Fake News, Politics and Society

A prescient article from Ines Eisele at Deutsche Welle (DW) which is very relevant to the Anglosphere and elsewhere as people struggle to understand the world around them whether politics, science, economics or otherwise, with suboptimal or even ‘gamed’ media.

Especially important currently with climate & Covid science denial, Putin’s Russian invasion of Ukraine and right wing political parties, which all share similar strategy and tactics, i.e. astroturfing media and politics, to then gaslight society, that may not produce beneficial outcomes e.g. Brexit and Trump.

The article touches on cognitive distortions, negative content triggers (pollster Lynton Crosby has said negativity moves voters, positives do not), personal benefits of beliefs versus facts, desire for attention and approval, finally solutions for resilience.

School curricula need to include both embedded and overt ways of avoiding fake news, junk or pseudo science etc. for empowered citizens, but adults in general also need the same training; age, experience or education are not sufficient.

‘From DW:

‘Fact check: Why do we believe fake news?

July 8, 2023

Fake news have become a real threat to society. How do psychological and social factors influence whether we fall for them or not? And what can we do against it?

Whether it’s the war in Ukraine, the coronavirus pandemic or gender issues, more and more fake news have been circulating on the internet in recent years, especially on emotional and controversial topics. Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Other times, they are easier to recognize.

But not for everyone: Some internet users are more likely to accept misinformation and fake news as true information than others. In this DW fact check, we look at why that is.

Cognitive distortions fool us

A term that comes up again and again in this context is “cognitive bias.” It describes faulty tendencies in human thinking from which we find it difficult to free ourselves.

Among other things, our views, and our preconceived worldview, also called “partisanship” or “confirmation bias” in some specialist articles, play a major role in why we fall for fake news. 

Cognitive psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky from Bristol University explains the phenomenon: “If I hear something I want to hear because it is in line with my political opinions, yes, then I’ll believe it even more.”

So we are always biased. For example, those who are convinced that Germany is taking in too many refugees are more inclined to believe news stories that report on local authorities being overburdened or generally say negative things about this group.

Another important “cognitive bias” is that we often simply trust our intuition. It seems unnecessary to us — and is probably too much of a nuisance — to check something again before we internalize it, comment on it, and forward it. Thus, many users only read the headline of articles, but not the actual text.

The Science Post and NPR, for example, tested this by posting misleading headlines. Readers only learned that the whole thing was an experiment if they clicked on the links — which most of them did not do.

Negative content triggers us the most

The “bandwagon effect”also misleads us: According to this phenomenon, people have a tendency to follow the opinions or behaviors of others rather than forming their own opinion. In relation to fake news, this means that we are more likely to believe information if others do so as well.

When we see a social media post with lots of shares and likes, we tend to trust swarm intelligence just like everyone else. As already mentioned most of them share and like without taking a closer look at the content.

Our memory is also not very helpful when it comes to correctly storing what we have seen or read, also described as “persistence of inaccuracy.” We often do not recall whether something was true or false. It is not uncommon for people to claim that a false piece of information was true, even if it was later corrected, for example in the form of a fact check.

Apart from these biases, fake news works so well because we are guided more by emotions than we realize. The fact that false news spreads six times faster than true information is due precisely to this emotionality, Lewandowsky says. “Fake news tends to create outrage in the receiver, the recipient of the message. And we know that people, whether you like it or not, are engaging with outrage, provoking information… That makes it more likely for them to go viral.”

The question of personal benefit

A study conducted by the University of Würzburg last year, in which 600 participants were asked to assess the truth of various statements, also revealed that dark personality traits and so-called post-factual epistemic beliefs make us more susceptible to fake news.

“To find out about respondents’ beliefs about knowledge and facts, we asked them: ‘Do you trust your intuition when you encounter information? How much value do you place on evidence? Do you believe there is such a thing as independent facts at all?,'” the study’s lead author, psychologist Jan Philipp Rudloff, told DW.

The evaluation revealed that the participants found it more difficult to distinguish true statements from false ones the more they relied on their gut feeling and the less they believed in the existence of facts.

“And then we also looked at the ‘dark factor of personality,’ sort of the core of all dark personality traits, such as narcissism or psychopathy,” Rudloff said. “They’re called dark because those are related to behaviors that we don’t socially approve of.”

