>> political strategists discuss the impact of social media on campaigns and elections and whether the technologies have added to the polarization in politics. balancing the protection of free speech rights with the policing of so-called fake news content on their platforms. this 50-minute forum was hosted by the university of southern california in los angeles. >> thanks a lot and thanks for the institute for hosting this event. i hope you enjoy it and continue to participate in the events. so we have an exciting panel today. i think we should go ahead and get started with some questions. many of the questions were prepared in advance, and so they are -- i'll start with some questions about news in this current year. it's only been a year since the presidential election, but it seems very hard to remember a time when facebook wasn't sin

on -- synonymous with fake news. what's your take on fake news and its impact on the outcome of the 2016 election? >> i think -- the microphone -- microphone. i think the impact of fake news was to allow primarily the trump voters to discount what was going on in the mainstream media, no matter how bad it was for their candidate or how bad it was factually. they just -- it allowed them to assume that it was coming from a biased point of view, and that, therefore, they ignored it. that has not been typical of american campaigns in the past.

>> so, i have a slightly different view on fake news in the sense that i think we focus a lot on the fact that, you know, this news might have, you know, changed the results of the election, and i think of fake news more of a symptom versus a cause, so i think it's a symptom of the polarization that's in this country. so my background's in psychology, and a lot of the research that gets done is about how people believe what they want to believe, and really smart people who have access to all the news and should know better, believe what they want to believe. so i think people are going to believe what they want to believe. certainly, social media is like gasoline on a fire, but, you know, i don't think fake news is necessarily a problem. i think it's more of an accelerant of the underlying problem, which is the divisions that we see in this country. >> yeah, i largely agree with you. i mean, the trump phenomenon was because people were unhappy. it may have been exacerbated and

fake news may have played a role in that, but i question the depth of the role. i mean, the spin that they are talking about on facebook is a joke. i mean, you can't effect change with that kind of money. it's bothersome to us because it could affect our elections, but in terms of practical consequence, i don't think it did much for this particular election. i think it could, and there's some interesting components to that fabric, but in actual reality i just don't think it did much. >> so, many of the questions about fake news come from the way we're receiving this, maybe new continent questionable quality. and that's because there's been a change in the control of news information. it's been shifting from media companies with editors and editorial policies, to tech companies that may not have such expertise on board. so some in congress want the government to regulate political

ads on sites such as facebook and similar to the way they are regulated on tv, what is your thoughts on this? >> well, i mean, the regulation on television is pretty minimal for the most part, but it, essentially, is a creation of a disclaimer that says who the ads are paid for by. so they are paid for by a campaign, it says paid for by bob shrum for governor committee. beyond that, there's not much regulation. in terms of candidates and their ability to say whatever they want to say on television is pretty unrestricted. they are mostly immune to libel laws, so i don't think that it's asking a lot for our online advertisers to have some commitment to disclosing while

the ads are playing who paid for them. similar to what we do on television. i think the reality is, we didn't get where we are in terms of television and disclaimers last week or the week before. it took -- it evolved over time, and the other very key element in this is the air waves, the broadcast air waves, are publicly owned, and the federal communications commission regulates them, and they put together these requirements. obviously, online communications is not federally regulated, and i don't think there's any political will to federally regulate them or should there be. but -- so it's a real question of are they going to be self policing in terms of what they do, or is congress going to step in and we've seen that argument

be joined in the last few weeks. >> i think, honestly, it would be really tough for the government to regulate -- you know, i think technology moves too fast for government to really meaningfully regulate, but i think, you know, i work in the tech industry, and i talk to people at some of these companies, and i have never talked to someone at one of these companies who does not somewhat acknowledge their responsibility and want to do a better job. and, you know, these companies are made of people who care just like you do and were surprised by things that have happened in the political world just like you are and want things to be better, not necessarily just, you know, in one direction or another, but just better in terms of the kinds of things we all care about. so, you know, i can say -- i think people are working on it. i think there's a lot of smart people working on it, and i kind of sometimes liken it to nutrition. once upon a time, you know, we

