Faith in Government Declines When Mobile Internet Arrives 61
An anonymous reader shares a report: The early days of the internet were full of predictions about access to information unleashing a wave of democratisation. More recently, views on the internet's impact have soured, as states use it to spy on dissidents and influence foreign elections. Opinions on this topic are abundant, but hard data are scarce. No one knows whether the Arab spring could have occurred without the internet, or whether Russia's online efforts to boost President Donald Trump's campaign had any effect. Nonetheless, scholars can sometimes find natural experiments to substitute for such counter-factual scenarios. A recently revised study by the economists Sergei Guriev, Nikita Melnikov and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, which is now undergoing peer review, uses the growth of mobile broadband to reveal a link between internet access and scepticism of government. Most of the 4.1bn people now online got connected after 2010. To measure how new users' views changed as a result, the authors combined two datasets. First, for each year in 2007-18, they estimated the share of people in each of 2,232 regions (such as states or provinces), spread across 116 countries, that could access at least 3G-level mobile internet. Then they used surveys by Gallup, a pollster, to measure how faith in government, courts and elections changed during this period in each area.
In general, people's confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3G. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in countries with unlimited web browsing than in ones that censor the internet. This implies that people are most likely to turn against their governments when they are exposed to online criticism that is not present offline. The decline was also larger in rural areas than in cities. A similar pattern emerged at the ballot box. Among 102 elections in 33 European countries, incumbent parties' vote-share fell by an average of 4.7 percentage points once 3G arrived. The biggest beneficiaries were parties classified as populist -- though this may simply have been because they happened to be in opposition when voters turned against parties in power, rather than because of their ideology.
In general, people's confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3G. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in countries with unlimited web browsing than in ones that censor the internet. This implies that people are most likely to turn against their governments when they are exposed to online criticism that is not present offline. The decline was also larger in rural areas than in cities. A similar pattern emerged at the ballot box. Among 102 elections in 33 European countries, incumbent parties' vote-share fell by an average of 4.7 percentage points once 3G arrived. The biggest beneficiaries were parties classified as populist -- though this may simply have been because they happened to be in opposition when voters turned against parties in power, rather than because of their ideology.
Blame it on the internets! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's definitely not correlated with the increasing incompetence of our governments...
Re:Blame it on the internets! (Score:4)
And who's fault is that ?
And before you scream "victim blaming !", yes, I am absolutely blaming the victims here, because in this case, the victims are actually the ones chosing freely, willingly, and knowingly the worst possible agressors, and explicitaly mandating them to consistently and repeatadly fuck them in the ass.
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Re:Blame it on the internets! (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely. IT IS YOUR PERSONAL FAULT.
Did you run for office, or encourage someone else COMPETENT to run? Did you vote in the primaries? Did you do *anything* for someone you thought *was* good?
Based on your post, no, you did nothing, you just want to sit back and compalain, because you drank the Kool-Aid (tm), and believe that government can't do anything, and business is perfect. (in which case, you've never worked a real job).
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My post was saying that those who have a declining faith in government are not exclusively those "chosing freely, willingly, and knowingly the worst possible agressors, and explicitaly mandating them to consistently and repeatadly fuck them in the ass"
Re: Blame it on the internets! (Score:2)
In a FPTP democracy, that which is not actively opposed is actively (insofar as the system is concerned) encouraged.
Personally, I don't like the system. I've suggested alternative voting systems, alternatives to FPTP, alternatives to pure democracy. I've also voted for realistic opposition candidates.
It's minimal, but it's something.
Non-voters can't claim that.
Protest voters (3rd parties with no chance) can't claim that either.
You might very well have a good claim to have done something. If so, it's probabl
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Faith in Government Declines When Mobile Internet Arrives
Sorry, that headline should be:
Faith in Government Declines When the Crap that's Viewed over Mobile Internet Arrives
or perhaps even better:
Faith in Reality Declines When the Crap that's Viewed over Mobile Internet Arrives
Or intentionally unknowing (Score:2)
> willingly, and knowingly the worst possible agressors, and explicitaly mandating them to consistently and repeatadly fuck them in the ass.
Willingly, yes. I'm not sure about "knowingly". Heck, probably most don't even know that they don't know.
It seems to me in the US we have a lot of people who have interests other than policy and politics. In one survey, just 50% of people didn't know who the vice president is. Much less what their accomplishments are, or policy positions, and certainly can't analy
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I said:
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I don't know that most people have the time, energy, and interest to actually be informed - to seek out unbiased facts and analysis and really understand a lot about economics, law, foreign affairs, etc etc. I do have an idea on how to address that, which I will post separately.
