Conspiracies

Just pointing to my brief piece on Medium about Democrats and whether they're now believers in conspiracy theories. Read it. Short, brilliant, and did I mention short? And brief?

Conspiracy Theories ... Still Out There

Politico ran a story today about conspiracy theories that's worth a read if you're into them (as I am). It also got me thinking, so I dipped into my own data for some quick analyses. Who believes in a particular conspiracy theory? Basically, those who want to believe in a particular conspiracy theory.

So let's look at four popular theories below, two that you might call getting oxygen from the right, two from the left. The wacky right has Obama born outside the U.S. (birther thing), and the so-called "death panels" of Obamacare. The wacky left has the notion the government knew in advance about 911, and the idea Hurricane Katrina's flood waters were purposely aimed at poor sections of New Orleans.

This is what I did (nerd warning). I constructed four quick-and-dirty regression models on each of the four conspiracies above. That means I tossed a kitchen sink full of things into a model to let them fight it out and see which ones remain statistically significant, which are posers and drop out. Let's look at the results:

• Obama born outside U.S. -- Believers tend to be older, less educated, of lower income, female, read less newspapers, but more politically conservative and Republican. Also, even after all these statistical controls, watching Fox News made you more likely to believe this.

• Death Panels -- Believers tended to be younger, less educated, of lower income, Republican and conservative. Also, less likely to read a newspaper but, yes, Fox News watchers. Even after all these controls.

• Government Knew of 911 -- Believers were younger, less educated, of lower income (seeing a trend here?), non-white, less likely to read newspapers, less likely to watch Fox News, more liberal and more likely Democrat.

• Government Directed Katrina at Poor -- Believers were younger, less educated, lower income (sigh, yes), were more likely women, black, liberal, used less Internet news but read newspapers more, and less likely to watch Fox News.

What gives fuel to a conspiracy theory? Looking at the results above, it's a combination of two factors. Consistently, theories from the wacky left and the wingnut right are believed by those of lower socio-economic status. The second factor is quite simple -- people believe what they want to believe. In this case, liberals tend to believe theories that made George W. Bush look bad, conservatives tend to believe theories that make Barack Obama look bad.

Fox News deserves special mention. Even after a host of statistical controls, some of which were not significant in the models after all this other stuff is considered, watching Fox News is consistently related toward believing the anti-Obama stuff and not believing the anti-Bush stuff. Other media factors come and go, but Fox News is a special case.

The More You Know, the More You Don't Know?

The more Republicans know about the politics, the more likely they believe in political conspiracy theories.This conclusion comes from an article in Mother Jones and relies on a survey conducted last month.  More on that survey in a moment.

Here's the crux of the article:

Among Democrats and independents, having a higher level of political knowledge was correlated with decreased belief in conspiracies. But precisely the opposite was the case for Republicans, where knowledge actually made the problem worse. For each political knowledge question that they answered correctly, Republicans' belief in at least one conspiracy theory tended to increase by 2 percentage points.

The article's author, Chris Mooney, knows his stuff.  He suggests the reason may in part have to do with a conservative's greater need for "cognitive closure" and a need for certainty. A reasonable hypothesis, but I'd counter it has more to do with the nature of the conspiracies examined in the survey.  The two "conservative" conspiracies are about Obama specifically, the two "liberal" conspiracies have to do with Bush stealing the 2000 election and "The Truther" movement about 9/11.

Equivalent?  I'm not convinced.  But let's turn to the survey itself, a national poll of 814 registered voters conducted in December 2012.  First, despite the claim, it's really a survey of people who say they're registered voters, but that's a methodological quibble.  Political scientist Dan Cassino, who runs the Fairleigh Dickinson University poll, says "birther" conspiracy theory is likely to believed more than others because "it's been discussed so often." 

Yup.  Two myths are anchored on Obama, are more recent, and received lots of mainstream media play -- mostly attempts to debunk them.  I'd add here that there's a growing body of research that suggests attempts to debunk myths actually adds to their believability for some people, so I'd be damned cautious about arguing politically knowledgeable Republicans are more likely to believe "their" favorite myths compared to politically knowledgeable Democrats and "their" favorite myths.

And here's a point from Cassino's press release that doesn't comfortably fit the Republicans-are-evil-and-dumb narrative -- young African-Americans are more likely than whites to believe in conspiracy theories.  Not sure how the hell you explain that one.  Would you even want to try?  Not me.

