WE FOUND THE ONE GROUP OF AMERICANS WHO ARE MOST LIKELY TO SPREAD FAKE NEWS
AUTH: HEMANT KAKKAR & ASHER LAWSON
Brief commentary by Charles Sulka
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Please read the article at Politico (.com):
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/14/we-found-the-one-group-of-americans-who-are-most-likely-to-spread-fake-news-526973?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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The proliferation of fake news — primarily a social media phenomenon — is a very serious problem. As the writers want us to believe, it is primarily a problem caused by those of marginal intelligence on the political right. The writers ignore the proliferation of stupid ideas from leftists usually presented in strident fashion as shrill opinions drowning out dissent — ideas that in the long run are far more harmful to society. To sum up the results of this study, leftists just don’t spread fake news. (Or so the writers insist.)
The writers here conclude that the way to deal with the fake news problem is censorship by the social media companies. But, wait! That’s what we have now. All this process produces is nonsense instead of reason and reality … the proliferation of the narrow-minded view of the leftists who gravitate toward jobs in media and communications.
Now that’s a really stupid idea. It’s nothing short of ridiculous to think that the ‘fact checkers’ at Facebook, Twitter and Google could differentiate between fact and fiction. They are all flakes, taking orders from their paymasters in the propaganda business. Now that is a fact. They’ll probably dismiss my words as fake news, or disinformation. But it is not disinformation, and the fact that the social media censors are the most sinister form of propagandists is hardly news. (To thinking people, anyway.)
There are a lot of presumptions and questionable assumptions in this quasi-scientific survey. For example, the article starts out by demonstrating its own bias and willingness to accept silly notions by dismissing “anti-vaccine messaging” as fake news. Anyone with a functioning brain can see from the medical and scientific reports that the Covid ‘vaccine’ is not a vaccine at all, but an experimental DNA-altering drug concoction that does not confer immunity nor stop the spread of the disease, and which arguably causes more serious problems than Covid itself. Plus, it leads to unpredictable mutations of the virus that produce new and more virulent variants of the disease.
Admittedly, the facts are hard to find, due to censorship by the social media companies.
And therein lies the problem. Still, these writers do advocate a scientific examination of the issue. It is a good place to start in analyzing the problem. (And it is a problem, on both the left and the right.)
Just be wary of the writers’ conclusions. If they were being forthright, they would have published their findings under a slightly different title: WE FOUND THE ONE GROUP OF AMERICANS WHO ARE MOST LIKELY TO SPREAD FAKE NEWS — US (INTELLECTUALS)
(CHS 01-20-2022 1115 0500)
(File updated 01-20-2022 1223 -0500)
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WE FOUND THE ONE GROUP OF AMERICANS WHO ARE MOST LIKELY TO SPREAD FAKE NEWS
By HEMANT KAKKAR and ASHER LAWSON
Politico Magazine
01/14/2022 12:00 PM EST
One subset of conservatives expressed the greatest tendency to promote false news stories. Here’s what it means for the fight against misinformation.
Hemant Kakkar is assistant professor of management and organizations at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Asher Lawson is a Ph.D. student in management and organizations at Duke.
Whether it’s anti-vaccine messaging or falsehoods about the 2020 election, it’s easy to blame conservatives or Republicans as a group for spreading misinformation, as many in the media and academia have done. But this message is oversimplified, and anyone who wants to fight back against the very real scourge of fake news in American politics should look more closely.
In newly published research, we found that it’s not conservatives in general who tend to promote false information, but rather a smaller subset of them who also share two psychological traits: low levels of conscientiousness and an appetite for chaos. Importantly, we found that several other factors we tested for — including support for former President Donald Trump — did not reliably predict an inclination to share misinformation.
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Read the article in full at Politico website (URL above.)
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