I'm with you like 95% of the way on this one. Firmly agree that doing things that matter is a good problem to have, for a scientific discipline. And I'd extend the intuition and say that capital-P Pragmatic science is what we're after.
My concern is that it you are trying to have & eat the same cake. "Mission"/"pragmatic"/"activist" science -- it strikes me that the missing center of this word cloud is *political*. I think that *all science* is political, and I'm quite sure that all *social science* is political. Even and perhaps especially the "objective" economists who conjured homo economicus into being. And so PolComm is political! But this reveals what I think is the deeper problem with the first item on your to-do list.
We never had a deliberative conversation about our shared normative commitments. There were cascading crises which created a coalition of convenience....but it's been six years, and normal politics has set back in, which internally mostly means careerism and status games.
So I share your disgust with Jordan and your solidarity with the academics affected by his bullshit. But I can't help but feeling like a fair description of what happened is: academics, frustrated by a lack of influence, have decided to step into the political arena...and we're shocked to be confronted with a pack of dirty hyenas.
Finally, I think this is a tactical mistake: "Other researchers filled out forms (GASP! THE HORROR!), created by the platforms, that helped the platforms enforce their own policies."
I personally believe that there has been *far* more collaboration between academics and platforms, including about dis/misinformation, including during the 2020 elections. So if, hypothetically, a large number of collaborative studies are published in a high-profile outlet later this month, is a sarcastic gasp gonna cut it ?
yes, I think you're right -- what I grew up calling "mission science" is just a variant of capital-P pragmatism. That's the gold standard. The term comes with its own baggage, since pragmatism has also for years been a euphemism for No Labels silliness. But actual Pragmatism is what I'm after.
That said, "political" also has some baggage attached to it. There's a whole section of this essay that I cut, discussing some of the social science research that I felt was doing pragmatic harm through inattention. And that work came from a group of mostly-historians that definitely recognized their work as political, but were operating on a model of politics that was allergic to pragmatic questions.
And fair point on the sarcasm. (I stayed up very late writing and got kinda punchy by the end.) If/when those studies come out, it'll probably be worth taking them seriously and writing more. But also, based on the complaints I've seen from Jordan and his goons... eh, sarcasm seems pretty damn appropriate thus far, at least.
(And thanks, would be great to have a longer discussion about this sometime.)
At least on Capitol Hill, I think political communication research remains heavily removed from being used practically.
This was an ongoing problem while I was there. I’m def not a believer that all we need to fix political communications is a researcher but I curiously found communications completely removed from this process.
Whereas legislative teams could use CRS to assist with getting the information they needed for decisions, communications had no such resource. Furthermore, because it is politics, there are very few dissent mechanisms or ways to seriously engage with proclamations by important people (no matter how baseless the claim).
I would love to see some more interesting discussions about how communicators could get practical and accurate briefings on their craft. I generally found that doing research work and being laser focused on getting actionable insights seemed to prove helpful to other comms folks…but there was no serious process for it.
There obviously are 'bad faith actors' in play (Roger Stone, Steve Bannon being likely examples). But I think it might also have to something about how the human brain/psychology works. I find it believable that part of how these people act is simply because they are convinced of x, y or z. People are able to believe the most crazy things and as psychological research has shown: convictions influence our observations and analyses more than the other way around. Memory is 'fantasising about the past' and its function is in part to create stability in our convictions (which is evolutionary important), if our convictions change, our memory changes with it. So, Trump asking Raffensperger "find me 10780 votes" can also mean that he thinks he is trying to unearth the 'truth' (the conviction he already has). Hanlon's razor is in play here. If that is the case, the way to fight it becomes different.
We tend to assume in all of this that humans are intelligent. And while more intelligence helps a bit against becoming convinced of crazy stuff and then becoming immune to factual (or scientific) arguments/observations, none of us is immune. We are *all* potential 'flat earthers'.
I think both elements are in play. There are bad faith actors (and capitalism probably makes sure these rise to the top more often — see your tobacco firms), certainly, but a large part might be honestly held (simplistic) convictions (including 'analytic' convictions like being a 'free speech absolutist' or 'libertarian').
Using what we can learn from psychological research of the last 20-30 years, we might address this problem more effectively. Reference: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stupidity-versus-malice-gerben-wierda (on Bonhoeffer writing about how people were convinced in the 1930's of untrue things. Bonhoeffer starts with
‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
I'm with you like 95% of the way on this one. Firmly agree that doing things that matter is a good problem to have, for a scientific discipline. And I'd extend the intuition and say that capital-P Pragmatic science is what we're after.
