• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Harvard Study: Mainstream Media Acted as Trump’s Mouthpiece, Clinton’s Foe

Veelk

Banned
https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud/

Harvard-Hillary-email-study.png

”Donald Trump succeeded in shaping the election agenda. Coverage of Trump overwhelmingly outperformed coverage of Clinton. Clinton's coverage was focused on scandals, while Trump's coverage focused on his core issues."

The more insulated right-wing media ecosystem was susceptible to sustained network propaganda and disinformation, particularly misleading negative claims about Hillary Clinton. Traditional media accountability mechanisms—for example, fact-checking sites, media watchdog groups, and cross-media criticism—appear to have wielded little influence on the insular conservative media sphere. Claims aimed for ”internal" consumption within the right-wing media ecosystem were more extreme, less internally coherent, and appealed more to the ”paranoid style" of American politics than claims intended to affect mainstream media reporting.

The institutional commitment to impartiality of media sources at the core of attention on the left meant that hyperpartisan, unreliable sources on the left did not receive the same amplification that equivalent sites on the right did.

These same standard journalistic practices were successfully manipulated by media and activists on the right to inject anti-Clinton narratives into the mainstream media narrative. A key example is the use of the leaked Democratic National Committee's emails and her campaign chairman John Podesta's emails, released through Wikileaks, and the sustained series of stories written around email-based accusations of influence peddling. Another example is the book and movie release of Clinton Cash together with the sustained campaign that followed, making the Clinton Foundation the major post-convention story. By developing plausible narratives and documentation susceptible to negative coverage, parallel to the more paranoid narrative lines intended for internal consumption within the right-wing media ecosystem, and by ”working the refs," demanding mainstream coverage of anti-Clinton stories, right-wing media played a key role in setting the agenda of mainstream, center-left media. We document these dynamics in the Clinton Foundation case study section of this report.

In some ways, this is kind of obvious just by those who followed the campaign trail alone, but it's nice to have actual scientific evidence that shows how skewed the media depiction was in favor of Trump.

They wanted to sell papers, they sold the country instead.

The thing that I'm worried about is that there is no doubt that the election of 2020 will be way worse in this regard. I mean, maybe we'll get a cleaner candidate and Trump will have more scandals to his name by then, but that's not the issue. The issue is that republicans don't play by the rules, while Democrats chain themselves to them. And this time the republicans are the ones in power. Hell, what if Trump gets around to trying to pass that press censorship shit he's talking about?

I feel like we need an Obama tier charisma just to have so much as a shot.
 

ZeoVGM

Banned
Oh yeah, the media helped Trump during the campaign, no doubt about it.

Watching CNN play up the email "scandal" and run the video of Hillary almost fainting when she was sick was truly disgusting.
 

Shiggy

Member
Trump's stance on immigration and trade were scandalous/shocking by themselves, thus automatically leading to higher coverage than Clinton's "ordinary" view on these issues.

Someone wanting to build a wall on the US-Mexican border and wanting Mexico to pay for that vs. someone who doesn't have any scandalous immigration initiatives.
 
Trump's stance on immigration and trade were scandalous/shocking by themselves, thus automatically leading to higher coverage than Clinton's "ordinary" view on these issues.

Someone wanting to build a wall on the US-Mexican border and wanting Mexico to pay for that vs. someone who doesn't have any scandalous immigration initiatives.

I agree with this. At least part of the reason behind the figures we see in the OP is due to the fact that, outside of her scandals, Clinton was largely a boring candidate. There's not much pop to her stance on trade. Trump's buffoonery on all of his policy positions was far more effective at drawing eyeballs to the message he wanted to convey.
 

Veelk

Banned
I agree with this. At least part of the reason behind the figures we see in the OP is due to the fact that, outside of her scandals, Clinton was largely a boring candidate. There's not much pop to her stance on trade. Trump's buffoonery on all of his policy positions was far more effective at drawing eyeballs to the message he wanted to convey.

She had a LOOOOT of good policies and stances. Sure, some of them were Obama 2.0's, but that doesn't make them bad or not worth reporting on.

For me personally, her Student Loan Forgiveness plan was huge and I couldn't believe that didn't get more cover. An affordable college educuation for everyone.

The biggest part of any sell is how you present it. People had the materials to make an awesome sell, but everyone wanted to look at the angry orange monkey flinging poo instead.
 