have evolved to be really into sugar, right, and to really want to eat sugar, and eventually we learned that too much sugar is bad for us and we have, like, signs that tell us how many calories things are. and, you know, we've evolved to sort of pay attention to negative information and compete as groups and our information diet, you know, can be very unhealthy for us in a similar way. it's not just online. look at the 11:00 news. all the seven things that you don't know that might kill you if you don't watch the -- it's sort of ingrained in us that these algorithms in the media are all optimizing in some way towards human nature, but, you know, just like with nutrition, there are ways for us as a thoughtful species to understand that, you know, the kinds of things we're seeing aren't good for us, and for smart people to do good things, to do things about that, so people are working on these algorithms. so in the absence of regulation, i do think things will get

better. >> that was extremely thoughtful, and i'm not going to say anything that's even remotely that thoughtful. i like bill's perspective, yeah, it makes common sense there should be some degree of transparency, but when you game that out, i don't think it will have any real practical effect, because this kind of expenditure goes through a pac, unraveling how funds get into that pac is very, very difficult, if not impossible. the point is, you're not going to see a facebook ad or any ad with the disclaimer this ad was purchased by the russian government. it's going to go through a lot of hands before it gets there. so i think practically speaking, and bill, i would defer to you if you feel differently, because you actually would place those things and interact with them, i think it's extremely challenging to see who paid that. the transparency just isn't there. >> i think the impact, particularly on independent expenditure ads of disclaimers

is grossly exaggerated by most campaign reformers, because oftentimes they say paid for by the committee for a better world, and who's against a better world, obviously? but on the other hand, it does lead a paper trail that you can follow and try to figure out who's behind the money. now, i think the russian -- particularly the issue involved with the russians, i think if somebody comes up to you and says they want to hire you to do their polling and pays you in rubles, you're probably going to say, well, this is probably not a good idea. >> well, they would just pay cash. no, you're absolutely right. >> so, i've enjoyed your analogy about sugar, and maybe you didn't mention it, but diabetes, right? so maybe when we create something, when the technology creates something like refined sugar, it's exciting, but there are consequences like public

health problem of diabetes, and as a technology developer myself, i feel like our community is sensed the pace of development is increasing, and so the opportunity to regulate and to alter our behaviors for these downstream consequences, our window becomes shorter and shorter, so i wanted to ask bill and justin, you know, in your line of work, have you noticed an acceleration or is it just par for the course the way the technology is changing both opinion research and political messaging or the fields you work on? >> well, i think the most profound impact of technology on the political process so far has been the huge acceleration of fundraising opportunities from small donors. literally, president obama's campaign was funded primarily by small donors, particularly in '08, and i think we saw that with bernie sanders this time.

so, you know, we're talking about ads, but i think the most profound impacts has been the fundraising, the change in the fundraising culture. and that part of digital communications and digital political communications is far advanced beyond where advertising is right now in terms of the digital world is still struggling to get 15% to 20% of advertising dollars, either commercially or politically. so, you know, there's questions about where it's going to go, and, of course, all of these things change. i mean, there's going to be other digital breakthroughs and different ways to communicate, and i have a firm view that what we do in the communications world is we don't really get rid of any old media, we just add

another form of new media on top of it, so it's like we get to be a more fragmented and more complex communications culture, particularly in the advertising side. and it just -- you know, we're still advertising on tv, still advertising on cable, still people are advertising on broadcast radio, and then we have all these other new mediums, including online and satellite and all these other things that are coming, and i'm sure -- i think we can see podcasts are going to play a significant political role over time. so, you know, there's just an enormous fragmentation going on in our communications universe, and people are not only self selecting about the news, as we talked about, they are also self selecting about where they get their news. and, you know, we know there are people who are watching exclusively fox television,

people who watch exclusively msnbc. we'll probably see the same phenomena on podcasts. people who listen to progressive podcasts and people who listen to conservative podcasts exclusively. so that's a big change, is that people become so ideologically driven about their -- where they get information from. >> yeah, the medium mix-up bill was describing, it evolves over time, because -- but it hasn't flipped. people consume information in the ways they like to consume them and it's usually multiple different ways, so digital doesn't own the world right now simply because people consume information in a variety of ways and in most media markets, tv is an incredibly efficient way to spend money, if you've got money. in my small world figuring out what people think and figuring

