the entire point of misinformation campaigns is not to misinform citizens but to wear down the electorate into preferring ignorance
This comment should be highlighted.
As if the American electorate was ever really informed at large to begin with. I’ve been hopeful that we’re seeing the start of a new age of enlightenment like the one that preceded the French revolution. But if the source of knowledge becomes detestable (enshitification of the internet) it may be slowed or stopped all together.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
This is by design. As cited here: https://jordanrussiacenter.org/blog/propaganda-political-apathy-and-authoritarianism-in-russia
Russian propaganda derives its effectiveness from political apathy rather than its ability to persuade. Because citizens understand that their actions cannot affect the autocrat’s policies, they invest only minimal resources in acquiring political information or thinking about politics at all. This state of affairs, in turn, leads to a very superficial processing of information. Citizens use narratives imposed by the Kremlin as frameworks for interpreting political events, but do not incorporate them fully and do not formulate consistent political opinions. In other words, propaganda works because citizens are not interested enough in politics to form consistent opinions to challenge—or support—authoritarian rule.
And it isn’t new either. From 1922: https://www.jstor.org/stable/6376?seq=2
Consequently to-day the average citizen confesses he really does not know what the facts are in this and many other important issues. He has been deluged with facts, near-facts and falsifications put forth by interested parties, so that he has a mass of undigested and conflicting ideas on these subjects, or else has become frankly partisan to one view.
Yep, it’s not enough to be realistic instead of pessimistic.
Like, people need to be aware the current system is just a ruse, but it also needs to come with a plausible way out so people don’t just give up and disengage.
But if they do, you can’t shout them into re-engaging. That just drives them away further.
You convince them that it might be different this time. Not even the guarantee, just a semi plausible chance that things could improve if they re-engage.
As you pointed out all this is widely studied in sociology, it’s not some secret knowledge no one has. There’s just no money in it, so sociologists can’t influence the parties when both parties use donation amounts as the only metric when picking leadership.
There’s a couple good picks for the DNC election on 2/2/25, but there’s a very good chance the double down and vote based on who brought in the most donations. If they do that, we need to mobilize a third party asap for 2028.
I’m not giving the Dems another dime until I see a primary where they don’t rig it in favor of the old guard.
In 2008, Obama pulled off a surprising victory against establishment favorite Hilary Clinton, mainly off the back of a swell of online, small dollar donations. In his first term, among other things like stabilizing the economy in the midst of what we called The Great Recession (dumb name, I know, though a lot of people did lose their houses and jobs), he gave everyone health insurance subsidized by the government via taxes on health insurance and pharma companies, as well as Medicaid expansion. While not ideal, this was both realistically doable with the degree of Congressional support at the time, and a massive improvement over the previous system.
For some reason people have forgotten this in their zeal to pressure the dem party. I do get that, though I think it’s important to retain a degree of memory of what actually happened and why. Anyway, are we really sure a third party is necessary, when it is possible to simply win this one?
Or even that great of an idea? Because unless you pulled all the dems with you, you’re just leaving a dominant repub party by helping them divide and conquer. This is very frustrating, no question, but so is life sometimes.
I think some have forgotten it. But I think more people either weren’t paying attention back then, or were so young that they didn’t even know what was happening. I’d hazard a guess the younger the voters, the more they think the democrats are always terrible and never get anything done and primaries don’t do anything.
Not to say there aren’t older people who think the same, just my guess about why we get so many people insisting the democrats are just as awful and not fixable so they stupidly think a third party would be better despite that just removing their power as people.
Thank you for this informative comment. I appreciate it.
This is why America is the way it is, Americans will never admit that their country is garbage. It’s ALWAYS Russias fault. lmfao
I’m not saying this is Russia’s fault – I’m pointing out that this exhaustion is a longtime goal of propaganda.
