Entries Tagged 'information overload' ↓

Dennis Prager asks a provocative question: “Why Do Palestinians Get More Attention than Tibetans?

He lists a bunch of reasons: terror, oil, Israel, China, the left, and the UN. My favorite answer is last [e.a.]:

The seventh reason is television news, the primary source of news for much of mankind. Aside from its leftist tilt, television news reports only what it can video. And almost no country is televised as much as Israel, while video reports in Tibet are forbidden, as they are almost anywhere in China except where strictly monitored by the Chinese authorities. No video, no TV news. And no TV, no concern. So while grieving Palestinians and the accidental killings of Palestinians during morally necessary Israeli retaliations against terrorists are routinely televised, the slaughter of over a million Tibetans and the extinguishing of Tibetan Buddhism and culture are non-events as far as television news is concerned.

Setting aside Prager’s pro-Tibet sympathies and his Palestine fatigue, it’s worth paying attention to his last argument, which is as profound as it is simple. I repeat:

No video, no TV news.
No TV, no concern.

That is, I believe, an underexamined (so far) reason for the American public’s lack of interest in the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, of course: there is little to no video, except when some American luminary is visiting (and then the usual terrorist suspects in Iraq piggyback on the media coverage and put on a really violent show).

As if on cue, PEJ releases a report about how last week’s “news” was dominated by a pseudo-event (Obama’s race speech) rather than by events on the ground that have an impact on how Americans live their day-to-day lives (which, once upon a time, was the province of the “news”). ETP’s Rachel Sklar notes that the over-the-top Obama coverage totally eclipsed the five-year anniversary of our engagement in Iraq.

Well, the PEJ just released its fifth annual State of the News Media report, in which I read this notable bit [e.a.]:

Citizens suggested that the press failed to deliver sufficient coverage of some basic bread and butter issues, such as rising gas prices, toy recalls, and the legislative battle over children’s health insurance. … To the extent the press covered distant parts of the world, people in some ways thought even that was too much.

PEJ suggests that we Americans just aren’t that into anything that doesn’t touch our daily lives:

This suggests that the media, in not covering Iraq, is merely giving the audience what it wants. Apparently, the majority of people who watch TV don’t want to think about Iraq. That seems to be the consensus.

I’ve noted this before, of course: the “infotainment” in Infotainment Rules refers not so much to the fluffy content offered by the MSM as to the type of coverage that the MSM gives the “news”—that is, stories are chosen for their entertainment value and they are presented with entertainment values (conflict, dramatization, exaggeration of the importance of personality traits in the “characters” [public figures] who are featured in news stories [which makes them into caricatures but also into recognizable archetypes for a mass audience], an emphasis on emotion, etc., etc.].

Turning away from our apparent lack of interest in Iraq and to the general question of what we are interested in leads to questions about our jam-packed attention economy, in which a gazillion items from a bazillion entertainment and “news” outlets compete for just a fraction of our individual focus. As a society, we suffer from information overload and information pollution, and yet as individuals we also want to be informed about the things that might affect our daily life (the “news” is an early-warning system for possible dangers ahead).

Though we say we want “news,” we force the news media (which we depend on) to compete with everyone else who’s got something to sell. We are in control, through our attention span. They are all vying for a bit of our attention.

Those who want to get our attention have to give us a valuable intangible that cannot be reproduced at no cost, says Kevin Kelly. Among those intangibles is trust. There are a bunch of others. It’s fascinating stuff; read all about it here.

The Politico notes that the political campaigns are all revved up:

The presidential campaigns in both parties have begun reacting ferociously to real or perceived attacks from rivals, goaded by a tight campaign calendar that leaves no room for error, and a determination to show they’re tougher than John F. Kerry was in 2004.

All of the candidates have sought to exploit any whiff of negativity from their opponents by pivoting off the charges with counterattacks designed to gain sympathy or political advantage within their own party.

