America Speaks: Political Coverage Boring and Uninformative…ouch
About a month ago, the PEW Research Center released one of their good/bad surveys that I always find particularly insightful.
The surveys are good in the sense that they are revealing about public sentiment. The surveys are bad, because they most often reveal an underlying sense of cynicism, malign, and discontent with American politics.
Some surprises here and some interesting findings I will raise. First, a surprise: 41% of respondents could not name one single Republican presidential candidate. Not sure what to make of that one. There are some high profile people in the bunch. A 2000 presidential frontrunner, an actor on a popular television show, the mayor of New York City during 9/11. What do you think?
Moving along, the survey reveals some things I felt when first coming up with the idea for Glassbooth that now seem more real.
55% of the respondents feel the presidential campaign is “dull”
I think we made a keen insight at Glassbooth. It’s not always that people are too busy to engage in politics, it’s that politics are not compelling. Consider the competition. Entertainment is so highly sophisticated today. The dramas are complex, the content often scandalous, the editing lively, the humor sometimes actually funny. When compared with reruns like the 32nd Democratic debate - this response is not surprising.
When asked if they would like to see more or less coverage of candidates’ positions on the issues, 77% of respondents said they wanted more, the highest of all the prompts
When thinking about this, it is also worth considering that 45% of respondents (the plurality) want less coverage of who is leading in the polls. News networks would be wise to take note. What is America saying in these numbers? People are feeling uninformed about the election and when candidates aren’t speaking in their town, they must turn to the news for political information. But its not giving them what they want. Instead the news covers politics like a horse race…apparently a very “dull” one at that.
Glassbooth is about remixing and rethinking the way we interact with political information. We try and make it fun and interesting by allowing you to directly access the information you specifically want to see about the issues that are important to you with cool and innovative tools. We’ll never poll you, but let us now how we’re doing.
Hey guys, great first run around and looking forward to finding updates and improvements. Interesting stuff all around. Edwards was the candidate that most represented my views (which I mostly knew anyways), however, that being said, I saw I was also closely correlated to Obama (expected) and Dodd (not as expected). The great tool this site provides is giving mutliple options to dig deeper into and constantly learn more about the cadidates as well as yourself.
Great start, keep up the good work.
-Dr. Acula
Kewl site.. absolutely love it. It confirmed that I am supporting the candidate that mostly agrees with me.
I hope the message gets out and everyone takes a closer look at the candidates instead of following the crowd.
You get an “A+” in my book.
Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.
We are what we repeatedly do.