A look at the focus on disinformation by media, tech, and academic leaders, and how assumptions about disinfo effectiveness echo old media and advertising myths
In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were good. Midcentury American man could come home after eight hours … Tweets: @karlbode , @karlbode , @daveyalba , @daphnehk , @noupside , @bostonjoan , @mattyglesias , @hshaban , @rosiegray , @noupside , @tomgara , @alexburnsnyt , @nickconfessore , @rklein90 , @mathewi , @bernstein , @jayshams , @benyt , @benyt , @brianstelter , and @evelyndouek See also Mediagazer Tweets: Karl Bode / @karlbode : but this framing of an attempt to combat massive online white nationalist conspiracy cults and hugely irresponsible online tech platforms as largely some rich liberal game of patty cake seems oddly narrow https://twitter.com/... Karl Bode / @karlbode : this article everyone is so giddy over is a strange combination of helpful truths (America and its media was always broken, adtech is neither competent nor omnipotent) and a lot of less helpful hand wavy dismissals of very real problems https://harpers.org/... Davey Alba / @daveyalba : A friend told me “I feel like there are good people who work on disinformation who aren't doctrinaire or naive about the challenges. And there are grifters & hangers on who do shoddy work & propose unworkable solutions. They're not alll Big Disinfo” agreed https://harpers.org/... Daphne Keller / @daphnehk : Wow. This article. It's a contrarian takedown and does some overstating, but it is amazing to see someone questioning the verities of our disinformation discussion. And especially to see such clear focus on the motivations of participants. https://harpers.org/... Renee DiResta / @noupside : Interesting article arguing that “mis-/disinfo” is akin to “fake news” in its politicization & vagueness, which I agree with, though there are better defs than the one chosen here For a while now I've argued that “propaganda” is the word that fits, https://harpers.org/... Joan Donovan / @bostonjoan : I'd say this article is cynically true of some of the initiatives in the field, esp orgs that are selling solutions or reputation washing. I would go as far as to say, universities have always been interested in misinformation. Professors & librarians are seekers of truth https://twitter.com/... Matthew Yglesias / @mattyglesias : I'd been thinking of doing a piece arguing that the old, less competitive media landscape wasn't better just so uncompetitive that nobody could see its flaws. But @Bernstein says it here way better than I could have. https://harpers.org/... https://twitter.com/... Hamza Shaban / @hshaban : My takeaway from @Bernstein's thoughtful essay is how powerful repetition “works” as a propaganda tool, whether or not social media platforms are actually persuasion machines. https://harpers.org/... Rosie Gray / @rosiegray : great piece by @Bernstein on the increasingly entrenched media narrative of “disinformation” as a catch-all bogeyman, despite it not being clear what exactly the term means or how much it really affects ppl's behavior https://harpers.org/... Renee DiResta / @noupside : But interestingly the thing I think the essay could have connected the dots better on was Ellul's key contribution that propaganda evolves to fit the information environment of the day. It is impossible to divorce from the technological. Propaganda changes as the medium evolves. Tom Gara / @tomgara : “Is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them? The latter possibility has embarrassing implications...” https://harpers.org/... Alex Burns / @alexburnsnyt : “it's possible that the Establishment needs the theater of social-media persuasion to build a political world that still makes sense, to explain Brexit and Trump and the loss of faith in the decaying institutions of the West” https://harpers.org/... Nick Confessore / @nickconfessore : This is a really good @Bernstein essay on some of the definitional and observational problems surrounding journalistic treatment of “disinformation,” which really goes all the way back to the immediate post-2016 period. https://harpers.org/... Rebecca Klein / @rklein90 : “In this context, the disinformation project is simply an unofficial partnership between Big Tech, corporate media, elite universities, and cash-rich foundations.” https://harpers.org/... Mathew Ingram / @mathewi : Is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them? https://harpers.org/... via @Harpers Joe Bernstein / @bernstein : I spent much of my year @niemanfdn thinking about our endless obsession with “disinformation.” My essay about it is the cover story of this month's Harper's. I hope you read it! https://harpers.org/... Jacob Shamsian / @jayshams : this essay is making me change my mind about things, which i think means it's disinfo https://harpers.org/... Ben Smith / @benyt : An key part of this is that “misinformation” can also serve as a back door for the return of total journalistic confidence about our own objectivity. https://harpers.org/... Ben Smith / @benyt : A really important @Bernstein corrective to the current obsession with “disinformation” https://harpers.org/... Brian Stelter / @brianstelter : The new cover story of Harpers is a @Bernstein essay about “Big Disinfo,” exploring why “the disinformation frame has become so dominant” https://harpers.org/... https://twitter.com/... Evelyn Douek / @evelyndouek : “An even more vexing issue for the disinfo field, though, is the supposedly objective stance media researchers and journalists take toward the information ecosystem to which they themselves belong.” The Big Disinfo Industrial Complex is... a problem https://harpers.org/... See also Mediagazer