This is yet more evidence, for those who need it, for the validity of the Feiler Faster Thesis, in which Mickey Kaus was making an observation about momentum in politics. He suggested that with the speeding up of everything in our everyday life,

there are now simply more opportunities for turns of fortune and that voters are able, for the most part, to keep up. …

 ”The FFT, remember, doesn’t say that information moves with breathtaking speed these days. (Everyone knows that!) The FFT says that people are comfortable processing that information with what seems like breathtaking speed.” [e.a.]

Campaigns are responding rapidly to attacks because they are trying to turn every moment in the spotlight—even (perhaps especially) moments of crisis—into an opportunity. They have learned the hard way that unless you answer every attack, you leave yourself open to the possibility that your opponent’s displeasing narrative about you, or his attack on your image, will stick to you.

Rapid response is about upping the ante, about fighting bad PR with better PR in the hope that you will accrue an image of yourself appealing enough for voters to cast their ballot for you. What’s amazing about it is that politicians do this even though most voters aren’t even paying attention. They just cannot afford to stand still as the river of news*** rushes by them.

——————-

*** Doc Searls recently elaborated this concept. I’m still trying to process it. Totally fascinating stuff:

Here’s the problem with most news: it isn’t. It’s olds. It happened hours ago, or last night, or yesterday, or last month, or before whenever the deadline was in the news organization’s current “news cycle”. It’s not now. …

News is a river, not a lake. It is active, not static. It’s what’s happening, not what happened. Or not only what happened.

But what happened — news as olds — is how we’ve understood news for as long as we’ve had newspapers. The happening kind of news came along with radio, and then television. Then we called it “live”. Still, even on the nightly news, what’s live is talking heads and reports from the field. The rest is finished stuff.

There’s a difference here, a distinction to be made: one as stark and important as the distinction between now and then, or life and death. It’s a distinction between what’s live and what’s not.

This distinction is what will have us soon talking about the life of newspapers, rather than the death of them.

Because it’s not enough to be “online” or to have a “presence” on the Web.

To be truly alive, truly new, truly part of the life of its readers, a newspaper needs to be on the live web and not just the static one. It needs to flow news, and not just post it.

It needs to flow rivers of news, or newsrivers.

The New York Times wonders if candidates are giving us too much information. Then the paper lets a surrogate act as its mouthpiece:

“I’m all for democratizing dialogue, but this is just much too much information,” Mr. Begala said. “It’s appalling, really.”

Hmmm. Appalling? I wouldn’t go that far. I see all public figures—from politicians to CEOs to movie stars to sports sensations to news anchors to talking heads—as self-conscious performers. They’re in front of the camera—of course they’re performers! Plus, no one can create a public profile in today’s world unless s/he’s got good visuals.

Bottom line: they’re not my cuppa, but they’re here to stay, because as long as there are public figures and cameras, there will be performers

Here’s what I had to say back in February:

Gawker reports on a “Firm Potent Leader with Plenty of Stamina”:

The Post ruined all our breakfasts with their cover this morning (seriously: “Judi gushes as Rudi rushes in”?? Ewwwww!!!)

Check out the placement of her hand on his cheek. And her hair, cascading just so. I’m going to throw up.

I also once posted a picture of The Kiss:

And for a while I was obsessed with making fun of the PDAs of the Chief Monkey of Iran:

 

the many loves of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

July 31, 2006

June 2006

They just won’t reject Rudy, goddammit. (He may play the Theme Song from 9/11 everywhere he goes, but they don’t know him like we know him, says New York magazine.)

Enter the Politico: Fuggedabout Rudy! He’ just too liberal for you!

Giuliani-Appointed Judges Tend to Lean to the Left

When Rudy Giuliani faces Republicans concerned about his support of gay rights and legal abortion, he reassures them that he is a conservative on the decisions that matter most.

“I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am,” he told South Carolina Republicans last month. “Those are the kinds of justices I would appoint — Scalia, Alito and Roberts.”

But most of Giuliani’s judicial appointments during his eight years as mayor of New York were hardly in the model of Chief Justice John Roberts or Samuel Alito — much less aggressive conservatives in the mold of Antonin Scalia.

A Politico review of the 75 judges Giuliani appointed to three of New York state’s lower courts found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 8 to 1.