Non-Americans are also exhausted by US political news…
Lemmy gets better once you filter out:
Trump says
Trump wants
Trump demands
Trump claims
Trump will
Trump threatens
Musk says
Musk wants
Musk demands
Musk claims
Musk will…that way you don’t have to see the media frantically reporting on every stupid word vomit as if no lessons were learned over the past 10 years. Ragebait headlines is part of the problem, and I will take no part in it.
How does one attain this power?
It’s done client side. I’m using Voyager.
Perhaps we should shorten that too:
Trump
Musk
That was my knee-jerk reaction as well, but sometimes news about them are actually newsworthy. I just was to filter out proof that news media never learned anything in 2016, and block all the stupid shit they say. When they do anything worth reporting on, that’s when I might be interested.
You’ll be able to read when they have any appreciable impact without those keywords in the headline though.
I added RFK to my list as I work in pharma so I can’t stand his nonsense, and I had to go back and add Elon as well, because they call him either equally as much and I was wondering why I was still seeing that dumbass in my feed.
Originally I was worried about missing out on important info. Listening to some people talk about it in one of my podcasts, they mentioned they were tired of seeing people say Trump will do this or that, they only care about hearing about what people are going to do about the dumb stuff he says and does.
That struck me, as firstly, he normally doesn’t do the majority of stuff he says, and secondly, if he does actually do anything of significance, I’ll see it on AP or NPR. If I don’t see it that way, that means nobody is fighting to stop it anyway.
I know everything these clowns do is going to be bad or stupid, I don’t need to constantly be told that because I already know. I want to hear the names of who is going to do something about it, or I don’t want to hear about them at all in my Lemmy feed, which is supposed to be fun or educational for me.
Other news that is less engaging can deliver the bad news when it needs to, but if I control my feed here, I’m going to make it less frustrating. Reading about these jerks the last few years has done any good.
Absolutely my feelings on the matter.
I don’t want to turn Lemmy into my own personal doom scroll. Nothing good is going to come out of the next 4 years and if anything is truly immediately bad that I need to deal with, it’ll be everywhere not just here.
You’re not kidding, eh?
not empty?
Yup.
I’m done.
There’s no room left for doubt. Americans are braindead stupid and our media is an international joke. After the election I stopped watching anything political. Made the jump from Reddit to Lemmy. And I’m only seeing this post because I was browsing ALL.
On inauguration day I plan on only browsing my local subs going forward. I don’t need to be more ashamed of being American or know what clown car bullshit Donald Trump and his enablers have done that day to embarrass us on the world stage.
We’ve committed as a society to a degradation of our nation and that’s what we’re going to get. I don’t need to watch that process under a microscope.
I’m in this camp as well. I followed the news closely the entire Trump administration and through the Biden administration, and despite knowing everything this prick had done the American electorate either shrugged it all off or didn’t follow any of it and reelected his ass.
Nothing positive came of me knowing about Trump’s every bowel movement via crappy media posts. Many voters didn’t even know Biden had dropped out of the race.
I don’t think the “Trump is good for ratings” media outlets anticipated this reaction of ours, but the nightmare scenario of a second Trump term has already arrived and the media – if they had any effect – aided him in his return to power. I’m through with clicking on the bait and pretending that “democracy dies in darkness” and subscribing to the same newspapers that help push right-wing narratives in an effort to appear unbiased.
Edit: I am, however, subscribed to a number of things via RSS to stay informed without being part of their clickbait games. I cannot recommend enough people going back to RSS.
Sounds like you are fed up of the poor quality circus coverage that passes for mainstream media news.
Perhaps you can find some better quality news and consume it at a time and place of your choosing? Maybe limit it to 10 minutes a day or a week?
It is understandable that you might turn to apathy having the news equivalent of highly processed, poor quality fast food shovelled into your face all the time; especially given how powerless to change these things we can feel. But you may be able to take back some control of your media diet.
It’s not the quality of the content. I’m responsible when it comes to my sources. It’s the sheer volume of legitimate depressing news making it crystal clear that our society is amoral and uneducated and that I’m probably not going to see too much progress in my lifetime and will probably struggle as much, or more, than I currently am until I’m dead. I could be getting my news from the absolute best, most unbiased sources and still be getting overwhelmed by utterly depressing developments that add up to a really grim outlook for the future.
