{"id":454,"date":"2017-04-07T15:58:18","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T14:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/?p=454"},"modified":"2017-04-07T15:58:18","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T14:58:18","slug":"worrisome-new-data-on-the-dynamics-of-fake-news-sociological-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/2017\/04\/07\/worrisome-new-data-on-the-dynamics-of-fake-news-sociological-images\/","title":{"rendered":"Worrisome new data on the dynamics of fake news &#8211; Sociological Images"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<div class=\"post-meta\">\n<div class=\"byline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/author\/lisa\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> on April 5, 2017<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>\u201cFake news\u201d has emerged as a substantial problem for\u00a0democracy. The circulation of false narratives, lies, and conspiracy\u00a0theories on self-described \u201calternative news\u201d sites undercuts the knowledge voters rely on to make political\u00a0decisions. Sometimes the spread of this misinformation is deliberate, spread by hate groups, foreign governments, or individuals bent on harming the US.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/faculty.washington.edu\/kstarbi\/Alt_Narratives_ICWSM17-CameraReady.pdf\">new study<\/a> offers information as to the content, connectedness, and use of these websites. Information scholar <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hcde.washington.edu\/starbird\">Kate Starbird<\/a> performed a network analysis of twitter users responding to mass shootings. These users\u00a0denied the mainstream narrative about the shooting\u00a0(arguing, for example, that the real story was being hidden from the public or that the shooting never happened at all). Since most of the fake news sites cross-promote conspiracy theories across the board, focusing on this one type of story was sufficient for mapping the networks. Here is some of what she found:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The sites do not share a political point of view. They are dominated by the far\u00a0right, but they also include the far left, hate groups, nationalists, and Russian propaganda sites. They did strongly overlap in being anti-globalist, anti-science, and anti-mainstream media.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/04\/05\/information-scientists-releases-worrisome-new-data-on-the-dynamics-of-fake-news\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/04\/8.png?w=750&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fake news sites are highly repetitive, spreading the same conspiracies and lies, often re-posting identical content\u00a0on multiple sites.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Users, then, aren\u2019t necessarily being careless or undisciplined in their information gathering. They often tweet overlapping content from several different fake news sites, suggesting that they are obeying a hallmark of media literacy: seeking out multiple sources. You can see the dense network created by this use of multiple data sources in the upper left.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/04\/05\/information-scientists-releases-worrisome-new-data-on-the-dynamics-of-fake-news\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/04\/7.png?w=750&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One of the main conspiracy stories promulgated by fake news sites is that the real news is fake.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Believing this, Twitter users who share links to fake news sites often also share links to traditional news outlets (see the connections in the network to the<em>Washington Post<\/em>, for example),\u00a0but they do so primarily as evidence that their false belief was true. When\u00a0the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reports the mainstream story about the mass shooting, for instance, it is argued to be\u00a0proof of a cover up. This is consistent with the <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/02\/27\/why-the-american-public-seems-allergic-to-facts\/\">backfire effect<\/a>: exposure\u00a0to facts tends to strengthen belief in misinformation rather than undermine it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In an interview with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seattletimes.com\/seattle-news\/politics\/uw-professor-the-information-war-is-real-and-were-losing-it\/\"><em>Seattle Times<\/em><\/a>, Starbird expresses distress at her findings.\u00a0\u201cI used to be a techno-utopian,\u201d she explained, but she is now deeply worried about the \u201cmenace of unreality.\u201d\u00a0Emerging <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/acp.3161\/abstract\">research<\/a> suggests that believing in\u00a0one conspiracy theory is a risk factor for believing in another. Individuals drawn to these sites out of a concern with the safety of vaccines, for example, may come out with\u00a0a belief in a Clinton-backed pedophilia ring, a global order controlled by Jews, and an aversion to the only cure for misinformation: truth. \u201cThere really is an information war for your mind,\u201d Starbird concluded. \u201cAnd we\u2019re losing it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is a professor\u00a0at Occidental College. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture, and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/lisawadephd\">Facebook<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/04\/05\/information-scientists-releases-worrisome-new-data-on-the-dynamics-of-fake-news\/\">Worrisome new data on the dynamics of fake news &#8211; Sociological Images<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lisa Wade, PhD on April 5, 2017 \u201cFake news\u201d has emerged as a substantial problem for\u00a0democracy. The circulation of false narratives, lies, and conspiracy\u00a0theories on self-described \u201calternative news\u201d sites undercuts the knowledge voters rely on to make political\u00a0decisions. Sometimes the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[330,1],"tags":[371,372],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8jhJx-7k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosetta.vn\/short\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}