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as all the cash back you earn on your credit card at the end of your first year. This is assessed. amazing because Discover is accepted that ninety nine percent of places in the- U S, that take credit cards, learn more at discover: dot com, slash Twenty twenty one Nilsen report limitations apply I'd like you to imagine This should be very hard, but imagine you are in the midst of a growing pandemic. Twelve. vitality has now been reported here in the United States. Our doctors saying we're on the verge of a medical disaster and let's say you want to be as informed is possible. The daily on a virus death toll in the United States might hit three thousand by early

the corona virus, forcing millions more Americans into virtual lockdown. This dangerous health crisis could dovetail quickly into a political crisis. And now let's say you are an economics professor, watching this news for hours a day. How does the information you are getting add to your understanding of the pandemic? Thy honestly thought I was going crazy. The economist in question here is Bruce. Sesar. Dude Dartmouth College, I'm very utilitarian. I was looking for useful information and hence my frustration because I felt like it was more Vittorio and entertainment. When Sacerdotal says he was looking for more useful in from and what does that mean? What I will be looking for is ok. There is this new study done here's what they found. Here's what this means for the pandemic. Here's what this means for when we can get back to work, but instead it tends to be a lot of eggs and

bemoaning the numbers, even if they haven't changed or had gotten better it wasn't that sensitive out one to pretend everything was fine. They mean this thing called more people than most of the wars we been in, and so it's hard not to be knocked down by that. But Sesar do saw a difference. being knocked down and wallowing. He began to wonder if the news coverage of the pandemic was commensurate with the pandemic itself and whether the coverage he was seen, mostly from major: U S: media outlets, whether it was perhaps more negative than other coverage, Blake, local news or international news. Even the articles published in scientific journals, all of them were seeing the same cause nineteen story unfold, but where the major? U S? Media outlets selling a more negative version of the story, and if so, what were the ramifications? Sacerdotal wasn't quite alone in his concern

the centres for Disease Control issued a warning about media consumption. Take break from watching reading or listening to news stories, including those on social media, the CDC said it's good to be informed, but sit limiting news to just a couple times a day now sacerdotal remember is an economist, not an epidemiologists store or public health. Color. So he also wondered how the economic set up of the? U S, media industry was. driving the tone of the coverage? We have been putting out a series of episodes lately about how the? U S is fundamentally different from other countries. We have looked at the extraordinarily high levels of individualism in America we ve looked at policing child poverty, transportation policy did Bruce session find another dimension on which the? U S is an outlier here, I need to do what economists do he started: gathering data

in order to produce a study. Well, that's what then, when you take it economist and lock on it further CNN for three months, make it more and more angry today economics, radio your news negatively biased or We just blame the english language. We have lot of words, four types of bad feelings, and, let's not forget about social media. We found that moral words like evil. Or hate these, would also be linked, increase of morality, Marshall, clue. In said at first more than fifty years ago, The medium is the message so been said that we call TV a medium because it is neither rare nor well done is that fair is true, is time to answer these questions? Yes, it is right after the here

but with me. What was that about this is really Ex radio the podcast but explores the hidden side of everything? Here's your host Stephen Dublin, in certain circles. Lake academia, where Bruce Sesar, don't works journalism, or I do you are, only considered a more serious person if you are critical ribbon negative, whereas positivity tends to be associated with naivete Cheerleading yeah, that's probably right so sacerdotal, who is generally an optimist, sometimes feels like an outlier. I had this idea of came together a merry band of people who actually believe there's economic growth

and that poor people are becoming better off in the U S, even if not as faster rate as rich people, etc, etc. And I wonder if having people like that band together could be more effective than one or two voices crying in the wilderness. It's interesting that when it comes to the business world and particularly the hi tech world, I think there is plenty of optimism, investors. I mean you look at companies like Tesla Amazon that exist in part, because investors subsidized their operations with the option. in the ten years down the road that the big pay off his coming. So there's an interesting die how to me there right. It is true that tech investors can be incredibly optimistic, sometimes to a fault. How optimistic should you be if your investing in media firms. It depends. Newspapers are, for the most part, a bad bent over the past. Fifteen

