"Free Speech" may not mean what you think

There's been a lot of talk recently about free speech, but a lot of people have a very superficial understanding of what "free speech" actually means.

I taught several semesters of Communication Law, and here is what the Constitution and the courts say "free speech" means.

Crowd-sourcing Political Persuasion in Social Media

Update: Although this post was written a while back, people are still finding it and reading it. I have updated it here and there to reflect the post-Trump realities.

Right after the 2016 US election, we heard a lot about the "echo chamber" that saw a lot of people talking about issues in social media, but mostly to people of similar beliefs.

Why did neither side have much success persuading people of conflicting beliefs and what should we do differently for the futute?

The 3Ws of Political Messaging

The lines are drawn for the November election propaganda blitz.  Both campaigns have their messaging in full swing. 

But much of the political communication we receive will not be directly from the campaigns or political action committees.  It will come from "friends" on social media. So how do we, as individual citizens, share our thoughts in a way that might actually persuade others?

Policies, not people

All over the place right now we hear name-calling and ad hominem attacks (attacks on who the people are, as opposed to the policies they support). 

But arguments like that are a great way to alienate voters "in the middle" who have not yet made up their minds, because you are not just insulting the top-of-the-ticket candidates.  You are insulting the undecided voters, themselves.

When you say things like:

You are un-American for supporting _______,

If you support that candidate, unfriend me.

You are gullible if you believe those lies. 

If you do/don't wear a mask, you are stupid and maybe evil. 

 

Who raised you? 

Do you think you will shame people into changing their minds?  It's not likely to happen.

If I tell you that you are stupid, does that open you up to new avenues of understanding?  No, it makes you stubborn and it makes you close down and avoid different ways of seeing things.

Name-calling is satisfying because it allows you to express anger or fear, but it is not good persuasion. Attacking the candidates for their personality or background does nothing more than add further polarization in the minds of the people you are trying to persuade.

If you want to get people to change their minds, you need to engage with them and use evidence.  People (such as voters) will use every tactic they can to AVOID admitting that they were wrong.  Good persuasion opens the door to greater understanding, and greater understanding opens the door to changing ideas.  Insults and attacks close down pathways that might change ideas.

If you want to change the ideas of people you know, don't insult them (or the candidates they may be considering). Engage with them and introduce them to persuasive evidence.  Ask questions so you know what their actual perceptions and concerns are and focus your evidence toward these things. 

Of course, phrase your questions so as to challenge their assumptions and point in the direction you want to go.  More about that in another upcoming blog post.  

 

Facebook and Twitter probably CAN legally censor your posts

A recent Supreme Court ruling may put the damper on efforts by the president and his defenders to stop social media giants from censoring and blocking accounts of people who make abusive, bullying, fascist, or other extreme posts, political and non-political. 

Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, was actually about cable TV public access channels, but the court's ruling sheds light on the right of media companies to censor user-generated content.

Remember that the First Amendment does NOT guarantee free speech in all situations.  What it does is prohibit the Government from taking actions that limit free speech (including all levels of government).

The cable company in this case censured and eventually banned the plaintiffs from providing content for the company's community access channel, as the result of a program they produced that was critical of the cable company itself. The plaintiffs claimed that because the community access channel was set up as a public forum, their rights were violated.

The Supreme Court majority noted that although the cable company had a contract with the city, it was essentially operating as a private company, and not as an agent of the city.  Therefore, the court ruled, the cable company is not bound by the First Amendment.  It returned the case to the federal district court for review, taking into account this guidance.

It seems to me that this is VERY relevant to the question of social media companies removing content or banning users.  Facebook and Twitter are not in any way agents of the government. They are clearly private companies.  Thus they have the right to set rules and boundaries about allowable content, known as the Terms of Service. 

Of course, there are complications, like the false positives resulting from the use of algorithms to try to identify violating content, which implies that the companies need functional appeal processes. 

But when people post in social media, they need to remember that they are still really playing in somebody else's sandbox, and nastiness CAN have consequences.

Star Trek Discovery: Saints of Imperfection

Here are observations about the fifth episode of Star Trek Discovery this season, Saints of Imperfection.  There ARE a few minor spoilers below, but not full episode summaries.

