Examining the Alternative Media Ecosystem through the Production of Alternative Narratives of Mass Shooting Events on Twitter
Reflection:
In this paper, the author studies the “fake news” phenomenon by generating and studying domain network graphs and qualitatively analysing tweets collected over a ten-month period. She explains the political leanings of the alternate news sources and describes how these websites propagate and shape alternate narratives.
Examples
“Global warming is a hoax created by the UN and politically funded scientists/environmentalists, aided by Al Gore and many others to put cap and trade in place for monetary gain”
” Osama bin Laden is not dead / has been dead for long / is an invention of the American government.”
” That ample evidence of alien life and civilization exists in our solar system, but is covered up by NASA.”
These are some of the popular conspiracy theories. Several others can be found on website that is dedicated to listing and categorizing these theories.
What is the need to study conspiracy theories?
Research has shown that if you start believing in one conspiracy theory, there is a high chance that you might start believing in another. “Individuals drawn to these sites out of a concern with the safety of vaccines, for example, may come out with a belief in a Clinton-backed paedophilia ring”, stated Kate Starbird in one of her published articles.
Why do people believe in conspiracy theories and false narratives? How to change their mind?
The author of an article replicated a part an existing study. He conducted a twitter poll asking users if the sequence 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 has any pattern. 56% agreed that there is indeed a pattern even though sequence was generated by just randomly flipping a coin.
The author cites the paper “Connecting the dots: how personal need for structure produces false consumer pattern perceptions” [I couldn’t find the pdf version, I just read the abstract] and states that
One of the reasons why conspiracy theories spring up with such regularity is due to our desire to impose structure on the world and incredible ability to recognise patterns” and
“facts and rational arguments really aren’t very good at altering people’s beliefs”
The same article discusses several approaches and cites several studies on how to convey authentic information and make people change their mind: –
- Use stories: People engage with narratives much more strongly than with argumentative or descriptive dialogues.
- Don’t mention the myths while making your point since it has been seen that myths are better remembered than facts.
- While debunking the fake theories, offer explanations that resonate with people’s pre-existing beliefs. For example, conservative climate-change deniers are much more likely to shift their views if they are also presented with the pro-environment business opportunities.
Use of Bots
One of the things I noticed in the paper is the use of bots to spread the conspiracy theories and misinformation. It seems that during major events, the bot activity increases manifold. I found two studies analysing bot activity (not just limited to spread of conspiracy theories) “NEWS BOTS Automating news and information dissemination on Twitter”[1] and “Broker Bots: Analysing automated activity during High Impact Events on Twitter”[2].
More diverse events
The data in the study was limited to shooting events. The analysis could extend to other high impact events like natural disasters, elections, policy changes and find out the similarities if any in the sources spreading the misinformation and the misinformation itself.
Influence of multiple online communities
Certain subreddits (the_donald) and 4chan (/pol/) communities have been accused of generating and disseminating alternative narratives and conspiracy theories. What is the role of these communities in spreading the rumours? Who participates in these discussions? And how are users influenced by these communities?
Identify conspiracy theories and fake news
How do rumors originate? How do they propagate in an ecosystem? What is the lifespan of these rumors?
I feel an important step to identify conspiracy theories is to study how the language and structure of the articles coming from alternate sources differ from those of the mainstream ones. Not just the articles but also the carriers i.e the posts/tweets sharing them. How is the story in these articles weaved and supported? We saw an example in the paper where Sandy Hook shootings (2012) were referenced in Orlando shooting (2016) as an evidence to support the alternate narrative. What other sources are used to substantiate their claims? Authors in paper “How People Weave Online Information Into Pseudoknowledge” find out that people draw from a wealth of information sources to substantiate and enrich their false narrative, including mainstream media, scholarly work, popular fiction, and other false narratives.
Artcles/videos related to conspiracy theories among top search results
A simple search for “vaccination” in YouTube gives atleast 3-4 anti-vaccination videos in the top 30 results where people share theories/reasons about why vaccines are not safe (link1, link2). More conspiratorial content in the top results will expose more people to fake stories which might end up influencing them.