you're, so the digital Revolution has upset what used to be a very profitable applegarth. U S. Newspaper revenues fell from around six a billion dollars a year to twenty billion, but cable tv is doing great at the big three Fox NEWS, CNN and MSNBC revenues continued, Oh and their profit margins are massive CNN, for instance, earned an estimated Seven hundred million dollar profit in twenty nineteen revenue of just one point: six billion dollars: it's not only a for profit enterprise, but it's highly profitable and it's a big market they can segments and while technology markets thrive on optimism began to suspect that major media outlets thrive on. Pessimism. The media is very good at producing negative stories that are eye catching their also good at producing stories which cater to people's existing tastes and fears fearmongering. We should say.

is not new journalism does span a wide spectrum, but the most crowd pleasing outlets Long followed a simple mantra if it leads it leads and Sacerdotal argues that this instinct is particularly strong in the. U S. essentially the? U S, major media is better at giving people what they want their particularly talented and profit maximizing How did he reached this conclusion? It was the result of a huge research project. collaboration with Molly Cook and ran Jan Seagal. They set out to analyze coded news coverage in four distinct categories: major? U S, media locally, regional- U S! Media intern, national media outlets and scientific journals, all told they analyzed. Forty three thousand stories, including journal and newspaper articles and cable tv transcripts they use

machine learning, algorithms and what Sash Udo calls very simple word: counting techniques to measure how negative or positive a given story was This measurement relied on the use of two lexicons popular with researchers, a list of nearly five thousand words? Judged to be negative and another list of positive words just over two thousand of them, perhaps the difference in size between these two lexicons, been a clue here- are some of the words from the negative lexicon, appalling, barbaric catastrophe, dangerous nefarious, recklessness stagnate, troublesome Orson and some words from the positive lexicon applaud, appreciate expansive gaining ready. When of all the researchers, focused their analysis on cuban coverage.

because that's what saturate was interested in, but the particulars of the pandemic also allowed them to sharpen their analysis. Since the virus hit different places at different times this man, they could use local covered trends as a control tool to isolate and measure the tone of the media coverage, so what they find it doesn't seem to be driven by the trend in case. That much in that's really disturbing right, because when the news is terrible, I expect terrible reporting. But we counted up the number of negative and positive stories, both in times when cases arising when cases are falling and when cases arising negative stores outnumber positive, one seven to want or six and a half to one and then when cases are plummeting it still five and a half to one negative stories to positive stories, I mean that's really upset So you write that about eighty seven percent of covert coverage in national. U S media last year was negative. The share for in

national media was only fifty one percent, that's a massive massive difference. Only fifty three, then in U S regional media so again, huge difference, then sixty four percent in scientific journals. So that's really interesting to me because I guess has to do with the difference in mission between journalism and scientific journals. What do you make of that headline? Number? Eighty seven percent now activity in national. U S, media versus sixty four percent negativity in scientific journals. Overall, of course it's not proof positive because, as you say, these entities have different missions, but to us it's pretty astounding its, look: yeah, there's bad news about covert, and maybe that you know some scientific articles are about spread in those sort of things but other hand, there's a good forty percent that are finally good things. The positive scientific news just doesn't get out there and often, gets out there in the mainstream media gets kind of botched.

for example, think about how the vaccine timeline was covered early on here is a New York Times had mine from April twenty. Ninth, twenty twenty truck seeks push to speed vaccine despite safety concerns and here's a passage from that article. President trouble is pressing his health officials to pursue a crash development programme for reverse vaccine that could be widely distributed by the beginning of next year. Despite widespread scepticism that such an effort could succeed and considerable concern about the implications for safety note, we should see the New York Times as coverage of president Tromp was almost uniformly critical, so maybe not surprising that its coverage of the Trump administrations vaccine efforts might also be critical, but the times was just one of

