06-09-2023, 02:19 PM
(06-09-2023, 01:25 PM)Dill Wrote: Thanks for the feedback. There were two links in that which could have been separated into two posts.
Both had the common intent of shifting right vs left contrasts onto a more solid, if incomplete, grounding in data.
The first link, derived from the Free Speech project at Georgetown U., directly addressed the "silencing" of college speakers, sometimes by violence and threats. My goal in presenting it was to encourage caution regarding MSM coverage of "cancel culture" and the like. They spend more time with sensational cases, so that is a motivation to create sensational cases. The resulting coverage then skews people's perceptions. 20-30 incidents a year on 10 campuses doesn't seem like much when you remember there are 4,000+ institutions of higher ed in the U.S.
This is possible and I agree that the media will focus on the more extreme stories, for obvious reasons. But I consume a lot of less mainstream media, both left and right, and I rarely encounter such a story regarding right wing protests.
I went on very left leaning sites and searched for college protest. Logically one would assume that if a site is going to cover such a right wing protest it would be a far left site. Here are the results.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/search?q=college+protest (no examples)
https://www.vice.com/en/search?q=college%20protest (one example in the first ten pages)
https://www.google.com/search?q=college%20protest%20site%3Abuzzfeed.com&oq=buzzfeed&aqs=chrome.0.0i271j46i131i199i433i465i512j0i433i512l2j0i512j0i433i512j0i131i433i512j5.14463j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&ved=2ahUKEwjj0sPG1rb_AhU6C0QIHdihBogQ2wF6BAgsEAE&ei=aFyDZOP-O7qWkPIP2MOawAg#ip=1
The above is Buzzfeed, as the search function on their site wasn't working. I didn't see any examples here.
https://www.google.com/search?q=college%20protest%20site%3Adailykos.com&oq=daily+kos&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i131i433i512l2j0i512j0i131i433i512j0i512l5.1940j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&ved=2ahUKEwiSl7uQ17b_AhVdOEQIHaGGDEMQ2wF6BAgYEAE&ei=BF2DZJKFAt3wkPIPoY2ymAQ#ip=1
That is Daily KOS, as their on site search program sucks. Didn't see any examples here either.
https://www.vox.com/search?q=college+protest Zero examples.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?as_q=college+protest&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=www.theguardian.com&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&tbs=#ip=1
The Guardian. Again, zero examples.
One would think if right wing protests were occurring at anything close to the same rate that these sites would be covering them. That there are so few stories, while certainly not definitive, certainly raise doubts as to their occurring equally, or close to equally.
Quote:The second link was to address the logic of right/left comparison at a more general level, which expands assessments of violence beyond college campuses, but doesn't exclude them. The study's hypothesis reached back into previous work on right/left violence to emphasize features imminent to each side's worldview that account for one being more violence prone than the other.
Which is good information, just not germane to the point being made.
Quote:I think Islamic terrorism was included as a separate element because they wanted to avoid forcing them into the American (North and South) and European political spectrum, but they needed to include them because the study was also global in nature.
Understandable.
Quote:I tried your suggested Youtube experiment. I found that the "left" search and the "right" search often called up the same videos. My hesitancy about using Youtube to assess quantity is that there is no reason to suppose the number of videos breaking one way or the other corresponds to anything other than the intensity of organization of one side as opposed to the other. This is why it is important that states and the federal gov. compile data on political violence, against which we can check our impressions of the magnitude of a perceived threat.
I did the same and will post the links below. That way people can make up their own mind. The searches below certainly seem to skew heavily left.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=left+wing+college+protest
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=right+wing+college+protests
