The Misinformation-Outrage Cycle
This is Part 4. It’s generally best to follow the advice given to Alice and the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: “Begin at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop.” But if you must read out of order, here are all the links:
- Part 1: “There are no Yankees here.“
- Part 2: “Creating the Conditions for Mainstream Conspiracy Theories.“
- Part 3: “The Perils of Legal Punditry.”
- Part 4: “Social Media Makes it Worse”
- Part 5: “Get the Fighters Fighting and Keep Them Fighting”
- Part 6: “How to Hold on to Facts”
Part 4: Social Media Makes it Worse
Recall from Part 2 that, beginning in the 1980s and accelerating in the 1990s, mass media fragmented. People found themselves in what we might call partisan information ecosystems in which they were offered content that would appeal to them. This fragmenting made it easier for conspiracy theories and misinformation to spread. It also pushed partisans toward more extreme views, thus causing people who were less engaged with politics to ignore politics altogether.
The Internet and social media then fractured audiences into even smaller units of like-minded partisans.
Historians have compared the invention of the Internet to the printing press. From Yale Professor Timothy Snyder: “New media always cause tremendous disruptions. The printing press led to 150 years of religious wars.”
While the printing press didn’t cause the Protestant Reformation, it was the most important driver of the Protestant Reformation by allowing for the widespread dissemination of new information, including misinformation (errors), disinformation (deliberate lies), and propaganda that people were not equipped to evaluate.
The Pew Research Center says this:
Algorithms help good jokes, cute pet videos, and clever quips go viral, which provides a lot of fun. Algorithms also allow groups of like-minded partisans to find each other. Based on who you already follow and the kind of content you engage with, the algorithm will suggest other people to follow. If you find someone on social media who you admire, you can see who that person follows and you can also follow them. Pretty soon—because of the content being served to you by means of algorithms—you can find yourself in a large group of thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of like-minded people who are continually confirming each other’s biases.
Algorithms also allow content and news to be targeted to individuals with pinpoint precision. Here is an example of how misconceptions can spread:
- Person A sees a Misleading Headline or a headline stating an opinion as if it is a fact.
- Person A clicks on it, skims the article without reading closely and thereby misses the subtlety, and then “likes” it. (Fact: On social media, people tend to scroll quickly, taking in headlines and reacting to them without reading past the headline.)
- The algorithm shows Person A lots of like-minded partisans talking about the opinion as if it is a fact.
- The algorithm shows Person A a post in which a Legal Expert comments approvingly on the Misleading Headline. (The algorithm is smart enough to send Person A an expert who shares Person A’s partisan views.)
- Person A is then persuaded that the Misleading Headline is true.
- Over the coming days, weeks, months—or even longer—Person A’s belief is continually reinforced by members of his or her community.
Person A, by herself, is simply a misinformed person. Multiply Person A by hundreds of thousands of people in a partisan ecosystem, and you have a problem.
Once a person acquires a belief in this manner, it is very difficult to get that person to question the belief.
Some experts post on social media only when they have well-thought-out opinions. Some lawyers who regularly appear on television are careful to stick to the facts and make sure that, when they speculate, it’s clear that they are speculating.
But some experts (to use Peter Arenella’s phrase) fall prey to the seductive power of being anointed a ‘national expert’ on all legal issues. They discover that it doesn’t matter if they are talking about an area of law they know nothing about and didn’t bother researching. They discover that it doesn’t matter if they toss an opinion off the tops of their heads. Anything they say (particularly if they confirm the biases of their followers) will get lots of engagement and they will be heaped with praise.
Also, they learn that there is no collective memory. They can be wrong with impunity, which frees them to be careless.
Get the Fighters Fighting (and Keep Them Fighting)
Before law school, I taught English and creative writing at the college and university level. It was so long ago that it feels like another lifetime, but I remember Janet Burroway’s book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft because when I taught the introductory fiction writing class as a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, I was required to use her book as a text.
As everyone who has taken a literature class knows, good stories contain conflict. Burroway offered this advice to fiction writers:
- Get your fighters fighting.
- Make something — the stake — worth their fighting over
Conflict engages readers. Recall from Part 2 that cable news shows learned to use “conflict” programming to engage readers. Social media creates conflict by using algorithms to elevate material that promotes division and creates rage.
The Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen explained that Facebook algorithms incentivized “angry, polarizing, divisive content.” In her testimony before Congress, she said:
In a 60 Minutes interview, Haugen explained that content that gets engaged with – such as reactions, comments, and shares – gets wider distribution. Facebook’s own research found that “angry content” is more likely to receive engagement. She said that content producers and political parties are aware of this.