If we buy this set of conspiracy theories are equivalent (debatable) and if we buy into how the survey measures political knowledge (can't tell from the release), then the results raise a number of questions. 

Allow me to get a bit PhDweebish below. 

Greater political knowledge should result in less belief in conspiracies, but hold on.  The theory of motivated reasoning suggests partisans, even knowledgeable ones, will be more likely to believe such myths.  That's all partisans, not just one side of the divide.  Essentially, people believe what they want to believe, especially when it's negative about someone they disagree with or dislike.  So I maintain the Obama-anchored questions are not equivalent to the "truther" and "stolen election" questions.  The latter are from several years ago, myths that received less mainstream news play by comparison -- and certainly damn little near the time the survey was conducted. This can skew your results.

Perhaps, and only perhaps, the Mother Jones article is a textbook instance of motivated reasoning, of seeing and believing what you want to believe -- in this case, about Republicans.

Gays Elected Obama?

Gay people elected Obama.  How's that for a provocative lede?  You doubt me? Check out these fun stats, based on exit poll data.  Respondents were asked: Are you gay, lesbian or bisexual?

Yes   5%
No  95%

No surprise above in how many gay or non-gay voters were found in the electorate this week.  But check out the numbers below.

                           Yes, Gay    No, Not
Voted Obama           76%          22%
Voted Romney          49%         49%

In other words, among voters who said they weren't gay, it's a tie.  Among voters who said they were, Obama overwhelmed Romney.

Oh my, if Rush Limbaugh sees this, he'll have a fit.  Forget I mentioned it.

And I should point out that it's likely many of these votes were in states that were already solid Obama in the first place.

As Beck Heads for the Fox Front Door

As I (and the rest of the planet) wrote about Wednesday, Glenn Beck will soon leave his Fox News show. There are some really good takes on this.  I'm partial to The Atlantic's version, which gives several reasons why it may have happened -- from Beck is too crazy even for Fox to his drop in ratings to fleeing advertisers to, well, Beck's gotta be Beck, and he'll do it better somewhere else. 

The latter, the personal branding argument, is a powerful one, but I'm going to come at this from its potential effect on the audience.  TV and radio talk shows tend to have a mixed audience.  There is the choir, the faithful getting preached at and who seek out the Becks of the world, on the left and on the right, to hear their opinions and predispositions echoed so they will feel good about themselves and their worldviews.  Then there are the curious, the political news junkies curious as to what "the other side" is up to, or to get ammo to make fun of them.  And finally there are the merely curious, the kind of people who not only slow down to oggle a traffic accident but who will actually get out of the car for a better view (yeah, that's me).

The political effects of such programming are not inconsequential.  Reaffirming beliefs, providing talking points to the faithful, those are significant effects and often watching or listening to this stuff pushes these folks even more to the extreme, and it tends to make them even less likely to entertain argument from the other side.  If indeed Beck went too far, we might take this as a good sign that even Fox has limits on its conservative brand.  But I suspect it's more a financial than journalistic decision, assuming Fox actually makes decisions based on journalistic ideals.

So what's the effect on real people?  I'd like to say the very worst hugger of invented historical conspiracy theories is gone, but his brand is powerful enough that he'll find a soapbox somewhere and an audience will follow.  What we're really seeing is an even further fragmentation of the media, in particular the conservative media, in which Fox might find itself marginalized into representing more of a mainline conservative viewpoint while a not-quite-but-kinda-like-Tea-Party-Conspiracy-Theory model will emerge elsewhere as a mild, but significant, challenge.

In other words, what's happening to the Republican Party is also happening to its primary information organ -- Fox News.

Colbert -- Double Agent

Stephen Colbert plays a right wing, self-obsessed TV bloviator on Comedy Central.

Or does he?

A study in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media suggests something more ominous is at work. Conspiracy buffs -- and you know who you are -- pull up a chair.

Colbert, we all thought, was a liberal posing as a windbag conservative to make them look silly. But this study suggests people who watch his program actually become more conservative and more Republican. I blogged about the study in January, but now I've given it more thought.

It's simple: Colbert is not a liberal posing as a conservative to make conservatives look foolish. It's much deeper than that. Colbert is a conservative posing as a liberal who poses as a conservative. We think he's making conservatives look foolish when, instead, he secretly pulls people to the political right.

Clever, Colbert. Very clever.

And now I am so confused.