Same here, I was already using Lemmy but I deleted the Reddit app the day of the election, and I actively avoid political news on any social media. I’m super done with it all and just focusing on myself.
Focusing on yourself is pretty much all you can do. If a society chooses to enter a downward spiral, then there’s not much an individual can do to change that. We’re just gonna have to spiral until we hit rock bottom and then hope Americans have what it takes to piece it all back together. Probably gonna be a lot of suffering and death before that happens though.
The next four years are in part going to be about Trump and his assortment of grifters, nut jobs, and ass kissers doing all they can to troll anyone not in their club. Damn straight I’m not tuning in for that.
This is a definitional question. A lot of shit on news shows is not actually news IMO. It’s shit, experts saying nothing about nothing, light on facts and heavy on innuendo about speculation… Of course people get tired of that. They don’t learn or understand anything by watching it.
Repealing the Fairness Doctrine was a very bad move.
Fox News views by dementia patients is still at an all time high.
Can confirm.
Source: I work in elder care.
It’s our own dumbass fault for making our news particularly exhausting
“We” didn’t do this. News outlets are not elected. Cable news was packaged and proselytized in the 80’s and advertising revenue has never let it go away. Lazy political campaigns glommed onto a captive audience and continually underfunded grass roots organization for media buys. That became it’s own industry and here we are.
However, at no point were any of these decisions made by the population at large. We didn’t all get together and collectively decide, hey let’s really fuck up our media diet and incentivize our most reactive take on an issue to further politicize the holidays and vaccines. This was done to us. It’ll take a lot of work to undo, if it ever gets undone.
I think it’s just part of the US return to its roots as it’s post WW2 advantages are beginning to wane.
The American population bought American exceptionalism hook line and sinker so it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment.
The “return” of yellow journalism is just part of the trend as the modern US returns to its late 1800s roots.
Yellow journalism, specifically the USS Maine and Pulizer and Hearst don’t really factor into the 24hr news cycle. They absolutely factor into how the news has always been a tool for the wealthy to shape and alter public opinion. However that’s been a problem since the stratification of wealth. You can go all the way back to cuneiform tablets to show this. It’s human nature.
Seriously. Fuck Ted Turner for lots of reasons, but in this case specifically for inventing the idea of 24 hour cable news.
and then thinking it’s okay to bury their heads in the sand afterwards.
Our political news is divisive, polarizing and isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know. There’s basically no objective news outlets in the country. They’re either heavily left-leaning or heavily right-leaning, and everyone watches the ones that align with their pre-existing views, which is only reinforcing what we already believe, or is designed to make us angry without offering any actual solutions, which is just tiring.
heavily left-leaning
Where’s the heavily left-leaning news? I’d like to consume some. Late-stage capitalism, rights of labor, single payer healthcare, CEO/corporate greed, abolish cars, eat the rich-type news would be nice to see somewhere.
- Jacobin
- Mother Jones
- Democracy Now!
Just off the top of my head
Where do you think ProPublica stands in that spectrum then?
Not that I’m any kind of authority on the biases of publications, but I tend to think of ProPublica as more about investigative journalism than any political theory.
All three of those publications you list either contribute to or source articles from ProPublica on a regular basis. All three also tend to cite sources and first hand reporting in their articles. You cannot say the same for far right publications, especially rumor mills in the Breitbart, InfoWars, Fox News sphere of influence.
There is absolutely a difference between the “left” and the “right” when it comes to journalism. The patterns I’ve noticed are more rigor in fact checking on the “left”.
However, you bring up a good point in that the media amplifies tribalism. I think social media is amplifying the opinion pieces that drive the wedge issues. Finally, I’m noticing a trend of podcasters sourcing opinion pieces as fact.
