skibrian
Replace every comment in the below blurb about trump (that came from a much longer article) with a relevant tweet instead about the GSEs from Carney, IU, Pagliara, Rosner, anyone else, and then think about who is re-tweeting. Who is reposting? Why? Do the retweeters share views against their own? Or do they just share views that confirm their bias? Eventually, people unfollow opinions they don't like and don't listen to a news channel they don't like and suddenly, well, they only hear things that reinforce what they want to believe.
As real money is at stake with the GSE's, this is something to think about in this new social media age. We already have seen the woes associated with censorship at the various investor message boards:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/28/what-the-press-still-doesnt-get-about-trump-215049
5. We’re not only stuck in bubbles—social media is making them worse.
Emily Parker, former chief strategy officer at Parlio and author of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground
On March 15, a Guardian correspondent tweeted a photo of a Trump voter at a rally for the president in Nashville. The man was holding a sign that read, “I’ve made a huge mistake.” This was a perfect distillation, it seemed, of the regret that onetime Trump supporters were surely feeling now that he was actually in office. Sure enough, the tweet was retweeted more than 40,000 times.
Viral images create their own kind of truth. One man’s sign can give the impression that Trump voters are changing their minds more than they are, or that the rally was a failure. This is not the Guardian correspondent’s fault. There’s no reason to believe that the photo was fake news, or that the journalist was trying to mislead. He was reporting “from the ground,” and not from the coastal media bubbles. That same day, he also tweeted a photo of White House press secretary Sean Spicer surrounded by fans (though it very got few retweets).
The “huge mistake” tweet is just one example of a more widespread
phenomenon. Images like this can buoy those in the Trump opposition—who,
after all, may be more likely to read reporters’ tweets. But such
images also risk lulling people into thinking that Trump is less popular
than he is. Too often, we cherry-pick examples that fit our worldview,
and social media blows them out of proportion. Many journalists vastly
underestimated Trump’s popularity before the election; the media need to
avoid making the same mistake now that he is president.
