Wrestling with Wikipedia

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have created a wikipedia account and will now attempt to write an entry for political knowledge.  Do a search for that phrase now and you're sent to political philosophy, which strikes me as unfair.

So the question is, how to begin?

One easy approach is to break the phrase to its two component words, link to wikipedia entries on that.  Political actually takes you to politics.  Knowledge has an entry, as I mentioned previously.  But this is a clunky way to do it and to be honest it doesn't tell us very much.

Another approach is to focus on the conceptual and operational, going all PhDweeb on the issue.  I think this is the way to go, but it's going to mean a lot of stuff in my head I take for granted (like which single malt Scotch is best) needs to be pulled out and actually used.  There are good books or seminal studies on the topic and I could build the article around them.  Obviously I'll mention this blog because hell, shameless self promotion is all the rage today and I'm not about to miss an opportunity to join the fun.

Finally, I should think about what someone is likely to need if they're searching for political knowledge, because there's a damn good chance a Google search will hit the wikipedia page fairly early on.  Why would someone search for this?  Research?  Wacky fun?

So I think I'll start by building a list of great books, articles, and cites.  Then I'll pick a few, use this as my skeleton or outline.  And it'll get messy as I get into misperception, such as WMDs or whether Obama is Muslim.  Those may bring out the crazies, but there's not much I can do about that.

Media and Knowledge

Since this blog is all about media and knowledge, it seems only fair we examine that source of all information -- wikipedia -- to see what it has to say on the subject.

• Media: This wikipedia article is a big category and, as such, has a lot of subcategories. Indeed, there isn't a basic definition offered.  Think about it.  There's everything from advertising media to social media and several others that fall between A and S.  Nothing beyond this, no Yak Media or Zebra Media.  So I followed Mass Media and learned it's media designed to reach a large audience.  Fair enough.
• Knowledge -- Interesting, but the wikipedia article about knowledge begins with an old media technology, the Oxford Dictionary, to define it.  Basically, knowledge is expertise and skills learned through experience and education, especially facts and information.

I'm a big fan of Wikipedia.  After all, I'm even mentioned (here, but scroll down a bit to the Political Polls section).  From above, we can't take a lot from media and knowledge.  If you try to search for "political knowledge" you get bounced to "political philosophy."  Read that and you pick up bits and pieces of how knowledge fits into various political philosophies.  For example:

For Locke, knowledge is neither innate, revealed nor based on authority but subject to uncertainty tempered by reason, tolerance and moderation. According to Locke, an absolute ruler as proposed by Hobbes is unnecessary, for natural law is based on reason and equality, seeking peace and survival for man.

Reason, tolerance, and moderation are concepts rarely demonstrated in today's media environment, especially on cable TV.  Philosophers have long wrestled with how knowledge and a just society fit together, but again we don't see a lot of that today outside of philosophy classes.  I'm sure Glenn Beck will get to it soon.

Other than an exercise in filling blogspace, there's not a lot we can learn from wikipedia's offering.  Which means someone needs to get cracking.  Maybe I'll create an entry there on political philosophy and blog about it here.  Might be an interesting experience.

Chronic Know-Nothings

From ages back, the idea of chronic know-nothings has re-emerged thanks to misperceptions that Barack Obama is Muslim (or wasn't born in the U.S., or perhaps isn't actually an Earthling at all).  This NYTimes opinion piece does a nice job of summing up the topic about how we're building a nation of know-nothings.

Of course this is a topic near and dear to my heart, given I published an academic piece earlier this year attempting to explain who were the folks who, during the 2008 election, continued to doubt Obama's religious affiliation despite all information to the contrary.  I love it when I'm far ahead of the curve.  Happens, oh, once in a lifetime.

Kicking Journalism's Ass

I love Ira Glass and This American Life.  In a talk this week, he offered: "Opinion in all its forms is kicking the ass of journalism."

Ouch.

He especially blasted TV news, and he especially praised Jon Stewart (and, in an offhanded way, Glenn Beck, who he called "fascinating" without further elaboration).  A story about the talk is here.

He's on to something, of course.  Opinion is kicking journalism's ass, at least when it comes to ratings and attention.  That is, if you don't consider "opinion" as "journalism," which gets a bit confusing.  Is an editorial opinion?  Yes.  Is it journalism?  Kinda yes.  But what he's really doing is comparing the delivery of standard television news with the delivery of the host of TV talkmeisters, from Maddow to O'Reilly to Colbert to, well, all the people doing pretty damn well in the ratings.

Oh, and he praises NPR too.

Take a Hike

This NYTimes piece does a nice job of summing up research on multitasking (it doesn't work) and learning (it does, if you reduce stimuli for a period so your brain can engage in long-term learning).  My favorite part?  "At the University of Michigan, a study found that people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment, suggesting that processing a barrage of information leaves people fatigued."  Neato.  So go take a hike!

Anchors Away!!!

A Houston television station is dropping its news anchors for something entirely new, and just a little bit scary.  As this story briefly describes it, Channel 39 "will have more storytelling by those who “are” the story and an emphasis on video and audio."

PR folks in Houston, get a drool bucket.  You're salivating.

Not that I'm a big fan of local television news or TV talking heads (see delusions of adequacy), but this seems a bad idea hatched by bean counters and marketing schmucks.  Then again, maybe the audience won't even notice the difference. 

Learning in a Crisis

Here's a study, abstract below, that looks really interesting.  Unfortunately I can't access the full text and it's a journal, Electronic News, that I've honestly never seen before (it may have lasted only one year, it's not clear on the web page).  Still, here's the abstract:

This study builds on previous examinations of social and mediated learning, expanding the scope to the context of crises. We argue that mediated learning might be particularly important during crisis both to ameliorate the negative emotional consequences of such events as well as to prompt the learning of information that might be important in future emergencies. Using data collected from Minneapolis, Minn., residents after the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge, we demonstrate that individuals might have the capacity to learn from the media in the midst of a crisis and that women report learning more than men from crisis media coverage. Finally, we discuss implications for future crisis learning research and recommendations for the media. 

 A couple of things stick out in this abstract.

•  Women "report learning more than men" from crisis coverage.  For a variety of reasons, men tend to score higher on tests of political knowledge than women.  The reasons are complex, but this "report learning" is, to me, troubling since it's unclear if it's actual learning or the perception of learning.  Those are very different.
• The article suggests the awful emotions from such a tragedy may be moderated by news coverage.  This makes good sense, when coverage is reasoned and factual, which in this case I believe it largely was.  In political coverage, I'm not sure this finding would hold up, but it does raise some interesting questions about learning and emotion

I'd love to write more but I can't access the full article.