People are not sheep, but quality decisions require quality information. If their information is tainted, their decisions will reflect it. The purpose of misinformation is to "poison the well" to degrade the ability to make quality decisions.
This study and the previous ones are flawed -- they don't account for contamination across mediums.
This is best illustrated with a very simple, very clear example - the Nick Sandmann case. Forget the specifics of the incident and who was right or wrong - none of that is the point here. Rather, focus on how the coverage propagated through various mediums:
It began on twitter with someone uploading a video.
Next, it goes viral on twitter: the video simply sparked something visceral in everyone. Twitter's algorithms recognized this content as something in people were susceptible to clicking on, so it was selected for being served up as much as possible, sure enough people ate it up, and it went viral.
Newsroom "twitter trending" alerts went off -- they raced to get their stories out. WaPo got theirs out first. This matters for them because news aggregators will give them the headline click when they list the story. Their revenue depends on those clicks. Get it out first! Fact checking can follow later.
The trending continues - news aggregators' (Google News, Apple News) algorithms are now amplifying the WaPo story for the same reason as Twitter's algorithms.
Cable newsrooms take note of the story trending. They all have to air it -- if they don't they'll lose eyeballs to their competitors. A story trending this strongly, they have very little choice. They'll add some minimal editorializing on the story depending on their audience's leanings, but cover it they absolutely must, and they do.
But when you review the cascade of events - in the absence of social media, and specifically in the absence of their engagement/amplifications/click-and-eyeball-maximizing algorithms, that story would have no way of making it to the desks of newsrooms across the country, as something that viewers were jaw-droppingly susceptible to.
In summary, the role social media played here, is the filter that selected the most explosive, most polarizing story, and it put that story on the desks of newsrooms along with hard data that showed they would lose revenue if they ignored it.
None of these studies are accounting for this contamination. And to be very clear, calling it cross contamination actually dilutes the case. It's a one-way contamination. Twitter does not care what aired on CNN or any other news channel. But newsrooms and editorial boards all over the country/world have dedicated staff to cover social media "trending" stories. i.e. the contamination flow is one-way, and it is now a formalized part of the process.
And none of these studies picked up on this! None of them accounted for this! :(
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That's too simplified
People are not sheep, but quality decisions require quality information. If their information is tainted, their decisions will reflect it. The purpose of misinformation is to "poison the well" to degrade the ability to make quality decisions.
A fatal flaw: it does not account for contaminaton
This study and the previous ones are flawed -- they don't account for contamination across mediums. This is best illustrated with a very simple, very clear example - the Nick Sandmann case. Forget the specifics of the incident and who was right or wrong - none of that is the point here. Rather, focus on how the coverage propagated through various mediums:
- It began on twitter with someone uploading a video.
- Next, it goes viral on twitter: the video simply sparked something visceral in everyone. Twitter's algorithms recognized this content as something in people were susceptible to clicking on, so it was selected for being served up as much as possible, sure enough people ate it up, and it went viral.
- Newsroom "twitter trending" alerts went off -- they raced to get their stories out. WaPo got theirs out first. This matters for them because news aggregators will give them the headline click when they list the story. Their revenue depends on those clicks. Get it out first! Fact checking can follow later.
- The trending continues - news aggregators' (Google News, Apple News) algorithms are now amplifying the WaPo story for the same reason as Twitter's algorithms.
- Cable newsrooms take note of the story trending. They all have to air it -- if they don't they'll lose eyeballs to their competitors. A story trending this strongly, they have very little choice. They'll add some minimal editorializing on the story depending on their audience's leanings, but cover it they absolutely must, and they do.
But when you review the cascade of events - in the absence of social media, and specifically in the absence of their engagement/amplifications/click-and-eyeball-maximizing algorithms, that story would have no way of making it to the desks of newsrooms across the country, as something that viewers were jaw-droppingly susceptible to. In summary, the role social media played here, is the filter that selected the most explosive, most polarizing story, and it put that story on the desks of newsrooms along with hard data that showed they would lose revenue if they ignored it. None of these studies are accounting for this contamination. And to be very clear, calling it cross contamination actually dilutes the case. It's a one-way contamination. Twitter does not care what aired on CNN or any other news channel. But newsrooms and editorial boards all over the country/world have dedicated staff to cover social media "trending" stories. i.e. the contamination flow is one-way, and it is now a formalized part of the process. And none of these studies picked up on this! None of them accounted for this! :(