<
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210827/11343147446/most-information-about-disinformation-is-misinformation.shtml>
"Reporter Joseph Bernstein recently published a fantastic cover story in
Harpers all about "disinformation" and "fake news" but not in the way you
normally think about it. It's not like most such articles — often decrying
just how much disinformation is flowing out there, but rather taking a very
critical eye about how we (especially the media) talk about such things. The
piece is thought-provoking and well worth reading, and I've spent the last week
or so letting it sit and percolate in my head before writing up this post about
it.
Right after the 2016 election, there was a flurry of hand-wringing from the
media, trying to understand how what they were positive would happen (a Hillary
Clinton victory and a Donald Trump loss), didn't actually happen. A convenient
scapegoat for this surprising turn of events was... Facebook. The narrative
took over that it was "fake news" on Facebook that convinced a bunch of
gullible people to support a clearly unqualified candidate. That this
convenient scapegoat also happened to be successfully siphoning advertising
dollars away from some traditional media organizations was mostly just made
pointing fingers at it feel even better. However, as we warned at the time,
focusing in on social media and "fake news" was not just silly, but potentially
counterproductive. Indeed, within weeks, authoritarians around the world
started adopting the term "fake news" as a convenient excuse for censoring the
media. And, obviously, it became a key part of Donald Trump's stump speech as
well.
It wasn't long until "fake news" was used against any content someone in power
didn't like, and it became a key tool to push for censorship of those who were
actually exposing malfeasance.
Bernstein's article highlights how this same sort of thinking is happening with
the term "disinformation." Of course, disinformation doesn't have a clear
definition, and often it's in the eye of the beholder (like "fake news" before
it). But, the media (and many politicians) have become so obsessed with
"disinformation" that, once again, we've turned it into a kind of moral panic
— and a convenient one for censors around the globe."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
