Ask Skewz.com Founder About Detecting Media Bias 299
Skewz.com is not the Microsoft-funded Blews experiment that is supposed to help detect rightness and leftness in stories based on blogs that link to them. Instead of detecting blog links, Skewz relies on readers to submit and rate stories, and even tries to pair stories that have "liberal" and "conservative" biases so that you can get multiple takes on the same event or pronouncement. The Skewz About page explains how it works. The site has drawn a fair amount of "media insider" attention, including a writeup on the Poynter Institute website. But what does all this mean? Where is it going? Can Skewz.com help us sort our news better and make more informed decisions? We don't know. But if you post a question here for founder Vipul Vyas, maybe he'll have an answer for you. (Please try to follow the usual Slashdot interview rules.)
Incentivising Registration? (Score:4, Interesting)
The article said you are hoping to raise your current set of 600 users to something more like 10,000--what are you doing to accomplish that?
So what in general is the media. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Right say the media is to Left.
How do you prevent your own views from skewing the results. Because someone who is Left or Right of Moderate would consider themselfs a moderate, while they are not truely moderate. So they would True Moderate coverage as Slightly to the Left or Right.
Accounting for Regional Disparity (Score:3, Interesting)
How will you account for response bias? (Score:5, Interesting)
This effect could even arise from random fluctuations with a small enough response group, and unless this is controlled, your site could eventually be labelled as "conservative" or "liberal" which would discourage the opposite group from voting, possibly providing a feedback mechanism for bias.
How would you prevent this from happening while still allowing users to generate the results?
Re:So what is liberal or conservative? (Score:1, Interesting)
Complaints? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not many ratings? (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me put forward my brother's idea, in conjunction to a reply to this post. First, the reply:
If liberal/conservative means bunk to you -- as it will to most slashdotters -- surely the same process could be applied to a different division that is important to you "high tech/low tech" "wicked/humble" or whatever you want.
You might not care about labeling something "left/right", but you might care about "true/false".
Surely the software that can handle lib/cons could handle other pairs as easily.
So you pick from a whole list of pairs, and if you don't see a pair you like, you create one. The rating from the pair then will also generate a definition straight from dictionary.com, so that anyone who rates based on that pair, will see what the definition is as they rate it.
Now, let me combine it with my brother's idea. You create your own ratings profile, rating articles as you see fit, and the site does its best to give you articles that you would like.
But you also tie into that ratings from friends of yours that you respect. So you can say "make my true/false rating reflect 40% from band_shark, 20% from the general pool, and 40% from slashdotters."
Ironic? Dontcha think? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Accounting for Regional Disparity (Score:1, Interesting)
But just because NPR doesn't sensationalize stories doesn't mean NPR is unbiased. There is a slight liberal bias. It's not a Democratic bias, but it is a bias toward liberal ideas. That's OK though. It's not possible to have a completely neutral worldview. Every person and organization has a worldview.
On the balance, though, I'd say NPR is one of the best news sources available.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:2, Interesting)
But I guess to explain this you really need to know where these news stories come from and where the people behind them come from.
-- History --
The modern News industry in the United States was not really a government required/regulated thing. Basically when radio & television came on the scene the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required that companies that broadcast entertainment must also allocate some percentage of their airwaves to distributing news and emergency broadcasts (thus the emergency broadcast system, and why cities still have 'local' news stations) as a community service.
Now you have to realize that companies that made money on corporate sponsorships of entertainment were not thrilled with having this non-sponsored news eating up their time. So news used to be pretty dull in the US (basically being the minimum needed). But as large corporations started buying and consolidating more and more of these broadcasters, they started to realize something...they could sell the news. As such these companies also purchased newspapers, magazines, etc. (Note Newspapers were not immune to the entertainment-news too...read up on William Randolph Hearst and how he invented a war sometime).
Well as these entertainment companies made their way into the news space, they found (really around the Korean war, or maybe Vietnam) that big news 'sold' better then the local news. So as an entertainment company what do you do to maximize sponsorships....you make more 'big news'. In the cold war this was pretty easy...you had a enemy and well you just made had them always be the Bad people, and the US be heroes. But as the 'enemies' dwindled we needed new entertainment-news villains....enter the pendant.
--Political News--
By creating an atmosphere where some Americans ideas were left, and others were right you had a good vs bad. But the great thing was, half the people thought one was bad, and half the people thought the other was. Infinite source of debate. And with heated debate we could cause infighting and more news.
