And every work out the right way with core power field, like twenty six grams of high quality protein, to give your body what it means when it He then recover and build me muscle with power at metro by t mobile You can save more now that you need it. The most get one line of unlimited five g for just forty dollars period, taxes and fees, included, that's the lowest price and rebate plus choose from largest selection of free five g phones from brands. You love like samsung it's now and save more on the metro. If congested the fraction of users greater than thirty five gigabytes per month may notice reduced speeds in metro, customers may notice reduced speeds, vs t mobile privatization. Video streams in sd requires eligible, we didn't store for details either its deepened up in the past couple.

we have been revisiting our series on the unique aspects of american culture from our rugged individualism, to spirit of competition. This week we will ask one more question in this room: why is? U S, media so negative if you'd like to catch up on the rest, the series or you want to listen to any of our episodes. You can find it all on any podcast, app and entire archive is also available at free economics that come along with transcripts and show notes. As always, thanks for listening, I'd like you to imagine, and this should be very hard, but imagine you are in the midst of a growing pandemic. Twelve

They tell any, has now been reported here in the united states. The 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 corona virus death toll in the united states might hit three thousand by early jill 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 sacerdotal at dartmouth college, I'm very utilitarian. I was looking for useful information and hence my frustration because I felt like it was more advert oriole and entertainment. When sacerdotal says he was looking for more useful in. For me,

what does that mean? What I would 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 set one to pretend everything was fine. They mean this thing called more people than most of the wars we ve been in, and so it's hard not to be knocked down by that. But sesar do saw a difference between 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 being mostly from major: u s: media outlets, whether it was perhaps more negative than other coverage, lake, local news or international news. Even the articles published in scientific journals, all of them were seeing the same. Could

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 Consider 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, did bruce sacerdotal and another dimension on which the? U s is an outlier. He d

I need to do what economists due east, the gathering data in order to produce a study will that's what then when you take an economist and lock them in cnn for three months make it more and more angry tonight, We cannot radio is your news, negatively, biased or We just blame the english language. We have a 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. To increase of morality, Marshall! clue in said at first more than fifty years ago. The medium is the message it also been said: 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 it with me. what this is really comics radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host stephen abner in certain circles, lake academia, where bruce astrodome works. journalism or I do your job,

we considered a more serious person if you are critical or even negative, whereas positivity tends to be associated with naivete or cheerleading yeah. That's probably right so saturday, who is generally an optimist, sometimes feels like an outlier. I had this idea of getting together a merry band of people who actually believe that there is 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 won. 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 and certainly in view tears I mean you look at companies like tesla amazon that exist in part, because investors subsidized their operations with the

to me in the ten years down the road that the big pay off his coming? So there's an interesting dichotomy there It is true that tech investors can be incredibly optimistic, sometimes to a fault. How optimistic should you be? If your resting 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 news we're revenues fell from around sixty billion dollars a year to twenty billion, but cable tv is doing great at the big three fox news: cnn and MSNBC revenues contain to grow in their profit margins are massive cnn, for instance, earned an estimated

if the one hundred and fifteen million dollars in profit in two thousand and twenty on 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 segment and while technology markets thrive on optimism, Saturday began to suspect that major media outlets thrive on pessimism. The media is very good at producing negative stories that are eye catching they're, also good at producing stories which cater to people Most 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 EU. 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 done collaboration with molly cook and ran Jan seagal. They set out to analyze covered news coverage in four distinct categories, major. U S, media locally! regional. U S, media internet, 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 sasha calls very simple word: counting techniques to measure how negative or positive? a given story was this man meant relied on the use of two lexicons popular with researchers, a list of nearly five thousand words judge 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 worsen and some words from the positive lexicon applaud, appreciate expansive gaining ready. When of all the researchers focused their analysis on covert 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 cases that much and 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 on cases are falling and when cases arising negative stores outnumber posit 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 upsetting so rate that about eighty seven percent of covered coverage in national. U s. Media last year was negative. The share for internet, National media was only fifty one percent. That's a massive massive difference. Only fifty three per cent 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 it has to do with the difference in mission between journalism and scientific journals. What do you make of that headline? Number? Eighty, seven percent