the fourteen major? U S! Media outlets in this analysis here, meanwhile, is a headline from one of the foreign outlets, the researchers analyze. This is the Oxford mail in England in February of twenty twenty. Also writing about vaccines. scientists working on a carogne of irish vaccine in Oxford and a passage from at article. The gender institute been working on a vaccine against another corona virus Middle EAST respiratory syndrome. Murders been shown to induce strong immune response is against mors, after a single dose of the vaccine and the first clinical trial, which took place in Oxford, the same approach to make the vaccine is being taken for the novel corrode of irish vaccine. So this is the kind of information that Bruce Sesar do. The economist would see later in his analysis, but at the time Bruce Ass, you do human was back in Hanover New Hampshire, watching, of CNN reading a lot of the New York Times. I literally thought it

losing my mind and I M thinking Well. Why am I putting faith in these scientists who say they can come up with a vaccine cause? The news clearly says they care that it takes five years to develop a vaccine and then, when the scientists and the companies actually came out with vaccines, I felt so early then veto it less importantly, vindicated that hey wait a minute. You know the scientist, we're not lying, it's just that they work to give it a full hearing. In the paper you write that the most popular stories in the New York Times have high levels of negativity, particularly for covert nineteen related articles, so is the New York Times just to use one example more negative than others, but data suggests that the New York Times is more negative than the average regional or local paper or tv. And what can you tell us about which a the arrow points. There, in other words, do New York Times readers want and seek out negative news.

or does the New York Times turn people negative. That's a great question and I am sorry to say we don't have the answer. They would always be less worrying. People to man, negativity and the New York Times supplies it and we're picking on the New York Times, but that name stands in for all the: u DOT S major media, he would be less disturbing if it were simply the people demand negativity, they get it the end. worries me is that it's a self reinforcing cycle In other words, it could be that the bad news livered by major? U s. Media outlets increases our appetite for bad news and in order to maintain its audience those out It's intern deliver even more bad news to pick on the New York Times, just a bit more. In a separate analysis, the data scientist colored Leetaru, performed a sentiment analysis on every article x, published between one thousand nine hundred and forty five and two thousand and five. He found the coverage

and drifting negative in the nineteen sixties- and it's gotten progressively more so but which way does the arrow point? Do news outlets simply meet our demand for negativity, or did they create that demand? It is. and well documented by academic researchers that humans do have a built in negativity bias? The social psychologist, Roy Bow, Meister calls it the power of bad, and he says it can serve a valuable. A few miss out on a great opportunity for good food or sex or any other life affirming thing? Well. Ok, that's too bad, but you might have another one fine day, but if you miss a dangerous predator fail to notice that will put an end to your life part. The psychological mechanism underlying our work is that the mind was shaped by evolution to pay your

to risk. So how does the power of bad and ancient psychological mechanism intersect with how the New York Times conveys information to understand that it helps the first understand, how the english language has been shaped by this negativity. Bias is certainly the case in language that negativity heightens emotion and heightens the impact of what you're saying that is Erika eloquent a linguist. I write about language and I'm the author of highly irregular about what English is so weird weird in some simple all relatively harmless ways. Lake spelling one example from open consider the following three words: d: o you d h, he. Oh, you g H, Anti H, R, o you d, each other the opening letters there identical so

It may sound identical. Why are they pronounced dough, tough and through? But the way spelling in English isn't nearly as complicated as the weird emotions, especially the negative ones? Well, we I have more ways of being negative. We have a lot of words, four types of bad feelings. We have guilt. We have shame those are very specific, their different from sad, their different from down and depressed, and there are definitely lots of ways of being positive or happy, but the vocabulary you have for it. There aren't very specific ones that are like that titular type of joy, you feel when you sit down to a meal that looks really good or enough. Something very specific like that. I have to say this is the little distressing to me. Cause

when the most famous lines in literature is the first sentence of Anna Corona by Tolstoy. Happy families are all alike every unhappy families unhappy in its own way. I've always thought that was such a bad caricature. That happiness must have as much variety is unhappiness, but you are telling me basically no surprise Tolstoy right, I'm wrong. Well you can definitely describe different types of happiness, but we tend to do along description to get exactly what we're talking about. We don't have the word that sums it all up in one package, there's a default, and this is how expect things to be, and then there is a marked situation and in language the Mai, the situation is the one that gets the name, because it's a departure, especially with verbs. We have the verb,