out how to influence their thoughts and behaviors, digital has had a profound impact. i mean, if you're talking about a highly informed horse race and there's really only one, that's the presidential race, then google surveys is fantastic, it's remarkable, it's unbelievable. if you're talking about anything other than that, then it becomes -- degrades in efficacy. there are, you know, folks who are process thelytizing a particular tool or method because they get enamored with that method. just like any kind of industry. and they forget that sometimes there's a right widget for every application, and it's not one size fits alls. in my world there's a move right now to transition from telephone research, which if you perform it in the right way, it can be the most accurate form, to integrating digital online research, which can be inkreeblbly useful for the right approach, but there are pitfalls with it. the digital aspect of that typically comes in in california

from the voter file, and in recent years, 50% of every new voter registration card has a valid e-mail address. it works. it's really, really good. but if you say arbitrarily i'm going to do 50% of this on phone, and that includes cell phones and all that stuff, and a 50% of it online, you've put 50% of your sample to new registrants, which composes a fraction of the electorate. so you've gone ahead and put an artificial constraint, and there is good reason to look at that and say that methodology is thawed. it may hit the mark from time to time, but it's going to be wrong much more often than a different methodology for a particular purpose. if there's 10,000 voters in that space, then you can slice and dice the methodology and include digital and be careful about the proportions and you can get much better -- reality is, you'll get a higher rate of response than you would normally, and that

information can't be regarded as statistically significant, because the math doesn't work that way, but it's directional. the rest of the world works with directional research. so when i work on consumer-based stuff, which if i'm selling toothpaste or technology, i can't use the voter file, which is a remarkably effective tool, but i have to use some construct of big data. and what people forget, big data sounds really cool, it's just a work around. and it's good, gets better and better and better, but it's nowhere near as effective or accurate as the voter rolls in the world of public policy. anyway, divergent there. >> thanks. so, back to companies, media companies, so companies such as google, facebook, and twitter are making the case they are actually not media companies and should be -- they should take a hands-off role in policing content on their platforms. i want to get your takes on whether the benefits of free speech outweigh the consequences of the spread of false

information and how platforms might want to deal with bad actors trying to manipulate messaging. >> broad question. >> well, this is going to be a very complex problem for a long time. i think that -- i mean, there's a difference between what the hearings did on facebook when they were talking about russian collusion, and i totally agree, it was not -- the impact was not that great on this election, but the potential impact in some future election just continues to grow as rapidly, the foreign interference, grown more rapidly than the last 20 years. it will have an impact. how the industry itself deals with these issues, you know, it's going to be really difficult for them. i mean, to the extent an industry can have an ideology,

theirs is more antiregulatory, antigovernment, libertarian in many ways than other industries, even more conservative industries. they are going to resist any kind of regulation, and congress is going to hold, you know, particularly -- it is amazing how interesting congress gets into issues about elections. they have a little bit of self interest in how elections are conducted, so their aggressiveness on this issue will be pretty extensive. they will want to see some clean up your act kind of dynamic, but i think there will be resistance. we're a long way from figuring this out, too. a hell of a long way. >> so, i think i've already said i think it's almost impossible for -- almost impossible for government to really effectively regulate some of these

technologies, but i'll give you a hopeful thing, which is that, you know, also i think something useful for your engineering students who might be in the audience today, i think there's a movement towards the idea you don't have to measure just clicks or time on site or ad impressions, which is what a lot of these sites are designed to optimize towards. there are companies that try and sense when you are in danger of hurting yourself and try and help you with that, or there are things trying to measure things that are a little more human, little closer to the goals and, you know, reminded by some people say if you ever give an a.i. a problem like stop all human suffering, you know, easiest way to stop all human suffering is to kill all human beings. now there's no more suffering in the world, right? so sometimes there are unintended consequences of the

goals we set for these algorithms and we're realizing these consequences, and for the engineering students here, there are interesting ways, you know, to think about how can i measure, you know -- measuring things like, you know, fulfillment, happiness, you know, those are fuzzy constructs, but they are, if you can measure whether something is or is not a cat, you can measure some of these fuzzy constructs, as well. >> speaking carefully, because some of the companies are clients, there is, i think, a challenge within technology companies of hubris, and i think they tend to breathe their own exhaust a little bit too much, and they tend to be some of the worst corporate actors in america. one, for example, particular ride hailing app, the way they approach growth was to ignore the law. i'm not a law and order person, but the reality is, we live under a construct of laws, and