For people with a strong dark personality factor, he said, their own advantage is the most important thing. Everything else — and that could be the truth in some circumstances — becomes subordinate to that.

“The question then is not whether a piece of information is true or not, but whether it benefits them, plays into their cards, serves as justification.” Dark personality traits and a problematic understanding of knowledge and facts often go hand in hand, according to Rudloff, and usually manifest themselves at a young age.

The desire for attention and approval

Joe Walther, director of the Center for Information Technology and Society at the University of California, points to another important aspect that promotes the spread of fake news. He sees liking, commenting and spreading information on the internet primarily as a social interaction: “I think people often engage in social media (behavior) in order to feel like they’re participating and to be recognized for it.”

“So if I send you a crazy story that research has found that short people are more susceptible to fake news than tall people. I doubt such a thing is true, but I think you would appreciate that I sent you that crazy, funny thing and I think people use social media in order to be liked by others, in order to get attention, to be recognized, validated,” he said.

At the same time, this example helps to illustrate that users don’t share fake news necessarily because they fall for it. Rather, they simply want to entertain and amuse themselves and others. Or they share content precisely because they do NOT believe it to be true.

What can we do to become more resilient?

The reasons why we believe fake news are complex. Among other things, they have to do with our personality and our attitude toward knowledge and facts. Fake news is also an appealing vehicle for networking with others and enjoying attention and approval. There are also various cognitive mechanisms that distort our perception.

The question is: How do we become more resilient? The first step is to become aware of how susceptible we are to manipulation and to be aware that we can never be entirely objective. Jan Rudloff advocates providing students with more meta-level knowledge regarding facts and science.

“Ultimately, in science, it is always the case that you can only find a consensus, a kind of agreement among as many experts as possible. But as new information comes in, what was previously considered fact or consensus can shift.”

This is very complex, he said, and it gives some people the impression that facts are arbitrarily determined by politicians and scientists. An example of that is the claim made during the corona pandemic that children would not spread COVID-19 as much — and then it turned out they did.

An approach that goes in a similar direction is the so-called prebunking. With information about fake news and disinformation at their disposal, users can be sensitized even before they encounter it. One idea of that would be to provide an information campaign ahead of an election where a lot of fake news is expected to manipulate voters.’

For related articles and blogs on Adult Learning, Critical Thinking, Curriculum, Digital Literacy, Learning Theory, Media, Science Literacy, Soft Skills and Statistical Analysis click through:

Critical Thinking or Analysis: Importance for Education, Media and Empowered Citizens

Covid Misinformation – Gut Instinct & Beliefs vs. Science & Critical Thinking

Skills of Critical Thinking

Anglosphere Nativism and Eugenics in Political  Media – Language and Social Discourse

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

Covid-19 Coronovirus Data and Statistical Literacy

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories and Radical Right Libertarians

Covid-19 Climate Science Vaccination Misinformation PR and Astro Turfing

Critical Thinking or Analysis: Importance for Education, Media and Empowered Citizens

Throughout the world, especially now with social media, the digital volume of information and velocity, all citizens need skills of critical analysis, especially through the education system, community and media.

While newsrooms cut costs, headcounts and resources, many journalists or reporters now have less time and fewer resources to produce more news content.  However, this comes with the commensurate risk of media being gamed by corporate and political forces of the right, due to media using heuristic shortcuts on any issue and inherently biassed towards parties of the right.

Gaming media is done in various ways including using think tanks masquerading as academic or research institutes. In fact too often they are PR or lobbying groups, staffed by pseudo intellectuals producing ‘research’ reports which are promoted in media, for adoption or approval by both voters and the politicians or government; avoiding commentary or analysis that actually conducts analysis and may preclude policy initiatives?

However, they are never publicly subjected or exposed to expert analysis, including claims of non-scientists linked to fossil fuels who dismiss climate science, with neither informed challenge nor expert input.

What can journalists or media and citizens do? 

Acquire skills or understanding of critical thinking and related through informed analysis e.g. science or research process, statistics 101, demography, history, language and geography. 

