“Geek the Vote ’08: PM’s Science and Technology Election Guide” is an article about science and technology relating to the election. It is a section of the popular mechanics website; it visually displays the names of candidates and then a link to a section about their proposal relating to specific issues including, auto, digital technology, energy/ climate, environment, firearms, infrastructure, science/education and space.
The text preceding the visual display states, “Popular Mechanics compiled these links to make it easier to compare leading presidential candidates on several issues of interest to our readers, primarily in areas of science and technology. We did not analyze any of the proposals, and we do not necessarily endorse them” In the section where they explain the methods they used in putting this together, they reiterate the non-bias nature of the section and provide details of how the information is collected. People sometimes feel it is hard to obtain non-bias political information, is a tool like this effective in providing information for voters?
Looking at the chart was also interesting to see how some of the issues had many more proposals than others and what the cause of that might be.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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As someone interested in the specifics behind a presidential candidate's ideas but without much time, I lack confidence in my knowledge of all the things that a given candidate advocates for or in how to prioritize when probing deeper on specific issues. Realizing that most mass media only cover the sensational, I put little faith in any understanding derived from these sources. Generally, I like these comparative charts for their more comprehensive overview and often use them as a starting point, however, I recall recently looking at a similar chart on CNN and thinking that whoever wrote it seemed partial to Hillary Clinton and that the information was so selectively presented that it added to bias that I felt already existed. As opposed to the CNN graph, this site clearly explains where the information is and is not coming from and how they choose to communicate it. So while this method is not always effective, in my opinion credibility here has been established on this site. What is interesting to me is that the source itself is unknown to me and yet I trust it more than the CNN graph. This serves as a reminder that name is not always enough in gaining trust, communicating the specific method used to derive conclusions, especially for controversial topics such as politics, has more merit to some.
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