activity in national? U S, media verses, 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. It's like look gathers bad news about cove it and maybe the from the scientific articles are about spread in those sort of things. But on the other hand, there is 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. It 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 trump seeks push to speed vaccine despite safety concerns and here's a passage from that article present

tromp is pressing his health officials to pursue a crash development programme for a of irish 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 say the new york times as coverage of president trump- 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 corona virus vaccine in oxford and a passage from at article, the general, institute has been working on a vaccine against another coronavirus, middle east respiratory syndrome, mers which

been shown to induce strong immune response is against mirrors, after a single dose of the vaccine and the first clinical trial, which took place in oxford. The same approach to me and of action is being taken for the novel corrective irish vaccine. So this is the kind of information that bruce ass or do the economist would see later in his analysis. But at the time bruce you don't! The human was back in hanover new hampshire, watching a lot of cnn when reading a lot of the new york times I live I thought I was 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, because the news clearly says they care that it takes five years to develop a vaccine. Then, when the scientists and the companies actually came out with act scenes I felt so relieved and veto, 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 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. Org 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 demand, 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 S, major media, it would be less disturbing for were simply that people demand negativity, they get it the end. What worries me is that it's a self reinforce 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 outlets in turn deliver even more bad news to pick on the new york times, just a bit more. In a separate analysis, the data scientist culpably toro, performed a sentiment analysis on every article, the times published between nineteen forty five in two thousand five. He found that coverage began drifting negative in the nineteen sixties and has gotten progressively more so, but which way does the arrow point? Do news outlets simply meet our demand for negativity or do they create that demand? It has been 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 function if you miss out on a great opportunity for good food or sex or any other life. Affirming thing well catered, that's too bad, but Might have another one? The fine day, but if you miss A dangerous predator fail to notice that will put an end to your life The psychological mechanism underlying our work is that the mind was shaped by evolution to pay 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? helps. The first understand how the english language has been shaped by this negativity. Bias is certainly the case in language that negativity,

means, 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 english is so weird weird in some simple relic. We harmless ways: lake spelling one example from open, consider the following: three words: d: o you g h. t o? U g, H, anti h, r, o you g h other then opening letters there identical. So they sound identical? Why are they pronounced dough, tough and through, but the will? spelling in english isn't nearly as complicated as the weird emotions, especially the negative ones. Well, we have or ways of being negative. We have a lot of words, four types of bad feelings. We have

the guilt. We have shame, though, those are very specific they're different from sad they're 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 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 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 he 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

and to do along description to get exactly what we're talking about. We don't have the word that Comes it all up in one package? There's a default, and this is how We expect things to be, and then there is a marked situation. And in language. The marked situate it is the one that gets the name, because it's a departure, especially with verbs. We have the verb to lie lying. We do not have a verb for to tell the truth. We have a whole for is it. We can say, oh 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 we're just going along with it when we can media. How do you think the negativity if the headline language shapes our perception of the events.

Shapes how we react to the events and how urgently we feel that reaction, negative pretty puts you and a heightened state of awareness and that in the state of awareness, is meant to spur you to action, the music also helps you know the music 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 day Our real examples from cnn breaking news text is being read aloud by our producers. Breaking news, no winner. in 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 been in to my adult life, including several years at the new york times, but I've always thought journalism as having a somewhat different mission from other industries. Yes ray writer 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 said: 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 session

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 what say a hundred years is partially eroded 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 Reef golden era, because if you go further back to the late nineteenth century, the papers were all yet they're 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 fuck the most facebook shared in the most light stories on, say the new york times or the bbc the most like things from the baby, we are also super nag is just the bbc is not supplying dearly as much of those super negative stories. What we

