Digest opened free editor
Rola Khaleda, FT editor, chooses her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
In the economy, the transition from a focused market with a handful of dominant players to a very competitive market for young players is usually a good. But when these players target products in different groups of consumers alternative versions of reality as we know them, it is not clear that the benefits of society.
Despite all the interest that the wrong information surrounds, the narrow focus on objective lies distracts us from a more fundamental shift. The emerging democratic risks are not of the extent that people think false things – they always have. They no longer believe the same things like each other, false or otherwise.
If this looks exaggerated, try a recent example. In January, after Elon Musk drew a new attention to the British gang scandal via the X social media platform, Almost half of the reformist voters in the United Kingdom They said they heard about the story in the news in recent days, compared to only one out of 10 workers or Lib Dem.
This is not a matter of whether certain information is correct or wrong, as if different people are facing the same information at all.
In the past, media organizations have largely followed the same news agenda, within the national borders. But in an unlimited information environment Standards It is increasingly exceeded.
This has led to continuous Vigil From online publishing platforms, including social media, to right -wing and right -wing areas, where different agendas abound. As a double citizen of X and Bluesky, there are clear differences in the topics I see on the two platforms.
Here is another Weak the wrong information letterThis is a unique problem on one “side”. Research finds that while conservatives in America are on average more than the possibility of false data on climate change, Liberals You are likely to believe the wrong data on nuclear energy. Other studies Among the United States, you find those who went to the college, who are not better judges than news from those who have high school education only.
I do not highlight this to criticize any specific group. on the contrary. I do this to confirm that most people – the left, the right and more educated – simply do not interrogate every claim they face.
Humans are efficient, as they are looking for shortcuts at every opportunity. The truth is that the vast majority of us will not invest time to examine facts or evaluate all the information we consume. If it seems reasonable and It comes from a source we do not trustThis is good enough.
Combining this reasoning with an explosion Provide information at UPSTARTThose who tend to work in pockets of the unprecedented fragmented media scene, and will get interesting results.
While the evidence for echo rooms and liquidations mixed To date, most research precedes the very recent transformation into The recommendations that were accurately seized.
When analyzing data from studying the British elections, I found that people who obtained their news from Tiktok were more likely to become supporters of reform in the UK between 2021 and 2024 of those who did not, even after controlling age, sex and education.
It is worth noting that the pattern is stronger among men than women, in line with the idea that different groups now inhabit distinguished information and political environments online – even within the same platforms.
Likewise, in Germany, Stro Tijook existence Among both AFD and Die Link, some believe that some have strengthened their support among young people and women, respectively, which contributes to a Bark Between the patterns of the young German voting in the elections last month.
The relationship between this fragmentation and the democratic functional defect appears everywhere you look at. America The ecosystem of polarized media It corresponds to the most broader political divisions than nations that have more cohesive media landscapes. Latin studies Find Divided media generates polarized policy.
And looking through age ranges, young people, whose sources of information that differ flavoring from previous generations and from each other (in terms of young women and young women) are now presenting the widest ideological division of many measures.
the The wrong information letter You will undoubtedly be affected, but like a teenager who was pasted on the screen, it lacks the broader context.
[email protected]and jburnmurdoch
Data sources and methodology
The relationship between the use of Tiktok and the support of reform in the UK in the general elections in the United Kingdom was carried out using the 21 and 28 -year -old waves of the British election, which follow the same British adults over several years, and measuring how their political views and other positions turned over time.
The logistical slope model was used to predict the possibility of a person’s vote in favor of reform in the United Kingdom in the 2024 elections, conditional on his previous support for reform and self -monotheism on the right -left political right (measured three years ago), and used for various social media platforms of news, as well as their gender, age and level of education. The terms of interaction for the interaction between the social media and sex platform were included, assuming that different people may see different content on each platform.
You can find a r icon to reproduce the analysis here.
https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F9b68222b-ced3-449f-be3f-9cc24a970964.jpg?source=next-article&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700&dpr=1
Source link