Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
51% of Tech Workers Believe President Trump Has a Point About Fake News (buzzfeednews.com)
5 points by untog on Feb 24, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


Interesting survey, but some points to keep in mind:

This is a survey of all tech workers in the US. It's not focused on Silicon Valley, and it's not focused on startups (in fact they only surveyed people in companies with 500+ people). Of course the tech giants + startups are not all of tech, but on the other hand, a lot of press coverage of tech is of them. The difference matters here - for example, people in the top tech companies are much more left-leaning on average than the people in this survey, since many are in the left-leaning Bay Area and Seattle, and we have political donation data on them confirming that.

And to be specific, just 20% of people surveyed are in the West (which would include the Bay Area and Seattle), while 37% are from the South and 20% from the Midwest. So over half are not from the stereotypical "tech industry" that the media covers.

Also the survey shows that many tech workers have mixed feelings about the media. The article tries to explain it by right-leaning politics (that the media is too liberal, a backlash against feminism, etc.). However, the article states,

> women in the tech industry are less likely to hold a positive opinion of the media than their male counterparts.

The article spends only this one sentence on that topic. But it may matter quite a bit, since women tend to be more left-leaning in their politics, and make up almost half of the people surveyed (44%). Given that, the article's explanations don't seem sufficient - there's something else going on here.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: