Online News Surveys

I frequent the MSNBC website for the latest news, especially at work. I notice that there are always lots of surveys on the site. In my opinion, I think that the government may be using these online survey results from the News websites to obtain information about society's opinions and feelings on different news items. It's an easy way to track people's reactions about current events. Feed that data into complex computer programs and over time, they can generate a lot of information about society's views as a whole. Just something to think about.

Of course they do. Hell, the government conducts its own polls to gague public support and opinion all the time. There is nothing secret nor sinister about that. And its generally what the government in a free country should do: monitor how people feel about certain things so they can act accordingly the way popular sentiment and desire leads.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
Of course they do. Hell, the government conducts its own polls to gague public support and opinion all the time. There is nothing secret nor sinister about that. And its generally what the government in a free country should do: monitor how people feel about certain things so they can act accordingly the way popular sentiment and desire leads.

I disagree..I think the true purpose of the polls is to see if thier mind controll projects are working on us (subliminal messaging etc) ... then they know what they have to do more of in specific areas to get us to act more how they want us to. It's mass mind control 101, we are the lab rats..

Also how can you poll 3,000 people, and advertise it as though millions were polled??? example..." In a poll taken, 75% of Doctors favored abortions" Most of the time they dont tell you that those Doctors only numbered in the hundreds, from a few hospitals, in comparison with the thousands across the nation. They play with it to suit thier need like everything else, its a large topic..we could talk or hours..
[edit on 2-9-2006 by maathotep]

[edit on 2-9-2006 by maathotep]

Well, web polls like the ones of MSNBC and the like are clearly for entertainment purposes only - and they state that. For a poll to even begin to become considered somewhat legitimate the pollster needs to take into account tons of variables and add them into their formula when calculating results. Things such as "person was asked question but refused to answer (and notate this for each and every question on the poll and the poll as a whole)", "person was called but did not answer his phone," "person omitted answering X question," etc. etc.

In addition you also need to make sure your sample is representative of your population (including replacing people who did not answer certain questions, or the poll altogether) to begin with. The even better polls have questions repeated using different wording or replacing option choices (e.g. 1-Strongly Agree 2-Agree 3-No Opinion 4-Disagree 5-Strongly Disagree, have the numbers reversed and such) and the best even have the trained pollsters evaluate the emotional and environmental condition of the participants. What would be considered "legitimate" as a poll consists of exhausting criteria that must be met - which is why professional pollsters make huge amounts of money and why lots and lots of books are written on the subject - and why I always hated taking research methods courses.

Take Time Magazine's recent "Hillary Clinton - Love Her, Hate Her?" or other random polls on MSNBC and other news media and you can see clear examples of entertaining but very useless polls. We should be very very worried if any professional organization, much less governments, take them seriously or use them to formulate strategery.

..I think the true purpose of the polls is to see if thier mind controll projects are working on us (subliminal messaging etc) ... then they know what they have to do more of in specific areas to get us to act more how they want us to. It's mass mind control 101, we are the lab rats..

I totally agree!