Heavily left leaning meaning non authoritarian bigoted racist anti LGBT piece of shit.
There are no mainstream heavily left leaning news channels in USA, they are all right leaning or extreme right.
I think only an extreme right wing American can fail to see that.
I didn’t have any part in that, and I don’t know anyone else that did either.
We’re in the find out phase of ending the Fairness Doctrine
You can thank Ronald Reagan…
Yep, this country wasn’t over when Trump got elected either time. He’s a symptom of this country’s death in its current form under the current constitution.
Reagan was the deathblow, this has just been leftover momentum, that appears to have finally waned. From Trickle down, to legalized bribery, to conversion of their former opposition party into neoliberal corporate bribe takers, to ending real news in favor of corpo serving propaganda like “climate change is a hoax to sell books, CONSUME” on and on.
Trump’s authoritarian rise is just akin to vultures helping themselves to the corpse. This country has been little more than an oligarch exploitation piggy bank for half a century.
Yes it would be painful, but we’d need to tear it down and start over, as the core constitutional mechanisms for change have been circumvented through intential propaganda to sow division and protect the sociopathy of our economy from the citizens it hurts and murders for private profit. But we won’t out of cowardice, so climate change will do what we’re too social opiate addicted and fearful to do in a couple decades when it will hardly matter anymore.
The fairness doctrine didn’t do what you think it did.
Mind adding context?
I probably should have said “wouldn’t” rather than “didn’t”. It’s grossly out-of-date and would be a gross violation of the first amendment if it were to be tried as people want it to be.
It applied only to “holders of broadcasting licenses”. That is - “old timey television and radio” that was broadcast over the airwaves. The reasoning being that the airwaves are a limited resource (there can only be so many TV and radio stations in a given area) so the government didn’t want a single entity to monopolize all of it with a single voice.
But it wouldn’t apply to the internet, cable TV, or any other modern form of communication. It wouldn’t do anything to Twitter. It wouldn’t even effect Fox News (the cable station) or NewsMax.
Oh I’m not exhausted by political news, I simply refuse to injest political news from gigantic corporate monoliths. Within their “reporting”, their interests will always come before the people’s. Journalistic objectivity does not apply. If you believe these corporate news agencies have journalists, then you have been propagandized. “Seeing both sides” is not objectivity, it seeks to further the status quo.
May they fall into obscurity.
They’ll show you 8 sides of the story before they show you the truth anyway.
Maybe the media should stop being a bunch of useless corporate shitstains who bombard us with a 24 hour news cycle that exists mainly to make their owners more fucking money?
My dad has CNN on this morning. One of their segments was a top ten Crimes of the Year…
Let me guess, no mention of ending Trump’s legal cases just because he’s president. Nothing to see there.
Could it have something to do with how long the US election cycle is? It seems that basically the whole term is full campaign mode for the next election.
Compare to other countries with much shorter official election campaigns (4-6 weeks) and I wonder if they are less tiring.
That’s true. They should consider limiting it.
The last election showed that. Cable news is dead. The American people now get their news from YouTube and podcasts.
My and my SO’s grandparents have all moved on from fox to the daily wire. :/
Not YouTube or podcasts. TikTok and Facebook.
Facebook is ad revenue and an echo chamber repeating talking points from propaganda mills of external state actors. TikTok won’t be an appreciable factor until 2026 when the mass majority of those viewers are eligible to vote. Also those TikToks usually are soundbites from podcasters or repeated talking points packaged by a different talking head.
It’s
turtlespropagandists all the way down
It is funny how fascinated we have become with politics while it is this stupid theatre. I would prefer have the Government do a good job so I don’t need to think about them at all
Some of my friends have expressed a desire to do so. They’re disappointed in the country. A third of the country voted for fascism, and a third of the country didn’t give a shit. It’s a hard fight to stay motivated, even for issues that directly relate to oneself, if the process feels hopeless - not simply by the opposition of powerful elites, but by the opposition of the overwhelming mass of your fellow citizens.
