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For some time now, serious researchers have been looking into the realities of how much disinformation is on the Internet, how effectively it is spread, and what its effects are on politics, events and people. A major addition to this growing body of work has just been made by a paper by three European academics published in the journal Social Media + Society. (Here is a link to the study; it contains scores of links to other studies that support the findings I am summarizing here.
Some of its findings:
- There’s really not that much fake news on the Internet.
I know that contradicts conventional wisdom (which of course is not wisdom at all). Objective measures of the content of social media find that it consists overwhelmingly of memes intended to entertain — with humor, cute pets and wildlife, sensuality, profound sayings and the like. News and information intended to inform occupy a relatively small space, and most of it originates with legitimate news organizations. 70% of social media users say they rarely, or never, post about political or social issues. And in the words of the latest study, “the scientific literature is clear. Unreliable news, including false, deceptive, low-quality, or hyper partisan news, represents a minute portion of people’s information diet.”
- Not many people pay any attention to disinformation.
Research shows that when people see a post alleging a clearly biased point of view — “Biden is senile,” or “the election was stolen from Trump” — the only people who click on it are the ones who already believe it. They are not looking for information in order to form an opinion; they are looking for ammunition with which to defend their predetermined opinion.
The hyperventilators generate a lot of scary numbers. For example: During the 2016 US presidential campaign, the top 20 fake news stories on Facebook accumulated nearly nine million shares, reactions, and comments. Wow. A huge number, and very concerning. But this study points out that if each member of Facebook during that time period had reacted to one piece of content each week, the fake news traffic would represent less than one half of one percent of the overall activity.
- As a result of 2.), very few people are influenced by disinformation.
When confronted with a story that contradicts their predetermined opinions, people simply ignore it. Hyperventilating stories on, for example, the Russian disinformation campaign in the 2016 presidential election always emphasize the number of stories that were posted, or sent. This is what Politico reported in the aftermath:
In total, Russian operations included over 10 million tweets, over 1,000 YouTube videos, roughly 116,000 Instagram posts and more than 60,000 unique Facebook posts, New Knowledge found. That translated to a reach of over 120 million people on Facebook and 20 million on its subsidiary, Instagram.
Huge numbers, deeply concerning. Until you realize that Hillary Clinton spent twice what the Russians spent on social media and was unable to influence the electorate in her favor. Or until you read the many studies since that have found that the effect of the Russian effort was vanishingly small.
The Internet advertising industry is huge, but does it really work? Or is it largely a Wizard-of-Oz illusion maintained for our distraction and entertainment? Few have tried to find out. But a few years ago, Proctor and Gamble got to wondering whether the money it was spending on social media was effective. So in the fourth quarter of 2016 they cut their social media budget by $140 million per day. Guess what happened. Absolutely nothing.
Yet the wizard behind the curtain continues to pull our levers, and gleefully sows division and misinformation wherever it can. And while the American people are still measurably far smarter and more decent than the manipulators, the constant fog of falsehoods rolling out of every screen around us makes it ever more difficult to practice reality based, critical thinking.
The democratization of information dissemination via the internet, like the Hydra of ancient days, has proven both fascinating and disruptive. It has had the effect of hastening the demise of whatever national psyche (or consensus, if you will) that once existed in America.
Your article brings to mind a story one of my friends told me several years ago: she was attending an advanced studies class for teachers at a local university. The sessions were held at that institution’s library. As an aside, the professor brought up the point that fully ten percent of the library’s collection was dedicated to Black Studies. One student objected, and asked what percentage of the library’s books were dedicated to White Studies. The professor’s reply, “ninety percent”.
It seems that objectivity is not a human strong point. Like honesty, reverence and charity, objectivity remains an ideal.
10% + 90% = 100%. I guess that Oriental history, Buddhism, Engineering, Mathematics, Chemistry, Philosophy, Geography, etc. were absent. Or in the ‘White Studies’ section. Either way, something’s badly wrong. With more than one participant.
As always, context is everything. Yes, we all have axes to grind, but truly, you seem to misunderstand my comment.
You are probably right, I don’t understand. If physics isn’t part of ‘White Studies’, according to this librarian, where is it?
Plase elaborate so that I can understand you better.
The student – himself a white man – who complained that there was no special section in the library dedicated to white people had failed to recognize that the vast majority of books in the library were, in fact, written by whites – mostly men. Therefore, a special section dedicated to white authors would have been redundant…even silly!
The professor was informing the student of this in a pointed, albeit sarcastic, manner.
Thank you.
For shits and giggles, I would like to point out again, that heading into the 2016 election, according to the MAGA folk (and FOX and Friends), it was Hillary that was the “Russian Agent, ” as she was selling “atom bombs,” at below markets rates no less, to the diabolical Russian Federation.
Back in 2015, our former Secretary of State and Presidential hopeful was a Putin Stooge, don’t you know, so one might assume that if the Rooskies were to make efforts to twist the coming election in their favor, they would’ve been …
All In for Clinton!
Then post-election, “the wizard behind the curtain” pulled the old switcheroo, and it was The Donald who was – quite literally? – in bed with Russian interests, peeing on them or some such shit. I really don’t remember (or care to) what the sordid details of RussiaGate were, I only thought it the single dumbest Conspiracy Theory ever to come the pipe.
— Until, of course, the Vitamin D Conspiracy came along, just a few short years later.. Downvoted to minus 120 in a subreddit I was, for defending its honor. Did I claim it was magic elixir? No. Did I suggest it might good for you, if taken or absorbed in moderate doses? No. I only insisted that Vitamin D was a vitamin, and should continued to be recognized as such. That was my unpardonable thought crime. —
Clearly, The Age of Insanity.that we used to be living in has given way to something else, but what, I couldn’t rightly say. I thought about calling it the Era of Make-Believe, but that doesn’t begin to cut it.
The Epoch of the Braindead? Hmm … the short period that occurred before it became irrelevant to artificially create Eras or Ages for humans to study or consider.
Note: Since it vanished in mid-April, the Russian army has been all but absent from this Ukraine theater of war. Over the last 10 months, only on the rarest of occassions could traces of it be found. And their air force? Well, its been out-of-action really since day one.
Ain’t that something Tom?
Ukraine is being systematically de-populated via two proxie militias, some nasty private military contractors, the WWI artillery shell, and emigration. Pre-war population, roughly 41 million, today, half that at best.
Meanwhile, three newly constituted Russian armies, by the most conservative western estimates, now numbering 500,000 strong in total, the bulk of its unused air force, and some percentage of its 1,000 mobile rocket systems which have played no part in this war so far, sit just beyond the perimeters of this theater, doing God knows what.
Roasting weenies and toasting marshmellows is my guess.
I would say these developments are damdest thing that has ever happened in human history, especially when one considers we are still being told our side is winning, but really, given the environment we live in, it is all, as Mr. Spock used to say, “perfectly logical.”