SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the twitter-is-known-for-being-a-place-of-kindness-and-intelligence dept.
El Reg reports in a story that at least some people seem to think so.
Twitter trolls are undermining what political analysts had predicted would be a new form of responsive democracy.
Far from being an opportunity to engage directly with voters, researchers found that the more politicians tried to actively interact with their constituents, the more abuse they faced.
The eggheads, based in Europe and the US, analyzed just under 800,000 tweets from over 650 politicians based in Germany, Greece, Spain and the UK and found that the percentage of "impolite" tweets directed at them went from 8 per cent when they did nothing to an extraordinary 40 per cent when they actively tried to engage with voters.
If that wasn't depressing enough, the paper notes that the level of abuse increases almost exactly proportionally to how engaging people's messages are. The more they asked to hear people's views, the more those views were insulting.
"Most politicians who post anything quickly become subject to constant personal abuse," the paper, published in the Journal of Communication, notes.
Such is the level of unpleasantness and vehemence that most politicians simply give up and use their Twitter accounts to simply broadcast messages rather than seek input or discussion. Something that, ironically, has led to them being criticized for ignoring voters and not being sufficiently open or engaging.
My take: The egg heads may be right on this, however there is nothing inherently undemocratic in people publishing libelous and slanderous crap about politicians. It's been happening in American democracy for at least as long as the republic has been in existence. Some of the things said about Thomas Jefferson when he was running for president were worse than what we were subjected to during this election cycle.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday November 14 2016, @01:52PM
Damn those nasty Register people. Surely they know that "egghead" is a slur on intelligent people. What's worse, Mendax repeats it sans quotes.
I've ranted about that rag's undependibility and won't repeat myself about that, but when you're covering the Earthquake in New Zealand, why quote a Canadian newspaper when the locals would be so much better at the news gathering? There are several US sources for the twitter troll story; Washington Post, Salon, lots more. Google doesn't even list the Register's take on it.
Next time, just quote The Onion. They're almost as bogus as "El Reg".
And stop insulting people who are smarter than you. Keep that shit on your alt-right web site.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Informative) by Webweasel on Monday November 14 2016, @04:08PM
Eh, its a British culture thing. (El Reg is a UK site with mostly UK journalists)
We even have a prime time TV show called Eggheads:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggheads_(TV_series) [wikipedia.org]
Its a general slang term for smart people, but not really insulting. Would be considered a compliment by some.
Also, El Reg is supposed to be satirical news site. "Biting the hand that feeds IT"
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:22PM
If you're covering an earthquake in Spain, why would you quote an American newspaper?
From TFA:
There was one single American involved in the entire study, and presumably because of that you consider any news published anywhere outside of America to not be "local coverage"? The researchers were two Germans, a Norweigan, and an American. The tweets were all from Europe. As much as I hate that site too, I don't see any logic by which the WaPo would be more local than The Reg here.