Now many will point out there is more two it than that. There is a two party political system to blame, and that corporations were not some mastermind. True, there are a lot of dichotomies in the United States that helped create and enforce this view. Yes, with a few exceptions people were not masterminding the corruption of US news services. But if you look at the environment, and the times its pretty easy to see that it evolved that way. However as much as its denied by the agencies themselves, do you really think that the fact that most people reporting the news in the US are owned by entertainment companies; who have slowly started to make more money from news shows then movies and TV a pure coincidence with the rise of the left/right divide?
Re:Accounting for Regional Disparity (Score:3, Interesting)
In general "Conservatives" are more likely to have graduated high school and/or have a bachelor degrees while "liberals" are higher represented in the high school drop out and Masters/PhD's categories. Although in almost all categories (except the drop out rate which tends to lean Liberal by up to 20% more than Conservative)) the variance is usually less than 10%.
PEW has some good studies that compare political leanings to happiness, education and almost anything else you can think of.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Interesting)
So I pointed out that the US has the kind of problems that most democracies wouldn't countenance for a second.
Sure, the US system makes billionaires hand over fist, but at an intolerable cost.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:2, Interesting)
Please note that one can be "left wing" and "right wing" and still believe in the Constitution and personal rights. There are those on both wings that tend to ignore certain parts of the Constitution when it suits them, that's not isolated to "right wing loons."
Once you get past Constitutional infringements (attempted and successful) on both extremist wings--which are bad and inappropriate on both sides--I'll take the remaining conservative platform over the liberal. Like George Carlin has said, "Pacificism is a nice idea, but it can get you killed." I also don't like the idea of liberals destroying our economy with high taxes on any income level, rich or poor. These kinds of things can be debated within the legal Constitutional framework and when you limit contemplating policy to that which is really Constitutionally permitted, the conservative side wins on the merits.
Don't let the excesses of the current administration (perceived or real) blind you to the reality that liberal fiscal policy is inherently unsustainable, and that liberal social policy leads society down a very destructive road. A conservative policy does not necessarily lead to fascism or theocracy but a liberal policy almost invariably leads towards socialism which history has demonstrated to be a failure.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Interesting)
He was talking about local/private vs. federal action.
You were talking about "social justice"[1] policies, corporate tax breaks, and tax cut philosophy. (Tax philosophy as in, should cuts be a constant percentage across the tax brackets (weighted in dollars toward the rich), or percentage-weighted toward the poor.)
Hmm...In your terms, I think most conservatives would not affirm that they want to care for society from the top-down. That's what you think is going on (and you could be right), but in theory, that's not their philosophy.
[1] I hate that term when applied to things like welfare or other ways to improve the lot of poorer people. It implies that they are poor because some injustice. Which may or may not be true.
Re:Bzzt wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
"In 1939, Leonard W. Ferguson carried out an analysis of political values using ten scales measuring attitudes toward:
* War
* Reality of God
* Patriotism
* Treatment of criminals
* Capital punishment
* Censorship
* Evolution
* Birth control
* Law, and
* Communism
Submitting the results to factor analysis, he was able to identify three factors, which he named Religionism, Humanitarianism, and Nationalism. Ferguson's Religionism was defined by belief in God and negative attitudes toward evolution and birth control; Humanitarianism was related to attitudes opposing the harsh treatment of criminals, capital punishment, and war; and Nationalism described variation in opinions on censorship, law, patriotism, and communism. Note that this system was derived through purely empirical methods; rather than devising a political model on purely theoretical grounds and testing it, Ferguson's research was purely exploratory. Although replication of the Nationalism factor was spotty, the finding of Religionism and Humanitarianism had a number of replications by Ferguson and others.[1][2]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum [wikipedia.org]
As I said I think the definitions of left and right are pretty muddied these days but I do think there are worthwhile differences to note between secular humanistic thinkers who we may label "left" for lack of better terms and those with a more tough minded religous thought who we may label right wing.
Just my
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:if(Government != people) || (is_monolithic()).. (Score:3, Interesting)
- The People are the ultimate authority.
- The government only exists because the People created it.
- It is granted SOME power by the People to protect human rights (unified defense, for example).
- All other powers not granted to the government by the Constitutional contract, is reserved to the People.
That's my view of government, and it is supplemented by Thomas Jefferson's writings. For example he wrote, "If it were possible to have no government at all, we would do it. It is only to secure our rights that we resort to any government at all." James Madison made a similar comment, "If men were angels, we would not need government."
So the job of government is to be a servant to its master (the People) and protect individual rights.
And nothing else.
i.e. The government's job is Not to raid my neighbors' wallets, take their money, and give it to me so I can buy a house. That is Not the job or purpose for which the People created the government. On the contrary, such an action violates my neighbors' rights of property and labor.