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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: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday November 14 2016, @06:08PM
Does anyone really believe the votes reported? If so, why?
BOTH parties have insisted on voting machines that are easily corrupted. That they are so has been repeatedly demonstrated. One of the vendors of voting machines stated that his machine would guarantee that the Republicans won. (That was Diebold, several elections ago, but do notice that this didn't keep Democratic areas from also buying his machines. What I believe he was actually guaranteeing was that the controller of the machine could determine who won the election.)
This time we have the win by the candidate supported by the KGB. Why are we supposed to believe THIS election is any more honest than the prior ones? It's just that the corruption is masterminded from further away. (OTOH, the FBI apparently supported the same candidate.) It's gotten to the point where I actually believe that internet polls are as accurate as vote counts. (OK, that's hyperbole, but I trust you understand what I'm saying.)
It *is* worth noting, however, that I only know the sentiment in my local area, and I believe the same to be true of almost everyone else. And the exceptions just have a wide spread net of friends, and THEY just know the sentiment among those friends and those they directly interact with. Say around 500 people as an upper limit. So we don't know to what extent the votes are fabricated. With exit polls you need to trust both the pollsters, the replies, and the actual questions. (Sometimes you know what the actual questions are reported to be.)
Certainty isn't available to anyone. But there are specific reasons to doubt the reported vote counts. I suspect that the direct election of Senators was a mistake. As the votes get more local, you are more easily able to judge their accuracy. Of course doing something about it is a different matter.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @06:25PM
I don't believe the numbers, I think it became clear that citizens wouldn't support another president that lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote. I honestly don't think Trump won fairly, and I know Clinton didn't win the DNC fairly... so what, next election cycle we get shit together?
If we don't, I'm fairly certain we'll witness the beginnings of the revolution.
Oh, for all you Trump voters (I can't overly blame you, HRC was shit) are you loving his backpedaling yet? ACA forever, H1Bs untouched, what else is he already going back on?? The DNC and Obama played us for fools with their Hope for Change campaign (*hope* being the operative word there) and now Trump and sort of the GOP have promised similarly grand schemes. Things will go badly for us all, at the very least the Dems have to pay lip service to freedom and equality. The GOP does the same, except its freedom to follow the Christian *way*.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @07:35PM
Keep in mind where you get the stories on Trump. They have a fiery passionate hatred for him. They have made that 100% clear for the past 6 months. Just as if you read anything about Hillary from the right publications.
People like propaganda when it matches their view on the world. When it conflicts with what they believe to be true they get mad. Trump supporters were prepared to lose. Trump made sure of that (the system is rigged). Hillary supporters were not ready for it. The tolerant left is showing they were only tolerant because particular groups were voting for them. Once any of those parts of the groups went off range they became targets for derision and hatred. It was the minority votes that pushed him over.
Scott Adams has been blogging about this very thing. This is his best one yet on the whole thing give it a read with an open mind that you may be wrong and what you see as reality may be wrong. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153080448451/the-cognitive-dissonance-cluster-bomb [dilbert.com]
I personally have been reading up on the Mandela effect. Either the world is wrong or I have a shitty memory and remember and processed things wrong. Which of those two things is likely? Now I do know I am not alone with this happening. So it is probably a side effect of being a human. We get things wrong and process them wrong. Even then we will still remember them wrong.
I honestly don't think Trump won fairly, and I know Clinton didn't win the DNC fairly
She somehow magically stopped cheating? The stakes were higher than ever and the odds of being caught very low. I have seen people try to make money on mcdonalds toys. When there is money and power involved there is 100% chance of shenanigans. People are greedy. I have no doubt there were people out there trying to rig our election. Which is likely? Hillary Clinton who has been proven to cheat stopped cheating or she continued to cheat?
If popular and electoral had been flipped around you would not see a peep out of the media about it. They would be going on and on about how the rules are made. You and I know it to be true.
Be fearful of the mass producers of 'news'. They do not care one whit about you other than to make sure you add to their statistics so they can sell/show you advertising. You are the product they sell to the people who pay the bills. They make sure you properly attribute to them all that is right and to their enemies everything that is wrong. They have positioned themselves as the arbiters of right and wrong. They can phrase things to make it appear something that is bad is good and something that is good is bad. They can omit bits of news or overemphasize other parts. They have been doing this longer than we have been alive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @09:11PM
Heh, good post but I don't really follow all those news stories. I expect HRC cheated as well, but the real cheating that occurs is with the voting machines. Trump's stated policies are better for big corporations and the uber wealthy, HRC would have to have some semblance of an environmental plan etc. Trump can tell everyone to fuck off, do it "his way", and he'll be praised by the idiots that voted for him because he "tells it like it is".
Yes the propaganda machine has always been around and has gotten worse, but that's not where I'm getting my opinion.
(Score: 2) by PocketSizeSUn on Monday November 14 2016, @09:31PM
I live in a normally deep blue state and county (63+% counted for Clinton). I went out for beers with some old friends on the 10th and all of the people I presumed would vote democratic *all* voted for Trump. I was quite surprised as this is a group of quite varied backgrounds that are normally not political but generally left leaning and college educated.
I know the counties in this state have a habit of being systematically being bad at math as they report in. Usually not enough to raise eyebrows, and people tend to come clean if it comes to a recount. I suspect that Trump entered the race with a -2% handicap and knew it. Both camps were strongly against a Trump victory.
I believe this election was just as honest as every other election as far as the vote counting is concerned. The media coverage and the rhetoric this time around has been massively slanted, but it's been steadily getting worse over the last 20 years IMO.
I personally have no doubt that more people voted for Trump than Hillary, I was surprised as there were *no* Trump signs anywhere around here. It was somewhat surprising before the election, but after the election it's clear that the Trump voters around here fear[ed?] the public and professional backlash advertising their opinion which in many respects is *far* more chilling than anything else.