the lie lying. We do not have a verb for to tell the truth. We have a whole phrase. It we can say he's being a straight shooter, but we have one word for lying. You know, what's the opposite of speed, of littering of murdering that's what we're supposed to be doing. We don't need to name. It were just going along with it. When we and soon media. How do you think the negativity the headline language shapes our perception of the events, shapes how we react to the events and how urgently we feel that reaction, negativity puts you and a heightened state of aware in us and that heightened state of awareness is meant to spur you two action. The music also helps you know the Muse

that CNN and other cable news networks play to make sure you know that their raking. Now whose alert is really important? Breaking news Christians celebrate Christmas. These are real, samples from CNN breaking news text is being read aloud by our producers. Breaking news. No winner get America's historic election breaking news today, sunk one hundred and two years ago tonight we should also acknowledge that a lot of news is meant to alarm us, that's part of its purpose and I know journalism- is a business. It's the business I've in most of my adult life, including several years at the New York Times, but I always thought of journalism as having a somewhat different mission from other industries. Yes, Free rider and editor and producer once their work to get the attention and they want to be paid. But the argument being made by Bruce Sacerdotal goes beyond that he's

as that the major american media outlets are primarily driven by profit maximizing and that the best way to profit maximize is by accentuating the negative yeah. That's kind of the sad truth. I do think that the realm you're in the profession you're in people expect a certain level of truth, and I think that they often get that, and so I feel that some of that trust that had been built up over, let's say a hundred years, is partially around it, because it is perhaps more of a business than it was in the nineteen fifties. But in retrospect, doesn't look like a kind of brief golden era, because, if you go further back to the late nineteenth century. The papers were all we're there, just rags right, they were political rags and they were very explicit about it and if they, writing. You know a paper about the British or about George Washington. It was just a personal attack, so for better or for worse its business and people are getting what they want. Do you know anything?

about how american the taste for negativity is and assuming it is an anomaly. Why that's the case if we take the opposite view on this, which is that it's not actually the people that are different and I'll, give you some data on that. If you look at the most facebook shared in the most light stories on, say the New York Times or the BBC, the most likely, from the BBC are also super, Nag is just the BBC is not supplying dearly ass. Much of the super negative stories, what we, my co authors and I think is going on- is it's not that Americans are fundamentally different? the British or the French or the Italians we think what's going on is the structure of the industry is different in these different places, The? U s. Major media outlets explicitly focused on the negative, because we believe that's what drives viewer ship and clicks and keeps people staying on the page on the show. Ok, but why would that not be the case in France

or England or Australia in most of those other countries. You have a big public player like the BBC or the Katy and Broadcasting Corps as a libertarian leaning person. You think I wouldn't be pounding the table, for if public interference in this industry, but I think in this industry they have less of a profit motive and their somewhat less motivated by driving clicks and engagement and somewhat more motivated by the truth? Sacerdote study covered just two thousand and twenty from January first until December 31st. So it did include the beginning of the vaccine rollout, but it ended before Joe Biden became. President did look for a relationship between the political bias of the given news outlet and its tendency to run negative news. He didn't find any, but you could imagine that Donald Trump's contentious presidency may have

back to the overall tone of media coverage in twenty twenty. I certainly feel like the negativity is somewhat less pounding than it was six months ago, even in the face of this horrible rise of this variant. So then it does make you take part. they well. Maybe a part of it was the political. Finally, we ran but sacerdotal things is research funding, are more generalised able than that. We suspect this is much more than just a covert story. We think that negativity about climate change, your pick any topic unemployment inequality, poverty alleviation. We think that the media coverage, particularly from there The media is probably more negative, then it is in other countries, and why is this important other than this damage that so much negativity can cause here's one reason: if all your being told by the media is that problem x is bad and getting worse and that problem why