My concern is that it you are trying to have & eat the same cake. "Mission"/"pragmatic"/"activist" science -- it strikes me that the missing center of this word cloud is *political*. I think that *all science* is political, and I'm quite sure that all *social science* is political. Even and perhaps especially the "objective" economists who conjured homo economicus into being. And so PolComm is political! But this reveals what I think is the deeper problem with the first item on your to-do list.
We never had a deliberative conversation about our shared normative commitments. There were cascading crises which created a coalition of convenience....but it's been six years, and normal politics has set back in, which internally mostly means careerism and status games.
So I share your disgust with Jordan and your solidarity with the academics affected by his bullshit. But I can't help but feeling like a fair description of what happened is: academics, frustrated by a lack of influence, have decided to step into the political arena...and we're shocked to be confronted with a pack of dirty hyenas.
Finally, I think this is a tactical mistake: "Other researchers filled out forms (GASP! THE HORROR!), created by the platforms, that helped the platforms enforce their own policies."
I personally believe that there has been *far* more collaboration between academics and platforms, including about dis/misinformation, including during the 2020 elections. So if, hypothetically, a large number of collaborative studies are published in a high-profile outlet later this month, is a sarcastic gasp gonna cut it ?
yes, I think you're right -- what I grew up calling "mission science" is just a variant of capital-P pragmatism. That's the gold standard. The term comes with its own baggage, since pragmatism has also for years been a euphemism for No Labels silliness. But actual Pragmatism is what I'm after.
That said, "political" also has some baggage attached to it. There's a whole section of this essay that I cut, discussing some of the social science research that I felt was doing pragmatic harm through inattention. And that work came from a group of mostly-historians that definitely recognized their work as political, but were operating on a model of politics that was allergic to pragmatic questions.
And fair point on the sarcasm. (I stayed up very late writing and got kinda punchy by the end.) If/when those studies come out, it'll probably be worth taking them seriously and writing more. But also, based on the complaints I've seen from Jordan and his goons... eh, sarcasm seems pretty damn appropriate thus far, at least.
(And thanks, would be great to have a longer discussion about this sometime.)
At least on Capitol Hill, I think political communication research remains heavily removed from being used practically.
This was an ongoing problem while I was there. I’m def not a believer that all we need to fix political communications is a researcher but I curiously found communications completely removed from this process.
Whereas legislative teams could use CRS to assist with getting the information they needed for decisions, communications had no such resource. Furthermore, because it is politics, there are very few dissent mechanisms or ways to seriously engage with proclamations by important people (no matter how baseless the claim).
I would love to see some more interesting discussions about how communicators could get practical and accurate briefings on their craft. I generally found that doing research work and being laser focused on getting actionable insights seemed to prove helpful to other comms folks…but there was no serious process for it.
There obviously are 'bad faith actors' in play (Roger Stone, Steve Bannon being likely examples). But I think it might also have to something about how the human brain/psychology works. I find it believable that part of how these people act is simply because they are convinced of x, y or z. People are able to believe the most crazy things and as psychological research has shown: convictions influence our observations and analyses more than the other way around. Memory is 'fantasising about the past' and its function is in part to create stability in our convictions (which is evolutionary important), if our convictions change, our memory changes with it. So, Trump asking Raffensperger "find me 10780 votes" can also mean that he thinks he is trying to unearth the 'truth' (the conviction he already has). Hanlon's razor is in play here. If that is the case, the way to fight it becomes different.
We tend to assume in all of this that humans are intelligent. And while more intelligence helps a bit against becoming convinced of crazy stuff and then becoming immune to factual (or scientific) arguments/observations, none of us is immune. We are *all* potential 'flat earthers'.
I think both elements are in play. There are bad faith actors (and capitalism probably makes sure these rise to the top more often — see your tobacco firms), certainly, but a large part might be honestly held (simplistic) convictions (including 'analytic' convictions like being a 'free speech absolutist' or 'libertarian').
Using what we can learn from psychological research of the last 20-30 years, we might address this problem more effectively. Reference: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stupidity-versus-malice-gerben-wierda (on Bonhoeffer writing about how people were convinced in the 1930's of untrue things. Bonhoeffer starts with
‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.