My co and I think, is going on. Is it's not that americans are fundamentally different than 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 focus 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. katy and broadcasting corps as a libertarian leaning person. You think I wouldn't be pounding the table for 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

x and engagement and somewhat more motivated by the truth. Sacerdotal study cover just twenty twenty from january first until december. Thirty first, so it did include the beginning of the vaccine role but it ended before Joe Biden became. President sacerdotal did look for a relationship between the political bias of a given news outlets and its tendency to run negative news. He didn't find any, but you could imagine that donald trumps contentious presidency may have affected 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 eyes of this variant. So then it does make you take part as a well. Maybe it part of it was the political environment we were in, but sacerdotal thinks his research training

are more generalised than that. We suspect this is much more than just a covert story. We think that negativity about climate change, your pick any topic on it. We met the inequality poverty alleviation. We think that the media coverage, particularly from there The media is probably more negative. Then it is another country's. Why is this important? other than the psychic damage that so much negativity can cause. Here's. One reason if all you're being told by the media is that problem x is bad and getting worse and

problem. Why is even more unsolvable? Well, you 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's made even harder when the only stories that gain traction are the stories telling us that those problems can't be 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 and rainbows. one example of a very viral post, sad check out Joe Biden, recent brain freeze after the break additional negativity, evidence from twitter and facebook, and we do looks

we're 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 part cast, please let a friend know about it. That is a great way to support the pack ass. You like we'll be right, It takes a lot of ingredients to fix or build a car like cooking, but without the frozen dinner, easy way out. Ebay motors has a hundred and twenty two million parts. It's always right figment, so you can follow any recipe to a t whether the vintage italian coop, that's, I, like grandma's meatballs for a german luxury car, that's as complicated as almost real laden to cook up something great in the garage use, the ebay motors app or visit ebay motors that come. Let's ride freakonomics radio answered by the real good outcast, the real good podcast by. U s bank aims to set

rate and learn from those working to change, historical institutions and policies that disenfranchised by puck communities and women hosted by fate sally each season provides the opportunity, to learn from people who are on the ground working to better their immediate communities or their industries, topics include building community centred small businesses, bringing minority deposit institutions to new markets, the real impact of diversity programmes at corporate level and more. This is not a banking podcast, but faith and guests to explore how various issues impact people's ability to reach their goals and build generational wealth. The goal is to have open direct discussions of the issues without sugar coating things with corporate speak or letting corporations, including- u s, bank, author

from doing their part to change systems of power for the better, listen to real good on all major pot cast platforms or visit. U S, bank dot com, slash real good. 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 you here's another version updated for 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 model is based on capturing our attention in order to sell advertising that is steve, wrath, J

when we spoke with him. He was getting his phd in psychology at the university of cambridge. He is now a researcher at and why you he studies, misinformation and political polarisation. He also created a web app called. Have I shared fake news You can put your twitter handle and will show you specific news, urls that your shared that have been considered by independent fact, checkers to show a faker, unreliable information, as rep Jay said, the big social media sites are almost exclusively reliant on advertising dollars in twenty twenty one twitter took in just over five billion dollars in revenues that same I met, formerly known as facebook took in more than one hundred seventeen billion dollars. This means that all the newspapers in america, even all the cable tv networks, could fit in facebooks back pocket and in a way

do more than half of all americans get at least a portion of their news via social media with one third coming from facebook. Here's what steve rest! I wanted to know if you are a social media site and your 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 under linden and J Von babble analyzed, nearly 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 unpaid, it's from conservative and liberal media platforms and republican and democratic members of congress, so when they find what we found is that, 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 aisle. If a post was coming from a Democrat, a word like republican or conservative would lead to increase virality and if a post was coming from a Republican like Joe Biden, would lead to increase by rally the paper which was published in the procedure. of the national academy of sciences is called out. Group animosity drives engagement on social media. Also, post, 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 post about the owl croup receive much more engagement in total and steve. How confident

