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Bernardo de La Paz

(48,788 posts)
18. This is supported by an interesting study of aggregated search data correlated with voting
Sat Jun 24, 2017, 12:27 PM
Jun 2017

What Google Searches Reveal about the Human Psyche

Transcript and you can hear the segment. I found some more links, posted at the end of the excerpts.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-june-20-2017-1.4164559/june-20-2017-full-episode-transcript-1.4169712#segment3

excerpts of transcript:

my next guest says you shouldn't let social media make you feel bad about your life. In fact he has studied millions of Google searches and gained some surprising insights into people's real lives. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a former Google data scientist. He's a contributing op ed writer for The New York Times and he's the author of Everybody Lies: Big Data New Data And What The Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. And Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is joining us from Atlanta, Georgia. Hello.

...

AMT: Is this information that Google has that you got or did you go on Google and figure it out?

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: This is data that they aggregate the search data and they give it to searchers.

AMT: Okay. So what did you learn about racism in the U.S. by examining Internet searches?

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: Yes. So there is a disturbing element to some of this research. When people are lying, one of the ways people lie is they make themselves look better and they don't admit their racist tendencies. So the comparison on Google is depressing even horrifying, the frequency with which Americans make racist searches, are predominantly looking for jokes mocking African-Americans. And these searches predict very very strongly various political behaviors voting patterns.

AMT: You can make the connection?

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: Yeah. So for example places that made these searches in highest numbers, there were most likely to make racist searches where there is almost perfect relationship between the volume of these searches and support for Donald Trump in the Republican primary. So it's really clear in this data that racism played a huge role in Trump's rise even if people wouldn't admit that.

AMT: And you also looked at what people were searching for right after Barack Obama was elected in 2008. What did you find?

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: Yes. I mean another one where people you know on TV or in everyday conversation, people are saying whatever they thought of Obama's policies or positions that it was moving that we had an African-American president. But you see it the same period that searches for really really racially charged jokes mocking African-Americans were rising to their highest levels yet. And one in 100 searches on the night that Obama was elected with the word Obama also included the N word or KKK. So really a very very different in the privacy of their own homes, Americans were reacting to this event much differently than they were publicly proclaiming they were reacting.

AMT: And that was rather than using the phraseology like first black president or the like celebratory phrase.

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: Exactly. More people are making more searches kind of disturbed by having an African-American president than excited about having an African-American president.

AMT: And so let's get back to what you said about the election of Donald Trump and what you learned about who voted for him. Tell me a little bit more of what you saw.

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: Well, I think one thing that happened is you see how people responded when Obama was president. So the racist searches people were also searching for and eventually joining a website called Stormfront which is a white nationalist website. And you see kind of a direct relationship that these people who were antagonized by Obama's election and motivated to join these white nationalist websites or make racist searches then put Trump over the edge in the Republican primary.

AMT: And how do you know that you're making the right conclusion with that data?

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: Well, you have to be definitely careful when you're using statistics and data but there are a lot of tools that data scientists have to control for other variables. You can see is there something else about these areas that explain the relationship? Is it because these areas have more elderly people, or more people with fewer years of education or more people own guns or more people who attend church? And you control for all these variables and nothing explains the result. The only thing that really explains the result is the racism.

AMT: You also looked at clues before the election on voter turnout for Hillary Clinton, that are may be down.

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: Yes exactly. So if you ask people in a survey: “Are you going to vote in an election?”, just about everybody says yes but then only about 55 percent of Americans actually turn out to vote. So you can't really know from a survey who is going to be in the 55 percent who vote and who is going to be in the 45 percent who don't vote. But you can see on Google. People make searches in the weeks leading up to Election Day. They search for how to vote or where to vote or polling places, and these searches predict very very strongly how high turnout will be. And what we saw in this previous election, in the 2016 election, is that in cities with large African-American populations were 90 or 95 percent of the population is black, there was a large drop in searches for voting information, searches for how to vote or where to vote. So it was very clear from the search data that black turnout was going to be substantially down compared to previous elections. And since African-Americans support Democrats 85 or 90 percent of the time, this was a terrible sign for Hillary Clinton and one of the reasons she did so much worse than polls predicted.

AMT: Because that that did carry out during the election, right?

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: Exactly. The black turnout was way down.

AMT: If her people had been looking at the data you were looking at they would have seen that coming.

SETH STEPHENS-DAVIDOWITZ: They would have seen that coming and maybe put more energy into getting black turnout up.

---

http://sethsd.com/research/

NPR Transcript of another interview:
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=526399881

Persuasive proof that America is full of racist and selfish people - Vox
https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/6/13/15768622/facebook-social-media-seth-stephens-davidowitz-everybody-lies
Jun 13, 2017 - “Google is a digital truth serum,” Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of ... that suggested Trump was far more serious than many supposed.

Vox Calls Americans 'Racist' Over Google Searches | The Daily Caller {Right Wing reaction}
http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/13/vox-calls-americans-selfish-and-racist-due-to-google-searches/
Jun 13, 2017 - Stephens-Davidowitz research shows “searches containing racist ... and equates the search data as “clues” Trump was a “serious” contender.
Culture not economics determined the 2016 race [View all] DemocratSinceBirth Jun 2017 OP
Agreed cilla4progress Jun 2017 #1
We win without them DemocratSinceBirth Jun 2017 #3
Kick. dalton99a Jun 2017 #2
Yep. CincyDem Jun 2017 #4
In other words our coalition is bigger but not as unified. DemocratSinceBirth Jun 2017 #9
Right-leaning cultural values, left-leaning economic ones. roamer65 Jun 2017 #5
And the Nazi propaganda machine was nothing compared to RW radio and faux news Va Lefty Jun 2017 #7
It's National Socialism without the Socialism. DemocratSinceBirth Jun 2017 #8
Solid points. H2O Man Jun 2017 #10
The Nazis were capitalists. They opposed liberals, socialists and communists. Buckeye_Democrat Jun 2017 #22
Culture includes economics. H2O Man Jun 2017 #6
I doubt anyone would argue differently , JHan Jun 2017 #12
Economics is part of culture. Nt FBaggins Jun 2017 #11
One can be culturally conservative and economically liberal. DemocratSinceBirth Jun 2017 #13
One can also be liberal on some cultural issues and not on others FBaggins Jun 2017 #23
I think he won because of Russia, not culture. Honeycombe8 Jun 2017 #14
I think he won because of Comey. That likely wan't the intention of his actions but the result. DemocratSinceBirth Jun 2017 #16
That certainly played a part. But the hacking is what made it so close, so that Comey's Honeycombe8 Jun 2017 #20
Don't forget Hill won the pop vote but the dip hurt her in the EC. DemocratSinceBirth Jun 2017 #21
Culture read as: racist, sexist, homophobic Saviolo Jun 2017 #15
We led with our chin bucolic_frolic Jun 2017 #17
This is supported by an interesting study of aggregated search data correlated with voting Bernardo de La Paz Jun 2017 #18
Of course. And the culture wars wouldn't work without GOP media - Fox, right-wing radio sharedvalues Jun 2017 #19
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