All Political Knowledge is in the U.K.

Why do I think all (or nearly all) political knowledge is in the U.K.?  Would Google ever lie.  I did a search of Google Maps for "political knowledge" and most of the spots show up there, not in the U.S. or anywhere else.  See here for my search.

Comfort with Technology

Playing with technological toys to learn stuff apparently helps people become more engaged in public life, according to a new study, but one's comfort with technology makes all the difference.  Or as the report states:

Notably, individuals who report higher levels of comfort with mobile telephony and use it for information exchange tend to be more civically and politically engaged than those who report less comfort with the technology. 

Never mind the creative spelling of "civically" above (I can't think of another way to spell it, so I'd do what I always do when challenged like this -- write around the problem).  The point is, competence matters.  As the Journal of Communication research article uses a multiple regression to control for factors often associated with civic engagement.  The ultimate point?  Mobile media matter, but those mostly for those comfortable with the technology, which raises the question of a competence-based digital divide.


abstract | full study

Global Warming? Settled.

What people don't know about science would fill even the unfillable Internet.  For those global climate change skeptics out there, a simple video below explains how some wingnuts manage to get it all so wrong.  Be helpful if this ran on Fox News.

North Carolina and Political Knowledge

A study is out this week, reported here, press release here, about what people know in North Carolina and, namely, who knows the most.  The lede:

Here’s what you need to know about an Elon University Poll designed to test North Carolinians’ political knowledge — older over younger, men over women, and Republicans over Democrats or registered independents.

The survey of 515 adults used 10 questions to measure political knowledge.  The news story doesn't tell us what those questions are, but you can find them in a methodological report.  It's an odd group of questions.  Some of them are obvious (who is the VP? who is the speaker of the house?), but the rest are so North Carolina specific, and probably so under the radar for most regular folks, that the demographic relationships mentioned the lede are less than surprising.

Who is the North Carolina Attorney General?  Does anyone care?  Only 19 percent got that one right.  You can argue it's a question that provides good discrimination, separating the men from the boys, so to speak, in what people know.  I dunno that an item so difficult adds much.  And you'll be happy to learn 97 percent correctly identified North Carolina's capital city (isn't it Mayberry?).

So yes, I have a few quibbles with the questions.  Two ask about federal offices, one asks about the role of federal government (who interprets the constitutionality of a law), all good and fine.  The rest either ask about North Carolina officeholders (some vague, some less so), a bit of geography (state capital), and one asking folks to identify the initials SBI (it's the State Bureau of Investigation, no doubt improving the number of correct responses among felons included in the sample). 

I understand the N.C. questions.  After all, it's a N.C. poll.  But the analysis, basically crosstabs in the pdf file above, breaks voters down by party identification, by gender, by age ... but not by the single factor nearly every study in the history of the planet finds is the most powerful predictor of political knowledge -- education.  Maybe I missed it.  But if not, it's a curious omission given the power of education to explain what people know.  Often, when you break people down by education level, all those other factors mentioned above disappear.

Should Academic Journals Charge to Review an Article?

The answer to the question above is: No.  No.  Hell no.

And yet, and yet.  Here I was checking out a potential journal for a manuscript I'm working on -- a damn good journal, it turns out -- and it says you must either be a member of the host organization or pay a $25 "processing fee" for your work to be reviewed.  WTF?  This ranks up there, sleaze-wise, with literary journals who charge authors a "reading fee" to review their fiction for possible publication.  The rule in fiction writing is simple: money flows to the author, not the other way around.  Otherwise it's just a vanity press and not worth reading, and sure as hell not worth publishing in.

Again, this is a damn fine academic journal and, ironically, I used to belong to the group that sponsors it (I gave up membership a few years ago as I cut back expenses, dropping a couple of groups). It's an understandable rule from a financial standpoint, I get that, but in my mind it raises serious questions about the quality of the research when only members -- or those willing to pay for the privilege of consideration -- get published there.  Too damn insular for my taste.  In defense of the journal, it's apparently had this rule for some time.

Maybe it's like this in a number of academic fields outside my own and I just didn't realize it.

So off I go looking for another home...

Newspapers in U.S. -- Gone in 7 Years?

A "futurist" is predicting that print newspapers in the U.S. will disappear within seven years.  He says by 2019, they'll be gone in Britain and Iceland, and a year later, Canada and Norway.  A few years later, some other places.

Why do I doubt his predictions?

1. Have you ever known a "futurist" to be right?
2. His name, Ross Dawson, sounds like a TV actor.
3. He has a timeline, always a sign of being wrong.
4. He's based in Sydney and San Francisco.  Can't make up his mind.
5. He posted this on Halloween.  

But if nothing else, a nice near number like "seven years" is sure to up his exposure, draw hits to his web page, and keep him going as a "futurist."  I agree print is in trouble, and for a lot of reasons so is our political learning as print is the more demanding form of news, but I don't see paper going away quite that soon.  I suppose that makes me the opposite of a "futurist."  A historicist?

Below, his timeline.  Go to his site for more details, linked above.  Click on the image to see a better version.

Pre-Election: What People Click

An interesting box in today's NYTimes shows which U.S. Senate candidate web sites are the most popular.  It's hardly surprising that Tea Party favorites lead the list:

1. Rand Paul (Aqua Buddha got him to #1)
2. Christine O'Donnell (needs a more powerful spell to move up)
3. Joe Miller (Alaska?  Really?)
4. Charlie Crist (Fla. candidate, first non-tea party person)
5. Marco Rubio (another Fla. candidate)
6. Dino Rossi (no Martini?)
7. Carly Fiorina (California dreaming...)
8. Kendrick Meek (Third Fla. candidate)
9. Rob Johnson (not from Florida)
10. Pat Toomey (yet another tea favorite.  I like coffee.)

So in terms of what people click, there's your list.   It's overloaded with tea party favorites, Republicans, people from Florida, one guy who worshiped made-up gods, and a dabbler in witchcraft.  I get so confused.