Following on, allowing media and society to function versus receiving content including science, data or opinions that too often go unchallenged, while media not on the right is subject to constant challenges, intimidation and constraints?

Two articles first from the University of Tennessee and the second from Rasmussen University:

Basic Elements of Critical Thinking

A set of information and beliefs, generating and processing skills, and the habit of using those skills to guide behaviour.

Critical thinkers:

• Ask questions
• Gather relevant information
• Think through solutions and conclusions 
• Consider alternative systems of thought
• Communicate effectively

They’re willing to admit when they’re wrong or when they don’t know the answer, rather than digging into a gut reaction or emotional point of view.

Truth-Seeking – Ask questions and follow the evidence

Judicious – Able to make judgements amid uncertainty

Inquisitive – Strive to be well-informed on a wide range of topics

Confident in Reasoning – Trustful of own skills to make good judgements

Systematic – Organized and thoughtful problem solving

Analytical – Identify potential consequences of decisions

Open-Minded – Tolerant of different views and sensitive to own biases

6 Critical Thinking Skills You Need to Master Now

No matter what walk of life you come from, what industry you’re interested in pursuing or how much experience you’ve already garnered, we’ve all seen firsthand the importance of critical thinking skills. In fact, lacking such skills can truly make or break a person’s career, as the consequences of one’s inability to process and analyze information effectively can be massive.

What is critical thinking?

Even if you want to be a better critical thinker, it’s hard to improve upon something you can’t define. Critical thinking is the analysis of an issue or situation and the facts, data or evidence related to it. Ideally, critical thinking is to be done objectively—meaning without influence from personal feelings, opinions or biases—and it focuses solely on factual information.

Critical thinking is a skill that allows you to make logical and informed decisions to the best of your ability. For example, a child who has not yet developed such skills might believe the Tooth Fairy left money under their pillow based on stories their parents told them. A critical thinker, however, can quickly conclude that the existence of such a thing is probably unlikely—even if there are a few bucks under their pillow.

6 Crucial critical thinking skills (and how you can improve them)

While there’s no universal standard for what skills are included in the critical thinking process, we’ve boiled it down to the following six. Focusing on these can put you on the path to becoming an exceptional critical thinker.

1. Identification

The first step in the critical thinking process is to identify the situation or problem as well as the factors that may influence it. Once you have a clear picture of the situation and the people, groups or factors that may be influenced, you can then begin to dive deeper into an issue and its potential solutions.

How to improve: When facing any new situation, question or scenario, stop to take a mental inventory of the state of affairs and ask the following questions:

• Who is doing what?
• What seems to be the reason for this happening?
• What are the end results, and how could they change?

2. Research

When comparing arguments about an issue, independent research ability is key. Arguments are meant to be persuasive—that means the facts and figures presented in their favor might be lacking in context or come from questionable sources. The best way to combat this is independent verification; find the source of the information and evaluate.

How to improve: It can be helpful to develop an eye for unsourced claims. Does the person posing the argument offer where they got this information from? If you ask or try to find it yourself and there’s no clear answer, that should be considered a red flag. It’s also important to know that not all sources are equally valid—take the time to learn the difference between popular and scholarly articles.

3. Identifying biases

This skill can be exceedingly difficult, as even the smartest among us can fail to recognize biases. Strong critical thinkers do their best to evaluate information objectively. Think of yourself as a judge in that you want to evaluate the claims of both sides of an argument, but you’ll also need to keep in mind the biases each side may possess.

First and foremost, you must be aware that bias exists. When evaluating information or an argument, ask yourself the following:

• Who does this benefit?
• Does the source of this information appear to have an agenda?
• Is the source overlooking, ignoring or leaving out information that doesn’t support its beliefs or claims?
• Is this source using unnecessary language to sway an audience’s perception of a fact?

4. Inference

The ability to infer and draw conclusions based on the information presented to you is another important skill for mastering critical thinking. Information doesn’t always come with a summary that spells out what it means. You’ll often need to assess the information given and draw conclusions based upon raw data.

The ability to infer allows you to extrapolate and discover potential outcomes when assessing a scenario. It is also important to note that not all inferences will be correct. For example, if you read that someone weighs 260 pounds, you might infer they are overweight or unhealthy. Other data points like height and body composition, however, may alter that conclusion.

