2010-04-24
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Media and politics: The shock of the old in The Economist. The entire article is worth a read: it points out the ways the mass media still reach far more people, particularly older ones, who also vote more.
There were two other articles in the Britain section this week that caught my eye. One is on university students in Chester and elsewhere, and the other looks at how people’s opinions change when the costs of policies are stated. Both are worth a read, but the latter is perhaps the most universally relevant (and will be long after this election has come and gone).
2010-03-02
post/421928281
2009-10-06
post/205711027
2009-08-07
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danah boyd: Teens Don’t Tweet… Or Do They?
Bonus points for actually collating data (even if it’s self-reported). It makes a refreshing change from comment threads full of anecdote (“I’m on Twitter” “I’m not but my mum is” “Why does anyone even care about it, it’s full of banality”; repeat until bored to tears).
2009-04-23
Damage Your Health
Being a list of things that “can damage your health”, rendered verbatim from the Daily Mail, based on a quick Google search:
- flip flops
- diets
- 4x4s
- sweetener in chewing gum
- HRT alternatives
- too many vitamins
- flying
- alcohol
- eating vegetables
- home tooth-whitening kits
- falling in love
- Valentine’s Day!
- being celebrity-thin
- fitness DVDs
- using a mobile phone before going to bed
2008-12-06
It's not what the papers say, it's what they don't
More from Ben Goldacre’s excellent Bad Science column in the Guardian, this time on the incredible media misinformation on the MMR vaccine.
“On Tuesday the Telegraph, the Independent, the Mirror, the Express, the Mail, and the Metro all reported that a coroner was hearing the case of a toddler who died after receiving the MMR vaccine, which the parents blamed for their loss. Toddler ‘died after MMR jab’ (Metro), ‘Healthy’ baby died after MMR jab (Independent), you know the headlines by now. On Thursday the coroner announced his verdict: the vaccine played no part in this child’s death. So far, of the papers above, only the Telegraph has had the decency to cover the outcome. The Independent, the Mirror, the Express, the Mail, and the Metro have all decided that their readers are better off not knowing. Tick, tock.”
This reminded me to dig out the following from the Economist: “Sow the wind - Measles and MMR”.
FLEDGLING engineers learn about disasters like the 1988 Piper Alpha oil-rig fire or the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 as a reminder of the dangers that attend their profession. Perhaps, if the subject ever achieves respectability, media-studies undergraduates will pore over the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine scare in 21st-century Britain.
[Tammy Boyce] lays much of the responsibility for the MMR furore at the door of a scientifically illiterate, scaremongering press. And whereas health officials may have learnt from their experiences, she is less sure about the fourth estate. “Have the media learnt anything?” she wonders. “No, on balance, I don’t think they have.”
