Fake news, misinformation, and inoculation theory are at the forefront of modern communications science. The article by Bodaghi and Oliveira (2020) speaks about the characteristics of rumor spreaders in the context of Twitter. The 2022 article by the same authors discusses the theater of fake news spreaders and which role they play. Finally, the theory of inoculation revolves around a sinister concept of training individuals to accept certain premises through exposure to weaker strawman arguments (NATO, 2021).
From a technical perspective, the ideas seen in class that allow understanding the papers’ context include propaganda, radicalization, and confirmation bias. Fake news and rumors are some of the tools of propaganda. They provide seemingly factual support to specific political agendas and parties, and are widely used, to some degree or another, by all sides of the political spectrum. Fake news is typically aimed to invoke an emotional response in order to cloud one’s judgment and put the readers on one side of the political spectrum. Finally, misinformation is typically aimed at people seeking to confirm and reinforce their prejudice.
Additional concepts that are useful for understanding the subject matter include information warfare, selective readings, and fact-checking practices. The latter, in particular, would be interesting and helpful to discuss for better understanding of the articles. Many organizations engaged in such practices (such as Snopes) are commercial in nature and therefore are susceptible to bias (Bodaghi and Oliveira, 2022). Based on the conclusions of the articles, behavioral science can be applied in several ways. First, it can be used to understand the mechanisms behind fake news, particularly the Duckling syndrome. Second, it allows to understand how fake news and its damage could be counteracted. Finally, it can spread awareness and push back the Third-Person Perception effect. It is a fallacy where a person thinks of themselves as invulnerable or less vulnerable to manipulation. Increasing awareness of it would help create a nation-wide immunity to information threats.
From an ethical perspective, there are many issues that are related to the context. The primary one is a dilemma of safety versus freedom. As exemplified by Twitter, blocking and censorship of non-truths is used to counter fake news. At the same time, NATO (2021) acknowledges that hyper-partisan and polarizing content is difficult to fact-check, since it depends on a person’s perception. Indeed, accusations of fake news have been used by both parties in the context of the US mass media to discredit one another (Bodaghi & Oliveira, 2020). Thus, the threats of deception versus censorship have to be weighted in. The inoculation theory, also discussed in the NATO (2021) article, has several ethical issues surrounding it as well. It supports essentially utilizing strawman arguments to build “immunity” to specific kinds of messages, enabling individuals to reject stronger future evidence. Such practice, though framed as beneficial in protecting against foreign propaganda, can be effectively used in domestic efforts by governments to essentially indoctrinate individuals into their ideology.
To conclude, the articles touch upon misinformation and its spreading mechanisms within modern media. Fake news is a quintessential part of the Internet in its current iteration. It presents a danger to democracies and societies, as it allows populists and demagogues gain weight. At the same time, enabling censorship to counter the perceived threats of fake news may be just as dangerous, if not more so, as it gives specific organization the authority to decide what is and is not truth.
References
Bodaghi, A., & Oliveira, J. (2020). The characteristics of rumor spreaders on Twitter: A quantitative analysis on real data. Computer Communications, 160, 674-687.
Bodaghi, A., & Oliveira, J. (2022). The theater of fake news spreading, who plays which role? A study on real graphs of spreading on Twitter. Expert Systems with Applications, 189, 116110.
NATO. (2021). Inoculation theory and misinformation. NATO Stratcom COE.