2024-08-18
42 分钟We return to the Melrose Chronicle with a notably nasty run of years from 1205 to 1211. We also consider why people -- medieval and modern -- are so captivated by bad news. Today's Texts: The Chronicle of Melrose. Edited and translated by Joseph Stevenson, The Church Historians of England, vol. 4, part 1, Seeley’s, 1856, pp. 79-242. Google Books.
This is medieval death trip for Saturday, August 17, 2024.
Episode 107 concerning portents and interdiction, persecutions, heresy, and a year of bloodshed.
Hello and welcome to medieval Death Trip, the show where we explore the wit and weirdness of medieval texts.
I'm your host, Patrick Lane.
Today we're dipping back into the Melrose Chronicle, which five episodes ago sparked us off on our little sideline into the career of Joubert Doriac, aka Pope Sylvester II, aka the demon pope.
This time were jumping about two centuries ahead in the Chronicle to survey some events of the first years of the 13th century.
One thing that I think might stand out about this selection is, as the episode title indicates, a whole lot of bad news.
Medieval chronicles are full of terrible occurrences from causes human and natural, and sometimes supernatural.
The tendency for chroniclers and analysts to record such a preponderance of negative experiences certainly contributes to the popular perception of the Middle Ages as dark and grotesque and horrible.
And in this instance, it's not so much a biased projection by modern readers back onto the Middle Ages as much as it is a warped inference from this bias in medieval sources.
They are grim and gruesome in what they report, which prompts the question, are we really that different today?
A common observation that has been validated by academic studies is that our news sources are dominated by negativity.
Actually, let me clarify part of that.
It's not necessarily that there's more bad news being published than good or neutral news, but rather that bad news gets more attention and engagement.
A recent 2023 study confirms the conventional wisdom that negativity sells.
This study, which appeared in nature human behavior, demonstrated that while our newsmongers might not actually be as cynical as we perceive them to be, the effectiveness of negativity is very real.
Namely, in their survey of 100,000 online news stories, the researchers found that positive words were slightly more common than negative words, but the more negative words that appeared in a headline, the higher the number of clicks on it, and depressingly, the more positive words in a headline.
A corresponding reduction in clicks was observed.
This points to what makes news negativity an intractable problem.
Its not just that journalists and publishers chase negative stories, but that consumers demand them.