There is hard data that shows "Bernie Bros" are a myth [View all]

[Uncle Joe]

A computational social scientist's study shows Bernie's Twitter followers act pretty much the same as everyone else

Mainstream pundits and politicians continue to obsess over the stereotype of the "Bernie Bro," a perfervid horde of Bernie Sanders supporters who supposedly stop at nothing to harass his opponents online. Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens have all helped perpetuate the idea that Sanders' supporters are somehow uniquely cruel, despite Sanders' platform and policy proposal being the most humane of all the candidates.

The only problem? The evidence that Sanders supporters are uniquely cruel online, compared to any other candidates' supporters, is scant; much of the discourse around Bernie Bros seems to rely on skewed anecdotes that don't stand up to scrutiny. Many Sanders supporters suspect that the stereotype is perpetuated in bad faith to help torpedo his candidacy.

A few weeks ago I penned a story for Salon attempting to qualitatively disprove the Bernie Bro myth by pulling from psychological theory and the nature of online behavior. To summarize my conclusions: First, there is a general tendency for online behavior to be negative, known as the online disinhibition effect — but it affects all people equally, not merely Sanders' supporters. Second, pundits systematically ignore when other candidates' supporters are mean online, perhaps because of the aforementioned established stereotype; in this sense, the Bernie Bro is not dissimilar from other political canards like the "welfare queen." Third, Twitter is not a representative sample size of the population, and is so prone to harboring propaganda outfits and bots such that it is not a reliable way of gauging public opinion.

Now, to add to this qualitative assessment, there is quantitative evidence, too — reaped from studying hundreds of thousands of interactions online — that reveals the Bernie Bro myth as, well, a myth. Jeff Winchell, a computational social scientist and graduate student at Harvard University, crunched the numbers on tweet data and found that Sanders' supporters online behave the same as everyone else. Winchell used what is called a sentiment analysis, a technique used both in the digital humanities and in e-commerce, to gauge emotional intent from social media data.

"Bernie followers act pretty much the same on Twitter as any other follower," Winchell says of his results. "There is one key difference that Twitter users and media don't seem to be aware of.... Bernie has a lot more Twitter followers than Twitter followers of other Democrat's campaigns," he added, noting that this may be partly what helps perpetuate the myth.

(snip)

https://www.salon.com/2020/03/09/there-is-hard-data-that-shows-bernie-bros-are-a-myth/

I can assure anyone here that there is one thing that is not a myth, that being the corporate media conglomerates; their obvious financial conflicts of interest and their powerful adverse affects on public perception.

The U.S. has six and by some measures only five of them that own 90+% of everything the American People see on T.V. hear on the radio or read in publications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/democracyondeadline/mediaownership.html

https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/