Navigating the Gulf Between Fact and Meaning: A Critique of Pew Research Center Studies

What makes me weary about these Pew Research Center studies is that they lack the ability to address the divide between truth and meaning (eg. what can be expressed by the qualitative: meaning making).

In the explanation of the divergence of political group’s assessment, we are able to assess a single factual statement: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States”. Then, Pew provides the percentage response to the intrepretation of the factual statement, in that “nine-in-ten Democrats 89 percent correctly identified it as a factual statement, compared with 63 percent of Republicans”.

The challenge of discerning fact from opinion is as the heart of the problem, but, the study never digs beneath the surface to the “why” the problem exists and, what we can do about it.

Here’s the reality — meaning intercedes in interpretative understanding.

As human beings, we interpret facts through the filter of meaning and, in politics, meaning is divergent.

This is a reality that we have to learn to cope with and address because it is not going away, despite our belief in the persuasive power of factual reality. Belief does not constitute fact, but it is an enduring menace to democracy.

Thus, quantitative studies can’t tell us about meaning making.

Like the news as it relates to politics, Pew Research Center is drunk on syntax, blind to semantics.

It’s time to address the inherently human problem — in politics, we are always going to disagree about the interpretative that precedes the factual statement.

What can we do about that?