even more unsolvable. Well may start believing you may start believing that we are collectively terrible at solving problems, and it's probably not even worth trying, whereas the reality is that collectively we humans, I mean- are actually quite good at solving problems. Yes, it's hard, but it made even harder when the only stories the gain traction are the stories telling us that those problems camp now. I know what you're thinking you thinking wait a minute. There is one newish sector of the media that is practically devoid of negativity, social media. Everything on social media is puppies, rainbow is one example of a very viral posts, sad check out Joe Biden, recent brain freeze after the break additional negativity, evidence from Twitter and Facebook, and we do look for

solutions to America's media negativity warning it won't be easy. You don't see the moderate broadcasting corporation starting up and gather reviewers like crazy. It's coming up right after this. If you like this past, please let a friend know about it. That is a great way to support. The pack ass. You like we'll be right, back freedoms, radio sponsored by one dream. With one dream you can explore thousands of ours, a fascinating video and audio content check out the everyday I'd to beer to learn from one the industry's most recognised international experts or dig into the history of crypto with the crypto currency crazed, be something for everyone I know for economics. Radio listeners will love one dream too so sign up today at one dream: dot com, flash freak, adopts, that's double

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There is a famous saying in poker when you're sitting at the table, and you can't tell who's the sucker the sucker. Is you here's another version updated for our digital age. If you are spending a lot of time on mine- and you can't tell what the product is the product, is you the entire social media business It is based on capturing our attention in order to sell advertising that Steve Refugee. He is getting his phd in psychology at the university of came, he studies, misinformation and political polarization. He also created a web app called. Have I shared fake news? You put your twitter handle and will show you specific news, urls that your shared that have been considered by independent fact, checkers to share

faker unreliable information as rough day said, the big social media sites, or almost exclusively reliant on advertising dollars in twenty nineteen twitter. took in just under three point: five billion dollars in revenues that same year, Facebook took in seventy billion dollars. This means that all the newspapers in America, even all the cable tv networks, could fit in facebooks, back pocket and in They do more than half of all. Americans can at least a portion of their news via social media with one third coming from Facebook. Here's what Steve Wrath J wanted to know if you are a social media site and Europe, business is built around engagement in order to sell the most advertising possible. What's the best way to drive engagement so rest, J Lake, Bruce Sacerdotal, embarked on a big study,

he and to Co. Authors, Sander, Vonder, Linden and gave on bail analyzed the three million social media posts to learn what makes a post more likely to attract other users. Their analysis covered the years twenty, sixteen twenty twenty they focused, posts from conservative and liberal media platforms and republican and democratic members of Congress. So what they find. What we found is, each additional word, referring to the out group, increase the number of reach AIDS or shares of that posts by sixty seven percent, the out group, meaning someone on the other side of the political I'll. If a post was coming from a Democrat, a word alike, republican or conservative would lead to increase of morality, and if a post was coming from a republican word like Joe Biden would lead to increase virus.

Eddie. The paper which was published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is called out. Group animosity drives engagement on social media. Also posts, including words, referring to our group, were also much more like to receive angry reactions. Ha ha reactions, comments in shares, whereas posts referring to an inn group were more likely to receive like or heart reactions on Facebook, but posts about the owl croup receive much more engagement in total and Steve. How confident are you that you in your co? Authors are right? In other words, how empirical is this kind of research I mean we looked at eight separate data sets on Facebook and Twitter, so we are confident that we are right, especially about the specific point in history. Our general results were also replicated. Can you describe the two most viral posts

in your entire massive dataset. One example of a very viral posts was from bright Barton NEWS and it said check out job in the recent brain freeze- and it was a very unflattering video Joe Biden Nuno made him look like wasn't doing so well and then another postal very viral from the liberals, was from the daily beasts and about my pants, blue lying about covert nineteen, Let me just make sure I understand Steve what you're telling me is it when I tweet or post something on Facebook pretty much anywhere? If I want to be successful, because here I am posting, I'm not here to be invisible. All I really need to do is focus on my our group and being negative about them, and I win correct the year, you might win in terms of engagement, you might not get people to like you, but you know if you have like a rival podcast or something if you wanted to dunk on the rival pod gas that would probably get

lot of engagement. So in my next series of tweets I should say that I regret masses, glasses are too big and he looks like a circus clay you should try that we should put that to the tests. Can you help me get better like what are some kinds of words or emotions or actions stood post about? Well, let's see if we take from other research I was inspired by other research that also looked at the effect of the moral reach would have on by reality that we also replicated this effect as well. We ve that moral words like evil or hate, or they could even be put Positive moral words like care. These would also be linked to increase. Vibe.

