{"id":6279,"date":"2019-07-02T07:11:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T06:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/?p=6279"},"modified":"2019-07-04T16:52:42","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T15:52:42","slug":"the-organising-functions-of-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/2019\/07\/02\/the-organising-functions-of-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"The organising functions of fake news"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Lots has been written about the dangers of misinformation, including how to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41599-019-0279-9\">innoculate people against it<\/a>, or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/story\/20141113-the-best-way-to-debunk-myths\">debunk it once people have swallowed it<\/a>. A common theme is the idea that the risk of fake news is that people will believe it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But fake news has other functions besides getting people to believe something that isn&#8217;t true, and understanding these other functions may be as important as understanding its belief-altering properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Topic change<\/em>. When a blatent untruth is put out, it becomes something to talk about, orienting attention. This can be deliberate &#8211; as in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dead_cat_strategy\">dead cat strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Energy sink<\/em>. Untruths evoke refutations, further orienting attention and redirecting the energies of your opponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Loyalty test. Propaganda doesn&#8217;t exist to be believed, it exists as a flag around which people must organise, or display their opposition. The more blatant the untruth the stronger the test of loyalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Status display<\/em>. What better display of power than asking people to humiliate themselves by affirming an untruth merely because you said it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Misinformation is about power. As long as we try and deal with it as a class of information we&#8217;ll be vulnerable to its use by the powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More: &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.csudh.edu\/ccauthen\/576f12\/frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf\">On Bullshit<\/a>&#8221; by Harry Frankfurt<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Update: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fake_news\">Fake news<\/a> is a terrible bucket term which is used to cover everything from incorrection information to state propaganda, via all sorts of misinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Related: Podcast: <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/youarenotsosmart.com\/2019\/07\/02\/yanss-157-the-psychology-behind-why-people-dont-speak-out-against-and-even-defend-norms-they-secretly-despise\/\">YANSS<\/a><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/youarenotsosmart.com\/2019\/07\/02\/yanss-157-the-psychology-behind-why-people-dont-speak-out-against-and-even-defend-norms-they-secretly-despise\/\"> 157 \u2013 The psychology behind why people don\u2019t speak out against, and even defend, norms they secretly despise <\/a> &#8211; which covers, inter alia, norm engineering<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lots has been written about the dangers of misinformation, including how to innoculate people against it, or debunk it once people have swallowed it. A common theme is the idea that the risk of fake news is that people will believe it. But fake news has other functions besides getting people to believe something that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-self-defence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5KQtW-1Dh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6279"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6282,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279\/revisions\/6282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}