Twitter lets a person look at their “analytics.” (Actually, I don’t know if this is still possible.) These analytics allow a person to see which of their posts get the most engagement. People who are driven by a desire to be popular will study their analytics to see what kinds of posts get the most engagement. Then, they will consciously continue doing whatever gets them “likes” and new followers. The material that will get the most engagement either (1) confirms the pre-existing beliefs of their audience or (2) invokes a strong emotion in their audience.
@Catturds and Ben Shapiro enrage the left. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enrages the right. Elevating users on this list gets the fighters fighting and keeps them fighting, which of course, stimulates engagement and helps bring in advertising revenue.
There is a thing on Twitter called dunking: One person says something outrageous or painfully stupid. Others re-tweet the statement and dunk on it by adding a clever or snarky statement intended to highlight the outrageousness or stupidity of the statement.
Trump, while a candidate for office in 2016 and as president, demonstrated that the way to get more media coverage is to be as outrageous as possible. This created something we might call the outrage cycle:
- Trump said something outrageous designed to excite his supporters and enrage his critics.
- His critics became enraged.
- His followers felt euphoric to see his critics become enraged.
Others now copy this method. I have seen Ted Cruz, for example, post something completely outrageous designed to enrage his critics, who then “dunk” on him to the delight of their followers.
Both sides think they win a dunking contest: The dunker (usually a Democrat) shows how clever he or she is, and the dunkee (usually a Republican) gets to be the star of a show entitled “Watch Me Trigger the Libs.”
The dunking game drives up partisanship and increases engagement on the social media platform.
Is social media making us all more authoritarian?
In Part 1, I suggested that authoritarian characteristics exist on a continuum:
In Part 3, I showed how the misinformation circulating about the DOJ investigation stimulated three of the characteristics:
- support for conventional values (for example, the concept of the traditional family of man + women + children with each performing traditional roles.)
- authoritarian submission (submitting to perceived authorities)
- authoritarian aggression (“by any means necessary”)
- stereotypy (a tendency to repeat certain words and phrases; think of group chants)
- rigidity
- glorifying toughness and power (and despising bookish weakness)
- cynicism
- projectivity (the view that the world is a dark and dangerous place)
Now let’s talk about stereotypy, another item on the list.
Stereotypy refers to behaviors that are repeated without an obvious goal. When political psychologists discuss the traits of authoritarianism, they use the word stereotypy to refer to the repetition of phrases and a tendency to think in rigid categories.
In this video, Timothy Snyder talks about “Internet Triggers,” which he defines as something a person sees on the Internet, often because an algorithm directed the content to the person. The person then feels triggered and repeats it to someone else, who also feels triggered and in turn repeats the phrase. The people are thus transformed into repeaters of targeted memes and soon you have an Internet Trigger gone viral.
I took that introductory fiction writing class as an undergrad at UC Davis and still have my copy of Burroway. I found the quote from Mel McKee you mentioned on page 6. I wish our paths had crossed. It would have been fun to have had you as a teacher.
So many of the tools of good fiction writing are being employed by those in power (and of influence) today. Social media certainly makes that much easier. The trouble is that many of their supporters don’t necessarily realize they are treating fiction as reality. The destruction of public education a big part of that problem – too many people haven’t the skills to distinguish fact from fiction, and we are all in jeopardy because of that.
Teri, you said, “The way to control people is to reduce their ability to have complex thoughts”
I noticed this a long time ago when the people in my work group started using smart phones instead of email to communicate. Goodbye complex thoughts!
I feel it’s worth noting that much of the extremist MAGA right-wing acts and responds in ways that virtually duplicate the political side of the 1960s hippie movement and Jerry Rubin’s book Do It! — reliance on gut feelings and emotions instead of factual evidence and rational thought; absurd statements that the speaker doesn’t actually believe, and extreme cynical irony; attention-getting stunts that make our side cheer and laugh, and their side recoil in horror (like naked women and pigs on the floor of the Stock Exchange); constant talk about destruction, civil wars d tearing the whole system down because it doesn’t do what we want; conspiratorial thinking and belief in nonsense; and much more that I could list out and explain if I had time. Trump World has always reminded me of the Hippies and especially the Yippies and Weathermen, reversed. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Jerry Rubin became a conservative finance bro, the first “Yuppie” (his word).
Not just social media. I was listening to NPR this week during drive time. Terry Gross came on & she was interviewing Adam Kinzinger. She asked him about how the Jan 6 committee was ahead of DoJ investigating, & how did he feel now that there’s a special counsel?
He replied that he’s happy with how fast Jack Smith has moved & started to say something about how slow Merrick Garland was, but I turned it off before he could finish answering.
Neither Gross’s framing/question nor Kinzinger’s answer were worth listening to & do a disservice to the public.
Those Facebook recommendation algorithms do the exact opposite of a good librarian, especially a good elementary school librarian, which my mother was for 18 years. The librarian sees what a reader likes, and based on that helps them find books in other categories that they might like. A child who likes reading about sports, for example, might like biographies of sports figures, and move from that to biographies of other kinds of people. The current FB algorithms inhibit thinking; the librarian expands it.