we have to respond to them and respect them. that particular car company, in every city that they rolled out to, they simply ignored it. and states. even with self driving cars. when they did something against the law, rather than working with another organization, fix this in a way that works for everybody in some degree, which means everybody walks away to some degree happy, as well as unhappy, they didn't. if you could imagine an oil company or a tobacco company behaving in a way many technology companies behave, they would be crucified. but so far that momentum is still there. i think there's a -- i don't think there's an appetite to self regulate. >> the companies that you were eluding to include tech companies and also traditional media companies, and you mentioned some metrics that

might be -- might provide more value to society, but i don't know if there's a connection between those metrics and what is good business for the companies. so do you see -- is that a problem? so that many of the media companies are more incentivized to maintain attention or maybe even loyalty to that media source, which seems like it's not in line necessarily with the value -- some of the values that were proposed as alternative benefits of these -- >> yeah. that's certainly true at the micro level for individual companies, but then, you know, eventually the things that people value and the things that companies value converge. there's -- so, i guess, you know, ultimately, for example, some of these platforms are paid by advertisers. there's advertisers on the platform, a lot of those are

brand advertisers, you know, they want to be associated with things that provide value and, you know, they don't -- there's a huge effort right now around brand safety, for example, where brands are removing their ads from places that are -- they feel are harming, you know, their consumers. and so, you know, and that's in some ways a response to every day consumers who are tweeting to these brands that, you know, look, here your ad is on this really offensive place. so, you know, it's kind of -- the world doesn't get there, like, right away, but eventually things converge towards the things that people value are the things that businesses will optimize towards, and there will be inefficiencies along the way that will be, you know, terrible, and there will be terrible consequences, but, you know, i think business as a whole will eventually get to a point where they are trying to

serve, you know, some of these larger goals, even if, you're right, some of these companies right now, the business models are not optimized towards that. >> i'd say there's a comparison here historically between television and online, and it's back to the issue of how you evaluate how many people are watching an ad. television adopted a universal method that was monopoly by the nielsen company that has become a standard measurement in the television industry. i mean, there has been arguments over various rating methodology changes and there hasn't been all happiness and sweetness, but mostly it's been universally accepted as the standard measurement. online nobody can figure out who the hell they are talking to. that's reality.

and there was an experiment that procter and gamble, which is arguably the largest consumer company in the world, did over the summer, where they basically -- their argument, based on a study done by advertising agencies in the united kingdom, is that we didn't really know who we were talking to and there were a lot of bots out there and other things we know are big problems, and what is impressions mean, and what are we getting for it and what not. so this study came across the atlantic. procter and gamble takes a look at it, so they decide to do an experiment. their experiment was for one quarter they dropped all their online advertising. which had been 20% of their budget, advertising budget. they just dropped it. and to see what impact it would have on their sales. what they uncovered was it had zero impact on their sales. absolutely zero.

then coca-cola did a study, which they wanted to try to figure out, okay, what media most influences people at the point of purchase. and they found out just slightly over 50% said television, and then in the teens were radio and, unbelievably enough, print. in the high single digits was online. so we're still in the infancy of this industry as an advertising platform, not as we all experience it every day getting online and doing with all the things we do, communicating with each other, getting information online, what not, but as an advertising platform, we're still in the infancy. we can't quite measure what we're getting for our bucks, and on the other hand, we can't stay away from it, and there's, as we

talked about, you know, there are situations where, you know, california. this is a big state, everybody knows that, also has two of the top ten television markets in the country, los angeles and san francisco. one in the top 20, 25, sacramento, another one is, like, 6, san diego. so we have four of the largest media markets in the country. what's that do? makes us the most expensive place to communicate in the world, and then we have this political setup where the whole state votes for everybody, so it's very, very expensive to communicate here. online gives people an option to do something other than mail people things, to talk to them. so everybody finds it very attractive, and i think the political community, whether it's opinion research or advertising or field people, whatever, everybody wants online to succeed. they are just not sure what they are getting for their buck right

now. which is a bad thing in a capitalist society. >> so, i guess related to that, another thing online allows you to do is do much more precise targeting. the next question is about that. targeted political ads on social media are unlike tv ads in that campaign opponents might not see and, therefore, can't respond to information in the ads. how will this change campaigns' approach going forward? >> well, i think that that is one of the advantages, obviously, targeting. it's also one of the limitations. limits the number of people you're communicating with, but you can do wonderful things online with targeting. did a ballot measure last november where we actually spent a whole hell of a lot of money on texting, because we wanted to find some way to talk to millennials, because we know they don't really watch television that much. so, you know, there are a lot --