How to improve: An inference is an educated guess, and your ability to infer correctly can be polished by making a conscious effort to gather as much information as possible before jumping to conclusions. When faced with a new scenario or situation to evaluate, first try skimming for clues—things like headlines, images and prominently featured statistics—and then make a point to ask yourself what you think is going on.

5. Determining relevance

One of the most challenging parts of thinking critically during a challenging scenario is figuring out what information is the most important for your consideration. In many scenarios, you’ll be presented with information that may seem important, but it may pan out to be only a minor data point to consider.

How to improve: The best way to get better at determining relevance is by establishing a clear direction in what you’re trying to figure out. Are you tasked with finding a solution? Should you be identifying a trend? If you figure out your end goal, you can use this to inform your judgement of what is relevant.

6. Curiosity

It’s incredibly easy to sit back and take everything presented to you at face value, but that can also be a recipe for disaster when faced with a scenario that requires critical thinking. It’s true that we’re all naturally curious—just ask any parent who has faced an onslaught of “Why?” questions from their child. As we get older, it can be easier to get in the habit of keeping that impulse to ask questions at bay. But that’s not a winning approach for critical thinking.

How to improve: While it might seem like a curious mind is just something you’re born with, you can still train yourself to foster that curiosity productively. All it takes is a conscious effort to ask open-ended questions about the things you see in your everyday life, and you can then invest the time to follow up on these questions.

“Being able to ask open-ended questions is an important skill to develop—and bonus points for being able to probe,” Potrafka says.

Become a better critical thinker

Thinking critically is vital for anyone looking to have a successful college career and a fruitful professional life upon graduation. Your ability to objectively analyse and evaluate complex subjects and situations will always be useful. Unlock your potential by practising and refining the six critical thinking skills above.

Most professionals credit their time in college as having been crucial in the development of their critical thinking abilities. If you’re looking to improve your skills in a way that can impact your life and career moving forward, higher education is a fantastic venue through which to achieve that.

Other Blog, Articles and Links on Adult Learning, Business Communication, CPD Continuing Professional Development, Critical Thinking, Digital Literacy, Media, Science Literacy, Soft Skills and Statistical Analysis click through below:

Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center and the Carnegie-Knight Initiative, The Journalist’s Resource

Gapminder Foundation Resources

Covid Misinformation – Gut Instinct & Beliefs vs. Science & Critical Thinking

Skills of Critical Thinking

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

Libertarian Curricula – Science and Culture Wars vs. University Maths Teacher Training

Media on China and Wuhan Virus – Critical Analysis or Political PR?

Covid-19 Climate Science Vaccination Misinformation PR and Astro Turfing

Language, Discourse Analysis, PR and Communication in Politics

Narcissistic Political Leaders – NPD Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Collective Narcissism – Cognitive Dissonance – Conspiracy Theories – Populism

We have observed the rise of neo authoritarian conservative leaders using nativism and sociocultural issues with media PR support to inform the public, especially voters, suboptimally, including east and west.

However, there are pitfalls for democracy in manipulating access to information by the public or electorate, not just feeding the needs of narcissistic leaders (see article below ‘Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons’), but developing societal collective narcissism for populism and electoral advantage aka Brexit, also observed in Hungary, Turkey and Russia.

Often the target are older cohorts of voters who are less educated and diverse but dominate electoral rolls, hence, the descriptor ‘pensioner populism’ based on sociocultural issues and the same voters being praised and real or imagined threats inflated; according to Campanella see ‘Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism’. 

This can lead to permanent changes and dilution of liberal democracy for the 1% e.g. oligarchs, politicians and supporters, with friendly legislation that doesn’t attract media nor public attention, leading to ‘owned democracy’ and corruption.

Added to increasing evidence of narcissism in society has been the commensurate rise in cognitive dissonance witnessed when observing supporters, sympathisers, willing dupes and useful idiots, of left and right, unable to criticise Putin’s invasion of Ukraine due to implicit support for Putin or Russia, which can lead to the following and promoting of conspiracy theories.

Cognitive dissonance is described by Festinger in Scientific American as:

‘According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.’

