3w ago

How the rise of Craigslist helped fuel America’s political polarization

www.gsb.stanford.edu

The Surprising Link Between Craigslist, Classified Ads, and Political Polarization

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/35972832

Comments

cabron_offsets @lemmy.world 3w ago
You can’t just blame the fucking media. People at large are at fault for thinking republican bullshit is even halfway normal. They elected a pussy-grabbing, child-rapist felon who openly professes how he’d fuck his own daughter. To say nothing of his failed marriages, failed business, never having worked a goddamn day in his life, openly criminal associations and activities, and myriad public debacles.
Go on and marinate on that for a minute.
- FishFace @lemmy.world 3w ago
  Nobody is "just blaming" any one thing except in your head. The headline says "helped fuel" not "single-handedly caused."
  Maybe you've been affected by a related trend - that of not reading properly and just replying with whatever half-baked idea was already bouncing around?
  
  cabron_offsets @lemmy.world 3w ago
  Or maybe I’m sick of people avoiding hard truths and drawing unwarranted conjectures.
- friend_of_satan @lemmy.world 3w ago
  We study these questions using the staggered introduction of Craigslist (CL)—the world’s largest online platform for classified advertising—across U.S. counties between 1995 and 2009.
  So well before TACO Don was even a candidate.
  
  cabron_offsets @lemmy.world 3w ago
  Like that matters? You think fucking Gingrich and all those cunts were halfway normal? The last decent republican was Eisenhower.
- theneverfox @pawb.social 3w ago
  Propaganda works. Yeah, people are stupid, but if you spend decades destroying education and teaching disinfo, well... The results are predictable
  You can hate them all you like, but you do have to look at the problem logically if you want to fix it
- Teal @lemmy.zip 3w ago
  
  Let’s not forget his high achievement of winning a Golden Razzie award for his terrible performance as….himself. Yes, he achieved worst supporting actor playing himself. Not only that the movie is a perverted B- dumpster fire.
  Ghosts Can’t Do It
  Just to be clear, I’m not saying this is anywhere near as serious compared to the points you’ve made. Those are truly harmful things done to others. To know he was in such a low ranked movie and had the worst performance of everyone in it while trying to portray himself brings a bit of joy.
brucethemoose @lemmy.world 3w ago
The reduction in coverage was most pronounced before primary elections.
The reduction in staff covering politics made it harder for voters to differentiate between moderates and extremists in partisan primaries, and allowed extreme candidates to do better than they did before.
This makes sense, and it explains a lot, actually.
And to be clear, it's not just craigslist as a culprit here, but it's such a controlled A/B test that the effects are reliably measurable.
In the original paper, they also observed reduced turnout for House/Senate elections (which the article didn't emphasize as much, but is defininitely there): https://academic.oup.com/restud/article/92/3/1738/7665573?login=false#517516514
sem @lemmy.blahaj.zone 3w ago
More context from the article:
At the turn of the millennium, newspapers relied on classifieds for an average of 30% of their revenues. Martin and his colleagues found that the loss of this revenue led newspaper executives to cut costs largely by shrinking local political news coverage.
FishFace @lemmy.world 3w ago
That's pretty fascinating that they used the staged expansion of Craigslist to allow confounding factors to be accounted for.

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