Knowing and Making

The Economist is running a one-hour chat session on the #askeconomist hashtag today, which I'd recommend for some thought-provoking questions. My own interest, of course, is in the behavioural, cognitive and information-processing aspects of this. Two particular questions are relevant: Rational people would apply an appropriate level of skepticism to crowdsourced news; weighting its credibility according to who the messenger is, by the number of times the same message has been recycled or retweeted, by the number of independent sources. But real people do not. Psychology tells us that we inevitably overweight a message the first time we hear it (anchoring), and by the degree to which it confirms our prior beliefs (confirmation bias). The role of a professional journalist, in part, is to check facts and give us appropriate caveats on how much we should believe what we're told. How can this be done in the world of participatory journalism? Maybe we can develop automated to...

I couldn't make it to Paywall Strategies 2011 today, but it's a subject that's very interesting to me so I thought it was a good time to write about it. The whole question of paying for online news - and other information - combines two of my main research areas. First, it's all about pricing, and one of the most interesting and important new phenomena in pricing at that. And second, because the argument can only be resolved with a deep understanding of cognitive incentives (and disincentives).   In fact, the area of micropayments was one of the earliest case studies I considered when getting into the pricing world several years ago. It's one of the clearest departures from conventional supply and demand dynamics. Here's an example:   13% of people say they would be willing to pay for content online. And yet only 4% do. Why the gap? Yes, there's always a difference between what people say they'll do, and what they actually do. But from experience wi...

An intriguing situation with an advertising campaign in which the government promotes breastfeeding of babies. The "Breast is Best" campaign, aside from biasing sales in Kentucky Fried Chicken, is intended to encourage new mothers to breastfeed their babies instead of using bottles. Breastfeeding generally is thought to improve the health of the baby and, possibly, also of the mother. However, the campaign appears to have the surprising side-effect of reducing  the number of breastfeeding mothers. Apparently, highlighting the fact that people need to be encouraged to breastfeed creates an unintended norm...leading many people to (not consciously, I believe) think that bottle feeding is the default option. Therefore, a pro-breastfeeding organisation has asked the government to stop the campaign. I'm sure the new coalition, with its new budget constraints on the COI (Central Office of Information - the civil service advertising department) will be happy to oblige. ...

Sad news of a plane crash in Cameroon . There were eleven passengers on board and the search party has not yet confirmed whether there are any survivors. But here's a slightly awkward quote from the information minister: "For the moment, between nine and 10 corpses have been retrieved," Information Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary told a news conference in Yaounde on Monday. Think about that for a moment. Ewww.

Courtesy of Charlie Brooker and Farnam Street .

The Big Ideas talk this month was about The Future of News , presented by Tim Luckhurst - former editor of The Scotsman and now professor of journalism at University of Kent. Although the discussion wasn't the most enlightening use I've made of an hour and a half in the last month (or even today), it threw up a few intriguing points: That subset of "citizen journalism" which relies on unpaid, part-time people is unlikely to replace paid journalists in uncovering real stories - or, increasingly, even in the comment-and-opinion world. Indeed, I notice very clearly the differing impact of articles on this blog, between those which I've researched thoroughly and spent real time on, versus those which I dash off in half an hour as summaries of other thoughts. The correlation isn't perfect ( this article is my most popular ever) but the ones that people have really commented on, and which have found their way onto places I care about, are mostly the ones I...

Best article title I've seen since Super Cally Go Ballistic, Celtic are Atrocious and Diana fund pays out to Gypsies and Asylum Seekers in the Express .

From the FT:  Acrimony dashes Doha hopes : Normally, the closing session of the forum displays ritualistic expectation that the trade round will be completed in the coming year, but there was little such optimism in 2009. From the BBC:  Ministers promise 2009 trade deal Trade ministers from 24 countries have pledged that they will agree a new world trade deal by the end of 2009...most of these talks in previous years ended with similarly optimistic statements Huh?

The most unusual juxtaposition of 'Iceland' and 'Woolies' in the news in recent months: People in Iceland - a country currently in desperate economic trouble - have shipped jumpers and blankets to pensioners in England this week, to keep them warm in the winter. A container of woolies arrived in the north-east of England after an appeal on an Icelandic radio station. They were handed to local charities in Hull on Thursday. Definitely up there with Kerry Katona as amusing coincidences go.