Study of Blinking: conservatives more afraid than progressives

How hard you blink signals how you think: Startle reflexes’ thought to shape person’s politics, Toronto Star, September 19, 2008, Joseph Hall http://www.healthzone.ca/health/article/50209

“In an interview last week, hard right U.S. running mate Sarah Palin talked a lot about blinking.

“You can’t blink” and “we must not blink,” the Alaskan Republican told ABC News in response to questions about her readiness for office and the fight against terrorism.

Now a study in the journal Science says people with strong right-wing views blink much harder than liberals when confronted with threatening stimuli.

The University of Nebraska study suggests people who hold conservative views on such issues as foreign policy and gun control are more frightened than those with a more left-leaning bent.

“What we’re introducing to the field of political science is this notion that there is a physical basis to these beliefs,” says lead author Doug Oxley…..”

read more

Facebook and the Canadian Election


Canadians that are not in favour of the neo-conservative Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper are using Facebook to help oust him. It’s become an issue that Elections Canada had to look into facebook groups and they ended up concluding that, yes, the facebook groups are legal.

The groups in question are easily accessible through facebook and seem to be pretty active.

Pair Vote (Swap) – Canada Election 2008 is the place to partner with someone else to try to coordinate the best voting option based on your respective locations.

Similarly, Anti-Harper Vote Swap Canada provides the same service.

Click here for an example of how this vote-swapping works.

It leaves me to wonder why the people behind Vote for Climate don’t have a facebook page.

The Department of Culture


The Department of Culture is looking to have a positive impact on the current Canadian federal election. You can help them by joining their facebook group and, of course, by volunteering.

We are the Department of Culture, a growing community of Canadian citizens who are artists, arts professionals and cultural workers concerned about ensuring the social and cultural health and prosperity of our nation in the face of a Federal Government that is aggressively undermining the values that define Canada.

We are you: the painters, architects, dancers, writers, actors, designers, filmmakers, sculptors, performers, photographers, ceramicists, directors, curators, musicians, archivists, fashion designers, producers, weavers, choreographers, editors, librarians . . .

WHAT WE STAND FOR:

The Department of Culture was founded on the following objectives to:

ENCOURAGE A MULTIDIMENSIONAL VISION OF CULTURE that emphasizes living interactions between the artistic, cultural, social, political and economic aspects of society.
PROMOTE A VIEW OF CITIZENSHIP in which all Canadians are active participants in the creation of culture rather than simply as passive receivers of it.
ENSURE THAT GOVERNMENTS, AGENCIES AND INSTITUTIONS ARE ACCOUNTABLE for their social and cultural agendas.
SUPPORT THE CREATIVE AGENCY OF ARTISTS to make political change through all forms of artistic production.

Winners of Bill-C61 in 61 seconds

Cory over at BoingBoing posted the following about the contest to explain why Bill C-61 is so bad in 61 seconds. The dreaded Bill C-61 is that the Canadian Conservative party tried to through push parliament that is basically a copy of the American DMCA. Thankfully the bill has been stalled because of the election call.

Hopefully copyright issues will become an election issue.


Michael Geist’s “C-61 in 61 Seconds” Youtube competition — in which netizens were encouraged to make 61-second videos explaining what was wrong with Canada’s proposed equivalent to the US DMCA — has just come to end. Judges that include BNL’s Stephen Page and Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian selected three entries as their winners.


The bill is dead — thanks to the election that was just called — but one thing we know about bad copyright legislation is that it’s tenacious.


C-61 in 61 Seconds – The Winners

boler/research on TDS cited in CTV

i was thrilled to be asked by CTV journalist Andrea Janus to comment on yet another academic study on the effects of The Daily Show…and, the story accurately captures my concerns about how these social science studies reductively misrepresent the cultural significance of “fake news” and satire…

Is ‘fake news’ informative? Study tests fun vs factsUpdated Sun. Sep. 14 2008 8:31 AM ET Andrea Janus, CTV.ca News

[i am posting the second half of story…for full version see link below]

In a study of about 85 people, Kim and Vishak found that fake news show viewers:

  • Retain more information about a political candidate’s personal life and less about their positions on political issues.
  • Retain less information about political issues and processes compared to viewers of network news.

Mock news shows may not be the best way to learn about political candidates and issues because viewers watch the programs to be entertained, Kim said. So they may not be paying attention to all of the details.

Are comedy viewers also news consumers?

Megan Boler, a professor of media studies and philosophy of education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, disagrees and points to other studies.

A 2007 Pew Research Center study found that fans of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report rank high in surveys of public affairs knowledge, she said.

Viewers of the shows are already informed before they tune in, Boler said.