She had a LOOOOT of good policies and stances. Sure, some of them were Obama 2.0's, but that doesn't make them bad or not worth reporting on.

Sure. I didn't say they were bad policies, just that they were "boring" relative to her scandals and, well, everything coming out of Trump's face sphincter. That's still an indictment of our media, but I think more accurate than the idea that the media was consciously trying to help Trump's chances.
 

G.ZZZ

Member
Clinton being as safe as it could didn't really draw attention, with the only exception, the deplorable comment, being extremely questionable in term of appeal to voters if not downright counterproductive.

The left needed a more connecting candidate that promised the moon and change. Obama was that, Trump was that, Clinton wasn't. People don't really care if you don't fulfill your promises anyway, that's something implicit in being a politician. Italy elected Berlusconi three times in a row even if he was doing nothing of what he promised every time because he was good at selling it. Italy hasn't elected a left candidate in 20 years except Renzi because everyone except Renzi was , while possibly extremely competent and principled, just boring. And you know what? A lot of people already forgot what Berlusconi did and are ready to vote him again next year. A lot of American and international press was writing essays and was unable to understand how this was possible, turned out we were just ahead of the curve.
Voters who vote on actual programs are probably less than 5% of the electorate. Why is this to hard to grasp ? People are extremely dumb and easily manipulated, are we in 2017 still pretending they're not?
 

Strike

Member
Not anything we didn't already know. but it's nce to have actual data. After Jeb spent $100 million on one primary and only came up with 4 delegates, it was obvious something was up. A billion dollars in free press. Recipe for disaster.
 

diablos991

Can’t stump the diablos
Trump played them like a fiddle.
They haven't seemed to learn much as he is still on there every damned day.

Glad they helped the country avoid another Clinton though.
 

xk0sm0sx

Member
You guys would know more about Clinton since GAF is pretty left-leaning.
Imagine the outside world who didn't give a shit.

Not just America, but the whole world is following the 2016 election because of Trump. Trump IS the face of the 2016 election, even before the president was decided.
People who didn't give a shit about US politics knew about Trump. They also knew his slogan "MAGA". They wouldn't know about Clinton.

And same goes for Obama. He was the face of his election years. "Yes We Can" is still something regular people, outside US, associate with him.
 
What I would say is that the media tends to love a buffoon in general because, win or lose, it pulls in viewers. Trumps win just proved that memes and slogans are more important than actual policy. Trump won solely based on airtime. This is solely from an outsider though, but Trump was heavily advertised (and those appearances are advertisements) much more than Clinton.

The BBC has an absolute hard on for Nigel Farage, a man who failed to get elected as MP on 7 different runs, former head of a party with absolutely no MPs at all, but he became the face of Brexit, despite not being part of the official leave campaign. Fox News use him as the UK political go to.
 
I agree with this. At least part of the reason behind the figures we see in the OP is due to the fact that, outside of her scandals, Clinton was largely a boring candidate. There's not much pop to her stance on trade. Trump's buffoonery on all of his policy positions was far more effective at drawing eyeballs to the message he wanted to convey.
Yep.

If I remember right, there is a passage in one of Trump's old books that outlines the idea of "any publicity is good publicity"

I just randomly watched the "grab her by the pussy" video earlier today for the first time since it broke. Not sure if I found the direct source on Youtube but, on mobile, the highest viewed video of it was only 1.5 million views. And every top comment was of course praising trump and normalizing his comments. You'll see 5+ mil on anti hillary videos.

Hillary was an incredibly weak candidate for sure. She had my vote but thinking back I'm not at all surprised how this all ended up. All we can do is show up to vote in 2018 and then hope to god the DNC doesn't have such a shitty candidate in 2020
 

digdug2k

Member
Clinton being as safe as it could didn't really draw attention, with the only exception, the deplorable comment, being extremely questionable in term of appeal to voters if not downright counterproductive.

