Media Analysis

The next step is using these questions to evaluate the message of the chosen media:

1. Who is the intended audience for this message?

   • Anyone who follows Politico on Twitter (X) technically, but more specifically anyone who might get upset at this intentionally vague phrasing.

2. What is the purpose of the message (e.g., inform, persuade, entertain, sell)?

   • To get people concerned about Palestine and the erasure of the genocide there to interact with this content. This tactic is often called "clickbait" or "ragebait" with the underlying theory being that any type of interaction is good and angry interaction is easy to produce online.

3. What techniques (e.g., tone, visuals, language) are used to appeal to the audience?

   • The headline assumes the position of "clueless news writer" by saying "Middle East" instead of Palestine and appending the word "controversial" which is often a term used to hand-wave public concerns and protests.

   • We can see that this is intentional in the social media post by viewing the article itself, which uses the very normal headline "‘No Other Land,’ an Israeli-Palestinian collaboration, wins Oscar for best documentary".

4. How effective is the message in achieving its intended purpose?

   • Extremely successful given that this post has more than 150x the amount of views than other posts by Politico. The headline phrasing on social media was meant to drive engagement and visibility and it did.

Now we'll analyze the message's impact at various scales:

Individuals

• This post is meant to illicit rage and confusion in the user, to drive them to share with a rebuttal or in anger at the state of the world or a dim view of the state of the press. An abundance of this tactic creates an effect called "doomscrolling", meaning that reading posts reaffirms your bleak view of the world, in individuals who engage heavily with political content on social media.

Communities

• This post explicitly embraces a tactic of division because those outraged by the post see either a willfully ignorant or manipulative news media and those who aren't outraged see the outrage and discern that those that disagree with them are unreasonable and quick to anger.

The world

• This sends a message to global audiences that major US news outlets are either clueless about the specifics of a documentary about Palestinian activists, a conflict which the US has famously refused to stop funding and providing weapons for, or that those same outlets are willing to feign confusion to produce more traffic for their site. 

Then, we'll ask some questions to consider the ethical implications:

1. Does the message align with ethical standards (e.g., transparency, respect, truth)?

   • No! The tactic of rage or clickbaiting is one that is inherently disrespectful, untruthful, and duplicitous. The intent is to trick the reader into outrage and interaction.

2. Could this message lead to harmful consequences? How?

   • The main harm being done here is to community, via an increase in rage and division, and readers trust in journalism in the US (something that is already quite low on average).

3. How do social media platforms and algorithms influence what audiences see?

   • This is the key question for this example because this entire tactic was born of algorithms and the way/reasons content is shared online. Not that papers didn't create incendiary headlines for centuries before social media to sell papers, but that social media encourages a type of trust erosion that is actively dangerous to the publications using it and the public they serve.

In this portion of the assignment, students are encouraged to redesign the message to something that better aligns with ethical standards and broadens the positive impact of the message.

In this case, Politico have already designed a great headline and sub-header for this piece on their own site. They simply didn't use any of this text when posting to social media, even though it would easily fit in the character limit, because it wouldn't have gotten any sizable reaction.