1. May refers to transporting Tilly across the "dimensional plane."  So the thing Discovery is temporarily stuck in is basically an inter-dimensional portal.  Like a Stargate event horizon without the actual Stargate. Maybe THAT'S why the parts of the Discovery saucer need to rotate.  Because Stargates rotate in setting the destination address.  (In reality, CBS can't overtly use elements from MGM's Stargate, due to copyright, but the visual portrayals are reminiscent.)
2. Pike is seen entering the bridge from Lorca's Ready Room, even though Pike made a big thing a few episodes ago of not liking it and moving elsewhere. We can still see the stand-up desk through the doorway.
3. Pike and Georgiou were classmates at Starfleet Academy, although maybe not the same class year.
4. When Pike, Georgiou, and Burnham get into the turbolift, it starts going without anybody saying the destination.  In fact several times people get into the turbolift and don't say where they are going in this episode, but this is the only scene in which we see them continually after the doors shut.
5. A reference to "alligators" on Cestus III, was likely a reference to the Gorn, although supposedly Starfleet didn't know anything about the Gorn until the TOS episode Arena.  On the third hand, Lorca appeared to have a Gorn skeleton on display last season.
6. Also a reference to Deneva, one of the first Earth colonies, where Sam Kirk and family eventually live (and some of them die). 
7. Georgiou is eating an apple to show how cool she is, kind of like how the J.J. Abrams Kirk ate an apply in one of the movies.  She drops it when Burnham gets in her face.  She isn't as cocky as she pretends to be. Since they are getting ready to make a series about her, I HOPE that she is a nicer person than she lets on.  Here "oh look at the cute baby" moment last episode gives me some hope.
8. The new chief of security, Commander Nhan, is still wearing the skirt-and-tights version of the Starfleet uniform, except in Discovery blue.  Note that when Pike first came to Discovery, he identified her as an engineering staff member.  Now she's heading security.  Was she Security pretending to be Engineering, as a safety detail for Pike?
9. Once they find Tilly and...what else (spoiler) they find...they fritter away a LOT of time when they urgently need to be heading back.
10. Tyler has a radio integrated in his com badge, like TNG and later comm badges.  Nobody else has ever heard of that before, through the TOS movies.
11. The Section 31 ship does not have invisibility, but apparently is able to make its shields look like a big asteroid.
12. The tractor beams in this episode need a receptor or "tractor rig" to pull against.  The only time I remember the 1701 Prime using a tractor beam was in Space Seed, and they may well have placed a receptor on the Botany Bay, which we just didn't see.
13. Now we have two "we will meet again" foreshadows: Tilly and May, and Pike and Jacob (on New Eden). 
14. Leland is apparently in charge of Section 31, but he made a reference to "control" last week, and now we find out who "control" is.

Note: Photo is a "fair use" screen capture used for purposes of review or criticism, and thus complies with copyright law.

No More "Like and Share" - Maybe

Facebook's new policy about keeping "Engagement Bait" out of the newsfeed is intended to eliminate posts with "like and share this post" calls to action.  But liking and sharing is part of the engagement that marketers really want.

So what do they do?

First, let's take a step back and analyze why "like and share this post" has been so common.  There are three things to consider:

1.  Some marketers do superficial planning and all they want is good numbers.  Liking and sharing does cause more people to see a post, although they may not be the best people, i.e. the ideal prospective customers or key stakeholders of the business/organization making the original post. 

2.  Facebook has also been downgrading the ability of a post to spread via organic sharing and liking.  Facebook is a business and they are incentivizing marketers to spend money to deliver their posts (which are really advertising messages) to constituents who are selected by various categories and interests. 

3.  Persuasion theory says that we get people to do big things by first getting them to do little things that build towards the big thing.  Liking and sharing our posts demonstrates support, and repeated small demonstrations of such support set the stage for larger acts of support, like buying our product or voting for our candidate.  So, getting people to like and share has a strategic role.

So how do we respond to the new Facebook rules?

Marketing communications is about brand persuasion, and brand persuasion requires engagement -- a two-way interactive relationship between our business/organization and our customers/constituents.

So, we still want people to like and share, but we'll have to use more creative language.  Language like "pass this along" and "tell us what you think" are likely to become more common.  And marketers will need to monitor their insights (statistical reports from Facebook) about performance of messages containing various calls to action, to see which work best.

But the reality is that as social media matures, it is going to cost more money to use it for marketing.

Up to now, the costs have been relatively hidden -- the staff time for people to create posts and maintain the page, and the costs to develop customized content, like graphics, photography, and video.