As a retired software engineer, I would like to mention that there is no technical reason the algorithms couldn’t behave like librarians. It’s all a question of what the people paying the engineers ask them to create.
Very interesting reading, Teri – love your considered takes, which are far more readable to this Australian than 99% of what is visible from US sources, thanks to the exact phenomena you are writing about.
I’ve been thinking recently about how much people tie up their identity with their political ideology. There is a profound difference between how most US people who are inclined to do so will state their affiliation: “I am a [Democrat/Republican]” vs. how I hear people here stating it: “I usually vote [party]”, or “I always vote [party]”, or even for the tiny minority (about 0.5%) who have actually joined a party, they would usually say “I am a member of the ___ party” rather than the American phrasing, unless they are actually running for or in office.
(They might possibly say “I am conservative”. But let’s not start on the word “liberal” being the name of a major party here that is absolutely not…)
I think the personal definition of their selves as actually *being* their party that many US people display must tie into the “rigidity” item on the list. Changing who you vote for may not be easy sometimes, but it is a much lower hurdle to cross than changing who you *are*. It must be unbelievably hard for people who have self-identified as Republican or Democrat to renounce the party when it goes beyond their beliefs; easier to just shift their beliefs a bit than to change the label of part of their very core.
Not sure if it fits in to your agenda for these posts, but I’d enjoy reading your thoughts on this topic, too.
If you didn’t listen to Kinzinger, how can you know his explanation was not “worth listening to.” (I didn’t hear the discussion, so can’t get to the “meat” of the argument.) But, Leu2500, neither did you. Kinzinger is not a fool. His perception(s), experience, and career as a legislator should warrant your attention. Even if his opinion or statements of fact are wrong in your opinion, he deserved your attention. Garland was, in my opinion, very, very slow to present his opinion, or take meaningful action. I feel that he “dawdled” while “Rome” (i.e. D.C.) was burning. And that may have been a terrible decision, one which affected our current situation mightily.
Do you provide an Atom or RSS feed for your blog? I have subscribed to your Mastodon account’s corresponding RSS feed, but your material would be easier to read in my RSS-feed reader in blog form.
Recognizing extreme elements within our own communities, no matter conservative or liberal, is like hearing chalk dragging across the blackboard at that unfortunate angle. It happens, we cringe, and we go back to whatever we’re working on before the screeching occurred. Learning to appreciate or even tolerate the screeching is painful, but there it is – a real thing.
Thank you Teri.
It is important to disengage and think.
I appreciate you.
STOP
stop think observe plan
that acronym helps me remember to think
and not react.
So do you. 🙂
https://terikanefield.com/feed
Works for me.
Thank you. I wasn’t sure how to answer this.
I ran across a post today (Curmudgucation on substack) arguing that shared spaces are being crowded out by a proliferation of private spaces. Social media algorithms seem to help by showing us similar people to help strengthen our confirmation biases.
Interesting point!
I agree with all of this, but I think you are stopping short by not discussing who is turning away from social media. God knows I have spent time immersed in the internet and experienced all the negative impacts you cite. But I’ve really soured on it, and I suspect many others have too. As noted, new information technology disrupts, but we eventually adjust. I don’t think it’s going to take 150 years this time around. Maybe Musk’s destruction of Twitter was a good thing, it’s hastening the process. As social media splinters into dozens of options, it becomes more like cable TV–how many channels does an average person actually watch? And that dilutes the impact. As X has become the home for nasty screechers, it’s a lot easier to avoid. The first stone in an avalanche, maybe.
I completely agree. In fact, last November I wrote something similar. Everyone hoped for a “Twitter replacement” but I was hoping that something better (whatever that might be) would emerge.
I see a lot of those screechers on Threads now.
Also, part of what you describe (people get sick of the negative impact and leave) is why there is no collective memory. New people come in and didn’t know about the last 5 panic meltdowns. In 2020 when I mentioned the US v. Gamble meltdown, people didn’t remember. I think the people who recognized the toxicity may have left.
With a large Twitter following what happens is this: There is always some erosion as people leave, but once you have a large account, you get so much boosting from the algorithm that overall your account continues growing. This is why there is no negative impact on people who spin left wing nonsense. Later nobody remembers and their overall following keeps growing.
Teri, I am in awe of your mind.
“Before law school, I taught English and creative writing at the college and university level.”
Your discussion of human psychology, internet algorithms, groupthink, etc. with the receipts to substantiate it is beyond excellent. The best part about it, which makes it so valuable, is that “English and creative writing at the college and university level” plus law school plus years of practice of law does not naturally lead to your level of insight. That means you capitalize on a whole lot of diverse education and experience and actually THINK to come to conclusions. That makes reading it thought provoking and persuasive without any overriding feeling of pedagoguery. You are the sort I would love to sit under a tree and chat for hours with like Plato and Socrates.
