The Overhead Wire Daily | April 10th, 2024 | Social Media Rage
It looks like most if not all subscribers got yesterday’s email after we had an issue with Microsoft Outlook delivery in the last few weeks. If you are missing some emails that you wanted to read the news from, let me know and I’ll forward them along. All the longer form intros are at The Overhead Wire blog too.
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Thanks everyone for reading, I am super happy we get to keep doing this after 18 years and you all make that possible.
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So with all that back end stuff out of the way, it actually makes this Tweet/podcast from The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson a bit more interesting to me today. The short explanation is that there are four dark laws of online engagement according to psychologist Jay Van Bavel: 1. Negativity bias drives headline clicks 2. Extreme opinions drive in-group sharing 3. Out-group animosity drives engagement 4. “Moral-emotional” language goes viral.
I was chatting with former DC and Chicago transport head Gabe Klein for a podcast we’ll release soon on his office’s work on electric vehicle charging infrastructure. He mentioned that news headlines on stories he’s been in lately discussing that work have been changed from positive to negative in just 24 hours just to get more engagement and eyes on an article. One headline he mentioned said the complete opposite of what the article did, but I guess that’s what drives people to subscribe to news sites or drives advertising revenue.
It also relates to the recent discussion of congestion pricing in New York City. The majority of public comments for the policy have been positive, but you wouldn’t have known about that from the media headlines or driving celebrities. In my news search, it always looked like a 80-20 negative split.
It can be frustrating to us here because we’re not going around creating a rage factory to get the policies we want. But it can also be a positive because even if we see a bunch of negative headlines, perhaps there’s always something good that can be found under the surface. Let’s keep digging.
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