The left needed a more connecting candidate that promised the moon and change. Obama was that, Trump was that, Clinton wasn't. People don't really care if you don't fulfill your promises anyway, that's something implicit in being a politician. Italy elected Berlusconi three times in a row even if he was doing nothing of what he promised every time because he was good at selling it. Italy hasn't elected a left candidate in 20 years except Renzi because everyone except Renzi was , while possibly extremely competent and principled, just boring. And you know what? A lot of people already forgot what Berlusconi did and are ready to vote him again next year. A lot of American and international press was writing essays and was unable to understand how this was possible, turned out we were just ahead of the curve.
Voters who vote on actual programs are probably less than 5% of the electorate. Why is this to hard to grasp ? People are extremely dumb and easily manipulated, are we in 2017 still pretending they're not?
I dunno about this. I think you'd be hard pressed to call the first female president "boring" to people. She didn't really have to be super energetic to get eyes. Just smile and wave and be that nice lady that you'd like to see on TV sometimes. Pull up outside with big trucks. "Woman! President! Me! First! Vote!" That seems pretty exciting to me. Fuck a country that can't elect a single woman in the last 300 years, let alone the last 50.

More than half of America just hated her though. They were desperate for some sort of scandal to come along to justify their hate. The media picked up on that and fed them what they wanted.
 
I dunno about this. I think you'd be hard pressed to call the first female president "boring" to people. She didn't really have to be super energetic to get eyes. Just smile and wave and be that nice lady that you'd like to see on TV sometimes. Pull up outside with big trucks. "Woman! President! Me! First! Vote!" That seems pretty exciting to me. Fuck a country that can't elect a single woman in the last 300 years, let alone the last 50.

More than half of America just hated her though. They were desperate for some sort of scandal to come along to justify their hate. The media picked up on that and fed them what they wanted.

84688.jpg
 
The media gave him a huge bullhorn to shout his Obama birth certificate nonsense. I listen to NPR in my car and even they devoted time to it every time Trump opened his mouth. I hope the rating were worth it you fucking traitors!
 
Clinton being as safe as it could didn't really draw attention, with the only exception, the deplorable comment, being extremely questionable in term of appeal to voters if not downright counterproductive.

The left needed a more connecting candidate that promised the moon and change. Obama was that, Trump was that, Clinton wasn't. People don't really care if you don't fulfill your promises anyway, that's something implicit in being a politician. Italy elected Berlusconi three times in a row even if he was doing nothing of what he promised every time because he was good at selling it. Italy hasn't elected a left candidate in 20 years except Renzi because everyone except Renzi was , while possibly extremely competent and principled, just boring. And you know what? A lot of people already forgot what Berlusconi did and are ready to vote him again next year. A lot of American and international press was writing essays and was unable to understand how this was possible, turned out we were just ahead of the curve.
Voters who vote on actual programs are probably less than 5% of the electorate. Why is this to hard to grasp ? People are extremely dumb and easily manipulated, are we in 2017 still pretending they're not?

People in Italy aren't going back to Berlusconi though. At the last election, his party got 30 percent of the vote. Now, they're around 12 percent in polling.
 

Acorn

Member
You guys would know more about Clinton since GAF is pretty left-leaning.
Imagine the outside world who didn't give a shit.

Not just America, but the whole world is following the 2016 election because of Trump. Trump IS the face of the 2016 election, even before the president was decided.
People who didn't give a shit about US politics knew about Trump. They also knew his slogan "MAGA". They wouldn't know about Clinton.

And same goes for Obama. He was the face of his election years. "Yes We Can" is still something regular people, outside US, associate with him.
This is nonsense.

Everyone knows the Clintons here (UK) whether they like Bill/Hillary or not. Yes Trump was the story because he's a fucking idiot but it didn't make the world oblivious to the former first lady of the united states.
 

xk0sm0sx

Member
The outside world pretty much favoured Clinton. Trump was infamous for the absolute shit show he was.

Clinton? Of course she will make a better president than Trump. Now what did she say she's going to do again? - Regular people
To add on, if it's Trump, most people knows what he promised, even though it's not very popular. Trump said he's going to build a wall, tear down ACA.
They may not be popular policies, but it's something everyone knows.

Reply to above and below: Well maybe not knowing isn't the right word. Of course everyone would know about the two candidates. But I'm saying, with no evidence, that most regular people wouldn't know what things Clinton promised.
 

Haunted

Member
entertainment-based news media

free market, so let eyeballs/clicks decide which stories to run

whomp whomp

You guys would know more about Clinton since GAF is pretty left-leaning.
Imagine the outside world who didn't give a shit.

Not just America, but the whole world is following the 2016 election because of Trump. Trump IS the face of the 2016 election, even before the president was decided.
People who didn't give a shit about US politics knew about Trump. They also knew his slogan "MAGA". They wouldn't know about Clinton.
The fuck are you talking about, just because US citizens seem uneducated and uninterested in US politics doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't. :lol

The world knew both candidates and vastly preferred Clinton over Trump (exceptions: Russia, Singapore, Syria, North Korea).
 

