Not that the authors were necessarily doing this, but I think that simply attempting to associate misinformation vulnerability with mental illness really misses the whole point.
Fake news rewards a belief choice that healthy people indulge in every day.
While not wanting to get too into a religious debate, I think that religion teaches us that belief does not require evidence, but reward. I saw a video of someone making an elaborate orange juice for church. Price of admission- if you want that orange juice and spend time with 100 friendly people, is that you have to assent to a belief system.
This effectively teaches individuals that, if an organization can create an "Atmosphere of Plausibility" or "Illusion of Consensus", then the individual has permission to enter the tribe by accepting a belief. From there, an "us versus the world" bond is established, and outside groups/nonbelievers who want to "destroy the bond" or "destroy the group" are considered hostile.
This relates to fake news because we are trained that a belief requires minimal evidence as long as the social opportunities it affords are substantial. In fact, the greater the leap of defiance against evidence, demonization of "experts", etc, the more that a tribal bond is reinforced.
Since I've already crossed a line by discussing religion, I'll refrain from addressing politics aside from saying that this theory of "Belief Bonding" seems to fit with some paradoxes in American Politics quite well.
> Not that the authors were necessarily doing this, but I think that simply attempting to associate misinformation vulnerability with mental illness really misses the whole point.
Exactly. Besides, it is unethical, unscientific, and dangerous; i.e., you'll end up labeling large masses of people as insane because disinformation and misinformation are merely new terms for propaganda, which is public relations, which is marketing and advertising, and so on and so forth. Maybe they, the authors, the arbiters of truth, would allow me to test their sanity by asking them questions about my field? Or maybe they'd like to also classify people's sanity based on things like who buys some unneeded garbage prompted by online advertisements? Or based on who votes whom?
> I think it also reinforces the basic fake news premise that experts are propagandists.
Sure: plenty of intellectuals, including great writers and scientists, indeed have been propagandists. People like Merton even worked in war propaganda. There are plenty of experts in marketing too. And then there are people like Dugin, Zakharova, etc.
But please do not take this comment as a statement that all experts or intellectuals would always be propagandists. What I am trying to say is that we should really try to move away from these simple categories (true vs. false, disinformation vs. information, etc.) in order to understand the current information chaos. The dichotomous categories also promote the false hope that technical (AI/ML) solutions could be used to tackle the issue.
Fake news rewards a belief choice that healthy people indulge in every day.
While not wanting to get too into a religious debate, I think that religion teaches us that belief does not require evidence, but reward. I saw a video of someone making an elaborate orange juice for church. Price of admission- if you want that orange juice and spend time with 100 friendly people, is that you have to assent to a belief system.
This effectively teaches individuals that, if an organization can create an "Atmosphere of Plausibility" or "Illusion of Consensus", then the individual has permission to enter the tribe by accepting a belief. From there, an "us versus the world" bond is established, and outside groups/nonbelievers who want to "destroy the bond" or "destroy the group" are considered hostile.
This relates to fake news because we are trained that a belief requires minimal evidence as long as the social opportunities it affords are substantial. In fact, the greater the leap of defiance against evidence, demonization of "experts", etc, the more that a tribal bond is reinforced.
Since I've already crossed a line by discussing religion, I'll refrain from addressing politics aside from saying that this theory of "Belief Bonding" seems to fit with some paradoxes in American Politics quite well.
edit - clarity