Winner take all: how local information is smothered in noise
When I was a reporter for the Tribune, a constant question always nagged at the back of my mind: what does it take to get people interested in the stories of a county that is just shy of 5,000 citizens? What can we find interesting in news generated from a sleepy town? But the question is bigger than getting people’s attention. The real question is, how do you get people involved in local issues, and not national movements?
There are many divides between Custer County and the United States. The most striking is the urban verses rural divide. But while this divide is important, it is clear that local communities even in urban environments have a hard time gaining the attention of locals.
The main problem in my view is the “winner takes all” effect. This is a trend commented on by figures such as Malcom Gladwell and Nassim Taleb, but it is also evident in daily life. A rich array of shops in a downtown area are removed by box stores that sit just outside of town, and now those box stores are closing thanks to Amazon. This winner-take-all is more than just a business problem, it is mainly an informational fact.
In a world that is constantly connecting more people, those people start to desire the same things, and more importantly, consume the same information. The internet has made an existing trend in information consolidation accelerate at alarming speed. So now everyone has the story from the White House, a war in a foreign nation, the shooting in a school. But with the winner take all, what happens to the informational losers?
The losers in the information wars are meetings like the candidate forum at the Custer County High School two years ago. A long-term teacher and Westcliffe town trustee, during the school board election cycle, wondered, “How can a democracy function if voters are not informed on the choices of candidates?” How does one choose a candidate that they know nothing about?
Clearly, many voters look at the ballot and pick the name they feel comfortable with. This effect of non-rational decision making is well-documented in Daniel Kahneman’s masterpiece of behavioral psychology, “Thinking: Fast and Slow.” We often pick things based on how we feel about them, things that rationally cannot have any real emotional connection. But if we lack information to make decisions, we do not just stare at the ballot and claim we do not know, we unconsciously turn to other impressions to make the decision.
In an era of winner take all information, decisions on a local level are made not by any real connection to the local issues or unique situations, instead humans rely on what they heard from the winners of information wars. In this case, the national politics and media that spread those messages. The internet and social media, make the winners ever bigger.
The winner-take-all effect is absolute.
The problem here is that this effect is unfair, and damaging to everyone. Local services and elections go unnoticed and elections mimic exactly the words and campaigns of the two political national parties. Even restaurants suffer the winner take all effect. Hamburger and pizza sales account for nearly 75 percent of total food sales in Custer County, even though there are many other offerings on menus.
So how can a local democracy function if people are not informed? Not well. And the divisions created by narratives that exist outside Custer County will continue to draw interest away from local government, to quarrels about the national government. The only exception that proves the rule in Custer County is the recent recall against the Commissioners, where a clearly conservative national platform was used that had nothing to do with the facts or realities in Custer County. It was used powerfully to demonstrate that using a national narrative that demonstratively had nothing to do with local issues, could gain following on the local level.
I still have the original recall brochure sitting on my shelf to remind me that words, even without meaning, can attract followers. The title of the brochure was “Restore Custer County Values & Founding Principles.” Yet there was no information on precise values and principles that needed to be restored. Just a list of accusations, none of them with proof.
However, now that a couple of years have passed, I have noticed that locals do indeed spend more time than they used to on local elections. The stress and agitation caused by the recall seems to have had a beneficial effect on the attention of local voters. National political slogans still heavily influence local elections, but there is more interest than before that county recall.
Perhaps, like strength training, we only pay attention to the things that cause stress, and we get stronger as a community, thanks to stressful episodes like the recall. (Though, I have to note, it was terrible for those being recalled.)
– Jordan Hedberg