‘Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons

by Michael Maccoby   From the HBR Magazine (January 2004)

Summary

In the winter of 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, business leaders posed for the covers of Time, BusinessWeek, and the Economist with the aplomb and confidence of rock stars. These were a different breed from their counterparts of just ten or 20 years before, who shunned the press and whose comments were carefully crafted by corporate PR departments.

Such love of the limelight often stems from what Freud called a narcissistic personality, says psychoanalyst and anthropologist Michael Maccoby in this HBR classic first published in the January–February 2000 issue.

Narcissists are good for companies in extraordinary times, those that need people with the passion and daring to take them in new directions. But narcissists can also lead companies into disaster by refusing to listen to the advice and warnings of their managers. It’s not always true, as Andy Grove famously put it, that only the paranoid survive.

Most business advice is focused on the more analytic personality that Freud labeled obsessive. But recommendations about creating teamwork and being more receptive to subordinates will not resonate with narcissists. They didn’t get where they are by listening to others, so why should they listen to anyone when they’re at the top of their game?

Narcissists who want to overcome the limits of their personalities must work as hard at that as they do at business success. One solution is to find a trusted sidekick, who can point out the operational requirements of the narcissistic leader’s often overly grandiose vision and keep him rooted in reality. Another is to take a leap of faith and go into psychoanalysis, which can give these leaders the tools to overcome their sometimes fatal character flaws.

Weaknesses of the Narcissistic Leader

Despite the warm feelings their charisma can evoke, narcissists are typically not comfortable with their own emotions. They listen only for the kind of information they seek. They don’t learn easily from others. They don’t like to teach but prefer to indoctrinate and make speeches. They dominate meetings with subordinates. The result for the organization is greater internal competitiveness at a time when everyone is already under as much pressure as they can possibly stand. Perhaps the main problem is that the narcissist’s faults tend to become even more pronounced as he becomes more successful.’

For more related articles click through Ageing Democracy, Demography, Political Strategy, Populist Policies & Russia, plus blogs following:

Nationalist Conservative Political Parties in the Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Ideology and Populism for Votes

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy

The role of collective narcissism in populist attitudes and the collapse of democracy in Hungary

Population Ageing – Populist Politics

GOP Republicans’ Future – Democracy or Autocracy?

Conservative commentator David Brooks attended the recent National Conservatism Conference in the US and in the following article excerpts, parses through what he thinks is wrong with the GOP or the Republicans.

He cites from observations of participants, the paranoia and the obsession with social issues, universities, elites, culture wars, ‘cultural Marxism’ (popular with the Nazis too), while ‘their public posture is dominated by the psychology of threat and menace’ and imposition of minority Christian ‘values’.

One would suggest that it makes the GOP appear or sound Orwellian, i.e. claims of freedom or democracy, freedom of speech etc., while demanding any real or perceived public dissent, threat or difference is neutered.  

However, by claiming the GOP are victims of liberal BigTech type oligarchs etc., ignores the fact that other oligarchs e.g. in fossil fuels etc. have been supporting, via Koch Network think tanks, radical right libertarain socio-economic policies grounded in eugenics that are not good for many GOP conservatives’ nor society’s futures.  

This is not just in the US but via Atlas Network think tanks influencing the Anglosphere of the UK and Australia, plus elsewhere., while former President Bush is warning the GOP of adopting an ‘Anglo Saxon’ identity precluding and/or ignoring changing demographics?

Question would be, backgrounded by shenanigans round Trump’s defeat, ungrounded claims of voting fraud, calls for restrictions like Voter ID, gerrymandering etc.; how can the GOP gain and maintain power if they are fast becoming an electoral minority?

From The Atlantic:

The Terrifying Future of the American Right – What I saw at the National Conservatism Conference (18 Nov 2021)

By David Brooks

One of the ideas she’s absorbed is that the conservatives who came before her were insufferably naive. They thought liberals and conservatives both want what’s best for America, disagreeing only on how to get there. But that’s not true, she believes. “Woke elites—increasingly the mainstream left of this country—do not want what we want,” she told the National Conservatism Conference, which was held earlier this month in a bland hotel alongside theme parks in Orlando. “What they want is to destroy us,” she said. “Not only will they use every power at their disposal to achieve their goal,” but they’ve already been doing it for years “by dominating every cultural, intellectual, and political institution.”