Are you that you and 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, your entire massive dataset one example of a very viral posts was from bright barton news and it said check Joe Biden, recent brain freeze- and it was a very unflattering video, Joe Biden. You know made him look he wasn't doing so well and then another postal. very viral from the liberals, was from the daily beasts and about my pants. Lying about covert nineteen. Let me just make sure I understand you

What you're telling me is that 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? U how 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. A lot of engagement. So in my next series of tweets I should say that I regret is glasses are too big and he looks like a circus class. You should try that we should put that to the tests. Can you help me get better at it, like there's some kinds of words or emotions or actions to 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 out

each would have on by reality that we also replicated this effect as well. We and that moral words like evil, or hate, or they could even be positive moral words like care. These would also be link. to increase of iraqi. So maybe, if you express some moral outrage about ira glass yeah like IRA. My key is pretty nice. What about? Maybe so Joe rogan, this unnatural target as a competitor, but he could also just beat them out of me like with with one finger. So that's that's not a good idea. is that why have you guys got into a feud on social media that would probably dr alot 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 will you publish this 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 ooh these perverse incentives as rath J categorizes them are not universal. Just as journal Some 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 too. It is outright banned in china. Although many people use virtual private networks to get around the ban, some chain he's twitter users have been jailed for criticising the government and during the covert teen outbreak and move on the government clamp down on social media activity, that document what was happening in the cities, hospitals. 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, willie likely to go viral for both republicans and democrats, We also equally likely to go viral on facebook and twitter, so I think 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. Jim, we're going back a couple of thousand years and you're saying to a bunch of roman senators, because you know they were at least as contentious as modern politicians. Probably more so and it'd be like going back them instead saying: listen, you guys just

say negative and especially mean things about the other people in this arena. Does that seem Remotely realistic in whatever millennium we're talking, I think that what social me as taking advantage of a sort of an ancient instinct to pay attention to the negative or to the polarizing or divisive. But I think it is different. Now that there is the ability to act, rhythmically amplify this. They didn't have these outrage machines at that time that wages amplify the most negative content, what is the pay off of all this attention? What 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 a lot of the most extreme politicians, if you look at donald trump, for instance, he was really.

Taking advantage of 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 social media and he was president because a social media, another narrative could say because he was so stole 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 measured the value of dumping on someone else? That's a good question, because certainly Joe Biden he's not a big twitter user, 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 you'd have attention? There was a paper that shows that people don't really like when politicians are negative. Politicians can get or visibility, but the 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 the same phenomenon out 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 honeyed thousands coca cola have three point: three million, so they doing. Okay, ok, amounting cockle, think de boer, and if I load the tweets, backed new november of twenty twenty and I search their time line for the word pepsi. I guess zero, they're, not engaging at all. So if I were coca cola and I'm listening to steve raftery, I would say wholly crap, we ve been

wasting this amazingly great opportunity to tell the people who love us that I dunno pepsi cola puts rhetoric in there. I would add, er yeah again, I'm not giving people the advice that everyone should go dunk on their outgroup 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 more coke has all these very positive commercials see themselves with a positive image so yeah, it's not the best tactic for getting people to like you get has just of 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 yesterday. Certainly I think one can blame social media platforms for allowing completely false things to circulate, and so you can have a debate about them,

the degree to which that might be regulated. But if there's a negative story in the new york times, then people going to want to share it on facebook, and I mean that's what the data show people do according to Steve wrath J. That is pretty much the exact argument that companies like facebook and twitter make when they are a key. Oozed 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 six ass, that social media amplifies the bad and it amplifies the ugly and the good. It has a lot less of a chance of going viral 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 I'm facebook or twitter, though I could say, will be

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 negativity 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 account spur for 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