More and more, organizations are going to need to use paid reach to get their messages to the people they want to reach. A small business may be able to do this with only $15 or $20 a post, a handful of times a month, reaching a few thousand people. Bigger businesses, of course, will need more money to reach the hundreds of thousands or millions of people they need.

So, strategic planning, including budgeting, is a new reality of Social Media Marketing.

Five strategies to get the most from your online marketing

I have worked and taught in the field of media all my life, so I know the important role that advertising plays in providing the profitability which allows content that serves the public.

But online advertising often isn't accomplishing what it should.

This article makes a couple of important points, showing that online advertising is far from a mature industry, and often does not accomplish the goals of the advertiser.

Procter & Gamble cut more than $100 million in digital marketing spending in the June quarter but there was little impact on its business, proving that their digital ads were largely ineffective. 

The two most common complaints about digital advertising are that 1) advertisers are paying for ads that are viewed and clicked on by bots, not humans; and 2) ads are placed by thousands of automated “ad exchanges” that are out of control of the advertiser on sites and pages that don’t match the advertiser’s products.

I have been teaching for almost 20 years that the Internet should be seen in terms of the relationships it facilitates, not in terms of the technology.  I am fully convinced that the Internet, websites, and social media can be used to foster beneficial relationships between businesses/organizations and their customers/constituents.  But I am not convinced that display advertising, inserted into websites and social media feeds, is the way to do it.

It is relatively easy to create an ad and then pay one of these ad exchanges to place the add in various sites and feeds THEY choose, based on the demographic information YOU specify. They later tell you how many users saw or clicked on the advertisement.  As the article explains, there is great potential for the advertiser to be deceived about effectiveness, due to automated click bots, or the ad exchange putting the ads in bogus (or shall we say suboptimal) locations.

So how SHOULD businesses and organizations use social media and the Internet to promote their brand?

Here are my five strategies to get the most value out of your online marketing communications:

1.  You have to engage in TWO-WAY interaction with your audience

Give them content that is relevant to their interests and when they respond, respond BACK to them to show them you are listening.  This takes time, planning, and smarts.

The social media, itself, may be free, but the bigger your organization is, the more people hours and budget it takes to plan and create the content, to listen around the clock, and to make replies and help solve problems, all while perfectly aligning with your brand image and brand promise.

This process doesn't work via one-way advertising.

2.  Use strong CONTENT MARKETING 

People respond positively when the messages they receive are relevant to them. Messages that are not relevant get ignored, and frequent irrelevant messages may result in unfollowing.  This is why businesses and organizations need to REALLY understand their customers -- who and where they are, their interests, and why they are or should be interested in what WE have to offer.

The highly-relevant content we create may be posted right in our social media feeds. It might be in a blog or other format that is linked to from our social media.  But is also needs to be well-optimized for search engines, because the specific topic of the one particular content piece may be what allows someone to find us and decide to like/follow us.

This content will surely include text, but also video, graphics, and photography custom-produced for your social media posts.

3.  Time of day you post is really important

Post your content at a time when YOUR people are most likely to be reading, so your content does not scroll down and get lost in the clutter.  Some platforms may TELL you when your people are on.  If not, you can experiment with posts in different day parts.

4.  Call to Action

Every post should be crafted to stimulate some kind of action, even as simple as liking the post.

In persuasion theory, the way to get people to do BIG things is to first get them to agree to little things, and to then lead them along, step-by-step, toward the bigger things. These little things, as simple as liking or sharing, gets their thinking aligned the way you want, so when the bigger need or opportunity arises, they are pre-disposed to take the important action steps you want.

So EVERY content post should include some form of call to action.

5.  Seek both frequency and reach

For decades, the dual emphases for advertising have been frequency and reach.

Reach means you DO want to get your message to as many people as possible, to help find prospects, i.e. people with whom you are not in contact.  Your goal in online reach should be to get people to like/follow your feeds, or otherwise make initial contact.

But for building and strengthening the relationship between you and your constituents, the frequency of interaction is vital. The more positive contacts your audience has with you, the more likely they are to buy (or do whatever the action goals of your organization are), and this is driven by the frequency of contacts.

Of course, don't overwhelm them with 147 posts a day.  Find the daily or weekly frequency that is right for you and them.

The balance between frequency and reach may be different for different businesses/organizations, but remember that they do different things and your online marketing content should never be only one or the other.

Reach is making initial contact.  Freqency is about cementing the relationship.


