It is Wednesday so just a few things to report and discuss. I have noted in recent weeks an upsurge in the Twitter noise about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and various statements along the lines that MMT economists are male chauvinists, mindlessly attack other heterodox economists because we are a religious cult, that we thrive on conflict, that only the US has a sovereign government and more. Quite amazing stuff. And these attacks are coming mostly from the so-called heterodox side of the economics debate although not exclusively. It is quite an interesting exercise to try to understand the motivations that are driving this social media behaviour. Things that would never be said face-to-face are unleashed with regularity these days. There appears to be a sort of self-reinforcing ‘echo chamber’ that this squad operate within and it seems to lead to all sorts of bravado that would be absent in face-to-face communication. None of the attacks seem to have any substance or foundation. They just reflect an insecurity with the way that MMT is creating awareness and challenging progressives to be progressive. And, they just make the Tweeters look stupid. I thought I would document some of the recent trail of nonsense to let you know what is going on in case you haven’t been following it. It is a very interesting sociological phenomena.I concluded some time ago that following social media is a waste of time. I can't figure out why on earth anyone with any intelligence would be bothered with paying attention to it other than as an interesting historical, sociological and anthropological phenomenon of the so-called information age. Looks like noise to me. I'd characterize social media as the drivel chamber, good mostly for disseminating fake news, conspiracy theory, and propaganda.
This is the third addition in the ‘Exploring the effectiveness of social media’ series, which is reporting current research I am doing with Dr Louisa Connors, which seeks to understand how best to use social media to advance an awareness and understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We will be discussing some of this work at the The Second International Conference of Modern Monetary Theory (New York, September 28-30), that is, later this week. There is no doubt that social media (among other things) has played a major role in building a non-academic audience for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). But it is not yet clear to me that social media users who seek to advocate for MMT have fully understood the media they are using. I see counterproductive exercises regularly on Twitter, for example. There is a clear literature on effective use of social media and there is also a long literature on how to frame arguments to be persuasive. Calling someone on Twitter who disagrees with you a ‘fxxkwit’ or telling them they haven’t read the literature is probably not the best way to exploit what is a power tool for advancing our cause. This blog post extends the discussion about the strategic use of social media....Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The partnership between Facebook and the Atlantic Council is an attempt to ensure the grip of dominant imperialist powers – militaries, multinationals, banks, and philanthropists – who feel threatened by the unrestricted flow of information and anti-systemic narratives on social media.It's all about who controls the narrative. The Internet and social media are threatening elite control and they are now attempting to re-consolidate control.
Zuckerberg’s auto-da-fé before the Congressional inquisition is designed to send a message to his tech industry colleagues, as well as provide official cover for the future enforcement of draconian rules against deviants from the official script. “Misuse of social media!” cry the new Inquisitors. But who decides what constitutes “misuse”? Isn’t that what the First Amendment is all about?….
The suppression of free speech in the US and the rest of the “capitalist democracies” (a glorious oxymoron) is a systemic bipartisan plot that long precedes Trump, the result of the establishment’s realisation —brought to a boil with the upset election of Trump—that they are losing control of the main narrative—the truth is getting through, so to speak— and the holes must be plugged. The gargantuan echo chamber dedicated to lies 24/7 that is the mainstream media and supporting institutions must be kept safe from further erosion and eventual dismantlement by that pesky little thing some people still quaintly call, “just the facts.”...
I’m late to Zeynep Tufekci’s excellent Twitter and Teargas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. It analyses the impact of social media on political events such as the Arab Spring – remember that? – and Occupy. Her thesis is that online organization is a powerful political tool when combined with offline organization, but cannot substitute for it; and the evidence presented here from a range of mass protests certainly convinces me. The problem mass socially-networked protests have lies in their norms of decision making, which are slow and non-hierarchical. This makes them unable to change tactics quickly when hostile authorities respond to the protest, and so the moment passes. If, however, there is a parallel offline organisation with more conventional decision-making structures, the political protest can adapt and continue....The Enlightened Economist
"The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."
Whether preplanned or inadvertent, one of the most likely and far-reaching consequences of the fake news RussiaGate scandal is that Facebook and other social media giants might soon come under strict regulation by the state.Oriental Review
The artificially contrived and “deep state”-driven RussiaGate scandal has been inflated to epic proportions and has already resulted in the unexpected suicide of the US’ soft power, but this never-ending conspiracy theory is now poised to affect the rest of the world in a completely different way due to the likely “regulation” that Washington might soon impose on social media giants like Facebook. “Traditional” media has long been clamoring for the American government to do something about the astronomical rise of social media, which has poached millions upon millions of people away from newspapers and TV stations and redirected them to their smartphones instead. From the perspective of social media and many of its users, however, these people weren’t “poached”, but liberated from their prior status as a captive audience to conventional influence techniques and allowed to roam freely in cyberspace as they searched for alternative non-mainstream interpretations of current and past events....
The internet has received a substantial amount of blame for the recent increase in political polarisation. Using US data, this column argues that, in fact, the internet has played no significant role in a generally increasing trend of political polarisation that goes back at least to the 1970s. The results highlight the importance of looking beyond convenient narrative explanations, and the need for a deeper understanding of the drivers of political sentiment.Although unmentioned, an implication of the study is that the supposed "Russian influence" on the US election through the Internet and social media was minor at most. The country has been highly polarized for decades. Moreover, HRC won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college, a uniquely American phenomenon. Her loss is easily account for by her failure to campaign sufficiently in states that she assumed were safe. That outside interference flipped those states is implausible on the evidence. If there was an influence based on the Internet and social media, it is more plausible that it came from Big Data provided to the campaigns for strategic use by firms such as Cambridge Analytica.
So, to sum up: The Internet has removed “constraints on what can be said.” It has meant that the mainstream media and party establishments have “lost most of their power.” Legacy institutions can no longer “set bounds” on us.
And this is all bad! And scary! And a threat to democracy!This is quite interesting in light of the social organization in the US during the anti-war protests in the Vietnam era. There was an almost total blackout of alternative opinion in the US media and what coverage there was pictured the opposition as a motley band of socialist crackpots, communist sympathizers, or DFHs (dope-crazed "dirty fucking hippies practicing "free love").