people are going to explore all kinds of vehicles in order to talk in a targeted way, and ultimately, i think it will become more universal and media platform and people will talk to large numbers of voters online. >> yeah, i see lots of people using targeting to really impressive effect, you know, a lot of the companies i've worked at, you know, micro targeting, niche targeting. you know, think about entertainment. entertainment has historically been marketed to young men, young women, older men, older women, you know, we all know that our entertainment preferences are not so simple, and being able to market to, you know, market vikings to fans of "game of thrones," seems very obvious. being able to do those kinds of very obvious things is really helpful. and i guess, you know, the key

is some way to make it seem like more -- if some day this can be seen as more of a service and less like an intrusion, you know, i get ads that i am really genuinely happy to see, and i get ads that i'm not. >> yeah, so speaking to the targeting thing, it can be really useful, and there's a change in that kind of black box of digital spend. digital spend used to be kind of and largely still is evaluated kind of like a government program. how much money did you spend on it as opposed to who did it actually go to and tracking the folks that actually saw it. in terms of the demographics and so forth. that was hard. difficult, that was the gap. there are companies that are either being purchased by or partnering with isps, so they are able to track that spend to an isp so you have an incredible not only targeting by demographic, but you know who digested the information and what way they digested it. little creepy, but it's that

missing link of efficacy and it came online over the last couple years and it's getting more and more prevalent throughout different media markets. it's incredibly useful for me, because i can do visual ad testing, especially advertising, perfectly aligned to this. in a period -- takes a little bit of time, but in a period of one and a half weeks or so i can figure out and do testing of a couple of different concepts and get very, very accurate information in terms of who it is most effective with. so for my little world it's becoming more and more useful. >> specifically when there's messaging from one campaign with targeted approaches, there may not be a chance for opponents to respond. is this something that's likely to be exploited, or is this -- do you find this problematic? >> i don't think anything really occurs in that degree of a vacuum. some point or another it's visible.

>> i agree totally. i think people -- once you are out there in the world, people are going to find out about it outside of the targeted universe. so if you're saying extraordinarily controversial things to one audience, you know, and something entirely different to another audience, if you don't get caught, it will be a minor miracle. >> okay, and so final prepared question, 2018 is right around the corner, and we don't yet have solid evidence that facebook's efforts to combat fake news are successful. what's the 2018 political information outlook and how will it be different from 2016, and will our facebook feeds and google searches help us make better decisions about whom to vote for, or will it be worse? >> well, we had an election last week, and it was remarkable, particularly virginia, which was

contested. new jersey, not so much. i mean, people didn't come away and say fake news had some profound impact on the election. i mean, they talked about what the two candidates were saying and how they were advertising, how they were organizing, and in the postmortem it was who showed up and how they voted and all the things he does that tells us what happened after the fact. but i thought it was interesting that we did not see a huge fake news, you know, dynamic, at least in virginia. >> i mean, i'll say i think it's going to get worse. it's going to be worse. it's probably going to get worse for a little while, and it's not because of the platforms. i think the platforms are going to try to get better and be largely the same or make improvements around the edges until they figure it out, but i think what is changing is that

we're that much more polarized than we were five years ago. and if you look at, you know, measures of political polarization, they were all, you know, getting worse and worse in very alarming ways. and so, again, where i started was that a lot of the problems we see around fake news are a reflection of the partisanship we see. look at them, the race in alabama right now, the kinds of things people are saying about what is true, what is not true, who you support, what that says about your beliefs about what is true and what's not true. it's, obviously, a lot of motivated reasoning going on, and it's not just limited to people in alabama. there's research about how, you know, really smart people, the smarter you are, the better you are at justifying the thing you want to believe. you use that intelligence to figure out a way to believe what you want. so, i think things are going to get worse, but the hope is that, you know, there are also people

