PILOTed

Is the News Media Making Us Angry?

The media has always filtered and distorted information. Newspapers, magazines, television, radio, cable news, news sites, social media, have never been impartial observers and reporters of all that’s happening locally and in the world. But something seems to have shifted in the last few years. What’s different about the media today?

If we understand the media’s role in how we receive information and perceive the world, and if we can teach the next generation, maybe we can make better decisions and we don’t have to be so angry and so despondent about the future.

The following branches from the article News in the Age of Abundance, by David Perell. There’s more to the article than what is contained here.

To understand how and why the media conveys news, follow the money. Marketing and advertising drive media and social platforms. The nature of advertising has changed over the last two decades, from brand advertising to performance advertising, and that changes the way media creates news coverage and the way we see news.

Brand advertising is designed to promote a product or service (brand) to people who may not care and who are mostly unlikely to be in the market to buy right now. If you are mass advertising (using traditional media), you have little control of whom you reach, most of the audience is not interested in your message, so the role of advertising is getting the brand in their heads so that when they are ready to buy, the brand is what comes to mind. You may not be thirsty right now, but when you are, what soda brands pop into your mind?

Performance advertising is reaching people who are already in the researching or buying process and bringing them to the next step in the buying cycle. If you are interested in looking at restaurants, there is a pretty good chance you are interested in making a reservation somewhere. Effective performance advertising became possible due to personalized advertising techniques based on large-scale data collection.

The change in advertising triggered a change in media. Reporters and entertainers used to focus on improving their craft. Now the key skill (in terms of employability and pay) is their ability to attract, keep, and grow a loyal audience of potential customers. Research and objectivity are less valued than finding and keeping sponsors and having an engaged audience. Research shows audiences are mostly engaged through memorable headlines and memes.

How do media and reporters use headlines and memes to attract viewers?

Bertrand Russel defined Russell Conjugations in 1948, showing how changing just one synonym can make sentences that were factually equivalent evoke strikingly different emotional reactions. Many words have a factual meaning and an emotional effect. Writers can change the entire meaning of a sentence by replacing a key word with a synonym that has the opposite connotation. For example:

1. I am firm
2. You are obstinate
3. They are pigheaded

Most of us regard the first examples positively, the second one neutrally or slightly negatively, and strongly negatively on the third example. The same below:

1. Based on new evidence, I have revised my conclusion.
2. You changed your mind.
3. They are flipflopping.
4. He has gone back on his word.

It’s admirable for Alan Dershowitz to revise his conclusion based on new evidence. It may or may not be okay for him to change his mind. But for him to flip flop or go back on his word merely to support a paying client? Unforgivable! Definitionally, all four sentences are equivalent, but the reporter can attract and appeal to different audiences, evoking different responses by changing just a few words.

Many people support undocumented workers who are providing needed services while trying to provide for their family, but are against illegal aliens taking jobs and using resources that rightfully belong to Americans.

 The changing nature of media rewards the more extreme forms, as they are more likely to spread and attract more eyeballs. We see that both in what attracts our attention and in the way information spreads.

The ease with which we can choose our information sources reinforces polarization.

The wide choices in media, especially seen in television, have meant people have more chance to select news that they agree with. The result is that media has become more polarizing and also more focused on entertainment than information. When people choose media that aligns with their beliefs, they are nudged further away from information sources that offer other points of view, and they then harden those differences to negative emotions which then draw those people back to reinforce those differences. It’s an escalating cycle.

As David Perell notes in the article, “People who read the Gettysburg Address when it was written focused on the texture of Lincoln’s prose, not the fashion of his top-hat.” Today, we spend more time getting riled up about the optics of Nancy Pelosi ripping up the State of the Union or Rush Limbaugh getting a medal during the State of the Union than on the content of the speech. The drive for media to engage means that form rises above content, glamor over truth, and emotion over rationality. Today’s political leaders understand the reality of rallying their audience with snappy slogans and emotion-filled speeches, just as today’s information sources and media rely on sensational stories and click-bait headlines to grow audiences for their advertisers.

The media, and media news, engages viewers by entertaining them, and when the information being conveyed isn’t entertaining or provoking enough, media needs to spice it up. News can be spiced up through pseudo-events (like awards shows or annual celebrations), adding color to existing stories (for example, using Russell Conjugations), or emphasizing false urgency (the Democrats are going to take away your guns, or the Republicans are going to take away your healthcare and social security).

Media companies (including the platforms) survive and grow by their ability to attract advertising dollars, which depend on large numbers of viewers. Attracting viewers is often a process of gaming media algorithms, composing misleading headlines, and spinning stories

If the most read content is polarizing or emotionally jarring, over time what does that do to carefully constructed accurate reporting? Low quality content tends to drive out high quality content.

Celebrities (or politicians) capitalize on this trend by “publishing daily distractions under the glitzy guise of informing the public.” News of declining world poverty rates or improving global health aren’t entertaining, they do not attract views, but linking the latest storm to earth threating global warning can fire up high engagement. Stories about the 725,000 people who die annually from mosquitoes are less engaging than a cataclysmic story about one of the 10 people killed by sharks each year. Homicide and terrorism account for less than one percent of American deaths each year, yet those are the stories that attract readers, not stories on cancer or heart disease, which together account for greater than 50% of deaths.

