#Misinformation#FactChecking#Disinformation#Propaganda#News#Media#Democracy: "If you think people are gullible, misinformation is rampant, and misinformation is the leading cause of troubling beliefs and behaviour in society, it makes sense to try to design interventions that teach people to be more paranoid about misinformation. However, if you think—as seems to be the case—that people are already highly suspicious of manipulation and low-quality misinformation is relatively rare in their information diet, you will realise there is a high chance such interventions will backfire, exacerbating problems of distrust that lie at the root of many profound epistemic problems in society.
It also illustrates why it is appropriate to hold misinformation researchers and misinformation interventions to very high standards. Even if expert classifications and research are not being used to censor, there is a risk that faulty and highly subjective assumptions will shape popular, well-funded interventions that either achieve little of value or worsen the problems they aim to fix."
#SocialMedia#Misinformation#Disinformation#FakeNews: "“Misinformation,” some say, is now just code for views one disagrees with. (Right-wing figures have harassed Donovan online and off, and accused her of perpetuating a “censorship-industrial complex.” Other researchers have faced even greater scrutiny, in the form of congressional subpoenas and public-records lawsuits.)
Quantifying the effect of misinformation is even harder than defining it. In the debate over why people fall for conspiracies, some scholars say that too much attention is paid to social media’s role and not enough to other factors, like government officials who make false claims on prime-time TV. Studies have failed to reliably find a direct causal relationship between viewing online misinformation and changing specific behaviors, such as switching voting positions. But to Donovan, Facebook’s ability to disseminate falsehoods at unprecedented scale has obvious consequences. When vigilantes take up arms in the wake of online rumors about “antifa” invaders, when people read on their feeds that vaccines are microchipped and voting is rigged, other members of the public — law-enforcement officials, doctors, journalists, election workers — spend time debunking and reassuring. “There are millions of resources lost to mitigating misinformation-at-scale, where the cost of doing nothing is even worse,” Donovan has written. She is among those advocating for “a public-interest internet,” one where social-media feeds would be required to contain “timely, relevant, and local” news curated by librarians."