"HOW FOX NEWS WORKS" (Twitter thread by "Mad Grandpa") worth a read...

[CousinIT]

The twitter thread below ties in with the video in this OP, too: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017542167

ORIGINAL Twitter thread:

Link to tweet

UNROLLED Twitter thread:

HOW FOX NEWS WORKS - Thread
(spoiler: it's a drug)

Fox’s confounding success in retaining and misinforming uneducated conservative viewers is the result of one particular unique behavior. And it explains the surprising ability of Fox viewers to be so susceptible to it all.

1/
We are all familiar with Fox’s distorted misinformation and cartoon propaganda, but Fox specializes in a more important 2nd type of broadcast. And it's this that's responsible for the real Fox magic.

2/
Every day, Fox seeks out minor, local stories and factoids that, on a practical level, are totally irrelevant for a national audience. Fox then distorts and exaggerates the stories to reveal affronts to core conservative politics or beliefs.

3/
For example,

“US Navy veteran ordered to remove American flag wrap from mailbox.”
or
“Illegal immigrant charged in deadly freeway crash.”

or variations on the “war on Christmas” theme
etc.

4/
The facts of these stories impact the lives of none of Fox's viewers, aren't topics of national interest, and if disclosed, often weaken the story’s polarizing stance.

Fox wouldn't even broadcast these stories if it weren't for the one critical benefit which I'll get to.

5/
To achieve that benefit it's important that the story obviously incriminate itself without overtly articulating the verdict. Fox feigns objectivity, leaving space for the viewer to judge. That's intentional; for the system to work, the viewers MUST be one to pass judgment.

6/
It’s as if you’d reported “Blind man says ‘Sky is red’, wants stop sign painted blue”.

By design, this triggers the viewer to cry, “THAT’S NOT RIGHT! The sky is blue! How dare he!”

Many media pundits explain Fox's stories like these as merely reinforcing viewers’ politics.

7/
Others argue they are designed to enrage conservative viewers. Both criticisms are correct, but there is something more at work.

These stories also exist to stroke the uneducated conservative ego.

8/
Rage is merely an outcome of feeling “correct” in the face of a fabricated injustice within this virtual reality.

Passing "correct" judgement on these self-incriminating stories make viewers feel smart. Make them feel right and righteous.

9/
In a world where uneducated working-class people are faced with feelings of inferiority, here comes Fox to the rescue, with a channel designed to make these viewers FEEL SUPERIOR to the very educated, "elite" people who they have felt lesser-than for so long.

10/
To make them feel like WINNERS.

It is a kind of virtual reality that becomes addictive. A perpetual source of validation and reassurance.

No other news outlet goes to such effort to make uneducated viewers feel so good about themselves.

11/
So naturally these viewers prefer Fox. It FEELS good to be fed a steady diet of validation. For someone to say,

"You get it! Maybe you didn't go to university, but wow, you're intuitively smart. Who needs an education? Those guys? They're the brainwashed ones."

12/
"You're above all that. You see the big picture. You just proved it by knowing the right answer all by yourself!"
Ultimately, a steady diet of these stories makes viewers more receptive to Fox's misinformation and propaganda when it matters.

13/
The addiction is powerful, and it virtually ensures that these addicts will come to Fox's defense when needed. Fox addicts need not even believe the propaganda, they'll support it so long as they can still feel "superior".

14/
They'll fight on facebook and twitter, supporting blatantly disingenuous claims - because it keeps them on the high, it keeps them feeling smarter and superior. And because the thought that FOX might honestly be wrong is abhorrent.

15/
God forbid the entire virtual reality construct might be wrong.

When viewers venture away from Fox, when they read NYT, WaPo, CNN and other outlets that do not stroke the uneducated conservative ego, the world must feel suddenly cold, the bottom drops out.

16/
The high is gone, and those old insecurities and feelings of inferiority creep back even stronger, since they've been floating way up high above reality on a happy cloud. Without the high of validation, Fox viewers suffer withdrawal.

17/
So addictive is this feeling of finally being better, righter, smarter than others, of “winning”, that viewers will seek out “ammunition”, defensive data, links and ridiculous memes, most of them factually incorrect and disingenuous, to counter those main-stream stories...

18/
...outlets and people who threaten to weaken to remove the source of emotional validation. The Fox drug.
Donald Trump’s uneducated unsophisticated rhetoric and words serve as an extension of the Fox tactic, doing exactly the same thing. Makes these viewers feel right. Feel better about themselves than the world naturally affords.

20/
Makes them feel like winners.

Even the label “forgotten men and women” is a pandering euphemism.

These uneducated, working-class people were never “forgotten”.

21/
They simply hadn’t felt like they were part of a righteous, superior community before. They were just living in the real world, where having an education gives you more opportunity. These people weren't "forgotten" they simply had (and still have) somewhat less opportunity.

22/
The nationally irrelevant news stories Fox broadcasts and tweets are intentionally designed to validate the egos of uneducated conservative viewers, who become addicted to the resulting feelings of superiority and in turn, become soldiers of the Fox News misinformation war.

end/

HE ADDED MORE tweets:

Link to tweet

Adding one more Tweet to this thread.

This study explains the Fox validation addiction.

MUST READ:
Trump Voters Driven by Fear of Losing Status, Not Economic Anxiety, Study Finds
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economic-anxiety.html

Link to tweet

And finally, I’ll just leave this here:

FEAR & UNbalanced: Confessions of a 14-Year Fox News Hitman
https://medium.com/@tobinsmith_95851/how-roger-ailes-fox-news-scammed-americas-la-z-boy-cowboys-for-21-years-1996ee4a6b3e

Link to tweet

I feel I need to add this to the thread. This captures something I was trying to articulate when I described the reason these people will support even false information. The feeling. This is it:
The cruelty is the point. The cruelty is the point. The cruelty is the point. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

[lapfog_1]

1. Ask a smart person if they feel they are smart

you may get some modesty or down play... but normally you will get an answer like "there is so much that I don't know"

Ask a stupid person if they are smart... and you will almost always get "I'm a very stable genius" or words to that effect.

