Social Media is Growing as a News Source

Posted on by Alex M. Hochberger, MBA
newspaper folded up

Despite the Plethora of #FakeNews, social media is growing as a news source. Even more shocking, its rapidly growing in the over 50 set, while younger Americans seems to have peaked, albeit at 78%.

Thanks to Pew Research for the breakdown, Key trends in social and digital news media. I hope that they’ll update this, because it’s a few months old already, but the trends are clear.

Social Media is Catching Up with Television

News Sources Over Time

In 2016, Television beat Online News by 19 Points. In 2017, Television beat Online News by 7 Points. We’ll expect that 2018 numbers will show that Online is overtaking Television. The shift is rapidly, with explosion is those getting their news on mobile devices.

It’s NOT the Young Driving these Trends

Kristen Bialik and Katerina Matsa Report:

More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (85%) now get news on a mobile device, up from 72% in 2016. The recent surge has mainly come from growth among older Americans. Roughly two-thirds (67%) of those ages 65 and older now get news on a mobile device, a 24-percentage-point jump from 2016 and about three times the share in 2013. Mobile news use also grew among those ages 50 to 64, with about eight-in-ten (79%) now getting news on mobile, about double the share from 2013. Large increases in mobile news use also occurred among those in lower-income households.

If you think that this is a trend among the younger demographic, it’s not. Younger people embraced mobile years ago, the growth is in the senior demographic.

Two out of Three “Senior Citizens” (65+) get their news on a mobile device. Contrary to the image of elderly voters staring at Fox News for hours on end, the growth is among older Americans and lower-income Americans.

Online News Matters. Mobile News Matters.

Do They Believe The Online News

They say that they don’t, they see lots of fake and misleading news, but they keep consuming it. How does a plethora of fake news being consumed impact your perceptions of reality? Is your brain capable of filtering out the misinformation?

Only 5% of people have a lot of trust in the news that they are consuming. People only recognize the source of the news 50% of the time, which creates tremendous opportunities for purveyors of questionable news to impact people that may or may not realize that it is coming from a questionable news source.

The efforts at “Fact Checking” are largely limited to national sources and campaigns. At local levels, there is little to no attempts to filter out fake news. We saw a plethora of nonsense news explode nationally in 2016, but how many local sources are we seeing explode now, pushing nonsensical stories to a willing audience.

How Does This Opinion Leaders

You need to be online, you need to engage with online news, and you need to be promoting in Social Media. Even the people you think aren’t paying attention online, are. The vast majority of Americans now get some or all of their news online, predominately on a mobile device. This shift has happened rapidly, with rapid increases in the last two years.

If you reach out to people the same way in 2018 that you did in 2016 or 2014, you will be shocked at how much the electorate has changed.

Branding in Politics: All the Difference in the World

Posted on by Alex M. Hochberger, MBA

Retirement Savings is probably the most challenging economic issue facing the country. I presuppose that the issues with resolving the “crisis” are not political, but marketing.

Nataxis Global Asset Management commissioned a survey, and Time Magazine is reporting that 82% of Millennials support mandatory retirement plans and 75% support mandatory matching contributions.

Intuitively this makes sense, 82% of Boomers are counting on social security, but only 55% of Millennials think that social security will be there for them.

Interesting, if you ask people about expanding or cutting social security, according to Huffington Post, support for increasing social security reaches 70% among Millennials and 75% for Baby Boomers.

What does this mean:

  1. Expanding Social Security is VERY Popular
  2. Mandatory Retirement Savings in personal accounts is VERY Popular
  3. Mandatory Retirement Matches is VERY Popular
  4. Cutting Social Security is VERY Un-Popular

Notice a pattern here? Social Security is funded via a mandatory payroll tax on the employee and employer, a “match” if you will. The “optional” Bush Plan 10 years ago was super complex, was based on optional contributions to private accounts that would reduce benefits, and other confusing options.

What if instead the plan were phrased as:

  1. Expanding Social Security with Mandatory Retirement Accounts
  2. Employees and Employers would be required to contribute
  3. The accounts would be private, and default to Treasury Bills
  4. People could move their Social Security Investment Account to fiduciaries, or not, with limited investment options

That sounds economically, exactly like privatization. But every branding exercise would focus on expanding social security. Now sell your Social Security Expansion plan via Social Media, and you have a winner.

Sen. Schumer’s Attempt to Intimidate Facebook

Posted on by Alex M. Hochberger, MBA

So our wonderful Senate, which has decided to punt on any actual governing in favor of executive departments and the judiciary, has decided to weigh in on Facebook’s privacy policies…  In fairness, it’s just a few Senators, not the entire Senate, but still, this issue is greatly concerning.  Whether it is summoning private businesses for a dressing down, like Goldman Sachs, or now Facebook, the tendency of the Senate to weigh in on individual businesses attempting to intimidate them is greatly disconcerting.

Officially, hearings are supposed to be fact finding when bringing outside individuals in (as opposed to oversight of government bodies), but in reality, it looks like posturing, pandering, and intimidation.  Now, if they are concerned about privacy on the web, and wanted to bring Mr. Zuckerberg in to weigh in on the impact, that would seem perfectly reasonable.  But to instead just send a letter from someone who helps makes laws is really disconcerting.

If they believe that the legal regime doesn’t protect privacy, propose a law to protect it.  However, to simply pander by attacking a high profile business is pandering at best, and an attempt to gain extra legal powers by the government through intimidation at worst.

Whole Foods Boycott, Free Speech in Modern America

Posted on by Alex M. Hochberger, MBA

I am really concerned by the movement to boycott Whole Foods because of a political position taken by the CEO in an editorial to the Wall Street Journal.  In the editorial, CEO John Mackey expresses his fear of the proposals from Washington, and shares with the readers what Whole Foods has done regarding health care for its employees and urges some common sense reforms to the system, some of which are in the proposal.

Aghast that Whole Foods is a business operation, the upper middle class liberals took to the Internet to punish this company for its CEO being proud of what they did in the company and sharing the experience with the readers of the Wall Street Journal.

Now, Health Care Reform is a pressing issue in America, and has dominated the news and the political cycle for this summer.  Mr. Mackey expressed his opinions and experiences.  He hasn’t used his position at Whole Foods to affect the political debate, he isn’t having the stores he runs promote his agenda.  He, as a private citizen with some knowledge of health care costs as a major employer wrote a well thought out, intelligent editorial, one that some of his customers might disagree with.

As a result, they are calling for his head and a boycott of the firm, putting his livelihood in jeopardy because he disagree with them on a political issue.  Now, this isn’t government censorship directly, but given how much of corporate capital is controlled by pension funds for public employees, for example, that could vote their shares to endanger his job, there is just a wee bit of potential government censorship here.  More importantly, Americans should all be discussing this issue and debating it, and by attacking Whole Foods for the CEO disagreeing with them, it is simply shutting down debate.

If Whole Foods was endorsing his position and broadcasting it in the stores, fine, you have a cause.  But to attack a business because of the CEO’s personal politics, that seems like a way to simple stifle debate in America.  If Whole Foods is neutral, but Mr. Mackey takes a position, Whole Foods should be left alone, and Mr. Mackey should be able to express a position without people going after his livelihood.