Mr. Sam

Member
This is nonsense.

Everyone knows the Clintons here (UK) whether they like Bill/Hillary or not. Yes Trump was the story because he's a fucking idiot but it didn't make the world oblivious to the former first lady of the united states.

Nor is Trump at all popular here. Clinton was our, and the rest of the world's, preferred candidate by a country mile.
 
This is what happens when a pragmatist runs against a populist.

Trumps issues were simple and easy to explain, but obviously they aren't practical, realistic or smart.

Clintons ideas usually acknowledged the complexity of some of the problems and as a result, were much more complex and hard to explain.

So naturally the media had an easier time talking about Trumps messages than Clintons.
But they also usually failed at pointing out how dumb Trumps plans were.

Nonetheless the Clinton campaign is also at fault here. They rarely made efforts to explain some of the more complicated issues and rather focussed on empty slogans, celebrity endorsements and Anti-Trump rhetoric, which was effective in bringing in a certain group, but not at all effective in bringing in undecided voters, independents and centrist republicans.



I would've voted for Clinton over Sanders.
Even though I agree with Sanders ideologically almost 100% since I am a social democrat.
But Sanders proposals were unrealistic, his goals are great, but he has no plans on how to get there and there is no broad political will to achieve them in congress or the senate and there is not enough know-how about the systems Sanders wants to implement. In short: A Sanders presidency would've been a disaster and would've set back social democracy in the US for decades.

Clintons program was the right approach in my opinion: Baby steps.
But she did a horrible job promoting it.
It already started in the primary where she could've obliterated Sanders proposals easily, but either she didn't know about the flaws in his plans or she didn't think it was necessary to point them out.
Anyway, it was a horrible campaign throughout.
She lost against an the most unqualified man-child to ever run for office and in my opinion the reasons for her los a varied, many factors played a role, but at the end of the day she only has herself to blame. With better messaging she would've won easily, despite all the other things like media, e-mails, Sanders etc.
 
Guh, I feel sick just thinking about it. She could have been president. Instead we have the fucking nazi supporter war inciting piece of shit.
 

G.ZZZ

Member
People in Italy aren't going back to Berlusconi though. At the last election, his party got 30 percent of the vote. Now, they're around 12 percent in polling.

The dude should've vaporized after twenty years of do-nothing-but-prop-my-industries, and instead he's surging up again as the only "credible" leader of the right.

He'll be in the next government for sure. He's been the best at riding up the moods of the populace since forever.
 

Baraka in the White House

2-Terms of Kombat
This was obvious.

Right-wing media is a well oiled machine utterly committed to advancing conservatism and attacking anything perceived to be to the left of that goal.

The rest of the mainstream media is a well oiled machine utterly committed to bluster, bombast, and ratings.

So for two very different reasons a massive majority of media in the U.S. was drawn to Trump and tepid towards Clinton.
 

TheOfficeMut

Unconfirmed Member
Trump played them like a fiddle.
They haven't seemed to learn much as he is still on there every damned day.

Glad they helped the country avoid another Clinton though.

I wish you would spare us all and help us avoid your ass by not posting. You are insufferable.

As for the person below me who posted that article, it makes sense that liberal media was shared amongst Trump supporters because they also had the tendency to publish negative articles about Clinton if any existed, which suited a Trump voter's agenda. On the other hand you rarely, if ever, saw Breitbart or Fox News condemn Trump, so what reason was there for us liberals to share that bogus shit?
 

PKrockin

Member
Posted this a few days ago. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1421616

Here are some additional highlights I pointed out.

9Yfiikp.jpg


Understanding the role of immigration in the 2016 election is complicated by the many facets of the issue and the distinct frames used to describe the topic, each of which resonated with different subsets of the electorate. A review of the Breitbart immigration stories shared most often on Twitter suggests that fear of Muslims and Islam, expressed both in cultural and physical security terms, was their primary frame for immigration. The Breitbart stories also included economic arguments, such as that immigrants fill jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. citizens, or that immigrants place a burden on government services and often end up on welfare. An additional line of argument was that immigrants endanger the physical safety of U.S. citizens: the Breitbart stories argued that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes or acts of terrorism or introduce dangerous communicable diseases. A related but distinct assertion was that immigrants are coming in sufficient numbers that they will impose their customs, culture, and religion on the U.S. This fear appears to be highest in relation to Muslim immigrants, as seen in fears that large Muslim communities would institute Sharia law in the towns they inhabit.

