America’s Misinformation Crisis

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 145
  • Views: 2K
  • Politics 
nycfan said:
I found this an important observation that helps understand this nihilist behavior:

“… Michael Caulfield, an information researcher at the University of Washington, has argued, “The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” This distinction is important, in part because it assigns agency to those who consume and share obviously fake information. …

What we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built.

Rather than deal with the realities of a warming planet hurling once-in-a-generation storms at them every few weeks, they’d rather malign and threaten meteorologists, who, in their minds, are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit,” as one X user put it. It is a strategy designed to silence voices of reason, because those voices threaten to expose the cracks in their current worldview. But their efforts are doomed, futile.

As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that.” …”
Click to expand...
I read an article recently - I think it was linked on here, but I couldn't locate it quickly - that made the argument that the common factor across the Republican Party since the rise of Trump is the willingness to believe in total the lies that make up the alternative reality of the party. That it is no longer policy or ideals or platform that unites the Republican Party, it is an adherence to the alternative reality created by right-wing politicians (especially Trump) and pushed out by right-wing media.

This seems another data point for that argument.
 
finesse said:
Earth doesn't care about humans. There's already been five massive extinctions where most forms of life was destroyed. What remained kept going. Let's be clear. Mother Earth doesn't need saving. It's humans that need saving. As best as I can tell, we're a pervasive and pernicious skin infection for her.
Click to expand...
yup, it's not if but when the next extinction level event happens.
 
This has been a problem for some time now. As someone mentioned earlier, people still believe Obama was born in Kenya. Misinformation fueled a lot of the BLM movement and associated problems from 2014-2020. Misinformation during COVID was rampant and was responsible for countless needless deaths. Misinformation about the 2020 election led people to storm the capitol. And we've seen this month how easily misinformation around events like Helene can spread. Russia and China have been behind many of these incidents, but our own people are suckers for falling for them. The problem is not going to get better.
 
StrangePackage said:
If you ever wanted a perfect example of bad-faith bosiding, here it is.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily as long as the associated problems are the various misunderstandings and mischaracterizations by Republicans. It's not like any protest movement isn't going to have abusers and users hanging around it as well as those who are overzealous so they are never completely free of undesirables.

Otoh, I'm with you. I don't think that's exactly what he had in mind.
 
finesse said:
Not necessarily as long as the associated problems are the various misunderstandings and mischaracterizations by Republicans. It's not like any protest movement isn't going to have abusers and users hanging around it as well as those who are overzealous so they are never completely free of undesirables.

Otoh, I'm with you. I don't think that's exactly what he had in mind.
Click to expand...
I'm confident that he didn't mean things like Republicans pretending multiple American cities burned or that "Ayntifuh" was coming to shoot up their local Cracker Barrel in Cousinscrew, Arkansas.
 
StrangePackage said:
If you ever wanted a perfect example of bad-faith bosiding, here it is.
Click to expand...

There were riots and people killed over misinformation. That is not up for debate. You may not like the facts, but they are nevertheless still facts. In fact, after 2020 it was discovered that Russia was behind some of the largest pro and anti-BLM pages on social media. They were playing both sides, using misinformation, to cause social unrest here. Hell, in one city there were actual riots over a wanted murder suspect committing suicide. He did so on camera, by pulling a gun out of his pocket, placing the barrel in his mouth, and pulling the trigger. The misinformation outlets immediately claimed via social media that the police had executed him. People predictably rioted.

The key to stopping misinformation is recognizing it and condemning it, even if the people falling for it happen to share your political beliefs. Apparently that is too hard for many people to do. My team is better than your team, truth be damned.
 
LSU complied some key misinformation circulating during the George Floyd protests:

George Floyd Protests

With the sheer amount of info circulating right now, it’s easy to mistake fact and fiction. Here is a list of prominent rumors about the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, debunked, fact-checked, and explained.
faculty.lsu.edu faculty.lsu.edu

President Trump claimed that police did not use tear gas to clear apparently peaceful protestors outside the White House on June 1. ABC News reported, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ‘tear gas’ isn't a specific chemical compound but a general term for chemical agents used for riot control that may cause temporary respiratory distress. Compounds including Mace and pepper spray fit the CDC's definition.” The U.S. Secret Service later admitted that police used pepper spray.