Ha! Thanks.
I started out as a philosophy major.
Ah ha! You liberal arts folks are sneaky!
Terri, how can I tell if I am in a bubble? I am a progressive. I started life to the right of Genghis Khan and am currently to the left of Malcolm X. The terrible things that people say show up in their social media don’t show up in mine and if they do they get blocked. By reading your posts, am I confirming my biases? I read a great number of substack columns and get daily emails from both MSM and lesser. Do I have to read stuff by Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz, MTG, Boebert, or Steve Bannon to be “balanced” ?
Keep reading. I think I answer your question in the conclusion.
I don’t think I had watched CNN in years and I only watched Rachel on MSNBC. I came to the conclusion that their viewers had watched too much “Law and Order” and thought all criminals had to be caught, prosecuted, and tried inside an hour. Since leaving Twitter and cutting the cable cord, I’m almost ready to toss my blood pressure meds. I watch the PBS Newshour (1 day delay), drop in on Threads where I follow you, and read trashy novels with my spare time. And I vote. Always. Thank you for your always intelligent commentary on our world.
I’m going to do a long one here on disinformation in an area in which I, really by coincidence, happen to have a small amount of expertise and where rampant misinformation pretty much has had the whole country believing false info about crime for decades.
Goes back to grad school in 70’s, when I was in sociology dept at Northwestern and needed a grant or scholarship. A professor pulled strings and got me a fellowship to the Center for Urban Affairs (now gone, but there’s another similar center). I was immediately assigned to work on a huge project funded by the LEAA, The Reaction to Crime Project (most, if not all, the material produced by the project is in Northwestern archives, much available online).
The project was based on crime stats they knew existed, which showed the chances of being a victim had not really changed and they wanted a study to figure out how to reduce people’s fear — tho not going as far as admitting the stats constantly produced in the media are completely misleading.
My first job was on a literature review covering 1000s of studies, articles, reports, etc. on crime statistics. Somewhere around the time that TV news suddenly made a lot of local stories national, law enforcement changed their reporting on crime from figures on the probability of victimhood to just reporting the raw totals of each kind of crime committed. Since the population is always growing, the raw totals, will, of course, always go up. That reporting, combined with the suddenly widespread crime reporting on TV came together to produce a population living in fear of crime.
However, except for POC males from 15-25, largely living in inner cities, the probability of being the victim of most major crimes (those that existed in early ’70’s–a few have been added since then) has NOT changed. In fact that probability as of the last info I was able to find (probably 12 years ago) had not changed in 100 years.
The 2 biggest things that changed people’s thinking from leaving doors unlocked to buying security systems like crazy were the change to reporting gross numbers and the way national tv news programs began spreading news of crimes that previously would have only been known locally, giving the appearance of a huge increase in crime.
Most of the studies did not try to explain why law enforcement chose to make that change, but there was an implication that it helped get funding. Over the years I came to understand how convenient the shift in perception was for officials trying to convince the population about the criminality of poor people, POC, etc. Crime is rampant and it’s all “their” fault.
I’m not sure if I was more stunned by the revelation that the whole “crime problem” perception was basically made up and perpetuated by continuing to ignore data on probability (which has become increasingly harder to find) or that LEAA basically knew the crime problem was bogus but was going to spend $100s of millions of dollars to slightly reduce fear rather than to correct the misperception.
I left graduate school before the study finished and, of course, none of the materials were mine so I have none of it. But I continued to pay attention and, especially once the internet let me look up studies, I noted that the probabilities of victimhood on most major crimes continued on the same even path they’d been on for a century+.
John Stossel made a documentary in which he covered some of this issue in 1994 ( https://youtu.be/WmiFShBQDIs?si=KmQleHQySWSNd6jC ). When I researched, I never bothered to print out or bookmark since I was just pursuing the info out of personal interest so I can only offer my memories on the findings. For some reason it’s gotten much harder to find studies on probability as the mountain of info online has exploded, so I don’t have recent info.
I’ve tried to talk with people about this and note that eyes just glaze over because this is an arena in which everyone is so convinced of the truth of the crime problem that no one questions it. In the political arena both sides speak of it as if it’s a given, just offer different solutions.
It’s pretty scary to me how easily the folks who made these shifts and who decide about presentation of stats etc were able to shift perception for a whole nation and I often wonder how many other things we’ve been fooled about.
I’m also sad that no one wants to hear or explore the real story because I think it would dramatically change how we fund and pursue criminal matters. The right kinds of funding targeting the specific neighborhoods that generally have the biggest problems could shift everything but it doesn’t happen because the perception is of a problem that’s everywhere.