Scared yet? Well, McCain just announced. Sorta. In the “newly usual way” (according to the NYT’s Adam Nagourney): on Letterman.

How old school (hat tip: BuzzMachine).

Adam Bellow, a longtime publishing professional, has launched an innovative undertaking that looks very promising (it’s a simple, elegant idea). It marries the latest in technology (print-on-demand) with one of the oldest traditions in publishing: pamphleteering. The CJR Daily interviewed Bellow back in December:

His newest venture has as its goal no less than, as his Web site puts it, “to reinvent the book for the 21st century.” Bellow wants to do this by bringing back the art of pamphleteering. In a series of 4-by-6 inch, $4 booklets with an average of 60 to 80 pages each, he hopes to create a new, affordable forum for presenting ideas.

Bellow is consciously trying to tap into the tradition of pamphlet wars that accompanied “all the great social and political and scientific and religious revolutions in Western history… from the Reformation to the Enlightenment.”
He also notes the climate and times we live in as factors that make short books (not to mention short books that can be delivered electronically) sound so appealing:

[P]eople don’t have time to take in all the information that is thrown at them. And this in a period when the tone and the level of public intellectual argument in this country has been adversely affected by both the media revolution and by current events. It’s been polarized and coarsened by the political climate. It’s also been made shallower and more superficial by the media environment.

Excellent points, both. Bellow continues:

So that’s on the one hand. On the other hand, I noticed the explosion of activity on the Internet. After 9/11 there was this huge explosion. I think it can best be described cosmologically. First there is a big bang. Thousands and thousands of individual blogs are spewed out. Nobody reads them in particular. They are all just little points sort of flickering in the cosmic gloom. But over time, because the Internet is a kind of pure intellectual democracy, little aggregations form. People are drawn to one another by common interests. And at the same time, certain individuals emerge as large planetary bodies, very often surrounded by circles of other people who share their interests.

Best of all, Bellow gets the power of the blogosphere.
Sounds promising. I’ll be watching.

Trying to keep his name alive, the Egyptian doctor makes a public appearance on video, in which he preaches about the war in Iraq, Bush’s lies, and the pope’s insults to Islam:

As-Sahab, al-Qaeda’s multimedia production arm, issued today, Friday, September 29, 2006, a 17:51 minute video speech featuring Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and titled: “Bush, the Pope of the Vatican, Darfur, and the Crusader Wars”. He appears in two scenes: one, subtitled in English, with an office-setup background with a lamp, flag bearing “No God, but Allah”, and a cannon; the other is without a background, and depicts Zawahiri dressed entirely in white, without subtitles.

To U.S. President George W. Bush, Zawahiri brands him a “deceitful charlation” and liar, and questions: “why don’t you tell them how many million citizens of America and it’s allies you intend to kill in search of the imaginary victory and in breathless pursuit of the mirage towards which you are driving your people’s sons in order to increase your profits?” He questions his motives for initating the War in Iraq, ridiculing the false prexets under which it was conducted. To this end he cites the purported links of Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, and the presence of weapons of mass destruction.

I wonder: don’t the Democrats get nervous when they hear Zawahiri mimicking their talking points?

On a side note, I find it fascinating that al Qaeda has a “multimedia production arm,” As-Sahab, which even advertises its productions ahead of time, as noted by Stratfor in early September:

Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera and an Islamist Web site aired previously unseen footage Sept. 7 of Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking al Qaeda leaders apparently planning the 9/11 attacks. The video, like most other recent ones of al Qaeda leaders, was produced by the jihadist network’s As-Sahab media branch, the fairly new organization behind the network’s latest media blitz. In fact, banner ads appearing on extremist Web sites claim the video is a trailer for an upcoming As-Sahab documentary on the 9/11 attacks. [emphasis added]

As-Sahab began advertising this new tape a couple of days ago, too.

The original Al Qaeda (bin Laden and Zawahiri) is now reduced to competing for our attention with Anna Nicole Smith, the torture bill, torture victims in Iraq, Torture by Bill [Clinton], a depraved sex-murder maniac in Colorado, and George Allen’s racist slurs.