Flora Bush - the child left behind
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Political Affiliation on Campus
The Facebook is an extremely popular social software on campuses
around the country. According to Fred Stutzman, (hat tip: Paul Jones)
85% of incoming Freshmen at UNC - Chapel Hill had a facebook account
on day one of class.
If you follow that link to Fred, you will see that he used the Search
function of the Facebook to look at the breakdown of UNC students by
political affiliation. Intrigued, I did the same thing for NCSU. After
an hour of struggling to import the Excel image (that is larger than a
couple of square milimeters) into Blogger, I gave up, so here are the
raw data. You can make your own graph, or just compare the raw numbers
between the two campuses:
Political Affiliation: Female / Male
Very Liberal: 244 / 264
Liberal : 1267 / 1122
Moderate: 1101 / 1491
Conservative: 1560 / 2312
Very Conservative: 119 / 320
Libertarian : 38 / 122
Apathetic : 94 / 309
Other : 152 / 509
-------------
Total 4575 / 6449
Update: I figured out how to resize the image (I did it in MSPaint!):
The obvious difference is, as is expected, that the students at UNC
report themselves to be more liberal than NCSU students. No surprises
there. In both schools, guys are more conservative than girls - also
no surprise. On both campuses, very few students choose the extreme
options ("very liberal" or "very conservative").
What can we glean from these data? I say, not much. There is just too
much information missing.
Sampling: What proportion of NCSU students have a profile on Facebook?
Are the men or the women more likely to put up a profile? What is the
sex-ratio of students at NCSU in the first place? Are people of a
particular political ideology more or less likely to sign up on the
facebook? Does that differ between the sexes (e.g., female
libertarians are less likely to sign up than statistics would expect,
but male libertarians are as likely as anyone else to sign up)?
It is not neccessary to choose any political affiliation when making a
profile. What proportion of students have profiles with no political
affiliation at all? Does that differ between males and females? Does
that differ between people of different political ideologies?
Searching: What does the facebook search engine do? What proportion of
hits tabulated above are alumni (graduated last year), grad students,
faculty or staff? How many of the 'hits' are non-existent people? I
have seen, when searching faculty, profiles of Albus Dumbledore, Rush
Limbaugh, Andy Rooney and many other celebrities and fictional
characters. Coach Herb Sendak is listed as a professor of philosophy!
Self-reporting: How accurate is the self-reporting? Are students
choosing 'moderate', 'apathetic' or 'other' (or not to sign up at all)
in order to not allienate their friends? Is the choice to avoid the
tag "very" motivated by the same reasons? After all, the total number
of friends is a currency of prestige on the facebook.
Meaning of labels: I think that people who reported being "very
conservative" and "very liberal" can be believed on their word. The
former are members of Young Republicans, GOP activists, and Christian
fundamentalists. The latter are largely "Deaniacs", with some other
Democratic activists, College Democrats, and Greens thrown in the mix,
too.
What do the other labels mean? I did a little scan of the profiles
listed as "other". Most people on facebook list membership of various
virtual "clubs" or groups. I was expecting to find some Greens (the
only major party that is not a choice on facebook) in this group.
However, most of the "other" have listed membership in groups
concerned with student life, popular culture, partying, drinking and
sex - no politics. Shouldn't they picked "apathetic" instead? I have
found some, among the "other" who are members of a variety of
Republican, conservative, and Bush/Cheney clubs. Shouldn't these
people self-report being "very conservative" instead?
How about Libertarians? It is a strong third party in North Carolina.
Why were there four times more male than female self-reported
libertarians? Is that the sex-ratio of the party membership in the
state? Also, "libertarian" is a very inexact term. What does it really
mean? I know some students who consider themselves libertarian, yet
when poked with questions, reveal to be pure liberals. Do they know
the meaning of labels?
What does "moderate" mean? If you considered yourself a moderate, you
are likely not paying attention. I assume that the concept of
moderation in everything, including politics, appeals to many. But,
moderation in politics is a meaningless concept - it reveals lack of
understanding, information and motivation. Most of the people who list
themselves as moderate are, more honestly, apathetic. Some are perhaps
liberals who think they are conservatives because of the way they were
raised.