… Hundreds of Twitter and Facebook posts suggested George Floyd is not dead, The New York Times reported.

…
George Soros, a billionaire investor and prolific Democratic donor, is blamed for funding the protests.

  • For years George Soros has been painted as a villain by the far-right and made the target of numerous conspiracy theories.
  • On Twitter, Soros was mentioned in 34,000 Tweets related to Floyd in a one-week period
  • On YouTube over 90 videos in five languages were shared connecting Soros with the protests in one week. YouTube did not remove the videos because they did not violate any of its policies.
  • On Facebook, 72,000 posts mentioned Soros the second week of the protests, up from 12,600 the first week. Of the 10 most popular posts about Soros, 9 featured false conspiracies linking him with the protests -- all 10 were collectively shared over 110,000 times
Two of the top Facebook posts were from Texas’ Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller, who said, “I have no doubt in my mind that George Soros is funding these so-called ‘spontaneous’ protests. Soros is pure evil and is hell-bent on destroying our country!”

…
Some conservative commentators asserted, with little evidence, that the riots and looting were coordinated by antifa, the far-left antifacist movement.

  • Vox reported that antifa is not a unified organization, but rather a loose ideological label for a subset of left-wing radicals who believe in using street-level force to prevent the rise of what they see as fascist movements.
  • Trump Tweeted in late May that “ANTIFA-led anarchists” and “Radical Left Anarchists” were to blame for the rioting and civil unrest. He referred to antifa as a “Terrorist Organization.” The FBI says there is no evidence the protest movement was hijacked by antifa or any other "extremist" group.
  • Trump tweeted that Martin Gugino, a peaceful protestor who was pushed down by Buffalo Police, could have been an “antifa provocateur.” AP journalists reported that Trump was referring to a report from the One America News Network (OANN), which cited an uninformed blog arguing that Gugino was using antifa-like tactics, such as “a method of police tracking used by Antifa to monitor the location of police.” Top tech experts called that claim confounding.
  • A fake “manual” of riot orders also appeared on Twitter that was supposedly created by Democrats to coordinate antifa activists. The manual was linked to an old hoax in 2015 surrounding the protests in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray.
  • A Twitter account that claimed to be associated with “anifa” was actually linked to Identity Evropa, a white-supremacist group. The Twitter account pushed violent rhetoric, ostensibly to paint peaceful protestors as violent. See the NBC News reporting.
…
  • According to Sky News, “the #DCblackout hashtag was used to promote false claims that authorities in DC were somehow preventing the protesters from using their smartphones to communicate with each other. Twitter removed the hashtag - which was being noticed worldwide - from the "trending topics" section due to what it described as "co-ordinated attempts to disrupt the public conversation" around the protests.”
  • The BBC reported that a photo of the U.S. presidential residence apparently with all its lights off has been shared widely on Twitter, including by Hillary Clinton. However, a reverse image search reveals that the photo is old - taken in 2014 - and it's been edited to make it look like all the lights are off.
  • As protests took place across the nationfollowing the death of George Floyd, claims surfaced online that animals at the Chicago Lincoln Park Zoo escaped and roamed the streets after an alleged break-in.
  • A photo falsely shows the Lincoln Memorial covered in graffiti. “The only vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial was graffiti at the bottom of the steps at street level, far away from the statue,” said Mike Litterst, chief of communications for the National Mall and Memorial Parks.
  • A conservative news website published a story with a misleading headline: “NPR Wants People to Burn Books Written By White People.” The NPR story says nothing about book burning. Instead, it implores white people to examine their bookshelves and see if they are only reading authors that look like them.
  • A public service announcement warns of a white supremacist who has been shooting at Black people at traffic lights. He drives a white truck and was last seen in Mesa, Arizona. The AP foundthat state and local police officials in Arizona as well as organizations that track violence by white supremacists said they received no reports of a gunman targeting Black motorists in Mesa, surrounding cities or elsewhere in the state last week. The Arizona ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center said that they also did not receive reports of the shooter.
  • A news article suggests that an Abraham Lincoln monument was recently torched in Chicago. The AP found this to be false. A news article published in June falsely suggests that an Abraham Lincoln statue was burned in Chicago during protests that turned violent in the city. The incident happened in 2017, not recently.
 
