One of my favorite sites that I’ve discovered in recent months since we’ve all become more aware of media, bias, echo chambers, and the like, is AllSides.com. Around before the election last year, it seems to have only grown in notoriety since.
It’s interesting to check out their sample stories, with a headline from the Center, the Left, and the Right; sometimes, the headlines are quite similar and feel mostly factual, and sometimes, the headlines are wildly divergent. You can see the pointed and polarized language much more starkly in these moments. It also feels like their sorting of the different news outlets is pretty close to accurate, as you compare the leaning-left and -right sorts of headlines to the ones further to the extremes, or the ones to the center.
AllSides has apparently been running a survey on Net Neutrality, with introductory arguments on both sides from John Oliver and Reason. They’ve presented their data so far, but the survey is still open (which isn’t very scientific, but that’s fine). They also showed their respondent bias, which is more heavily to the left.
I wonder if the lower level of respondents from the right has to do with them not caring as much about the issue, or whether more people on the right tend to go straight to their preferred news sources than to somewhere like AllSides? That’s all just speculation, and besides the point.
The point is, results were pretty strongly in favor of Net Neutrality, because it’s something people tend to be behind: at a fundamental level, it seems like we’ve reached a point where the Internet is a utility.
But don’t take my word for it… check out the results, and take the survey yourself! And if you haven’t checked out AllSides before, definitely give them a look.
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Comparative Geeks 