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Here's my idea. From time to time friends and family ask me about policy and politics, because they know I'm a super nerd who keeps in eye on those things, and I'm not a fanboi for a particular politiball team who will j
Maybe YOU are the knowledgeable person (Score:2)
I had said:
Somebody you could trust to make *reasoned* choices about voting.
Of course if you're reading Slashdot, maybe you ARE that person. Maybe, amongst 20 of your friends and family you are the most informed about public policy and politics, and trusted to make a grown-up decisions. If so, they'd vote for you to represent your friend circle at the polls. Which would give you the responsibility to actually study the issues and make an informed choice.
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I'd argue B could do more damage than T because enough actually trusted B.
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Well, that's kind of my point. Both parties gave him enough support to do it. T couldn't pull that off, at least not the funding part.
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Some say he was itching for a fight with Iran.
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So far
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I suspect his approach is to agitate others into action, so then he has an excuse to pound back and say "they started it". It hasn't happened so far, but why gamble?
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Because war-time prez's get high ratings, and ratings are something he craves heavily, perhaps more than any other factor. If he feels he can legitimately blame the start on another country and feels likely to win during his reign, he may indeed go ahead with it.
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No. T pays heavy attention to ratings, probably more than the majority of prez's, and prez's typically get higher ratings during war. T likes R more than most P's, W historically produces R, and thus T may be more likely to trigger W to get R. Logic.
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Or the increasing boredom of our young people...
Uhhh.... (Score:5, Informative)
Since when is correlation causation?
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See Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin’s book "National Populism" (2018) for a good summary of the history and rise of populist parties and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.
They debunk several common myths about right-wing voters, like the "old white angry men" cliché, and trace the early beginning of today's parties to the early 1990s. (They do not mention 3G nor mobile Internet access).
Re: Uhhh.... (Score:2)
See Plato, The Republic. It contains some marvellous reasoning regarding populism, fatalism, understanding and how these affect the political landscape.
Why have 'Faith' in Government? (Score:4, Interesting)
Portland DA rejects over 540 riot-related cases in 'interest of justice' [thepostmillennial.com]
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You can believe though that if that DA perceived the criminal offense to be committed by the political 'other', then the book would be thrown at them. These are positions to be captured, and then used tactically to dissuade opposition.
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Because if something is illegal, it's automatically unethical?
Well duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, go read up on Iran Contra sometime. Or Gulf of Tonkin. Or how we got into the Iraq war (the kids of the first soldiers sent are now being deployed there). Or freakin' Smedley Butler. Or read "A People's History Of The United States". Or read how politicians are trying to get "A People's History Of The United States" removed from school libraries...
Government is going to happen, whether we like it or not. You need a big military to protect your country and you need a big civilian government to watch over the military.
But any machine that big is going to need a *ton* of maintenance. And not the exciting "Blood of Patriots" kind you see in movies. But the pants shittingly dull kind where ever 2 years you sit down with Google and look up the political positions of the jokers on your Primary Ballot (which most actively try to hide) so you can figure out which of said jokers is going to screw you over less.
This is a problem I've identified but haven't found a solution to. Politics is dull and stressful. Not a good combination. So a lot drop out. But it's absolutely critical because it affects every single area of our lives.
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The internet has promoted the free flow of information. That is a fact.
What was wrong was the prediction about "democratisation" when clearly what will happen is not the theory that 'the people become enlightened... and therefore so do those in power' but instead the correct theory (and predictable) is that 'the people become enlightened... about all the ways those in power aint giving it up'
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Re:Well duh (Score:4, Interesting)
You're thinking in the heat of the moment (Score:2)
Right now we've got a distortion in our body politic because a post war baby boom has created a ton of older voter and, well, Age Related Cognitive Decline is a real thing. These voters are vulnerable to attack.
I've mentioned it before, but I once saw an ad with a bunch of seniors sitting around a table talking about something scary. No mention of what though. At the end of the commercial was an impassioned plea to vote no on proposition such and such. Turns out it was a prop to
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To the contrary. As like as they are to become better informed they might instead fall down the rabbit hole of fake news and conspiracy theories.
For many people the internet has not made them smarter, or more aware, or better informed.
Re: Well duh (Score:2)
Having information isn't, sadly, the same as being informed.
As per Plato, you need education to match the information, which really doesn't exist yet for many people.
You also need high quality information, but the Internet is predominantly poor quality junk, conspiracy theories and cats.
The challenge will be to fix those.
Now, Plato's argument is that you can't fix it for everyone, but you can fix it for a sizeable number. I don't like that, very two tier, but there might be ways to make it work.
I'd rather h
Correlation causation (Score:2)
It’s not the increased Internet access, but simply that government have been more and more subverted by the bourgeois, and have been taking decisions that are against the best interests of the people.