“…
But also online are posts riddled with disinformation, including those specifically targeting BLM. Activists charge that those disparaging posts are part of an overall effort to undermine the movement and its message.

One post, for example, falsely claims the government has identified it as a terrorist group. Another that circulated widely claimed that BLM activists had badly beaten a group of elderly white people. That post was debunked by fact checkers who found the photos were of South Africans and had been online for years. It was removed, however Jorden Giger, an organizer with Black Lives Matter in South Bend, Ind., says there's still plenty of disinformation online designed to create confusion and distrust. …”

 

How Fake News Goes Viral: The Black Lives Matter Dallas Tape​

16 October, 2020

By Aoife Gallagher

In the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests a conservative news reporter shared an explosive video. It showed a mob savagely beating a man splayed across the sidewalk in Dallas, Texas. A narrative took hold: this was an innocent man being beaten – some said even to death – for defending his business.

Then Donald Trump amplified the claims.

But context and detail were entirely absent. Without these, content takes on a life of its own, especially online. A fake story can go viral in just hours – and reach the very highest levels of society.

Here is what really happened: A cautionary tale for our times.

www.isdglobal.org

How Fake News Goes Viral: The Black Lives Matter Dallas Tape

A video devoid of context and accuracy showing a mob savagely beating a man in Texas went viral. Then, a fake news story took hold.
www.isdglobal.org
 
“… Researchers in ADL’s Center on Extremism documented a range of examples of disinformation related to the protests. These campaigns often included the deliberate mischaracterization of groups or movements, such as portraying activists who support Black Lives Matter as violent extremists or claiming that antifa is a terrorist organization coordinated or manipulated by nebulous external forces. ADL’s researchers found evidence of white supremacists creating or promoting some of these fabricated claims and rumors to further their own agendas. Certain pieces of disinformation which originally appeared years ago have reemerged in the context of the current protests. In some cases, unsubstantiated rumors migrated from digital platforms to physical-world responses. …”


 
2ManyBlueCups said:
There were riots and people killed over misinformation. That is not up for debate. You may not like the facts, but they are nevertheless still facts. In fact, after 2020 it was discovered that Russia was behind some of the largest pro and anti-BLM pages on social media. They were playing both sides, using misinformation, to cause social unrest here. Hell, in one city there were actual riots over a wanted murder suspect committing suicide. He did so on camera, by pulling a gun out of his pocket, placing the barrel in his mouth, and pulling the trigger. The misinformation outlets immediately claimed via social media that the police had executed him. People predictably rioted.

The key to stopping misinformation is recognizing it and condemning it, even if the people falling for it happen to share your political beliefs. Apparently that is too hard for many people to do. My team is better than your team, truth be damned.
Click to expand...
Suggesting that BLM is a psy-op is misinformation. Point blank. I get that your uvula is pitch black from all the boot polish, but the DOJ doesn't offer, and cities do not accept, consent decrees in federal court detailing expansive formal findings of institutional racism and predatory policing based on misinformation.

You strain the gnat and swallow the camel.
 
“… The present study examines 2 years worth of tweets about BLM (about 118 million in total). Timeseries analysis reveals that activists are better at mobilizing rapid attention, whereas right-wing accounts show a pattern of moderate but more sustained activity driven by reaction to political opponents. Topic modeling reveals differences in how different political groups talk about BLM. Most notably, the murder of George Floyd appears to have solidified a right-wing counter-framing of protests as arising from dangerous “terrorist” actors. The study thus sheds light on the complex network and rhetorical effects that drive the struggle for online attention to the BLM movement. …”

www.nature.com

Attention and counter-framing in the Black Lives Matter movement on Twitter - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

The social media platform Twitter platform has played a crucial role in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The immediate, flexible nature of tweets plays a crucial role both in spreading information about the movement’s aims and in organizing individual protests. Twitter has also played an...
www.nature.com www.nature.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top