Looking ahead to the November 2016 US presidential election, I see clear signs that Google is backing Hillary Clinton.
Disclaimer, as a European I only loosely followed the election and our local media was very much pro Hillary. I had the image everyone concluded her presidency was in the bag and the election was a mere formality, in fact Trump's campaign was described as an elaborate trolling attempt until winning the republican nomination.
However the results (with a good deal of hindsight) seems to show the internet/media's ability to influence opinions is much smaller then they predict.
The Trump voters were not looking at the same results as you - Google tailors results by region, and also by user preference, and they weren't reading the same news/websites/social media as you.
Yes in some circles Clinton was viewed as a foregone conclusion, but those weren't the circles that voted for Trump.
> However the results (with a good deal of hindsight) seems to show the internet/media's ability to influence opinions is much smaller then they predict.
On the contrary. The internet & media's ability to influence opinions was on full display this last election. Trump won because of the internet, not despite it.
Yeah, the Trump campaign spent tens of millions of dollars more than Clinton on online advertising, using the profiles they have of most of the country to target people they believed they could influence in states they believed would be close.
Its also worth remembering that the Clinton campaign actually used their media contacts to push Trump in the R primaries based on the idea he would be the easiest R nominee to defeat!
> the results (with a good deal of hindsight) seems to show the internet/media's ability to influence opinions is much smaller
On the contrary, it shows that it can swing an election even in just the last few days - witness the orgiastic coverage from the press of Comey's -complete- non-announcement about Weiner's laptop. That swung a significant number of undecideds to Trump in the days following.
(And this is ignoring the previous year of "BUT HER EMAILS" coverage that was complete bullshit whilst ignoring the actually important things that Trump was saying and doing.)
(Also ignoring the Russian troll army promoting Trump on Twitter etc. because we don't have enough details on what they did yet.)
seems to show the internet/media's ability to influence opinions is much smaller then they predict.
They were wildly successful at influencing opinion, just not in the directions assumed. The media narrative doesn't attempt (or refuses) to acknowledge the non-reductive motivation and positions of people that disagree with the implied national status quo of their coverage.
I still maintain that the major news organs would have stopped Trump's candidacy in it's tracks if they had focused campaign coverage around concepts of governance, civics and leadership instead of the horse race and clickbait hot topics.
They should have stopped his candidacy in its tracks back in 2012 when he started [his involvement with] the Birther bullshit rather than giving him credulous coverage.
Or any of the many times he stiffed his suppliers. Or when he defrauded hundreds of people with Trump University.
Or, y'know, any one of a hundred times they should have reported on him properly rather than ruffling his hair and calling him a playful scamp.
[Edited to clarify that Trump didn't start the Birther bullshit since that was 2008-09 and he didn't get involved until 2011-12]
Serious policy discussions that require thought and making legitimate cost/benefit tradeoffs don't generate traffic. In the original Men In Black, Will Smith asks Tommy Lee Jones why they don't admit there are aliens, TLJ's response:
> A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
> seems to show the internet/media's ability to influence opinions is much smaller then they predict.
Please note that the study I cited was about search results and not the media coverage. I'd suggest that the media has shot themselves in the foot with the wild coverage of trivialities over the past couple decades. When every Republican is a racist/sexist/*phobe/bigot, then the terms lose meaning. Seriously, before McCain was "honorable" this year, he was a warmonger in 2008, and the savior from Bush in 2000.
Now we have the media flipping out because Trump has two scoops of ice cream (back in May) and because Melania wore high heels (this week).
At this point, most of the media has the attention span of a meth-addled chipmunk.. and too many of them have the depth to match. Serious discussions are behind them.
Disclaimer, as a European I only loosely followed the election and our local media was very much pro Hillary. I had the image everyone concluded her presidency was in the bag and the election was a mere formality, in fact Trump's campaign was described as an elaborate trolling attempt until winning the republican nomination.
However the results (with a good deal of hindsight) seems to show the internet/media's ability to influence opinions is much smaller then they predict.