The atmosphere is electric. She’s giving the best synopsis of national conservatism I’ve heard at the conference we’re attending—and with flair! Progressives pretend to be the oppressed ones, she tells the crowd, “but in reality, it’s just an old boys’ club, another frat house for entitled rich kids contrived to perpetuate their unearned privilege. It’s Skull and Bones for gender-studies majors!” She finishes to a rousing ovation. People leap to their feet.

I have the sinking sensation that the thunderous sound I’m hearing is the future of the Republican Party.

The information age is transforming the American right. Conservatives have always inveighed against the cultural elite—the media, the universities, Hollywood. But in the Information Age, the purveyors of culture are now corporate titans. In this economy, the dominant means of economic production are cultural production. Corporate behemoths are cultural behemoths. The national conservatives thus describe a world in which the corporate elite, the media elite, the political elite, and the academic elite have all coagulated into one axis of evil, dominating every institution and controlling the channels of thought.

The idea that the left controls absolutely everything—from your smartphone to the money supply to your third grader’s curriculum—explains the apocalyptic tone that was the dominating emotional register of this conference. The politicians’ speeches were like entries in the catastrophism Olympics:

“The left’s ambition is to create a world beyond belonging,” said Hawley. “Their grand ambition is to deconstruct the United States of America.”

“The left’s attack is on America. The left hates America,” said Cruz. “It is the left that is trying to use culture as a tool to destroy America.”

The first great project of the national conservatives is to man the barricades in the culture war. These people have certainly done their homework when it comes to cultural Marxism—how the left has learned to dominate culture and how the right now needs to copy their techniques. If I’d had to drink a shot every time some speaker cited Herbert Marcuse or Antonio Gramsci, I’d be dead of alcohol poisoning.

But others argued that this sort of liberalism is a luxury we cannot afford. The country is under assault from a Marxist oligarchy that wants to impose its own pseudo-religious doctrine. If you try to repulse that with pallid liberalism, with weak calls for free speech and tolerance, you’ll end up getting run over by those who possess fanatical zeal, economic power, and cultural might.

Another interesting debate among the NatCons is political and economic. Conservatives have lately become expert culture warriors—the whole Tucker Carlson schtick. This schtick demands that you ignore the actual suffering of the world—the transgender kid alone in some suburban high school, the anxiety of a guy who can’t afford health care for his brother, the struggle of a Black man trying to be seen and recognized as a full human being. It’s a cynical game that treats all of life as a play for ratings, a battle for clicks, and this demands constant outrage, white-identity signaling, and the kind of absurd generalizations that Rachel Bovard used to get that room so excited.

Conservatives have got the culture-war act down. Trump was a culture-war president with almost no policy arm attached. The question conservatives at the conference were asking was how to move beyond owning the libs to effecting actual change.

Christopher Rufo, the architect of this year’s school-board-meeting protests against critical race theory, argued that conservatives had erred when they tried to slowly gain power in elite cultural institutions. Conservatives were never going to make headway in the Ivy League or the corporate media. Instead, Rufo argued, they should rally the masses to get state legislatures to pass laws embracing their values. That’s essentially what’s now happening across red America.

The NatCons are wrong to think there is a unified thing called “the left” that hates America. This is just the apocalyptic menace many of them had to invent in order to justify their decision to vote for Donald Trump.

They are wrong, too, to think there is a wokeist Anschluss taking over all the institutions of American life. For people who spend so much time railing about the evils of social media, they sure seem to spend an awful lot of their lives on Twitter. Ninety percent of their discourse is about the discourse. Anecdotalism was also rampant at the conference—generalizing from three anecdotes about people who got canceled to conclude that all of American life is a woke hellscape. They need to get out more.

Furthermore, if Hazony thinks America is about to return to Christian dominance, he’s living in 1956. Evangelical Christianity has lost many millions of believers across recent decades. Secularism is surging, and white Christianity is shrinking into a rump presence in American life. America is becoming more religiously diverse every day. Christians are in no position to impose their values—regarding same-sex marriage or anything else—on the public square. Self-aware Christians know this.