You said you didn't write this paper to give advice for how to go viral on social media. But do you have suggestions for how to change the incentives that create this phenomenon? So I think that facebook could make very subtle, algorithmic tweaks to just good, so angry reactions cause less of iraqi. Then perhaps heart reaction, unlike reactions, lead to more virality. 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, subtly shifted. So we take advantage of viral positivity round then viral negativity that might be a potential solution? I mean that make so much sense to me when you watch the coverage of the olympics. It's almost as if negativity is board, especially if there's an american favorite who ends up doing

poorly 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 like the olympics, which is a pretty big global event and which is hugely profitable, why wouldn't I think that positivity has a lot of value and that negativity, maybe is exciting in fun, but kind of a losers trap yeah, I dont know sorry that wasn't really a question as much as this and I apologise. But if you have anything to say about it, we could make social media more likely olympics 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 early days, because a lot of very positive uplifting videos, but we,

suddenly. We ve seen like 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 engagement, all the time and beyond the power of bad as a strong bias, coming up after the break is there a market for good news? Maybe ten years from now will come back and the media industry will have realitas itself and maybe for the better I'm stephen Dublin. This is, for example, radio, we'll be right back. And every work out the right way with core power field, like twenty six grams of high quality protein, to give your body what it means when needs and recover and build mean muscle with we're power

The power of bad may indeed be a strong by us, but remember it is not equally powerful in all domains. Here again, is the dartmouth economist, bruce sesar. Do The data suggests that the 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- the negativity number for regional and local coverage just fifty three percent, so maybe there's room for some optimism, probably not local, missed ypres do tend to go broke at an alarming rate, since two thousand and five one in four local newspapers has shut down, so they may just simply not be as profit maximizing. Another possibility is that they play at a completely different role:

You know that they focus on local happenings in so when there's a fire, which is a very negative thing, you tend to get a lot reporting about it, but they are not in the same business of getting people whipped. 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 will come back.

in the media, industry will have realigned itself and may be for the better sasser two 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 looks at the problem from multiple angles: maybe even explores a solution. For example, look there's all this vaccine hesitancy? Perhaps some of the vaccine? Hesitancy is actually because there was no consistent, apposite message about the vaccines about the folk

we're developing these vaccines and that public private partnerships that create them with such speed. I certainly can't say that a huge fraction of vaccine 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 change and to get off of 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 to pessimists 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

This negativity 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 like a 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 gathering skewers 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 you're kind of in that space I was gonna, say I'm a little insulted because you're describing exactly what we try to do. On the other hand, you're right, I do not have the scale of what would be called the moderate broadcasting company, so maybe or maybe a name change is 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. Do you have any it is for names. If I want to go, the other way may have a shadow network, that's all If all the time you could go with constant,

negative news, but that may be taken thanks to bruce ass. You do and his co authors molly cook and ran down the gaol for producing such interesting research. The paper is called. Why is all with nineteen news, bad news. Thanks also to steve raft J and his co author Sandra Van der linden and J von babble, their paper is called out. Group animosity drives engagement on social media and thanks to erika open, whose latest book is called highly irregular white, tough through and dough dont rime and their oddities of the english language. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode or any episode we're at radio at for economics that come coming up next time on the show. Should public transit be free,

I cannot answer that without context one big serving of free public transit context. That's next time on finances, radio until then take care of yourself, and if you can, someone else to frequent must reduce produced by sticker in rent, but radio. This episode is produced by zack, look and see. Our staff also includes neil corinthe, Gabriel roth, Greg Been ryan tele Rebecca the Douglas Julie, camphor, morgan levy, eleanor osborne, Jeremy, Johnston, jasmine, cleaner immaterial, lyric about its Jacob clemente and billina comment or theme song is MR fortune by the check, is the rest of our music imposed by luis gara. You can get the entire archive of economics, radio and any pot cast ass if like to read a transcript or the show notes. We can find the underline research, that is, that freak. Oh not mix dotcom, 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 the same thing when I say I was really tearing my hair out, you work. Really doing it. The economics radio network they head inside of everything the stitcher.