[procon]

5. Truth.

I'm frequently humbled by how little I know. I love learning and my interests are multifaceted and eclectic. As much as I try, I'm left dumbstruck that my actual understanding and knowledge will never compare to the real experts.

On the other hand, my Fox news addicted (that's a fact!) brother waxes poetic, lecturing in great "scholarly" detail on the effects of the temperatures of Venus and Mars on global cooling. It's the Dunning–Kruger effect writ large and his emotions run white hot if his source is questioned, it's as if I just slut shamed his wife.

[erronis]

8. And the real experts are just like you - they admit they don't and can't know everything.

And most relish being proven wrong so they can start the research again, with new perspectives. So sad when people think they know everything - I guess that is like "religion".

I have dibs on your moniker when you relinquish it. But please don't, anytime soon.

[smirkymonkey]

2. K&R

[Delmette2.0]

3. Trump is their #1 sucker.

He is so addicted to their bs and definitely feels smarter because he listened to them.

[catrose]

4. The cruelty is the point. :_(

[Celerity]

12. "He's not hurting the people he needs to be": a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/trump-shutdown-voter-florida

On Monday, the New York Times’s Patricia Mazzei published a dispatch from Marianna, Florida — a small, politically conservative town that depends on jobs from a federal prison and thus has been deeply hurt by the government shutdown. In the piece, Marianna residents grapple with the fact that President Donald Trump, who most residents support, is playing a role in the pain created by lost wages.

Most Marianna residents support Trump’s border wall, his key demand in the shutdown fight, and don’t blame him for the fight. But Crystal Minton, a secretary at the prison who is also a single mother caring for disabled parents, had a somewhat different reaction — one that reveals an essential truth about the core Trump’s political appeal.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton told Mazzei. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.

Think about that line for a second. Roll it over in your head. In essence, Minton is declaring that one aim of the Trump administration is to hurt people — the right people. Making America great again, in her mind, involves inflicting pain.

This is not an accident. Trump’s political victory and continuing appeal depend on a brand of politics that marginalizes and targets groups disliked by his supporters. Trump supporters don’t so much love the Republican party as they hate Democrats, a phenomenon political scientists call “negative partisanship.” They like Trump not because he sells them on the GOP, but because they believe he’ll stick it to the Democrats harder than anyone else.

snip

[catrose]

15. That's when I knew we were raised on different planets.

My adult child has just started cancer treatments, and it is horrible beyond horrible for him--and me. But every week in the car on the way to chemo, he brings up how much better he has it than other patients, whether the type of cancer, expenses paid for by a study, drugs not so harsh, prognosis better, more of a support system. And when his friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, he told her, "I'm driving you to chemo."

As a single mother taking care of a disabled father, life was bad, but I knew I was more than many people. I was grateful, and I wanted more help for everyone. This single mother with disabled parents wants other people to hurt. I can't even.

[Nevilledog]

6. Spot on.

Thanks for posting.

[malaise]

7. Fascinating

Thanks

[MyOwnPeace]

9. O-M-G!!!!!!!!!

This SO clearly spells out all of it - and the kicker - the biggest sucker for their con is IQ45!!!!!!

[certainot]

10. it's the cartoon cliff notes for talk radio which does the widespread unchallenged repetition

talk radio was doing that ten years before fox

differences:

fox has political alternatives a click away

fox can't do the level of lying and hate radio can get away with

liberals monitor fox, notice, and respond

fox has to pretend to be balanced, with occasional dissenting opinions

the same story you get once or twice on fox can get chewed on for days in similar ways by different blowhards

over and over, stuff gets started on talk radio to prep it for fox

it's a lot harder to look into a camera and lie with the certitude the authoritarians crave over truth

and so on

if americans want to destroy fox - do talk radio first

[demigoddess]

11. you've got it exactly right. I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh and he had a way of

telling people that even if they were poor, if they supported the republican ideas, they would end up rich. Using the fact that things cost less in the old days, they would say my dad back in the old days only earned 25,000 a year. Which sounds like a pittance but in those days was darned good. My dad probably brought home less than 10,000 a year. A house costing 35,000 back then was practically a palace. this information was not discussed only that someone only earned 25,000 a year and had a good life. They ended up rich!!! Of course today that probably wouldn't buy much.

[renate]

13. I would give this a year's worth of recs if I could

This really is excellent. Now that it’s been pointed out, I agree that the validation is so important. And it’s understandable, to be fair. If I felt like half of society looked down on me and thought I was an ignorant hick, I’d be hooked on this kind of programming too. It makes total sense. And this almost makes me more sympathetic to Fox viewers. It’s like blaming the pushers for keeping the addicts hooked... one side knows exactly what they’re doing, and it’s not for the actual benefit of the other.

Thank you so much for finding and posting this!

[Different Drummer]

14. I believe Mad Grampa has the way Fox News works figured out accurately.

Bookmarking this one. K&R! Thanks for posting it!

[uponit7771]

16. K&R, Faux News et al gives Red Don a 15 - 25% bump in JA rate over what he should have

[uponit7771]

17. K&R, Another way to counter this is to get their trust with an agreeable point then throw in facts f

... from a non "threatening" source (sources winger world doesn't gov after) like USA Today, Newsweek, Dallas Daily (sp) or McClatchy.

They're usually smaller but facts from these sources don't trigger like the major outlets news and TV

[superpatriotman]

18. K&R

The right always acts like they know something we don’t.