Finally, there is something extremely off-putting about the NatCon public pose. In person, as I say, I find many of them charming, warm, and friendly. But their public posture is dominated by the psychology of threat and menace. If there was one expression of sympathy, kindness, or grace uttered from the podium in Orlando, I did not hear it. But I did hear callousness, invocations of combat, and whiffs of brutality.

NatCons are also probably right that conservatism is going to get a lot more statist. At the conference, Ted Cruz tried to combine culture-war conservatism with free-market economic policies—free trade and low taxes. Marco Rubio countered by, in effect, arguing that you can’t rally cultural populists if you are not also going to do something for them economically. Cultural populism leads to economic populism. Rubio’s position at least has the virtue of being coherent.’

For more blogs or article related to politics and society click through  links below:

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy

Ghosts of Galton and Eugenics Return – Society, Population and Environment in the 21st Century

Adam Smith – Classical Liberal Economics or Conservative Calvinist Christianity or White Christian Nationalism?

Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Socioeconomics and Authoritarianism

Think tanks’ call for ‘freedom’ really promises authoritarianism

Radical Right Libertarain Economics or Social Populism?

Koch Industries: How to Influence Politics, Avoid Fossil Fuel Emission Control and Environmental Protections

Research of Social Media – Fake News – Conspiracy Theories – Junk Science

Political or campaign media strategies including tactics such as fake news, astroturfing etc. have been used often, especially via social media, to influence users through others sharing, without checking information.

This has been observed and used by the fossil fuel lobby to denigrate climate science, anti vaxxers on vaccinations, then of late round Covid19, restrictions including the wearing of masks and promoting QAnon conspiracy.

However, research has shown that such conspiracies and misinformation can be significantly reduced by simple warnings or interventions that slow or stop sharing (based on when only headlines are read) of misinformation.

Following is an article that presents the issues and research conducted into social media user behaviour on Facebook and Twitter via Nature.

From DeSmog:

‘Nudging Social Media Users to Think Critically Helps Slow the Spread of Fake News, Study 

By Nick Cunningham Friday, March 19, 2021 – 12:00

Many people who share fake news online do so because they aren’t paying close attention to what they’re sharing, according to a new study. The research found that simply prompting people to think about the accuracy of their news content helps curtail the spread of falsehoods. ..

….While the spread of inaccurate or false information and conspiracy theories is nothing new — the climate denying disinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry dates back decades — the study’s findings undercut the notion that there is a widespread desire among the public to actively spread disinformation. Rather, it adds further evidence showing how social media allows for fake news to spread rapidly — and how to slow it down.

Online disinformation seemed to hit a fever pitch in the past year, with the spread of the violent QAnon conspiracy, Covid denial, 2020 election conspiracies, and pro-insurrection voices all intermingling and cross-pollinating.

But instead of the malign actors involved in creating disinformation — such as the Koch-backed network of think tanks, charities and politicians seeking to undermine climate science, or, more recently, coordinated social media campaigns and troll farms, sometimes backed by government intelligence agencies, aimed at undermining elections around the world — the new Nature study looks at the much larger set of everyday social media users who share this type of misinformation online, often unwittingly, or at least not with malicious intent. The results offer some reasons for hope, as well as some tools to fight disinformation.

The study surveyed thousands of U.S. Twitter and Facebook users….

……Instead, what the researchers found was that many people spread fake news without thinking too much about whether the information is accurate or not. It’s a problem of inattention, made worse by social media which pushes people to sift through news rapidly and superficially….

…..The good news was that even small interventions — the prompt asking whether or not headlines were accurate — redirected people away from a tendency to share false information. This suggests that social media platforms could, perhaps, periodically survey people on the accuracy of selected headlines in an effort to subtlety remind users about accurate information, the authors say.

Twitter has recently been taking steps to slow the spread of misinformation. Last year, the social media platform introduced a new feature that reminds people to read an article before retweeting it, which it says has promising results. The platform also began tagging misleading tweets with disclaimers…..

…In a recent analysis, DeSmog found that dozens of prominent climate deniers supported the January 6 insurrection in Washington D.C. They spread debunked claims about election fraud and in some cases supported political violence. This is the type of campaign that was then likely shared by many more people who, as the Nature study illustrates, may have shared the content without taking time to think about its accuracy.’

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