Final Thoughts

Lots of people think that if they USE social media, they will automatically be effective at marketing via social media.  Not really true.

There are many dimensions that must be accounted for and planned in social media marketing that go way beyond being a user.

I'll be teaching an online course on social media marketing in the spring semester through my school, Wayne State College. It will be regular tuition, but anyone anywhere can enroll, in a degree program or not, for undergraduate or graduate credit.

If you're interested, let me know.  Registration will be in October.

 

Who Posts Trump's Tweets?

When I first read the president's tweets about Charlottesville, my immediate reaction was that some of them didn't read the way he says things.  It turns out that some of them MAY have come from a staffer, not Trump himself.

During the campaign in 2016, we know pretty certainly that some @realDonaldTrump posts were made by the candidate himself, and some were made by staffers.  The language was different, but also some were posted from an Android device and some from Twitter for iPhone.  Trump was using the Android device during the campaign and staffers had the iPhone.

This is not unexpected. There are a LOT of politicians and celebrities who have staffers or publicists manage or contribute to their social media.  It is pretty much standard procedure, except that most politicians probably do the hands-on tweeting less than Trump has.

This article from March scrutinizes the Twitter dynamic of the Trump campaign/presidency. It turns out that some tweets are STILL probably written by somebody other than the president, personally. Again, not at all unreasonable for a politician.

The @TrumpOrNotBot bot analyzes the president's tweets and uses machine learning and natural language processing to estimate the likelihood Trump wrote a tweet himself.  It uses an algorithm that compares new tweets to the president’s massive Twitter record, and calculates the odds that Trump, personally, wrote the new tweet. Supposedly the algorithm is continually updated.

So what do I conclude from looking at the analysis?

I think it's really hard to accurately analyze the language, but the platforms the tweets come from are interesting.  This week, most tweets have still been sent from an iPhone, but some are from the "Media Studio" Android app.

The Media Suite Android posts are more likely to be announcements about events, videos of the president, government reports, etc.  Advocacy posts (and insults) are more likely to come from the iPhone app.

So what did @realDonaldTrump tweet?

iPhone:  We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one! 

iPhone: What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives. #Charlottesville 

Android Media Studio: We must remember this truth: No matter our color, creed, religion or political party, we are ALL AMERICANS FIRST. 

Android Media Studio: We will continue to follow developments in Charlottesville, and will provide whatever assistance is needed. We are ready, willing and able. 

iPhone:  Deepest condolences to the families & fellow officers of the VA State Police who died today. You're all among the best this nation produces. 

iPhone: Condolences to the family of the young woman killed today, and best regards to all of those injured, in Charlottesville, Virginia. So sad! 

iPhone: Our thoughts & prayers are with the families, friends & colleagues of #Virginia's @VSPPIO Lt Cullen & Tpr Bates #Charlottesville

I don't think it is likely that sometimes the president uses one phone and sometimes another, sometimes iOS and sometimes Android. It would not surprise me if more than one trusted person using an has access to post to the account. So I interpret the Android Media Studio posts as being the White House Communications office or other trusted party, and most, if not all, of the iPhone posts being directly from the hand of the president

In some ways, none of this matters, other than as a curiosity to observers. If something is released over the signature of the president, it IS functionally the president saying it, no matter who wrote it.  But given the unique Twitter dynamic the president has established, I find it to be intriguing to try to understand which tweets fall into which categories.

And particularly in light of the recent criticism of whether Trump should have called out white supremacists the way he calls out everybody else, I do wonder who really is posting what content to the president's accounts.

Strategic Distraction in Social Media

Given the power that social media has to influence society and social agendas, it's become a regular tactic to use social media ti divert attention away from the bad stuff.

Trump does it.  Lots of other organizations do it. But we are hardly aware of what is going on.

Two stories have prompted this post. The first is about a study that concludes that the Chineses government employs a tactic of diverting attention from bad news or dissent. They do this NOT by addressing the issue to counter arguments, but by inundating social media with other, positive content that leads the conversation away from the dissent. The study concludes that they do this with an "army" of 2 million people who flood the internet with positive news posts.

The article quoted one of the authors of the study as saying:

We had always thought that the purpose of propaganda was to argue against or undermine critics of the regime, or to simply persuade people that the critics were wrong. But what we found is that the Chinese government doesn’t bother with any of that.  Instead, the content of their propaganda is what we call “cheerleading” content. Basically, they flood the web with overwhelmingly positive content about China’s politics and culture and history. What it amounts to is a sprawling distraction campaign rather than an attempt to sell a set of policies or defend the policies of the regime.

