Hello. Could you explain a bit more what you mean?
Intuitively I imagine journalism is becoming less influential as people are increasingly trapped in echo chambers and their ability to process complex information and think critically is reducing.
What do you make of the arguments in Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels’ Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government?
Namely that voters are driven by group identity and tend to evaluate political leaders and parties based on recent events or outcomes in their lives—especially economic conditions or crises—after they’ve happened, rather than making decisions based on informed policy preferences or long-term considerations.
If that’s the case, investigative journalism may have a smaller than expected impact.
I certainly don’t think investigative journalism is a panacea or tremendously effective. Definitely agree that most voters are motivated by tribalism and economic conditions.
Still, even in this age, investigative journalism sometimes seems to have substantial effects. For example, the book on the Biden’s cognitive decline and cover-up made some waves and hopefully has some positive effects.
More generally, I’m also not sure to what extent our age is highly unusual. It’s not like people in the 1930s and 1940s (in say, Germany) weren’t subject to echo chambers and didn’t exhibit a few “skill issues” in critical thinking.
My sense is that many elections are decided by a few percent of voters (with around 20-40% on each side (the “base”) essentially being completely immovable by any argument) so even shifting a few percent of voters journalism could have an impact.
I think investigative journalism may be particularly effective during more “hingey” moments, before a political party has rallied around a certain candidate and before tribalism kicks in.
I agree that, say, changing the underlying structure of the information eco-system is probably more effective (e.g., changing (social media) recommendationalgorithms (e.g., on Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter) to promote truth-seeking and improve the quality of general discourse). (But that’s probably almost impossible to pull off for any given individual unless you happen to be, say, Zuckerberg or Musk). Also, interventions in the AI for epistemics space may be much more scalable and high-leverage.
Hello. Could you explain a bit more what you mean?
Intuitively I imagine journalism is becoming less influential as people are increasingly trapped in echo chambers and their ability to process complex information and think critically is reducing.
What do you make of the arguments in Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels’ Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government?
Namely that voters are driven by group identity and tend to evaluate political leaders and parties based on recent events or outcomes in their lives—especially economic conditions or crises—after they’ve happened, rather than making decisions based on informed policy preferences or long-term considerations.
If that’s the case, investigative journalism may have a smaller than expected impact.
Hi, makes sense, thanks.
I certainly don’t think investigative journalism is a panacea or tremendously effective. Definitely agree that most voters are motivated by tribalism and economic conditions.
Still, even in this age, investigative journalism sometimes seems to have substantial effects. For example, the book on the Biden’s cognitive decline and cover-up made some waves and hopefully has some positive effects.
More generally, I’m also not sure to what extent our age is highly unusual. It’s not like people in the 1930s and 1940s (in say, Germany) weren’t subject to echo chambers and didn’t exhibit a few “skill issues” in critical thinking.
My sense is that many elections are decided by a few percent of voters (with around 20-40% on each side (the “base”) essentially being completely immovable by any argument) so even shifting a few percent of voters journalism could have an impact.
I think investigative journalism may be particularly effective during more “hingey” moments, before a political party has rallied around a certain candidate and before tribalism kicks in.
I agree that, say, changing the underlying structure of the information eco-system is probably more effective (e.g., changing (social media) recommendation algorithms (e.g., on Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter) to promote truth-seeking and improve the quality of general discourse). (But that’s probably almost impossible to pull off for any given individual unless you happen to be, say, Zuckerberg or Musk). Also, interventions in the AI for epistemics space may be much more scalable and high-leverage.
I agree with David’s response.