Already. So maybe if you express some moral outrage about our glass yeah filling IRA, my key is pretty nice. What about baby so Joe Rogan, this unnatural target as a competitor, but he could also just beat them out on the lake with with one fingers. That's that's, not a good idea. Is that why have you guys got into a feud on social media that would probably drive a lot of engagement as well. So I'm ok with the food on social media, but if it tips over into real life, I'm dead. That's true. When we published a study, we really wanted to make sure that this didn't come across as advice for people. We wanted to emphasize that this reflected the perverse incentives of social media. These perverse incentives as rescue categorizes them are not universal. Just as journalism.

Operates under different guidelines around the world, so too do twitter and Facebook. In China, for instance, social media content is tightly regulated, especially any posts about politics, twitter, outright banned in China. Although many people use virtual private networks to get around the ban, some chinese or users have been jailed for criticising the government and during the covert, teen outbreak and we're the government clamp down on social media activity. That document of what was happening in the cities models in the. U S. Meanwhile, the government has been pretty much absent, in regulating social media activity. The occasional high profile banishment user, like Donald Trump, has come from the companies, not the government, but that may change as politicians on both sides have been calling for more regulation. Conservative think that there be

censored. Liberals are more concerned about misinformation by it. We found that our group negativity was. Www likely to go viral, for both Republicans and Democrats We also equally likely to go viral on Facebook and twitter. So I One potential solution that both Republicans and Democrats could agree on is maybe we shouldn't amplify this extremely negative content about her out groups all the time the man we're going back a couple thousand years. You're saying to a bunch of roman senators cause. You know they were at least is contentious. Is modern politicians probably morceau, and it be like going back them and so saying? Listen, you guys just say negative and especially mean things about the other people in this arena. Does it seem

remotely realistic in whatever millennium we're talking. I think that what social media is taking advantage of a sort of an ancient instinct to pay attention to the negative or to the poor, rising or divisive, but I think it is different now that there is the ability two algorithmic away amplify this. They didn't have these outrage machines at that time that wages amplify most negative content. What is the pay off of all this attention? What do the politicians, for example, actually gain? I guess I'm asking you to, prove that this by reality has real measurable value? What we see as lot of their most extreme politicians. If you look at Donald Trump, for instance, he was really good at taking it your twitter to sort of get the spotlight constantly. I mean that's the narrative, but he also lost an election as an incumbent president, which isn't easy to do so, of course,

narrative could say well, he was great at social media and he was president because a social media, another narrative could say because he was so hard. A negative. He lost an election. So that's what I'm asking, because attention for attention sake isn't necessarily the goal, so Is there a way to actually measure the value of dumping on someone else? That's a good question because Lee Joe Biden he's not a big twitter username. You could certainly take that perspective as well, because donkey certainly a double edged sword. You will get yourself more attention, but you will also get yourself negative attention. There was a paper that shows that people don't really like when politicians are negative. Politicians can get me visibility, but will also be perceived as more like all, so I it is sort of a game that they have to play

What do you see or know about this same phenomenon, our group negativity in totally non political, realms and even non media? Realms? Let's say it's you, no one actually, on one team dumping on somebody on a different Timor. What about commercial products if this phenomenon is so powerful? Why is Coke not just constantly trashing Pepsi, when I look at the Coca COLA official, twitter accountancy? How many I was cooked. Color have I'm three point three million, so they do. Ok on the loading cook, go deeper and if I load the tweets back to November of last year, twenty twenty and I search their time line for the word see I get zero they're, not gauging at all. So if I were Coca COLA and I'm listening to Steve Raft J, I would say wholly crap. We ve been wasting this amazingly great opportunity to tell the people who love us that I don't know Pepsi COLA puts wrapped in there,