The second story I read recently concludes that bots are a major factor in spreading "fake news" on Twitter. Automated accounts are particularly active in the early spreading of viral claims, and tend to target influential users, according to the authors.

I have addressed bots before and not all are bad, but in the political realm, they are doing more than just auto-liking posts.

So what can we learn from these two stories?

• There are organizations and governments that are actively manipulating the flow of information via social media and the Internet, for their own benefit.
• Often, their goal is distraction.

The Chinese government uses "good news" to overwhelm the "candle in the wind" of dissent.

Donald Trump uses insults to distract from the criminal investigations centered on his election campaign.

But whether he knows it or now, Trump also distracts from OTHER important things going on in the American government.  Because the insult of the day has to be reported and analyzed in the media (it doesn't but they haven't figured that out yet).....

Other important things never bubble up to the surface for broad discussion, like this story about a Commerce Department plan that could reduce the size of 11 marine sanctuaries and monuments.

If the opposition wants to retake Congress in 2020, and retake the White House in due course, they have to get MUCH more sophisticated about how they disseninate simple, straightforward Twitter-like talking points that will REALLY get the attention of undecided voters. Armies of people doing coordinated posting and bots are clearly fair game, but false information is not, in my opinion.

What's this blog really about?

August is when school starts again for me, and the end of July seems like a reasonable time to reflect on the status and goals of my blog.

As it turns out, I have been making a lot of posts about politics recently, but that is not my MAIN intent with this blog.  My intent is to post as an observer -- of life and culture and things that interest me.

What most people don't understand about Social Media

We've seen several reports recently of popular social media sites that are struggling to be profitable, like Twitter and Tumblr.

Profit? Most social media users see their accounts as a free service.  What's going on?

Seven Rules to get Great Fireworks Photos

With Independence Day fireworks shows on the agenda, social media will be flooded by photographs of fireworks, and most will not be very good photos. Here are my tips for getting the best fireworks photos:

1. Use a tripod. Good fireworks shots will require a slow shutter speed and you can’t hand-hold the camera still enough. Make sure it is firmly on the bare ground and not wobbly.

2. Use a DSLR camera. Point-and-shoot and cell phone cameras are usually too automatic, and you will need to use some manual settings (see below).

3. Get there early and frame your shot. You need a location with a clear view in the direction of the fireworks with no power lines, utility poles, street lights, etc. Generally start with your lens zoomed as wide as it goes (after step 4 below). You may still need to adjust how your camera points when you see how high the fireworks go.

4. Focus manually. You can’t focus on the fireworks themselves, so focus on buildings, trees, etc, at the same distance as the fireworks will be. Zoom in all the way and use automatic focus, then switch to manual focus mode so the focus doesn’t change. After that, you can zoom in and out without the focus changing.

5. Use a low ISO. This is another manual setting. Many cameras adjust the ISO automatically, but you want to set the ISO manually as low as you can. ISO 100 or 200 is good.

6. Use a slow shutter speed. You may need to experiment some as the show progresses, but start with three seconds, which should give you nice filaments and detail. But because of this, make sure that your tripod is firmly planted, so that it doesn’t wobble when you press and release the shutter. If available, use a cable or wireless remote. Note: Many tutorials say to set your aperture manually, also. I use the shutter/speed priority mode, along with the manual ISO, which allows the aperture to adjust itself.

7. Get into a rhythm. Trip your shot as soon as you see the missile shooting skywards. If you wait until you see the firework explode in the sky, it will be too late.

Follow these seven rules, but also be flexible and prepared to tweak your settings slightly as the show progresses (particularly shutter speed and camera angle) and you will get some great fireworks shots.

Note: The photo above is my own.

The Role of the ACLU

I am sure that there is a segment of Americans that is vexed with the ACLU right now, but the ACLU serves a vital role which every democracy needs.

What's REALLY going on with Trump's Tweets?

As bizarre as many of them seem, there is an astute political strategy behind the tweets of the president elect - deflecting the narrative.

Social Media Activism 2.0

From "The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: 

Divided they blog" by Ladal Adamic and Natalie Glance.  By extension, 

it is an excellent representation of the current understanding of the 

"Echo Chamber" in which people online mainly interact 

with people of similar thoughts and orientations.