The biggest categories - liberals and conservatives - are probably
even more or a grab-bag of apathetic, very liberal, very conservative,
and libertarian students, many of whom are misguided about the proper
meaning of the labels.
It is always a surprise for self-professed conservatives when they try
to do various political quizzes online and find themselves to the Left
of Marx. The meaning of terms has been obfuscated, often on purpose,
by the two big political parties. Many core liberal values, especially
those that most Americans hold the dearest, are erroneously believed
to be conservative due to historical contingency that these values
were held by the Republican Party some decades ago. Fiscal
responsibility is a good example.
Many people vote GOP because they (correctly) equate modern GOP with
conservatism and erroneosly think of themselves as conservatives. If
given a qeustionnaire, they invariably turn out to be quite liberal.
The Dems need to do something about this misperception, as it is a
major source of drain of voters away from it.
A final note on the Facebook study: most college students do not care
much about politics. They do not know enough. Their self-reported
political affiliation is a pretty accurate break-down of what their
parents think (not neccessarily correctly) is their political
ideology.
On the other hand, college is supposed to be a place where one
questions and leaves parents' beliefs. That is the place where one
obtains information and facts, where one realizes that one has
previously held erroenous ideas about history, economics, law,
gender-relations, religion, science and politics. Thus, it is to be
expected that college turns people into liberals, as the whole fabric
of conservatism is based on erroneous and long-debunked notions about
human nature, operation of complex systems (including economies) and
everything else. It would be interesting to repeat the facebook search
with divisions by year and see if recent alumni, grad students and
seniors are more liberal than freshmen.
Update: Thoughts From Kansas did the analysis of the Facebook at KU.
Update 2: Fred Sutzman has more on the UNC use of Facebook, focusing
on the freshman class. I initially got on the Facebook in order to see
how many students are blogging (and Fred looks at that, too). A
relatively small proportion of students put up a website on their
profile. When they do, it is usually a Flickr (or some other photo)
site. Some have websites made in class and not updated for two years.
I found a few xanga, MSNSpaces, and a few LiveJournals, but not a
single Blogger, not to mention more involved blogging platforms. Are
the kids not blogging? Are they hiding their blogs/journals? I know of
several students who have LiveJournals but do not provide links to
them from their Facebook profiles - in other words their FB profile is
their public face and their LJ is their private face, to be kept
separate at all times and at all costs. When I go to bloggercons, I
see grey hair everywhere. Are the kids going to take up blogging
later, once they ar ea little older, smarter, better educated and have
something to say beyond gossip?
Update 3: More thoughts: Someone with time and patience should look at
political self-description of freshmen by major, and compare the
numbers to that of the seniors in the same majors. Are conservatives
drawn to business and liberals to sociology or does spending four
years studying business turn one into a conservative and studying
sociology makes one a liberal? Are geneticists and biochemists more
conservative than ecologists and physiologists to begin with, or only
after years of study? How do philosophers stack up against physicists?
If college experience naturally turns one into a liberal, which majors
are most successful (if any) at engendering that change? Do some
majors turn kids into conservatives?
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Carnivals.....
Sneak's Wild World of Blogging carnival is back after the summer
break.
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Link-Love: New Political Friends...
G. D. Frogsdong on the Gerbils of War and a conversation with an
anti-protester in DC last week.
Bitter Green Gazette is a blog about agriculture and food business.
The fault lines of industrial agriculture is an example of an analytic
post. The posts collecting the current news are titled "Roundup,
Ready", for which Monsanto threatened to sue. The Gazette's answer: Go
to Hell!
Prairie Angel looks at Seattle as a lesson for rebuilding New Orleans.
This really makes me want to go to Seattle and take a tour of the
Underground!
Dadahead on the guy in philosophy class, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and
crazy conservatives getting crazier by the minute.
Preemptive Karma links to and article about a new textbook for
studying the Bible, promotes the new DefCon Blog, slams Hidrocket and
Falwell.
The Token Reader can make even Friday Random Ten into a riveting read.
How about open source code for voting machines?
Jim Johnson on the beauty of photographs depicting sorrow, images of
child labor, documentary photography and embededness.