“The Daily Show is not watched to the exclusion of other sources,” Boler said in an interview with CTV.ca. “In order to appreciate satire you have to have background knowledge. You’re not going to have pleasure watching The Daily Show if you haven’t been talking to your friends about what’s going on, following other kinds of news sources.”

Boler argues that Kim’s study, which showed viewers 20-minute video segments from either NBC and CNN or The Daily Show about a Supreme Court nominee, fails to take into account how viewers gather news.

More people are getting their news from a variety of sources, including blogs and Internet media outlets, in an attempt to be more politically engaged, she said.

Therefore, reaction to a single news clip cannot accurately evaluate a subjects’ political knowledge because it does not reflect the fact that people rarely gain that knowledge from a single source.

And the study ignores the fact that many viewers watch the programs online, which has spurred a whole online, user-generated media industry.

“Through that online watching there’s a level of citizenship engagement where people can comment on it, they can link to it on their blogs, they can talk to their friends about it online, so there’s an intense kind of community building,” Boler said.

At the end of the day, the role of satirical news shows isn’t to be a single source of information for viewers.

“Most people are aware that part of the pleasure of watching the Daily Show or Colbert is that it’s making fun of news formats. It’s doing that both in content and form,” Boler said.

“It’s doing that by pretending to be news and it’s doing it by using clips from actual news and then making a joke about how straight news is doing its job. And it’s urging you to ask questions about the role of media in a democracy.”

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080912/news_feature_080912/20080914?hub=TopStories

team member chantelle oliver on cbc! google’s future…

research team member Chantelle Oliver interviewed on CBC about Google!

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/09/08/chantelle-vs-mansbridge/

way to go chantelle…one of the only ones interviewed to address actual social practices of and myths about how users engage google!

Chantelle also works as a blogger for Walrus Magazine, her blog titled “Web 2.0 Museum”

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/category/web20/#blogs_top

highlight on current research: Rethinking Media, Democracy, and Citizenship

Exciting new findings are rolling in as we conclude three years of SSHRC-funded research on “Digital Dissent”: What motivates people to blog, post movies, engage in online political activities? To what extent does frustration with corporate-owned media motivate those who engage in such practices as the MoveOn.org Bushin30Seconds contest, writing political blogs, blogging about The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and producing creative/political digital art?

We have now presented our research findings at national and international conferences and published our analyses in journals and books. Through close analysis of online productions, an online survey to 157 online author/producers, and interviews with 35 digital media artists/writers, our findings include that:

  • increased online engagement requires that we redefine what counts as political citizenship
  • online web-based practices do NOT take away from offline organizing or activism
  • digital media does impact practices and industry of journalism
  • people from all sides of the political spectrum are frustrated with media and politicians, and that this skepticism and lack of faith is a key factor in motivating online political expression
  • satire and “fake news” has extreme appeal in an era characterized by crises of truth, evidenced by the flagrant lies and abuses of media by politicians which are now daily “evidenced” through digital media practices such as remix.

For more on Rethinking Media, Democracy, and Citizenship, see our conferences papers, publications, and findings under “Projects“.

new! free access to AL Jazeera Englsh online

We have just received word from Andrea Schmidt, a member of our research team, who is now posted in Wash DC working for Al Jazeera with Avi Lewis and others to cover the election.

“A quick PSA from my DC outpost inside Fortress North America:

Over the past months, many of you have asked me, “How can we watch the show you’re working on?” or “How can we get Al Jazeera English,” or “Prove that you actually do something, and you’re not just ignoring me.” I usually mumble something about charging a monthly subscription to RealPlayer to your credit card, or watching the lo res stream on the AJE website. But now there’s a good answer! You can download Livestation, and watch Inside USA and every other show and news bulletin on AJE — as well as France 24, Russia Today and a range of other international news channels — for free. And I’m told the quality is really great.

So if you’re interested or procrastinating, go here: http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

Then click on the “Watch Now” button next to Livestation, and follow the instructions to download and install…

Hopefully Livestation will keep you all tuned into the only global news channel in the world that claims to be the voice of the voiceless, until we get every angle and every side of it some decent cable carriage in the US and Canada. (Residents of Canada, feel free to call the CRTC any time and make your thirst known…)

This message has been brought to you by andrea, with love and rage. Feel free to forward the tip…”

AT&T: Thanks Dems!

Last night at DNC, AT&T threw a lavish thank-you party for the dems who let the telecom off the hook for working with the bush administration in helping them spy on people without warants.  Salon’s Glen Greenwald tried to infiltrate the party and get some of the names of the dems who had blindly helped the telecoms.  Met with evasion, Greenwald was not able to get any names but he did film the party and is hoping the online community can help identify the dems.

Greenwald was also on Democracy Now this morning.

via boingboing