"...Fake News, Propaganda, and Deceptive Social Media Posts"
Part 1
Outside of academics, I spend most of my time online on YouTube and TikTok. I’m intensely skeptical of any claim that anyone makes, especially if it emotionally affects me. If I ever see someone claim that something is true, especially if I kind of agree with it, I make a mental note that it's not real information and that I haven’t learned anything. If I don’t look it up to verify I try to forget about it. I was (embarrassingly) almost pulled down a right-wing and a communist rabbit hole at different points in high school so I’m intent on not letting that happen again.
Part 2
Marketing consultant Robin Cangie’s 2018 article: “How to Spot Fake News, Propaganda, and Deceptive Social Media Posts,” provides a helpful guide for spotting manipulative posts on social media. In her article, Cangie comments on a New York Times quiz that asked readers to identify the propaganda post in several sets of real Facebook posts. The answer wasn’t always clear cut. Even Cangie admits that she “had a tougher time” with some of the posts over others. (Cangie) If we have trouble identifying fake posts when prompted, then our chances of catching them while mindlessly scrolling likely approach zero. In a world of unconscious scrolling, unconscious recognition of manipulative posts is a key survival skill. I think that Cangie’s work does a good job at facilitating the development of a good intuition. While her recommendations are worded in terms of conscious reflection, they aren’t so formulaic that they could never become routine, subconscious patterns. That intuitive sense for when something is fake is a crucial skill for everyone to have. Even those who grew up online and consider themselves to have a good eye for fake posts like myself. We could all use a reminder to be vigilant for posts that prey on our emotions and biases while online, consciously or unconsciously.
Politics columnist, Philip Bump’s 2022 article “The very different media universes in which Americans live, visualized” provides a helpful interpretation of polling data collected by YouGov and The Economist. The data in question provides interesting insights into the media consumption and attitudes of Americans as it relates to age, vaccination status, and political party. Bump comments that these data show us “where party and ideology start to manifest explicitly.” And on first glance it's hard to disagree. The data visualization seems to show a massive gulf between the types of media that republicans and democrats trust. While it’s tempting to say that the main takeaway from this article is that we’ve all jumped into epistemic silos at some point in the last ten years, I think it’s more interesting to use the article as a prompt to be skeptical about data visualization. I don’t disagree with the concept that the right and left live in different media spheres, but do the graphs support the idea that “Democrats divide their attention between multiple sources of news far more than do Republicans.” like Bump suggests. Maybe, but we have to acknowledge that the shape of the graphs reflects the sturdy design too. I’m personally skeptical about the value of the shapes we see on the graph. There were not only more left-leaning sources listed, but the right leaning sources were generally more sketchy. Is The Washington Post the left leaning equivalent of Breitbart like the graph makes it seem? I don’t think so. So is it surprising that more democrats trust the Washington Post than Republicans trust Breitbart? My thoughts are incomplete, but I think it's more interesting than rehashing the same platitude about the problem of media division that we’ve all heard.