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They've always been under the sway of the rich. The difference is they can't cover it up as easily when people have ready access, and FAST access, to so much information. It's tough not to be disillusioned when you are constantly reminded that our leadership is completely and utterly devoid of humanity.
Burgeois (Score:1)
So the burgeois *IS* the people, or part of it to be exact.
Re: Correlation causation (Score:2)
The first problem is there is no "the people".
The population is riven, in the US and UK, with class warfare, sectarianism and self-defined castes.
There simply can't be a "the" in regards to people behaving like that.
And, no, there's no elite class in all of this. Whoever is winning at that time can call themselves elite, but it'll change the week after. It's believing someone else has it better by default that allows the war to go on.
If others have it better, and sometimes they will, it's because everyone i
Think for yourself. Have faith in nothing. (Score:1, Insightful)
Beware of any groups that are for censoring of information, larger government, anti free-speech or anti 2nd amendment!!! Its pretty easy to see who they are these days. They ar
Re: Think for yourself. Have faith in nothing. (Score:2)
Thinking for yourself is a fool's game. There is no self.
Make people suspicious and distrustful of government, then when members of the people are elected, they'll be suspicious and mistrustful of the people.
And that is precisely why there is corruption. You're electing the trained paranoids.
You can have a perfectly corruption-free government, I've described how many times. You choose not to, because you wish to be suspicious of it.
Flawed premise (Score:2)
Need I say more?
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+1 "Flawed Premise" should be the summary headline on this one.
I does (Score:4, Insightful)
"The early days of the internet were full of predictions about access to information unleashing a wave of democratisation."
People of power were relying on their friends who owned the newspapers and TV-stations.
That doesn't work anymore, so they are afraid.
Re: I does (Score:2)
Actually, the people with the power DO own most of the US radio and TV stations. And that's why there's do much fear.
Back when nobody could control that much, you had diversity and much less fear. You also didn't have nearly so much interference from politicians.
Draw you in with sensational headline... (Score:2)
...waste a bunch of words on what-ifs, and get around to the probable cause in the last sentence:
"...though this may simply have been because they happened to be in opposition when voters turned against parties in power, rather than because of their ideology."
3. Profit off of the 3 ads that ran while the rube was reading.
GIGO (Score:2)
The assumption is that all information in the internet is correct. The fact is there is a lot of misinformation, conspiracy theories and other noise. Groups of people buy into these misrepresentations because they feel powerless or they jive with their own skewed viewpoints. There's nothing to indicate that these mistruths are just that. There's no feedback device. Back with traditional news outlets, they had reputations. Some you knew were truthful, they won Pulitzer Prizes, and others were fictional (Mich
Are you Fing kidding me! (Score:3)
Umm, yes, yes you can. Jesus fucking christ Robert Perry wrote critical and scathing articles debunking the bullshit coming out of the New York Times about "Russian interference". When you examine the information - amount spent on ads, number of ads, content of ads, and when ads were released - it becomes childishly simple to determine whether or not they had an impact.
The cherry on top is when reporters actually talked to African American voters in Michigan after the election and the voters explained why they didn't vote or didn't vote for Clinton. Hint: it wasn't because of Russian interference.
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Well, if you're so well-read, why didn't Black voters in Michigan vote, or, if they voted, why didn't they vote for Clinton? Was it poll interference, voter disenfranchisement, disagreement with Clinton's policies, sexism, racism, "just don't like Hillary".
Re: Are you Fing kidding me! (Score:2)
It's not numbers that matter. If you want to go toppling dominos, it's no good pushing a fridge in the next room. Doesn't matter how much effort you put in.
But if you push the first domino, you need put in very little energy indeed.
Same is true in warfare, politics, crowd control, whatever.
You have to be pushing the right thing and need only ever reach the energy needed to activate the process. Nothing beyond matters.
correlation (Score:3)
It proves that... (Score:2)
Technology enables both the good and the bad (Score:2)
Technology is neither good nor bad. It makes things easier to do, whether you have good intention or bad ones. Governments haven't become less trustworthy, they do what they always have done, but now they have better tools.
In a real sense, technology helps bring to light the abuses that have already been happening. As the founding fathers of the US understood, government SHOULD NOT be trusted. That's why it's important to build a system of checks and balances.
Russia's online efforts to boost Trump? (Score:1)
The so-called Arab spring was planned, financed and instigated by western intelligence services. The so-called Russian online effort (if it actually existed) did nothing to boost Trump. What did hand Trump the election, was the free daily twenty-four-seven publicity that the Main Stream Media gave Trump. As Howa