A few months ago, I read an article called Six Features of the Disinformation Age, and it was like getting yet another kick in the gut w/r/t the current global and political nightmare we find ourselves in. It pinged quite a lot of my social psych brain -- desiccated and deleterious as it is these days -- so I wanted to plagiarize the gist and add my own sprinkles of flavor here and there. But be warned that it's not a journey where a happy ending is in sight any time soon.
1) Democratization
Once again, we see the promise of democracy subverted by heretofore unknown unknowns, to quote a early 21st Century philosopher. Without traditional institutional media gatekeepers -- for the oldies, think Walter Cronkite from CBS -- political discourse is no longer based on a common set of facts. If you can persuade a good chunk of the right people in the right places to change their attitudes about what does and does not constitute a fact, you can create your own reality that everyone else is forced to either live in or reckon with.
2) Socialization
Nature abhors a vacuum, so with the erosion of gatekeepers disseminating content comes a rise in peer-to-peer sharing of content. This p2p action, in psychological terms, strengthens confirmation biases and corrupts motivated reasoning in the process. Wanna know how bubbles form and get stronger and more opaque by the moment? Here you are.
3) Atomization
When my students are tasked to write, among other things, I tell them not to use any sources of information that don't have authors listed, for context -- or the absence of it - helps shape perception. When individual news stories are divorced from brand or source, the origin of an article becomes less meaningful to readers than who in their network shares the link to the article, furthering the blurring of credible and non-credible (or downright fucking in-credible) sources to the point of being indistinguishable.
4) Anonymity
Anybody who spends three seconds on Reddit or a message board will see the malignancy of anonymity metastisized into a potent and powerful force, as one might expect to happen when there is anonymity in information creation and distribution. Online news (or "news") often lacks not only a brand, but also a byline for the baseline process of attribution and analysis. Among other things, this obscures potential conflicts of interest, creates plausible deniability for state actors intervening in foreign information environments, and creates fertile ground for bots to thrive.
One 2015 study found that bots generate around 50% of all web traffic, with as many as 50 million Twitter users and 137 million Facebook users exhibiting non-human behaviors. Of course, you could argue that you meet humans with non-human behaviors all the time, but certainly not at such scale and influence. Decades of social psychological research on the effects of anonymity don't exactly shine the white light of truth and justice on the human spirit.
5) Personalization
Unlike legacy media (print, radio, television), internet content creators can A/B test and adapt micro-targeted messages in real time. For example, Donald Trump’s campaign was measuring responses to 40-50,000 variants of ads every day, then tailoring and targeting their messaging accordingly. And this is just one element of the campaign that we know about. Who knows what truffles the Russian digital swamps might yield?
6) Sovereignty
Unlike legacy media (see above), social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter (a.k.a. information ecosystems) are self-regulating...and are not very good at it. When attempts periodically arise to "clean up" the ugly and deceptive machinations of social media, not many positive products and policies are created. After all, the purpose of social media is to influence society and provide a robust return on investment for the quarterly financials, not make the world a better place or "don't be evil."
I wish that there were valid and available antidotes to the above items, but there aren't any easy answers. Instead, we have only complicated realities, woven together by ethereal strands of vapor and mist from a thousand genies who will never get back into those now-empty bottles. Sweet dreams.
1) Democratization
Once again, we see the promise of democracy subverted by heretofore unknown unknowns, to quote a early 21st Century philosopher. Without traditional institutional media gatekeepers -- for the oldies, think Walter Cronkite from CBS -- political discourse is no longer based on a common set of facts. If you can persuade a good chunk of the right people in the right places to change their attitudes about what does and does not constitute a fact, you can create your own reality that everyone else is forced to either live in or reckon with.
2) Socialization
Nature abhors a vacuum, so with the erosion of gatekeepers disseminating content comes a rise in peer-to-peer sharing of content. This p2p action, in psychological terms, strengthens confirmation biases and corrupts motivated reasoning in the process. Wanna know how bubbles form and get stronger and more opaque by the moment? Here you are.
3) Atomization
When my students are tasked to write, among other things, I tell them not to use any sources of information that don't have authors listed, for context -- or the absence of it - helps shape perception. When individual news stories are divorced from brand or source, the origin of an article becomes less meaningful to readers than who in their network shares the link to the article, furthering the blurring of credible and non-credible (or downright fucking in-credible) sources to the point of being indistinguishable.
4) Anonymity
Anybody who spends three seconds on Reddit or a message board will see the malignancy of anonymity metastisized into a potent and powerful force, as one might expect to happen when there is anonymity in information creation and distribution. Online news (or "news") often lacks not only a brand, but also a byline for the baseline process of attribution and analysis. Among other things, this obscures potential conflicts of interest, creates plausible deniability for state actors intervening in foreign information environments, and creates fertile ground for bots to thrive.
One 2015 study found that bots generate around 50% of all web traffic, with as many as 50 million Twitter users and 137 million Facebook users exhibiting non-human behaviors. Of course, you could argue that you meet humans with non-human behaviors all the time, but certainly not at such scale and influence. Decades of social psychological research on the effects of anonymity don't exactly shine the white light of truth and justice on the human spirit.
5) Personalization
Unlike legacy media (print, radio, television), internet content creators can A/B test and adapt micro-targeted messages in real time. For example, Donald Trump’s campaign was measuring responses to 40-50,000 variants of ads every day, then tailoring and targeting their messaging accordingly. And this is just one element of the campaign that we know about. Who knows what truffles the Russian digital swamps might yield?
6) Sovereignty
Unlike legacy media (see above), social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter (a.k.a. information ecosystems) are self-regulating...and are not very good at it. When attempts periodically arise to "clean up" the ugly and deceptive machinations of social media, not many positive products and policies are created. After all, the purpose of social media is to influence society and provide a robust return on investment for the quarterly financials, not make the world a better place or "don't be evil."
I wish that there were valid and available antidotes to the above items, but there aren't any easy answers. Instead, we have only complicated realities, woven together by ethereal strands of vapor and mist from a thousand genies who will never get back into those now-empty bottles. Sweet dreams.
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