putting on conversations like this who are trying to not be so polarized, to make things better. hopefully, if those efforts succeed, then i think that's what will solve things, not technology. >> yeah, the only thing i would say is that bubble, you know, that twitter and facebook create and allow people to kind of self identify the circle that they want to be around and that language and that talk and that chatter continues and continues and continues and, obviously, political circles it's highly charged, that has become exacerbated by the algorithms that are part of this. if you raise your hand and say i'm interested in that, you click on something that has a message, then you're going to get more and more and more and, you know, the hamster is getting fed more of whatever drug is going to eventually kill it, so that people's -- people naturally get more frustrated with that stuff. the tensions rise, and i think that's a real problem. it panders to human behavior

that is not noblist. i don't think it's the end of the world. i think we'll adjust. i think you had a point earlier about companies and them having a human kind of nature at some point, they self correct. people do, too. that's why companies self correct, is because they are from folks. i think it's somewhere in there, the intensity, hopefully, will kind of go down, but i think next year it will probably be crazy. >> i don't know. actually, your larger point that this is a reflection of the larger political polarization, this is not creating the larger political polarization. and you go back, nixon was bashing the media long before there was anything -- any online world or anything else. he was bashing dan rather daily in the white house, so, i mean, there's been an element of this in our politics for a long time.

and it just -- it's just heightened a little bit in this you can find your own world to talk to and you don't have to talk to the rest of the world. that's somewhat of a new phenomena. >> i think i was a little bit answering the question about fake news, because i think fake news is a sense of a polarization, and so i don't think the platforms are necessarily exacerbating the fake news, but i think to your point, i totally agree that the platforms are exacerbating our polarization in some ways. and, you know, i think that's, again, somewhat of a reflection of -- there's a study out that human beings are three times more likely to click on things that are negatively framed than positively framed. we've evolved to pay attention to negative things, because that's what stopped us from getting killed, our ancestors from getting killed. you don't pay attention to some danger signal, you die. you don't pay attention to some positive signal, you miss out on

a lunch. we've evolved to pay attention to negative things. therefore, algorithms optimize towards negative things. the media environment, everyone learns. and that's a problem. it's definitely leading to the polarization we see, so -- but yeah, that, to me, i think is a problem. i'd work on the polarization, less so on the fake news. a lot of the research we do is about how people are social and emotional first, rational second. we're always going to believe what we want to believe, so we have to work on that on the polarization layer, less on the rational what is the information i got. >> you mentioned alabama. that is really an interesting case study, and now you have a political universe that is extremely conservative, and extremely conservative candidate is now being accused of a horrendous acts, and on the news

we're listening to how the community that supports judge moore is trying to figure out how to rationalize this in a way that they can continue to vote for him. and it is like -- it's almost painful to listen to, because the truth is, they shouldn't vote for him, because he's a bad person, but they don't want to go there, so let's blame "the washington post" instead of ourselves. >> that's the cognitive dissidence, probably one of the most painful things you can live with in life. think about it, think about the most painful things you can think of, your son or daughter is accused of murder, right? your favorite sports team, you know, has -- the star quarterback is accused of sexual assault, you know, the person you admire most -- if it were

someone you didn't care about, it wouldn't matter, but it's that cognitive dissidence, what i want and one sphere what i believe and what i want in another sphere, it is painful even to watch. >> what if the manager of your favorite team pitches the wrong guy in the seventh game of the world series and it doesn't turn out well? >> the onion is kind of peeling pretty rapidly on that, right? rnc pulled support for him. >> yeah. >> i don't see that cognitive dissidence thing continuing for much longer. exactly right, there's a period where everyone tries to figure out -- people have a surprised look on their face when they are dead, right, it's not really happening. it's happening, but it takes a little while. even something like this, can't possibly be real, or maybe there's an explanation, then it becomes pretty evident pretty quickly, at least in this case,

that you have a real problem. >> you have to resolve it, so cognitive dissidence, i am a conservative in alabama, i want to vote for a conservative, i want to have a conservative senator. this man has been accused of assaulting teenaged girls, right? something has to give. you cannot sit there with those statements forever. you have to resolve it. you either have to believe that it's fake, or you have to stop supporting him, and you have to resolve it. and that's what people do all the time. they resolve it one way or another. they believe that something is fake news, or they stop supporting a candidate. >> or they have a third choice, which is they don't participate. which may be the outcome. >> we have time for audience questions, about 15 minutes. anyone? >> shout it? >> mike coming to you. >> mike's coming to you.