Blue Meme reveals the identity of the Intelligent Designer(s).
What is Rovenge? The Generik Brand takes it to the Dems and figures
out how to separate the wheat from the chaff there. And a serious one
on Intelligent Design.
Is Murky Thoughts on hiatus?
You gotta love The Disenchanted Forest, if nothing else but for the
post titles, like Frist's diagnosis of Schiavo more blind than his
trust, Philly Rag writer perfects the cranio-anal inversion, Frist is
gonna need a bigger fan and Waiting for the Soylent Green Medicare
Plan. Then go beyond the titles for the meat of it.
Birmingham Blues finds an ideal job for Brownie.
Phaedra of Smoke and Mirrors went to the DC rally.
Five Wells on privacy, tragedy of the bunnies, gerin oil and geraniol
and technology.
Under No Circumastances is one of many commenting on the recent paper
about the correlation between religiosity and social ills, but goes a
step further.
Speedkill dissects religion and Coulter.
A Beaumont evacuee blogs about Rita, Dallas, Houston and everything
else.
Circadian Rhythm blog (no, not Circadiana) on Intelligent Design.
Rigorous Intuition on remote viewing.
Draft for War in Iraq as economic choice, by DaveAwayFromHome.
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Edwards in the news
From an OAC e-mail:
Mark Your Calendars!
Senator Edwards will be on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Wednesday, October 5.
Don't miss Thomas Oliphant's column about Senator Edwards.
Restoring the American Dream
Senator Edwards has been quite busy and we wanted to let you know
about some of the things he's been up to! Recently, he delivered a
very well-received speech to the Center for American Progress in
which he laid out his plan for fighting poverty in America, and
this past week he traveled to Moscow on behalf of the Council on
Foreign Relations.
Senator Edwards serves as Co-Chairman of the bipartisan Council on
Foreign Relations Task Force, which assesses the relationship
between the U.S. and Russia. His co-chair on the task force is
former Congressman and Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, who joined
Senator Edwards on the trip. In Moscow the two of them met with an
array of officials and experts - including Kremlin officials,
Russian Duma (parliament) members, business leaders, NGO experts
and activists, and journalists - and they also had a chance to meet
some Russians as they walked through Moscow (Senator Edwards says
that the traffic there is so unbearable that they found it easier
to walk to many of their meetings). Now that he's back, he and Mr.
Kemp are preparing to convey their findings to the task force,
which will in turn issue a formal report suggesting specific,
bipartisan policies for improving our relationship with Russia.
Senator Edwards says during his trip he heard many things that left
him with a deep sense of possibility for this relationship, but he
also feels that he has a greater appreciation of the challenges
that he and the other members of the task force will face as they
try to improve that relationship.
We'll be hearing more about the task force and its findings next
year, when the official report is published.
Click here to learn more about the Council Task Force on
Russian-American Relations.
Sen. Edwards Speaks at Center for American Progress
On Monday September 21st, before leaving for Russia, Senator
Edwards spoke at the Center for American Progress. He discussed the
widespread poverty exposed by Hurricane Katrina, and he proposed
steps that we as a nation can take to combat poverty in the Gulf
Coast and across the country.
Download the MP3 of the speech, read the speech, or
watch the video.
A key part of Senator Edwards' plan is the New America Initiative.
It's modeled after FDR's WPA program, which employed millions of
Americans during the Great Depression. Through the New America
Initiative, residents of the Gulf Coast region would rebuild their
communities with the help of the government, nonprofit
organizations, unions, and private businesses. This concerted
effort would restore the region, and it would provide the residents
with good-paying jobs and benefits. In addition, the residents
would develop valuable work skills that would enable them to get
good-paying jobs in the future. This initiative could not only get
the region and its people back on their feet; it could make life
better than it was before for the thousands of Gulf Coast residents
who were living and working in poverty before Katrina struck.
To convince the President and leaders in Congress that this
initiative must be implemented, the call for it must be loud and
continuous. Thousands have already joined in. Please add your voice
to this call.
Thank you for your support! And if you haven't already, please
visit our web site. There you will find regular updates on Senator
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