Interestingly, they find that Clinton supporters tended not to share stories from center-right or right news sources as much as Trump supporters shared stories from center-left or left sources, suggesting liberals are more insular than conservatives. Does this mean liberals are a bunch of babies sitting in their ideological echo chambers? Well:

The weight of evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that partisan sharing patterns on Twitter are based primarily in media outlet editorial policies and less in the differences between liberals and conservatives in their willingness to engage with opposing views. Partisans on both sides share stories from the other side that confirm their existing beliefs, not in order to engage these other stories or refute them. Liberal media produced more content that partisans on the right found to their liking than conservative media produced that partisans on the left liked. Clinton supporters found very little coverage deemed worthy of sharing in the media sources most popular among Trump supporters. On the other hand, Trump supporters frequently found stories to share that aligned with their narrative.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
True. Good to see confirmed in the study.

I must add, though, that the Clinton campaign was dreadful when it came to actually messaging their policies. How many times at debates did we hear, "It's all on my website?" Analysis of the campaign's commercials showed they were overwhelmingly focused on how terrible Trump was but hardly ever focused on her own policy ideas.
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
I know about the need for proper studies and evidence and all that, but you didn't need a Harvard study to convince anyone about this.
 

lush

Member
4 years of juicy headlines! CNN is on track for another record breaking year! I hope it was worth it, the scary thing is the media doesn't seem to have learned their lesson.
 

Branduil

Member
Trump played them like a fiddle.
They haven't seemed to learn much as he is still on there every damned day.

Glad they helped the country avoid another Clinton though.

Who gives a shit about the minorities and poor people who will suffer and die under Trump, as long as you benefit that's all that matters.

I don't have the words to describe how much this line of thinking sickens me. There is no group of people with a greater empathy deficit than Trump voters.
 

ahoyhoy

Unconfirmed Member
Trump played them like a fiddle.
They haven't seemed to learn much as he is still on there every damned day.

Glad they helped the country avoid another Clinton though.

Trump is like an idiot savant when it comes to shit like this. There's no way he did any of this on purpose. He's a whore for attention and somehow this worked out for him.

The real pushers of the Email narrative was the Republican political machine. Trump just provided voters an alternative to EMAILS.
 

Downhome

Member
I truly do believe that the mainstream media wanted so badly for Donald Trump to win the presidency. They got exactly what they wanted, not matter how many of them act all high and mighty now that he is in office. They wanted nonstop stories to cover for the next however many years and now they are getting just that, for better or for worse in their eyes.
 
Trump's stance on immigration and trade were scandalous/shocking by themselves, thus automatically leading to higher coverage than Clinton's "ordinary" view on these issues.

Someone wanting to build a wall on the US-Mexican border and wanting Mexico to pay for that vs. someone who doesn't have any scandalous immigration initiatives.

Sold our soul to the devil. In god we trust!
 

G.ZZZ

Member
Posted this a few days ago. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1421616

Here are some additional highlights I pointed out.



Interestingly, they find that Clinton supporters tended not to share stories from center-right or right news sources as much as Trump supporters shared stories from center-left or left sources, suggesting liberals are more insular than conservatives. Does this mean liberals are a bunch of babies sitting in their ideological echo chambers? Well:

An interesting point for this, a news i read on phys.org today:

https://phys.org/news/2017-08-pair-global-natural.html

Breibart cited it almost immediately.

There's no ideological filter on normal sites, whereas there is on far right ones. This shouldn't be suprised that sometimes you can get news on normal sites that align with the far right point of view.
 

Mr. X

Member
When everyone had the same format of:

Trump says bad thing
News person says wow absurd
Trump surrogate on tv says he doesn't mean that (he did), he means this (no he doesn't), Hilary email benghazi.

Yeah, you constantly reinforced the Trump isn't serious and normalized his craziness 24/7 on every news channel. Stop giving his supporters air time to go to bat for him. They know how to signal boost to his base.
 

Chumly

Member
I watch NBC (morning and nightly news). Anytime I hear some trumper say that MSM is against republicans I want to punch them right in the fucking face. It was painfully obvious that NBC felt obligated with countering any negative trump story with a negative Clinton story. The treatment of Clinton was horrendous.
 
Top Bottom