Noise Equals Money

Poli scientist Jonathan Bernstein has moved from his "Plain Blog" blogspot to the big time at Bloomberg.  When those of us who were regulars in the comments section at the old place learned this, there were congratulations but also regret that our little community of sanity was likely to be broken up.

That seems to have happened.  Since many commented anonymously it's impossible to know how many have continued commenting at Bloomberg,  but I don't recognize but a few of those voices.  Instead there are the predictably extreme, dismissive, hate-filled comments that mock the idea of an exchange of information and views in a comments thread.

My routine these days has me checking JB late in the day if not the night, so I notice two things: I've arrived after the clamors of the day have ended, so the whole futile pattern emerges, and secondly,  if I comment it is often the last one and so it sits there nicely at the top, apart from the carnage below it.

Still, it's not as much fun as it used to be.  However I occasionally write something there that's worth repeating here, as in the following comment to JB's post on partisan media.  The topic got current I think because of a recent survey showing that a much higher percentage of those surveyed got their news primarily from FOX (almost half the total) and the usual candidate for its leftward counterpart, MSNBC, was close to the bottom.

Here's what I said:

Partisan media hype emotions, which as advertisers know, motivates buying i.e. contributing to candidates and parties. Though they operate differently--right wing media distorts or makes up facts, progressive media is more factually careful but still spends excessive time highlighting the emotionally potent outrages committed by the other side--they both have become important politically. Outrage as well as other more personal factors motivates people to clot comment threads with their often hate-filled shouting. Anything in this fast, increasingly connected and easily panicked information system can bend the debate and influence the terms of it. Any bit can be amplified by repetition as it moves up the aggregation chain. Otherwise the effect is cumulative--in supporting affiliations it gets tribal, and in information it adds to the noise that overwhelms the signal. That's probably why people are paid to make incendiary comments at places like this, although not everyone needs that kind of encouragement.