Political observers have noted recently that people on social media inhabit an "echo chamber" in which they only talk to themselves. As a result, no matter how much they post, they don't really change people's minds.

Yet, social media is huge in terms of selling stuff and corporations spend a fortune to influence people via social media.

How do we resolve these apparent conflicts into a paradigm for political activism via social media post-2016?

What is social media?

The idea of social networks long predates computers and smartphones.  It is "a social structure made up of people or organizations with one or more specific connection, such as friendship, family, common interests or dislikes, financial exchange, sexual relationships, and relations of belief, knowledge or prestige."

Social media is a technology-mediated social network, i.e. one pursued via electronic communications technology.

The key is that it is a network of relationships, not just information exchange.

What is persuasion?

Persuasion is "communication that is intentionally devised to influence attitudes, beliefs, or actions."  Persuasion, then, is about getting people to behave in ways you desire by appealing to their beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and motivations.

There are MANY ways to persuade (I have taught an entire semester course about persuasion). One of the most powerful, in the context of politics, is appealing to the threat/fear response. This works most effectively when the threat is personal.

How did social media fail in 2016?

To succeed, social media cannot be seen as persuading people directly to do something.  Social media needs to be seen as building relationships that will influence people to engage in a certain behavior.

In practical terms, we need to get people to do something because it is an expectation of the their reference group(s), or to support their group. Therefore, we use social media to forge and strengthen this group identify, and to present actions that align with the group.

when someone already agrees with you, this is not too hard.  When someone disagrees with you, it is much harder, and where you need to draw on psychology and established persuasion techniques.

The decision of which presidential candidate to vote for is a big, high-stakes decision.  Not many people change their minds easily about high-stakes decisions, and people HATE to change their minds, which means admitting that they were wrong.

So, how do we proceed?

We use sequential persuasion, that is, we accomplish our big goal via gaining compliance in a series of smaller persuasive steps.

We start by getting our target audience to agree to a small point that is so easy to accept and so logical that they cannot really object to it. Then we build, getting them to agree to another, and another, and another, each a logical step based on their previous agreement.

Businesses do this all the time in ways that are grounded in consumer psychology. Some typical tactics are:

• Pre-giving – Giving "free" return address labels, meals, etc, to get you in a more receptive frame of mind.
• Foot in the door, or a free consultation.  "We're not here to sell you anything.  We just want to understand your situation more" but in reality we are assembling evidence to use to sell you later.
• "But wait, there’s more” – Adding allegedly free stuff that is really hidden in the price you pay.  You see this in infomercials all the time.
• Lowball – Start with the basic version, but extol the benefits of upgrading.
• Incremental – Provide little bits of additional information at a time.  The dozens of little revelations about governmental surveillance of citizens accomplished this. People accept it now who would not if it all came out at once.

How do we apply this in social media?

We need to apply it top-down. Hundreds of thousands of people trying in uncoordinated ways to gain compliance isn't going to work as well as centralization of the message.  The centralization needs to be based on VERY careful analysis of the mindset and world views of the people who are NOT YET part of the group.

We need to find little points that are relevant to the big issues, and frame them in ways favorable to ourselves, but also that are hard for anybody to disagree with.  Then ask readers who agree to take some easy logical action, like sharing to their friends.

When we can show that it is particularly important based on THEIR frame of reference, we can to ask them to do something bigger, like send an email or make a phone call.

What we are asking may be straightforward and obvious our in-group people, but it may be more challenging for the folks we really want to reach, who are not yet in the group.  This is because they think differently from how we think.

How do I figure out the way the other guys think?

Number one, we listen to them.  Eavesdrop on their own talk and see how they present their logic.

But as I have posted before, there is also research that can help a lot.  It shows:

• Liberals make decisions based on data and analysis.  They are less emotional and more adaptable.  They are more likely to respond to complex information, considering multiple possibilities before making a choice.
• Conservatives make decisions based on fear-driven emotions, emotional attachment to an idea, and group identity.  They want stability, i.e. they resist change. When faced with ambiguity, they have a strong emotional response and are more protective of assets and loved ones.  For them, stability equals predictability, equals more expected outcomes, equals less fear.  They go with the choice that seems least threatening.
• The more conservative you are, the more group loyalty, authority, and purity/sanctity are important to you. The more liberal you are, the more harm/care and fairness are important.

