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‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

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Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#91

Post by genericone »

autoexec wrote: post #78
iratewizard wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be hard for the lay people trying to be informed to trust 'the science' while think tanks continually abuse science and statistics.

exactly. Science shares a fair bit of the blame too. Not enough peer review and verification of results. Corporations can pay scientists for whatever results they want to put out in a press release and there is no shortage of journals that will publish total garbage if you're willing to pay them enough. The lack of integrity and oversight in the scientific community makes it very hard for people to tell what they can…

Science is science as long as it is used and examined by scientific minds.

Scientific results and studies are indistinguishable from propoganda when used to sway/lead/inform the public. I'm not saying science is propoganda, I'm saying it becomes indistinguishable for those who aren't participating in performing the research or understanding the research methodologies.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#92

Post by uep »

bracobama wrote: post #81
uep wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I fundamentally disagree with their results, but the study seems like it has significant bias itself. In what context is Fox News only slightly right-leaning? Anything critical of the current administration is not left-leaning either. In the past, most of these organizations have been critical of the Obama administration, but they weren't considered right-leaning then.

From their site: "Our Media Bias Ratings represent the average judgment of Americans. They are based on blind surveys of people across the political spectrum, multi-partisan analysis and other in-depth analyses as well as tens of thousands of user ratings. Our scientifically-generated ratings are fluid and subject to change over time as new information is gathered and biases change. Unless otherwise noted as editoria…

Well I suppose that makes some sense. I have felt that Fox's online presence is slightly more neutral (though somehow more sensationalist) than their TV presence.

Edit: I do think the separation of their opinion pieces from their regular news reporting is a little bit of a cop-out though.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#93

Post by germanlee »

SantalBlush wrote: post #85
germanlee wrote: post #72

Rather than being an honest game to reduce "disinformation", this game is simply defending mainstream media. It's message is essentially "trust mainstream media". Not that shocking coming from cambridge considering they are at the forefront of cultural war being waged in the west today. How about get opinion/news from a wide variety of sources ( mainstream and fringe, big and small, national and international, right…

This is 100% false. It is an "appeal to the middle" fallacy based on two assumptions: 1. that all news sources are equally biased; 2. that aggregating those biases produces an unbiased result. Neither of these assumptions are credible.

1. I didn't say all news sources are "equally biased". Saying all news sources are biased is not the same as saying equally biased. Some are obvious more biased and more propagandistic than others. But without a doubt, every news source has biases. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to look into the history of every news company. Who created them, funded them and who is running them. But I suspect you already know this.

2. I didn't say the "aggregates" produce an unbiased result. I didn't mention anything about "aggregates". Seeing different opinions exposes to you the biases of every news source. If you just watch foxnews or cnn all day, you won't be able to pick up on the bias. But if you watch both, the biases of both become blatantly obvious. I'm not saying watching both somehow magically makes CNN or Foxnews "objective" and "honest". Quite the opposite.

3. Neither of those assumptions are credible because I didn't make them. You made those assumptions in an attempt to defend mainstream media. Which I see all over social media recently.

Every comment about being skeptical about media ( especially mainstream media ) gets met with your type of comment. Makes me wonder.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#94

Post by rthomas6 »

gfodor wrote: post #35

The "best" fake news these days is the stuff that doesn't register even to people are read-in on the usual anti-patterns. Subtle framing, selective quotation, anonymous sources, "repeat the lie" techniques, and so on, are the ones that I see happening today that are hard to immunize yourself from. Ironically, the people who fall for these are more likely to self-identify as being aware and clued in on how to avoid fa…

This isn't new, it's how subtle bias in the media has always worked. These techniques have been used practically since the beginning of the press.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#95

Post by mc32 »

vkou wrote: post #90
mc32 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google US I think it’s obvious would have little reason to promote Granma or RT. But they should have a pan-US org like USA Today and WSJ more evenly distributed. Also The Miami Herald is a pretty good paper, better than some on that list. It should also be higher ranked.