at a yet again, I'm not giving people the advice that everyone should go dunk on their our group right now. I do think that if they did do that, they would get more attention on Facebook and Twitter, but they might not get people to like the moral coke has always very positive commercials, a soul themselves with a positive image so yeah, it's not the best tactic for getting people to like you get has just said, a rule of social media that it will get you more attention, I can't blame the platforms directly. That again, is the economist Bruce Sacerdotal. Certainly I think one can blame social media platforms for allowing completely false things to circulate, and so you can have a debate about that the degree to which that might be regulated. But if there's a negative story in the New York time, then people are going to want to share it on Facebook and m. That's what the data show. People do, according to Steve Wrath J. That is pretty much the exact argument that companies like Facebook.

Twitter make when they are accused of using their algorithms to promote negative or even false information. They essentially argue that social media is a mere society, but raft J isn't persuaded our research, which suggests, that social media amplifies the bad and it amplifies the ugly and the good it has a lot less chance of going via a social media. Isn't just this neutral public square in which people have debates the most device of or negative content will capture our attention. I guess from Facebook or Twitter, though I could say, will both can be true in that we are a platform where people can say pretty much whatever they want to say, good, bad, neutral, etc, and then it comes down to preferences and what people actually want. So what's your evidence that the platforms actually guilty of accentuating the negativity, you could say that

we want negativity, because negativity is more likely to capture our attention, but I dont think that people actually want negative he in the long run some evidence for this comes from other research. There was another study by Hunt Alcott in which he paid people to delete their facebook accounts for four weeks and after those four weeks, people became less politically polarize and they actually reported better well being when we leave these platforms, we are often happier- I know you said you didn't write this paper- to give advice for how to go viral on social media, but do have suggestions for how to change incentives that create This phenomenon, so I think that Facebook could make very subtle, algorithmic tweaks to just make it so angry reactions cause less of morality and perhaps heart rate Sean's, unlike reactions lead to more veracity. There is also other research by Katy Milkman, for instance, that shows that high

arousal positive emotions are likely to go viral as well. So if the owl furthermore, suddenly shifted, so we take advantage of viral positivity rather then viral negativity that might be a potential solution. I mean that make so much sense to me. We saw so long ago, the summer Olympics from Japan when you watch the coverage of the Olympics, it's almost as if negativity is barred, especially if there is an american favorite who ends up doing very Surely you pretty much never hear about it. When you see the features on the athletes, there is always the negative, but it is just the barrier which the athlete overcame to get to triumph. So if that's the tenor of coverage of an event likely Olympics, which is a pretty big global event and which is hugely profitable. Why on earth wooden? I think that

the activity has a lot of value in that negativity. Maybe is exciting and fun, but kind of a loser trap I don't know, sir. wasn't really a question as much as a sermon. I apologise, but if you have anything to say about it, we could make social media more likely a wimp ex yeah, and I mean there are some platform. I think Tik Tok early on was taking advantage of viral positivity than I think like you tube in its early. Days was a lot of very positive uplifting videos, but we Finally, you we ve seen lots more controversies about the Youtube algorithm recommending conspiratorial our white supremacist videos, so I think it's a product of social media evolving with his business model of just constant gatesman, all the time and beyond the power of bad as a strong bias The power of bad may indeed. a strong bias, but remember it's not equally powerful in all domains. Bruce Sastrugi again. The data suggests that

New York Times is more negative than the average regional or local paper. Here again, Are the negativity numbers from the Sesar? Don't media study eighty seven percent of covert coverage. In national. U S. Media, like the New York Times was negative, negativity, number for regional and local coverage, just fifty three percent, so maybe there's room for some optimism, probably not local newspaper. First do tend to go broke at an alarming rate, since two thousand for one in five local newspapers has shut down, so they may just simply not be as profit maximizing another possibilities that they play a completely different role.