To rally your base, use tactics that appeal to your own way of thinking.  To reach across party lines, you need to employ the kinds of arguments and communication styles that resonate with the other party.  This cross-party thinking can be hard to do, because it is alien to how WE think for ourselves.

If the liberals failed in their use of the "echo chamber" in 2016, it was through NOT framing the issues in ways that would appeal to undecideds (and conservatives) and in NOT employing organized, strategized calls to action.

I haven't seem much post-election change in their strategies, but maybe it is still a work in progress.

How to Talk to the Other Side of the Asile

This Slideshare PPT, from 2015, contains a nice analysis of how Conservatives and Liberals think.

Your brain on politics the cognitive neuroscience of liberals and conservatives

Therefore, it contains ideas to keep in mind when we are communicating with people who think differently than we do.

Distorted News

There has been a lot of talk recently about fake news in social media.  There is some, deliberately intended to deceive, but the much bigger problem is advocacy cloaked as journalism, that distorts the story in order to advocate a particular political or social agenda.

Here are some examples of recent headlines that are probably NOT news:

       It's worse than you think

       The electoral system was rigged — for Donald Trump

       Trump releases seven-point health care reform plan . . . and it's excellent

The secret is understanding whether the source has an editorial bias.  MUCH of what we see coming down our news feeds is actually advocacy for one side or the other.

How do you tell?  It's really not hard.  If the headline or story contains a value judgement or opinion that is NOT attributed to someone, it is advocacy, not journalism (even if it resembles a news story).

The only things that do not need to be attributed in journalistic writing are facts that are "widely known or easily verifiable."  But in promotional writing using journalistic style can stretch this "widely known" criteria to the breaking point, making for the subtle implication that "everybody else knows this but you."

The complicating factor is that you can't just base your evaluation on the publication or website.   Many legitimate news sources also carry editorials, guest columns, and other opinion pieces.

You have to make an article-by-article evaluation!

Not Very "Super" Moon

Note that the largest the Moon ever appears in the sky is not much bigger than the smallest it ever appears.  The largest is only 14% larger than the smallest.  Average is in the middle.

Hardly anyone would notice a  "Super Moon" if not for social media.

Let's Make People Smart Again.

Image Credit & Copyright: Catalin Paduraru

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161113.html

Social Media is not about Advocacy

I've seen all kinds of chatter this week, second guessing the presidential election and blaming whoever they can think of for the outcome, including a hefty dose of blaming social media.  But most of this social media blaming is from people who do not understand social media.

Social media is about relationships, not about persuasion.

Social media is about relationships, not about advocacy.

Let me say it again -- social media is about relationships, which is why you are much more likely to see posts that agree with your social, political, and religious orientation.

Not quite seeing the difference?  Let's take a step back.

In the 1990s, visionaries were learning that the Internet was not simply about moving data from place to place.  It was about social relationships. Look at these two Prodigy commercials:  In 1990, it was all about stuff, but by 1995, it was about people.

Facebook and Twitter were created for the express purpose of connecting together people who already knew each other, and people who shared common interests.

When social media evolved to also be about marketing and selling you things, it drew on the fundamental principals of marketing communications, which are giving people information to which they are most likely to be receptive, and minimizing content to which people will react negatively.

This is why the Facebook newsfeed algorithm sends you news about things it believes are your interests.  In politics, this means content (news and advertising) that aligns with your political views.  Note that such advertising usually has a line at the top listing a couple of your friends who also supposedly "like" this content.

See?  Facebook is not only sending you content it thinks you favor, but it is emphasizing your relationships, in effect using your friends to make endorsements.  If you are not sure about a product or service, you are more likely to consider the product or service because people you know appear to like and endorse it.

It is your social relationships that they depend on to persuade you to consider the advertising.

Jack Wagner has pointed out that, because of the way social media works, many people who favored Trump did not really even see the opposition to him.  Many who favored Clinton never saw the opposition to her.

But even more important, they probably saw it, but did not feel any social connection to people espousing it, so discounted it.

Jim Wright observed that neither party is good at reaching out to the other side.

If progressives want to counter all of their feared Trump policy initiatives, they need to find new ways to communicate -- new ways of making contact with people who do not think the way they do, and new ways of explaining their positions in ways people who think differently can relate to.

But the real lesson here is that memes and fake news stories do not persuade people. Peer groups persuade people.  In real life and in social media.