Why not? After all, as the article posits, a diversity of opinion is important for the health of democracy. What better way to introduce diversity of opinion, then news that doesn't neatly fall into the socially-left-us-exceptional-pro-business-anti-human and the socially-right-us-exceptional-pro-business-anti-human buckets? You don't even have to turn to foreign news for that. There's no shortage of diverse domestic…

Oh I agree we should have more diverse domestic news sources for sure. We mainly get the take from large coastal metro areas but many inland areas and some big areas (like Chicago or All of Texas) are ignored. As I mentioned, the Miami Herald is a great paper. Not only does it serve Florida well, but it also has great international coverage, specially LatAm and Caribb.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#96

Post by ilaksh »

The problem with everything related to "fake news" is that it is not in the context of establishment propaganda.

Effectively it is an attempt to co-opt the concept of propaganda but with the supposed idea that there is a certain authoritative group that will tell you what's real and always presents just the facts in an impartial way.

It's quite amazing. What they have done is to create an enthusiasm for censorship. The net effect is actually the opposite of what it is advertised to be. It enforces top-down information control.

In a similar vein, Libra is advertised as a real cryptocurrency that can act as a digital cash. And yet it is actually an attempt to replace real cryptocurrencies with something that can be controlled, easily tracked, and profited from by the companies it was designed to disintermediate.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#97

Post by ch4s3 »

HSO wrote: post #55
deogeo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second best. The best is selective reporting. Even if every story is reported 100% accurately and objectively, by choosing which stories are promoted, and which buried, you can set any agenda you want. Edit: See https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-i... for an example.

Speaking of, I saw a particularly blatant example yesterday: https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1142442971922653184 I've been following the Andrew Yang campaign since his appearance on the Joe Rogan show and so far as I can tell MSNBC has been at it for months now. The gall still astonishes me: 20 candidates qualified for the debates, he now polls in the top 8 and betting markets even place him in the top five,…

They didn't replace him in the debate, the mistakenly omitted him from a graphic on screen and later corrected it.

He only barely cracked the top 8 as of two weeks ago, and with a paltry 2% with a net favorable of +8 in Monmouth's latest poll, which is not very good. I don't really know much about the guy, but he's not making much of a showing in the polls so I'm not surprised that networks aren't focusing on him.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#98

Post by mesozoic »

HSO wrote: post #55
deogeo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second best. The best is selective reporting. Even if every story is reported 100% accurately and objectively, by choosing which stories are promoted, and which buried, you can set any agenda you want. Edit: See https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-i... for an example.

Speaking of, I saw a particularly blatant example yesterday: https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1142442971922653184 I've been following the Andrew Yang campaign since his appearance on the Joe Rogan show and so far as I can tell MSNBC has been at it for months now. The gall still astonishes me: 20 candidates qualified for the debates, he now polls in the top 8 and betting markets even place him in the top five,…

He's probably not extreme enough. A classic liberal is basically viewed as a republican these days.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#99

Post by giobox »

dev_dull wrote: post #89
gfodor wrote: post #35

The "best" fake news these days is the stuff that doesn't register even to people are read-in on the usual anti-patterns. Subtle framing, selective quotation, anonymous sources, "repeat the lie" techniques, and so on, are the ones that I see happening today that are hard to immunize yourself from. Ironically, the people who fall for these are more likely to self-identify as being aware and clued in on how to avoid fa…

Fake news is less about outright lying and more about controlling and enforcing a certain narrative. That’s a problem especially when 6 companies own almost all of the media. I think the solution is more independent journalism. I’m already seeing a lot of it on Twitter with independent researchers. These people have obvious biases but it’s clear, which makes these sources oddly more useful even if they’re openly part…

I’d argue the biases of major news institutions are generally more scrutable and predictable than average private individuals on Twitter. The level of effort needed to establish those for someone you just read on Twitter is higher than I think many people who decry “mainstream” media sources like to admit, especially if in a area in which you yourself have no domain expertise.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#100

Post by conception »

mesozoic wrote: post #98
HSO wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of, I saw a particularly blatant example yesterday: https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1142442971922653184 I've been following the Andrew Yang campaign since his appearance on the Joe Rogan show and so far as I can tell MSNBC has been at it for months now. The gall still astonishes me: 20 candidates qualified for the debates, he now polls in the top 8 and betting markets even place him in the top five,…

He's probably not extreme enough. A classic liberal is basically viewed as a republican these days.

A "center" dem from today is 100% a 1980's republican. Their platforms are basically indistinguishable.
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