no that they focus on local happenings in so when there's a fire, which is a very negative thing, you tend to get alive reporting about it, but they are not in the same business, of getting people whipped up into a frenzy and getting a lot of clicks and attention and are less successful as result. So this sounds like a losing formula. If you are a media outlets that doesn't promote, negativity You more likely to go out of business. Yeah is a huge issue. There ought to be a market force for local and regional coverage. I mean the Good NEWS. is that we have all these new technologies for reaching people. We have all these less expensive ways to get the word out there, and so maybe ten years from now

we'll come back and the media industry will have realised itself and may be for the better sacerdotal has already admitted to being an optimist. So this may just be the optimism talking, but he does see an upside in media coverage that doesn't just bang on about a problem, but instead looked at

problem from multiple angles, maybe even explores a solution. For example, look there's all this vaccine hesitancy, perhaps some of the facts. Hesitancy is actually because there was no consistent, apposite message about the vaccines about the folks at were developing these vaccines and that public private partnerships that create them with such speed. I certainly can't say that a huge fraction of axing hesitancy is down to that, but maybe some of it is, I think, the entire attitude of the country towards the fight against Kobe, but even the fight against inequality against poverty and the whole view whether government works. I think we're way too pessimistic. I think we're way too pessimistic about our ability to fight climate

agent to get off a fossil fuels- the alarm bells deafening, were way too pessimistic about our ability to beat back over it and the next virus without comes along. Americans are literally to dangerous to be let out of our country and were way too pessimistic, about our ability to get people out of poverty. This entire thing is, and always has been a scam, and so it just bugs me- and I think this need activity is holding society back rather than looking at what we can do as opposed to what we ve done poorly. There should be a market for like sensible moderates who believe yeah government can work, but it's not always the solution and we should care about the deficit to Euro. A covert is bad, but look at all the great things we ve done, but, oddly you don't see the moderate broadcasting corporation starting up and

the reviewers like crazy, although maybe that in a way that's what you do, I mean I know that's not exactly what you do, but your kind of in that space I was gonNa Sam, a little insulted because your discretion king, exactly what we tried to you. On the other hand, you're right, I do not have the scale of what would become the moderate broadcasting company, so maybe maybe a name changes in order, but basically you ve told me if I have any self interest at all, I'm being an idiot by not being much more negative, given here as for names, if I want to go the other way, maybe have a shadow network, that's all negative, all the time you could go. It constantly negative news, but that may be taken thanks Bruce Sesar do and his co authors Molly Cook and ran Jan Seagal for producing such interesting research. The paper is called. Why is all co nineteen news, bad news. Thanks also to Steve Raft J and his co, author

Sandra Vonder, Linden and J Von Babble, their paper is called out. Group animosity drives engagement on social media and thanks to Erika Open. Latest book, is called highly irregular. Why tough, through an dough, dont, rime and other oddities of the english language? I would love to hear your thoughts on this so or any episode we're at radio at Freakin Alex dot com. Next time on the show, a conversation with a The person who is thought a lot about negativity. I will not let the press media politicians tell me I've got a hate. My brother in law, Arthur Brooks, is an academic who became quite by accident. A force in american politics, which he says has been totally infected by tempt. We need people from both parties that people going to vote for as opposed

somebody who will defend me from the personal voting against so does Brooks have a solution. He does. We can show steely courage with boundless love. Can love really conquer all that's next time on economics, radio until then take care of yourself, and if you can someone else too freedoms, radios produced by stature and rent, but radio. This episode was produced by Zack Weapon Ski. Our staff also includes Ellison, Craig Low Gregg ribbon. Joel Meyer, Tricia BO beater married to Duke Rhine, Kelly, Brent CATS, Jasmine, cleaner Eleanor us and Jacob Committee and Immaterial and we work bout it both of whom lent their voices to this week's episode. Are, song is MR fortune by the hitchhikers. All the other music was composed by Louis Scare. You can get the entire archive of economics. Radio in any part, cast up. If you would like to read a transcript

where the show notes where you can find the underlying research, that is it for economics, dot com, as always, thanks for listening I was literally shaking with fear. I was literally eating my feelings, so people complain about literally, but they don't complain about really but at the same thing, when I say I was really tearing my hair out, you were right We doing it the freak radio network they head inside of everything teacher.