[1] Starbird,Kate – Examining the Alternative Media Ecosystem through the Production of Alternative Narratives of Mass Shooting Events on Twitter
SUMMARY
This paper examines the alternative media systems and their role in propagating fake news. This is done by creating network graphs based on tweets related to alternative narratives of mainstream events based on media type, narrative stance and political leaning.
REFLECTION
This paper chooses a dataset from twitter that is both may be slightly small and limited to a couple of incidents that people/media have alternative explanations for. Examining the r/conspiracy subreddit for more events may give more definitive results. Here we may also be able to answer some of the other questions that come to mind –
- What kind of news’ alternative narrative becomes most popular – based off of science, politics, disasters both man-made and natural and terrorist attacks.
- While there may not be sufficient information to determine these links – what other things are popular conspiracy theorists also interested in? Are they in any way a result of their interest in conspiracy theories or fueling their fantasies in any way?
What surprised me in the paper initially was the inclusion of mainstream media in their network graphs at such a large scale – The Washington Post, The New York Times, etc. However, this made me realize that anything could seem like a clue to a person who is willing to believe in something. Though this would be tough and highly subjective, we could study if people predisposed to believing conspiracy theories – is it something that they already believe before they join communities, i.e., start using social media to read about them? Or is it the result of influence from joining and reading many alternative narratives? How about the timing of these conspiracy theories? Does it take a while for people to come up with alternative narratives or are these theories generated as the events unfold? Another interesting thing to find out is whether these theories have begun coming out at shorter and shorter intervals with respect to the event that they have narratives about. We would then know if theorists are ‘learning’ or are influenced by past theories and are coming up with new ones in shorter periods of time.
I next wanted to see how these alternative narratives tied in with other concepts we’ve previously examined in class – anonymity, sock-puppets and the filter bubble. It seems evident that all of the aforementioned issues could cause or inflame cases where people are leaning towards believing in conspiracy theories. Sockpuppets are particularly useful in pushing your propaganda while the filter bubble is going to help you by making sure users are bombarded with “false” narratives. The anonymity of the users who are propagating alternative narratives doesn’t seem to be an issue for those willing to subscribe since the ‘news sells itself’.
