Just think of what this whole story (Foreign meddling) says about these marginal voters in that case: That they were so easily swayed, that they decided to vote ostensibly against their own better judgement simply by being shown a series of ads to influence their emotions.
Something is very wrong with voter education if it's that easy to sway a certain influential population of voters.
I always love people who tout the "how could those feeble minded simpletons be so easily swindled; I would never fall for that" slogan.
Have you considered it might be happening to you, right now? How would you tell, if by definition we are talking about pressing unconscious psychological buttons?
You may be very well educated, but you've never the less the same monkey brain as everyone on this earth.
Note that you are attributing to me a sentiment that I don't hold. Rather, the argument that a significant number of voters were swayed to vote for Trump through targeted ads on Facebook, if taken to be fact, must imply such a state for the average voter. Not a very kind argument to be making.
Your comment adds nothing but a personal attack on me where one is not warranted.
...or it's not that voters were swayed by anything at all, and lots of people voted for an unproductive celebrity for their own reasons.
In the months and weeks approaching election day, I was struck numerous times by the reality that each political faction was profoundly disconnected from the other, in media consumption silos so different that if you happened to drift from one conversation to another, it felt like crossing an ocean and entering a distant country.
And to me, it was obvious that this social rift had calcified during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Somehow, amid the victory of the Obama presidency, left wing democrats simply felt as though their job was done, they could die happy, and anything else they imagined as natural was a foregone conclusion of the retirement they were set to sail into.
I don't think the media silos I noticed are the root of the problem. You cannot blame cartoons, talk radio and memes. I strongly believe that complacency, assumption and tone deaf, willful blindness among democratic party consituents led to the results we have watched unfold. I don't think it was New Media manipulation, and I don't think "fixing social media" will solve for the chaos we now see.
Ah yeah, totally. I feel similarly to you. I was talking about a smaller contingent of voters who might have been caught in the middle. I should have made that more clear.
Just think of what this whole story (Foreign meddling) says about these marginal voters in that case: That they were so easily swayed, that they decided to vote ostensibly against their own better judgement simply by being shown a series of ads to influence their emotions.
Something is very wrong with voter education if it's that easy to sway a certain influential population of voters.