This has the unintended consequence of decoupling readers from reality, because the long trail events start seeming like the norm.
We see it in survey after survey that the more ‘news’ media you consume the less you are in line with understanding what is actually happening.
Take out any element, and the circuit is incomplete. The media is what provides the feedback. Without it, it breaks in the same way your home's temperature will get out of control if the thermometer is broken.
The effect that just seeing some crime stories on TV makes people believe crime is everywhere is probably overrated. As is the believe that "the media" is oh so terrible today and was so much better in some unspecified golden age.
> We see it in survey after survey that the more ‘news’ media you consume the less you are in line with understanding what is actually happening.
Yeah, that doesn't seem plausible. I can't even say what "understanding what is actually happening" is supposed to mean? I guess you have some grand theory of what's really happening that they don't want you to know.
(ps: I know "long trail events" sound so much smarter than "rare". But it's "long tail")
‘What’s actually happening’ is alluding to boots on the ground surveys and government statistics.
E.g. society calls the police on children walking alone to the park far more today than in the past. The amount of fear has decoupled from the risk.
[citation needed]?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.5608... shows a nuanced result:
"First, we find that social media use is associated with several negative consequences, including the endorsement of misinformation related to COVID-19, lower knowledge about how the disease is treated, and greater prejudice toward Asian Americans...
...individuals using print and radio sources were less common in our study, but these sources were also associated with lower knowledge of COVID-19 and greater stigmatization of Asian Americans.
Finally, and in support that some media formats can have positive influences during public health crises, individuals using web news sources were less likely to endorse misinformation. These findings overlap with recent Pew Research Center findings that individuals utilizing national news on news websites are likely to closely follow COVID-19 updates which could help account for why the endorsement of misinformation was lower."
This seems (unsurprisingly) to depend on the source:
"Further, misinformation scores were significantly lower among participants who frequently use CNN (t = 2.054, p < 0.05) compared to those who do not as well as among participants who frequently use the New York Times (t = 4.397, p < 0.001) as compared to those who do not. Prejudice was similarly lower among participants who frequently used the New York Times (t = 3.070, p < 0.01) as compared to those who did not. Finally, participants who frequently used NPR scored significantly lower on misinformation (t = 5.256, p < 0.001) and prejudice (t = 2.082, p < 0.05), and significantly higher on treatment knowledge (t = −2.242, p < 0.05).
People who used Fox News scored significantly higher on misinformation (t = −4.117, p < 0.001) and prejudice (t = −2.392, p < 0.05), and significantly lower on treatment knowledge (t = 2.766, p < 0.01) than people who did not use Fox News. Participants who frequently used Facebook similarly scored significantly higher on misinformation (t = −3.360, p = 0.001) and prejudice (t = −3.574, p < 0.001), and significantly lower on knowledge of COVID-19 treatment (t = 3.900, p < 0.001) and symptoms (t = 2.387, p < 0.05). Participants who frequently used Twitter scored significantly lower on knowledge of treatment (t = 2.621, p < 0.01) and knowledge of symptoms (t = 2.538, p < 0.05)."
So those who consume "legit" (my words) news sources like the NYT or NPR score well on knowledge and low on misinformation. Those who use primarily social media or Fox News score high on misinformation and low on knowledge.
Sadly, Hackernews readers are not broken out among the sample.
E.g. democrats in the survey were more misinformed on risks of Covid than republicans. That explains why the misinformed fear is causing Californians to visit outdoor pumpkin patches while wearing cloth masks (this is analogous to wearing helmets while driving, which is statistically safer but not seen very often.)