>> i have a question about if there will ever be a media source that the majority of the population believes, again to the extent that people believe tv news, or took it for its word or took it as truth in the '60s and '70s, like you mention dan rather. will there ever be a figure on national television again where the majority, maybe 70%, 80%, 90% of the population believes them? >> well, i think the first answer to that is, it's going to be difficult, because there's an enormous amount of media fragmentation. '50s, '60s, through the '70s, into the '80s, you had three

networks that were dominant, and, you know, you had three choices. that was it. some people like cronkite, some people like brinkley, you know, not a lot a lot of people liked but nbc and cbs were dom nants. now you have so many more media outlets that people have a lot more choices. some of them ideological choices. some are stylistic. ted turner started cnn. people laughed about it. thought it was a crazy idea. people watching all news station on cable and it turn ed out to e a pre-cursor of all that's come since. >> i'm going to venture there will be a time.

there's a lot of agreement. there's more agreement between red states and blue states than amongst men and women than young people and old people than americans and people across the world. part of the partisanship. we all agree that, i don't know that clayton is a good pitcher or it's just when they become controversial and become part of this partisanship that it all breaks down. i think there may come a time when it's not, you see this when

like war happens. people rally around the flag and we stop thinking of ourselves as red state and blue state mem americans. it will revert to the things that most of us kind of agree upon. there will be a lot more agreement. >> you can divide it into pre-fox and post-fox when news became ideologically charged on both sides. prior to that you had these term centrists. those personalities were turned to present a reason analysis of

the issues. >> it's entertainment. it's not really news. >> david. >> rephrasing may be what robby was saying as part of the response. the partisanship may not be on action but opinion. do you see a role for media to unhelp in doing this.

>> we're doing research on just that question. it's the idea that if i watch saw i'm at a football field and watch my team get in a fight. well now i want to fight with fans of the other team. there's some bipartisan bills that get passed that don't get as much attention.

if we do this research right and it shows what i think it will show, that's a basic psychology finding. watching people fight all the time makes you you want to fight. you have the opportunity and the opposite is true to watching people get along makes you want to get along. hopefully they will take that step. now we have very severe polarization within the parties.

the political boths and i think that's pretty unpredictable where that ends up. >> we have time for one final question. >> we mentioned how certain algorithms are set up so you click on one message and it starts to recognize and feed you similar ideological messages whatever platform you're on facebook or google. in terms of combatting extreme

partisanship would there be an evening to working in an opposite manner so when you have people who are on a strict news diet of either side that maybe exposure to ads of the opposing ideological party might help them be a little more reseptember ireceptive to those arguments or open up to debate so that partisanship doesn't ghet in the way of good public policy? >> i only ask whose going to pay for it. it's a nice idea but they're a company. they are selling space. the reason that algorithm works is it's the same marketing approach, i went online and looking for pair of pants and i get these different things about pants. it's very simple theoretically. i love the nobility of your idea but someone's got to pay the

tab. >> it can't all be optimized against clicks. it will driver away users and they are only useful in so far as they serve users. there is certainly precedent for companies giving up some of that attention and giving up some of the engagement in service of something that looks closer. it's not necessarily the ultimate variable but it's something that's a less bad variable. the only thing i would add to what you said is showing people opposite information is i would just tweak that a little bit. a lot of our rezench search is are not affected by more

information but human connection and by stories. i don't talk about marriage law and history of marriage. i show them gay people who are relatively normal. they know them and like them. that affects their attitude. what would you want to share, something more emotional and social rather than rational. >> okay. we're coming to the end of this program. i'd like to thank the panel and i'd like to thank you for terrific job of moderating. i think this was illuminate nating and really fascinating. we should come back and do it again. we're going to do more and more of this as we go into the next semester. i would like to thank you, the students at usc. you're active and participating

and ask great questions. we've had a terrific semester. i hope next semester lives up to it. thanks, everybody. have a good exam period. we kicked off the tour on september 15th and now have visited 12 state capitals. our next stop is tallahassee, florida. we'll be there on december 6th with live interviews during washington journal.

earlier today ben carson discussed ongoing efforts to address homelessness among veterans. the two pyappeared at a newly on building that says nearly 60 units set aside for veterans that needed a home. this is just under 20 minutes. >> good morning, everybody. i guess it's still morning. almost 11:38. we've had a chance this mng