What can we do as consumers (or as teachers)?

We, and our students, have the power to choose what information we follow and the respect we give that information. We can focus our efforts and act on the things we can control. We can make a difference by taking action on often local issues instead of harping on national or global ones where we can, at best, rail to audiences who are already inclined to agree.

Just as the healthiest people control their diet and restrict their intake of empty calories, we can put effort into our information health. We can restrict our intake of the dramatic that is automatically served up by media, seek our own trusted curators, and vary points of view to see an issue from multiple vantage points.

As Perell concludes:

On the Internet, your rate of learning is limited not by access to information, but by the discipline to ignore distractions. The people you follow online is a leading indicator for your success, your health, and your happiness. Follow the right people, drink their recommendations deeply, and ditch the sugary cereal.

Perception

Let's start with three figures, an emoticon image, an image of a grown woman, and an image of a sheep, and put them together in the same frame.

 

As you look at the three figures, what's the story?

Here is a slightly different frame with an adult, a different emoticon, and the sheep image rotated about 90 degrees:

 

Different story, right? 

The fact is, there is no story except for what you've made up in your head. It's just a picture with three images each time.

Now look at two different ways to combine these two short videos:

First version:

 

And second version:

 

Your brain worked a little harder to come up with these stories, one with a happy ending and one with a sad one. Actually, there is no "ending"; it's just mixing the same two videos by reversing the sequence.

Okay, one final video:

 

Boy starts out happy with his teacher (or his mom, or his older sister, we really don't know that there's any relationship, that's just our brains looking for meaning) and his pet sheep. The sheep gets sick; in fact it looks like the sheep is going to die and the boy is very upset. The sheep is healed and the boy is happy again.

The human mind is a story making machine. We can't help but put together events, related or not, and create stories. 

It's not a fact that there is a sad or happy boy and that he's sad or happy about his sheep while his teacher is watching. The facts are that there are three 3D object files that were placed together in two slightly different scenes and recorded (using the 3DBear augmented reality app) and then those two videos were mashed together using iMovie.

As adults, we need to be able to separate the stories that our mind constructs from the facts or data that exist. When the stories are helpful, we can use them. Even when they are helpful, we should question them to see what angles we are missing.

We should be teaching our children these skills as well. And we'll be exploring similar issues on two upcoming live Edchat Interactives: Diverse Tools for Diverse Readers on October 29 and Unleashing the Power of Storytelling Across the Curriculum on November 5.

ASUGSV 2016 Highlights

What happens when 3500 of education’s digerati descend on San Diego? If you answered, the ASUGSV Summit, you're right.

For me, there were two sessions that hit it out of the park. Of course, that's not counting the 27 meetings over three days. Oh, and while we're talking about hitting it out of the park, how about those Mets?

Mind Games: Can Emerging Game Technologies Improve Learning & Talent Outcomes

• Rob Hutter, Founder, Learn Capital
• Johan Brand, CEO, Kahoot
• Vu Bui, COO Mojang AB (of Minecraft fame)
• Norihisa Wada, CMO, EduALab (Japan)
• Lauri Jarvilehto, CEO, Lightneer

Key takeaways:

• There is a parallel design structure to designing great games and designing great learning. When looking at brain images, there is virtually no difference between play and learning. In fact, well-designed games inspire self-regulated learning.
• Games solve the problem of students being too bored to learn. To close the engagement gap, schools need to compete with other distractions; games will do that, and best practice is playing games followed by a discussion of tactics, obstacles, and accomplishments.
• The power of games is the interaction-feedback loop, which fuels learning. While educational games have long been viewed as an oxymoron, that is rapidly changing as efficacious products are coming to market.

ED is in the Middle of mEDia

• Alan Arkatov, USC Professor and Katzman/Ernst Chair in Educational Entrepreneurship, Technology and Innovation
• Edward Fields, CEO, HotChalk
• David Rogier, CEO, MasterClass
• RIchard Sarnoff, Managing Director, Private Equity, KKR

Key takeaways:

• The large media companies are taking a close look at education (e.g. the $230M Bertlesmann plunked down on HotChalk). As the media companies look for better returns, they see that education is becoming more like what you watch on TV, except that people are willing to pay perhaps $5 for an hour of entertainment, but $100 for an hour of education, and the market for education is expanding as more people need to learn more over their entire lifetimes. Today, about 1/3 of the time people go online it’s to learn something.
• There are large hurdles. It’s hard for outside companies to understand that education requires a 7-10 year horizon; education is at best a get rich slow market. Second, while a lot of technology in other sectors has replaced humans with capital, that’s not happening in education. Third, education is highly regulated, with multiple layers of decision making, and so moves incredibly slow.
• While current levels of investment may feel like a bubble, addressing the biggest education issues are going to take such a long time to tackle, and the scale of the problems is so big, that the returns will eventually be huge. This will be even more readily apparent with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, which it will make it possible for students, teachers, and objects to interact without physically being in the same space and time.

And if you're looking to expand in education, shouldn't you be talking to Academic Business Advisors?