{"id":28742,"date":"2020-10-21T13:28:39","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T20:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=28742"},"modified":"2020-10-21T13:28:39","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T20:28:39","slug":"the-most-problematic-fake-news-are-not-complete-falsehoods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=28742","title":{"rendered":"THE MOST PROBLEMATIC \u201cFAKE NEWS\u201d ARE NOT COMPLETE FALSEHOODS"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by\u00a0Pilar Marrero<\/a><\/span>\u00a0|\u00a0Oct 21, 2020<\/span>\u00a0|\u00a0Politics<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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From left to right: Cameron Hickey, Program Director, Algorithmic Transparency at National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC); Jacquelyn Mason, Senior Investigative Researcher at First Draft; Jacobo Licona, Disinformation Research Lead at Equis Labs<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Disinformation, misinformation and hate speech, among other types of content, can lead to vote suppression and undermine democratic institutions. Experts offer tips on how to identify them.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Pilar Marrero, Ethnic Media Services<\/strong><\/p>\n

Problematic content \u2013 what some call \u201cfake news\u201d \u2014 regarding the elections is spreading rapidly in the media environment, potentially laying the groundwork for chaos in this election season. And the most potentially damaging content, according to some experts on disinformation, doesn\u2019t have to be patently false to have an impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s exactly why sometimes it\u2019s so hard to identify,\u201d said Cameron Hickey, a former journalist and program director of Algorithmic Transparency, a project of the National Conference on Citizenship (NCOC). Hickey led off a recent EMS conference on disinformation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter exactly what form this problematic content is, if it\u2019s misleading, it\u2019s a problem,\u201d Hickey said. \u201cBut the stuff that\u2019s absolutely false and can easily be fact checked is not what I am talking about. It\u2019s the murkier gray area<\/p>\n

According to Hickey, problematic content includes disinformation (intentional), misinformation (unintentional), rumors, junk news, and conspiracies. Subject matter varies, he said, noting categories such as:<\/p>\n

Fear and manipulation<\/strong>: content that tries to make you feel scared or angry or self-righteous in order to change your behavior.<\/p>\n

Conspiracy theories<\/strong>: theories that reference the \u201cdeep state\u201d or so-called \u201cboogeymen\u201d such as Bill Gates or George Soros.<\/p>\n

Missing Context<\/strong>: information that leaves out a key piece of the context to distort people\u2019s understanding.<\/p>\n

Pseudoscience<\/strong>: such as bogus cures for the Coronavirus or theories arguing that masks do \u201cmore harm than good\u201d which have been disproven by science.<\/p>\n

Hate and dog whistles<\/strong>: divisive language or images designed to elicit a feeling but not to clarify an issue.<\/p>\n

Faulty Logic<\/strong>: logical fallacies and false equivalencies.<\/p>\n

Old<\/strong>: content that is out-dated and no longer relevant to the current topic.<\/p>\n

Q-Anon conspiracy theory illustrates the worst of problematic content.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started very narrowly as a theory about the deep state and pedophilia, and then broadened to include a lot of different things,\u201d Hickey said. \u201cSome people refer to it as a cult, others even as a religion,\u201d<\/p>\n

The conspiracy includes the idea that Democratic politicians, leaders and celebrities are pedophiles who drink children\u2019s blood to remain young, that Donald Trump is the hero, and that \u201cQ\u201d himself is battling the deep state and the forces of evil, Hickey noted. He added that while pedophilia and child trafficking are real problems as underscored by recent cases involving the Catholic Church and Jeffrey Epstein, Q-Anon goes way beyond any reality.<\/p>\n

When asked to denounce Q-Anon in a presidential town hall, President Trump declined to do so. Both Facebook and Twitter recently eliminated Q-Anon- related content and accounts.<\/p>\n

Another \u201cproblematic\u201d type of content, according to Hickey, is the growing theme of \u201can impending civil war\u201d that many predict will happen after the election.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy concern about this is that there is no reason to believe at the moment that there will be such violence. All the conversation is problematic because it amplifies the potential risk for violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ideological hyperbole also qualifies as misinformation, Hickey says, such as referring to Republicans as \u201cNazis\u201d and Democrats as \u201ccommunists\u201d or \u201csocialists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese messages are being deployed constantly, not just in social media memes and social discourse but in the ads,\u201d Hickey added. \u201cWe are no longer having conversations about the issues or the identities of the politicians running for office but exaggerating narrow bands of their perspective and amplifying them in ways that distort reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some disinformation targets specific communities in different ways. Jacqueline Mason, senior investigative researcher at First Draft, monitors disinformation aimed at the African American community. She singled out a picture of Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Kamala Harris \u2014 a collage of images of all the black men she locked up and kept in prison past their release date \u2014 that went viral on social media. Harris\u2019 record as a prosecutor is often attacked and it\u2019s fair game, Mason noted, but the picture itself was fake. The photographs in the background were not identified and consisted of the same six images repeated time and again. \u201cThis is a clear disinformation tactic,\u201d Mason said.<\/p>\n

Problematic content targeting LatinX communities varies according to the cultural nuances and demographics within each, according to disinformation expert Jacobo Licona of Equis Lab. \u201cMany false narratives are co-opted and rapidly amplified in Spanish, which often goes largely unchecked on social media.\u201d The sharing of information through closed (private) platforms like WhatsApp makes them hard to monitor, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen bad actors using social media with the goal of suppressing the vote and depressing enthusiasm,\u201d Licona said.<\/p>\n

The perceived threat of socialism and vote-by-mail attacks are two current examples. \u201cWe continue to see some bad actors spreading the idea that socialism is coming to America and they tailor them to their audiences by targeting people who come from Cuba and Venezuela,\u201d Licona said. \u201cThis type of speech has been amplified by far-right accounts, and pro-Trump LatinX influencers connecting Biden with socialism and Castro\u2019s Cuba or Maduro\u2019s Venezuela.\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all have a role to play in reducing the impact of problematic content,\u201d Hickey concluded. \u201cI believe it\u2019s our shared responsibility to monitor for content like that in our own feeds and track and engage others to be vigilant about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responding negatively is usually not as effective as debunking the actual facts or sharing credible information that \u201cinsulates people\u201d from being taken in by problematic content, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Pilar Marrero\u00a0|\u00a0Oct 21, 2020\u00a0|\u00a0Politics From left...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28743,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28742\/revisions\/28743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}