One set of data like this on its own won’t distinguish between correlation and causation. Furthermore, this kind of data won’t indicate which direction the causation points. It requires a bit more context to really make these arguments thorough.
This is unsurprising—and very important to know. It doesn’t track ANY of the things that people are supposedly concerned about—unemployment, crime, immigration levels. But it DOES track anti-immigrant propaganda. Unsurprisingly, you can just make up any false shit and people will believe it.
Yeah —what wholly screws us 100% the billionaires. Super rich people. Corporations aren’t great and always had too much power but having a single person who can be a megalomaniac is a bigger problem. We didn’t tax them, now we won’t have freedom, democracy, a clean environment, etc.
Public concern and media coverage could have a common cause, like particular incidents involving immigrants or events making evident the effects of immigration.
The culprits are the politicians stoking outrage/fear/bigotry. The media is reflecting that and in some circles amplifying it, but it’s not “media” driving the issue.
So the media just uncritically amplify whatever politicians say? I missed out when Corbyn was Labour leader & the press was full of positive pieces about UBI and ending Islamophobia as an urgent issue.
You are arguing over which media sources have the largest market share, not whether they are an independent source of political messaging. The right wind amplifiers are bigger than the left wing ones, because even tho politics is about shaping opinion, media is about money and attention. UBI is dull
So you make my point for me. Things that are important but dull don't get covered. You still think the media is a simple amplifier, rather than a force that distorts the entire world? Just look up which countries have Murdoch press & check out their politics.
This graph is a little old. That end drop is around September-October 2022. It's most likely there were just other, bigger news stories those months. Namely Borris Johnson resigning/Liz Truss becoming PM (and the lettuce) and the Queen dying.
Nothing in these charts have to do with causation.
Politicians are trying to exploit a situation (real or imagined) and the media cover it. When the political messaging stops the media coverage follows suit.
I probably agree with your position, but doesn't the graph show that, in the last decade, the reporting followed the general sentiment and not the contrary? Not trying to be annoying or anything, maybe I'm missing something.
yep and the deep rooted racism, be it explicit or implicit, in the discourse. I can't even count the amount of times in the decade that I've lived in UK that I've been told by someone that "I don't count as immigrant."
All their “concern” and issues are drummed up crap. Immigration??? Really? But Democrats fall for it everytime. I don’t care about immigration or fentynyl. I know let’s solve immigration by making this a Hell hole where nobody wants to live.
It doesn't even have to be noticeable. It works with statements that are false, and which the subject knows to be false.
If the Daily Mail had spent 30 years telling us that the world is flat, a lot of well-educated people in the UK would now at least think it's debatable.
Populist Fascist Farage will keep it in the news his chance of power depends on misinformation, more commonly know as bullshit, and the gullible who swallow anything.
Yeah, in Europe, the extreme-Right propaganda is on TV also but the proportion of low-educated and informed people that can get caught in it is way lower than in #MAGAmoron -land!
I’m a USian shocked by this gullibility born of ignorance. I guess we all tend to base our idea of what the country is on our own circles.
I started researching basic adult literacy & education levels, and things became much more clear. It’s truly a tragedy what the erosion of ed has wrought here.
It’s a combination off things. People are much more frequently subjected to lying chatter targeted towards their emotions. If you look at many of the people who believe nonsense, the problem is not that they are illiterate.
There's also the pandemic, which is the dark matter behind all this. An existential threat makes people want to draw the bridge up and embrace "purity" around things like race, gender, national identity, sexuality, and so on.
I spoke with countless voters over the phone, up and down the country during the GE. The Tories took over hotels, filled them full of migrants and deliberately caused social unease. I was astonished how often it came up with voters from all social classes and political persuasion. It’s real.
I had no idea what "Ofcom" was because I'm not from the UK, but apparently they're some sort of regulation, yes.
But, in a neoliberal society where the rich have *ALL* the power, obviously someone who gets their paycheck from these assholes are going to be kept on a tight leash.
really curious if this is causation or strong af correlation. It would track that news media would increase their baseless yelling on immigration in accordance with the public’s. But it also tracks that the opposite is true
I think that both might be true - that one reinforces the other and vice versa. But what is also true is that the media *should* be in a better position to vet information and to think about it critically than the public is. This is (or used to be) one of its primary roles.
Can confirm, it's the same thing here in America
The Biden administration pushed one of the most restrictive immigration platforms in modern US history and set records for apprehending migrants, but the media ran with the Trump narrative that it was an "open border" so it became the #1 voter issue
this makes me so sad, that some rag is dictating peoplea reality and they just take it for granted; I blame the public education system that failed generations of people making access to higher educated reserved only for rich elites
Actually bad take, it’s more tabloid entertainment masquerading as press. Y’know, like Fox News which had to clarify it was as such to get out of a lawsuit.
Given how most of the mainstream media got consolidated by tycoons over the decades? Pretty much. It's also not a new phenomenon; Pulitzer vs Hearst trying to out-sensationalize the other is how we got the term "yellow journalism" in the first place.
It’s definitely true and a major enabler is Murdoch-owned media, which is incentivised to lie (or at least exaggerate) about immigration to make friends and money. The more Murdoch media you have in your country (US and UK vs Canada and NZ) the worse it is.
See this also: https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edac034
«With its salience as a politically contested issue increasing, negative yet previously less relevant immigration preferences and evaluations transform more often into politically tangible attitudes and behaviors, such as support for far-right parties.»
Comments
The culprits are the politicians stoking outrage/fear/bigotry. The media is reflecting that and in some circles amplifying it, but it’s not “media” driving the issue.
There were right wing politics and governments in UK and US before and after Murdoch. Tabloids, and yellow press, too.
Politicians know how to manipulate press coverage.
Because the red line leaps up *ahead* of the blue?
Politicians are trying to exploit a situation (real or imagined) and the media cover it. When the political messaging stops the media coverage follows suit.
The cognitive bias in factoring populist media like tabloids out of the equation of power altogether, is mistaking indelicate for insignificant.
If the Daily Mail had spent 30 years telling us that the world is flat, a lot of well-educated people in the UK would now at least think it's debatable.
See also: climate change
Murdoch's tabloids are nothing in comparison.
The benefits of Brexit... how's that £350 million per week to the NHS going, eh?
I started researching basic adult literacy & education levels, and things became much more clear. It’s truly a tragedy what the erosion of ed has wrought here.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1096421840631795714.html
But, in a neoliberal society where the rich have *ALL* the power, obviously someone who gets their paycheck from these assholes are going to be kept on a tight leash.
The Biden administration pushed one of the most restrictive immigration platforms in modern US history and set records for apprehending migrants, but the media ran with the Trump narrative that it was an "open border" so it became the #1 voter issue
https://web.archive.org/web/20230321141552/http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20050130-you_cannot_hope_to_bribe_or_twist.html
The papers could be writing about it more simply because the public is more invested in it, not the inverse
The amazing thing is that the more a lie is repeated, the more likely you are to believe it, *even if you know it's a lie*.
So it even works on people who are well informed.
«With its salience as a politically contested issue increasing, negative yet previously less relevant immigration preferences and evaluations transform more often into politically tangible attitudes and behaviors, such as support for far-right parties.»