{"id":4794,"date":"2018-03-14T19:09:41","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T19:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socialpanic.org\/?p=4794"},"modified":"2018-03-14T19:09:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T19:09:41","slug":"im-so-old-i-remember-writing-about-fake-news-in-2014-fakenews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2018\/03\/14\/im-so-old-i-remember-writing-about-fake-news-in-2014-fakenews\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m so old, I remember writing about fake news in 2014 :) #fakenews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social media, confirmation bias and its use in marketing #FakeNews #Propaganda #SocialMedia<\/h1>\n
\n
(I originally posted this on my tech blog, May 24, 2014, about 2 1\/2 years before \u201cfake news\u201d became a popular meme. Since then, social media has become a friction-less platform for the spread of propaganda, fake news, and worse.)
\n<\/em>
\nConfirmation bias occurs\u00a0when we tend to give weight to information that supports our beliefs and to ignore or discard information that opposes our beliefs.<\/div>\n
There are several studies finding social media reinforces confirmation bias. All the studies I found address this in the context of politics and liberal or conservative bias. \u00a0However, the issue is much more widespread than political topics.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
For example, many people share stories about contemporary topics \u2013 without bothering to check if the story is accurate or is provided with full or appropriate context. In some cases, bogus news reports become viral as they are quickly shared. \u201cUntruths\u201d are\u00a0spread wide but corrections rarely follow<\/em>.<\/div>\n
\nWorse,<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to new information, people are heavily influenced by the first information that they\u2019re exposed to. Combating an existing bias is much harder than influencing people on a subject that they have never been exposed to. Sometimes it is more important to be first\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus posting something that is unchecked and possibly wrong has great influence on others.<\/p>\n

First, we tend to share things with friends, who are friends, in part, because they already share similar views<\/a>.
\nSecond, when a \u201cfriend\u201d posts something that is wrong, who wants to tell a \u201cfriend\u201d they are wrong and risk losing a \u201cfriend\u201d? We may think social media encourages self correction of those items that are wrong, but there is a bias against causing hurt to friends. Many such posts are based on an \u201cappeal to authority\u201d by quoting an \u201cexpert\u201d (who often suffers from confirmation bias).\u00a0\u00a0Arguments based on \u201cappeal to authority\u201d are the weakest of arguments<\/a>\u00a0but provide a quick way to shut down skeptical responses: \u201cHow dare you question X!<\/p>\n

I have noted that many items shared on social media typically rest on the \u201cappeal to authority\u201d because the method is very effective:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026it was found that high-status individuals create a stronger likelihood of a subject agreeing with an obviously false conclusion, despite the subject normally being able to clearly see that the answer was incorrect.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The result is that social media is a highly effective platform for spreading false information, intentionally or unintentionally. Here is a classic example: a widely shared\u00a0list of celebrities with high IQs, allegedly provided by Mensa<\/a>, giving it the appeal to authority \u2013 except it was a hoax.<\/p>\n

In the case of intentionally spreading false or incomplete information, social media becomes an idealized platform for propaganda. Falsity is not confined to celebrity rumors but includes alleged scientific facts and statements about government policy.<\/p>\n

The Pew Research Center<\/a> did a survey regarding social media and confirmation bias within the realm of political thinking where confirmation bias, they found, is very much alive and well. They found that the more extreme the views (very conservative or very liberal), the more \u201cthey agree with their friends\u2019 comments most of the time or always\u201d suggesting (but not stated in the report) that the more strongly held the views, the more likely you have built a \u201cfriends\u201d group of matching beliefs who exchange information further reinforcing their confirmation bias.<\/p>\n

Confirmation bias within social media is a powerful force for sales and marketing activities and there are at least two ways it can be used.<\/p>\n

One, and the positive one, is to \u201cdevelop a reputation for accuracy\u201d and to \u201ccite your sources\u201d<\/a>. The goal is to be a trusted source of accurate information.<\/p>\n

The other approach is to use confirmation bias for manipulating your audience into taking actions. That\u2019s the sleazy option which\u00a0is\u00a0commonly used in political activities and emotional marketing appeals. \u00a0It is used, though, because it works. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets<\/a>, discusses how decision making is often based on emotional responses, not on hard data. People have evolved to use emotional responses as a rapid heuristic to quickly arrive at decisions, versus the tedious and time consuming use of hard data. A side effect is that we can be easily fooled into making decisions based on emotions and confirmation bias \u2013 even if the information is wrong.<\/p>\n

If you want to manipulate others, create or pass along stories attributable to \u201cexperts\u201d. Few will question the \u201cwisdom\u201d imparted, whether right or wrong!<\/p>\n

The upshot of this is that social media has degenerated into a platform for propaganda. Propaganda is a method of influencing entire populations towards a specific outcome. As written at Wikipedia<\/a>,<\/p>\n

Propaganda is information that is not\u00a0impartial<\/a>\u00a0and used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively (thus possibly\u00a0lying by omission<\/a>) to encourage a particular synthesis, or using\u00a0loaded<\/a>\u00a0messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. Propaganda can be used as a form of ideological or commercial warfare<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The root of propaganda is the same as the root of propagate<\/em> \u2013 or the spreading of something. \u00a0As described above, social media is\u00a0the ideal platform for the use of propaganda to achieve desired outcomes. Here, the vector is our \u201cfriends\u201d, who we may not wish to challenge. In fact, a perilous group think sets in: we pass things along without checking them ourselves. Besides, as noted above, who wants to cause a rift and point out their friends are wrong for passing the item along?<\/p>\n

A consequence seems to be less thinking and an increase in gullibility. We pass along anything. We do not question. Skeptical questioning is discouraged. We became dumber as we accumulate \u201cknowledge\u201d of things that are not true or are misinterpreted and misquoted out of context.<\/p>\n

Our best response might be to recognize and ignore posts based on appeals to authority, and to consider how we use social media ourselves and to be willing to dig deeper into the details. Details matter. A lot. But who has time to fact check every item posted on Facebook? No one, so the process continues and we become dumber, day by day. And as we become dumber, we become easier to manipulate \u2026 and the cycle goes on and on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.\u201d
\n\u2015\u00a0Daniel J. Boorstin,\u00a0The Discoverers: A History of Man\u2019s Search to Know His World and Himself<\/i>
\nSource for the quote is here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social media, confirmation bias and its use in marketing #FakeNews #Propaganda #SocialMedia (I originally posted this on my tech blog, May 24, 2014, about 2 1\/2 years before \u201cfake news\u201d became a popular meme. Since then, social media has become a friction-less platform for the spread of propaganda, fake news, and worse.) Confirmation bias occurs\u00a0when we tend to give weight to information that supports our beliefs and to ignore or discard information that opposes our beliefs. There are several studies…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,40,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-propaganda-methods","category-fictional-news","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}