We Have a News Vacuum

Nature abhors a vacuum, and the vacuum left by the loss of good media coverage is rapidly showing itself locally as well as nationally.

One side of the vacuum is attempting to be filled by what I shall gracefully call "misinformation monsters" who whine, moan, complain, ad nauseum, about every little thing the local government does. There is about as much truth in what they whine and complain about as is in the tiny little tip of my little finger, and the rest is conjecture, conspiracy crap, and fascist bigotry.

The other side is filled with, well, next to nothing, unfortunately. The local newspapers - the daily and the weekly - are not covering the county government in depth and detail. I know because that's what I used to do. I still do it with an online news outlet that I write for, but those stories do not have puppy dogs on them and aren't widely read. The online news outlet gets better hits from stories about kitty cats, trucks that get stuck in town trying to make turns on narrow streets, and other things that in the long term don't matter.

The county, in an effort to fill this vacuum, has created a "facts4u" page. They see the misinformation monsters on social media doing what they do best and try to correct the record. This is admirable, but it's not working well. The misinformation monsters are like the people the former guy could shoot on 5th Avenue. They'd go out bleeding to death and admiring his aim with their last gasp. They'd never believe he actually shot them.

This is a national problem. People are getting their "news" from opinions, from their friends, from, well, anything but an actual news source, apparently. And the news sources tend to grab a headline and beat it until something else catches their attention. (The recent unfortunate sinking of the Titan as it went to view the Titanic being a case in point. I am sorry those folks died, but I was sick of hearing about it. There are other things going on in the world. I mean, about 500 other people died in a Greek shipping incident at the same time, but they were immigrants, so I suppose they weren't worth as much coverage as the lives of billionaires.)

The local papers can't do what they need to do because they're understaffed. But even if they weren't, I have to wonder, now that we have all become social media junkies and everyone's a scientist, an expert on book banning, or an experienced pilot even if they've never been behind the controls of a plane, if it would make any difference. If the local media printed stories that covered topics in depth and explained what is going on with growth, economic development, the school system, book banning, etc., would the stories reach the people they need to reach?

I think not. Those people are no longer reachable by anything that does not echo in their brains as a compliant agreement with what they are already thinking. They seem unable to synthesize new information unless it agrees with their worldview.

Battling social media misinformation is an ongoing problem that needs to be addressed. The main way I deal with it is (a) I go slow and do not share information unless I have fact checked it myself. (The way I know most of the local misinformation is misinformation is because I have listened to and/or attended meetings, or talked to a primary source, not a secondary one.) and (b) I am skeptical of everything I read unless or until I have verified it. Many things do not interest me, so I ignore those. I certainly don't share them. If I have interest in something, I fact check it before I share.

I think before I post. I wish others would.

  Yale offers up these six ways to deal with misinformation:

 1. Trust the source, not the sharer.  A recent study found that in deciding what to trust and share on social media, individuals were more attentive to the sharer than to the original source of an article.  This is a mistake.  Reputable news sources have fact checkers and strong incentives to report facts accurately; they also have editorial practices that allow them to correct their own errors.  They are, for the most part, trustworthy.  Confused about a current event?  See what the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or the Washington Post says.

2. Remember that your reaction to an event isn’t the only one.  In response to a political or social event, you might find yourself surrounded by a storm of outrage, or a warm glow of approval on social media.  Researchers have found that networks of retweets and interaction about moral content on Twitter are highly segregated by political affiliation.  These researchers also found that people are generally more likely to share emotional content.  For this reason, social media is inadvertently selecting for the content that most drives polarization.  Be wary when friends share highly emotional moral content, and remember that elsewhere in the social network, other perspectives are likely being shared and you are not seeing them. 

3. Fight confirmation bias.  People tend to trust evidence that confirms beliefs they already hold and ignore evidence that pushes against these beliefs.  If you find yourself only trusting and sharing things that you already believed, you may be falling into the confirmation bias trap.  Along these lines, be wary of articles that report on a controversial topic, but where it is entirely unclear why anyone would hold the other position in the controversy.  Such articles are designed to get clicks and shares by appealing to confirmation biases.

4. Watch out for surprising scientific findings.  In general, people have a bias towards novelty.  We are fascinated by things that are surprising or new.  This translates into likes, click-throughs, and shares on social media.  And this means that journalists are incentivized to cover the surprising and novel, including in coverage about science. But in science, surprising findings are also often wrong or misleading.  Not every study reflects a true effect, and some studies fail to replicate. Studies that fail to replicate, though, are more likely to be reported on, and more like to be shared on social media, presumably because they are more surprising.  This unfortunately means that if you’ve heard about a scientific finding on social media, it is more likely to be false than one you haven’t heard of.

5. Read and share science journalism that covers a whole literature, not a single study.  One solution is to read, trust, and share scientific articles that report results from an entire literature, rather than focusing on a single study. Because scientific evidence is probabilistic, any individual study can be misleading. But an entire body of evidence, gathered by many scientists, replicated, and critiqued within a scientific community is less likely to mislead. Ignore sensationalizing articles about one study.  (And no, wine isn’t better than exercise for your health.)

6. Remember, the agents of unfriendly nations are out there. We are unfortunately in a media environment where we are regularly brought into contact with content created and spread by foreign actors trying to manipulate public beliefs. These agents are extremely savvy about what will be shared and liked. One major goal seems to be to polarize and divide the US electorate and to erode trust in the US democracy. For this reason, it is not safe to assume content created by sources you have never heard of is safe or reliable—even (or especially) if it tends to support beliefs or positions you already accept. Cultivate a skeptical attitude towards social media content, and use verified sources to check scientific and political facts before trusting, liking, and sharing.

I don't know what one does about people who pay no attention to this because it comes from a higher education source, or those who mistrust trustworthy sources.

*Bing images.