5h ago

The right dominates the online media ecosystem, seeping into sports, comedy, and other supposedly nonpolitical spaces

www.mediamatters.org The right dominates the online media ecosystem, seeping into sports, comedy, and other supposedly nonpolitical spaces

As Americans increasingly get their news from online shows and streamers, the influence of this media ecosystem becomes more prominent — and Media Matters has found that the most popular of this content is overwhelmingly right-leaning.In a new study, Media Matters assessed the audience size of popul...

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Keep in mind, these are almost certain to be the same people who complain about how political everything is these days. What they mean is that they don't want to see leftist/progressive memes, but they're fine shifting the Overton widow to the right.

What comedy are the right making? Comedy takes skill to write and deliver and their idea of jokes is just punching down on people without any punchline. Something that anyone can do by just being an asshole.

Comedy? Did they mean self-inflating shoulder clapping racist mysogynist guffawing?

Just go to comments on literally any YouTube… so ~~fowl~~ foul
- Most of those comments are bots. Moderation on YouTube is atrocious.
- I try to duck out of any comment thread before it gets nasty. So about 2 comments in.
  Edit: Potential pun thread ruined by reddwarf
- So the comment sections are packed with birds then eh? 😃
  But yeah, the language and attitudes in youtube comments are indeed quite...foul.
  Had to do it.... 😁

It’s because they fucking own all of the infrastructure and social media services. Jesus it’s pretty fucking obvious

Now remove all of the fake users and bots, which make up over half of active users on social media platforms.

I think it's worrisome to see the graphic, but the graphic also is strangely limited and the numbers aren't clear whether they are combined totals across platforms.
Presumably traditional media that has an online presence is excluded on purpose, but it's not clear why having a traditional media presence should negate the total online-only viewership. E.g., Daily Show with 35m+ across different social platforms? Colbert with 15m+? John Oliver with 10m+? It makes it feel like this is ragebait.

I mean, let's be real here, most people on the left are either like us, on niche platforms that dont do influencers, or are on TikTok/Bluesky, and once again, having an actual influencer following is difficult on those platforms. The leftist influencers that do exist are either extremely controversial or like singing to the choir and have a very tribalist mindset that keeps people who may be willing to listen out.

It is a crime that Thom Hartmann isn't more popular. The dude still regularly hosts Bernie Sanders and pretty much called everything that is happening today going back at the end of the Bush Administration. He might be the most prescient and informed guy on Earth. At the very least he pays attention to a lot of the moving parts within government and makes pretty good calls about what is going down.

All I get from this is that right-wingers are more likely to be so stupid that they rely on somebody else to tell them what to think.

I’ll believe Joe Rogan and comedians like Theo Von (who I grew up with, incidentally) have a big audience but who the fuck listens to all those other people? Podcasts aren’t like the AM radio of yore where people listened to Rush Limbaugh and then just passively listened to whomever was next. Most conservatives I know who are into talk radio listen to sports stuff like Bobby Hebert bitching about the Saints to calm down after a loss.
ESPN radio parodied it so maybe my experience is different. https://youtu.be/lb-FL5j3FTU

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