- Kate Starbird, Examining the Alternative Media Ecosystem through the Production of Alternative Narratives of Mass Shooting Events on Twitter
In this paper, the author analyzes twitter data from a 10-month period to create what they term as “domain network” which is studied by qualitative analysis to explore a subset of “fake news.” The paper through its qualitative analysis finds different groups that propagate this fake news. These groups as shown by the author does not fit the general left-right political spectrum due to overarching commonalities between the same.
Due to the shift from traditional methods of propagation of news which although had its demerits has put the burden of wading through lot of information and its validity on to the people who aren’t trained to do so. This has exacerbated the issue of “fake news” and has created a market for alternative news which is not a new phenomenon. I believe the way to tackle this issue is through stemming the funding of these sources. Censoring by the means of deletion, given that we live in places where right to speech exists, impinges on the rights of these rumor mongers but stemming the funding could ride the thin line and achieve the result we want. Creating necessary barriers like temporary auto demonetization of content if “clickbait” titles are found along with explicit content could be a way forward. But, systems should be in place to appeal for reversing this stance by genuine members which could be considered by a case of case basis by moderators. The moderator logs could then be put out in public along with the content for increasing transparency. Putting such burden might hurt genuine content makers but a well thought out design to do the same as discussed, I believe, is a right way forward.
Believing in one conspiracy theory makes a one more likely to believe another as shown in [2], is an interesting one. This issue I believe is exacerbated by the selective exposure due to the “filter bubbles” created by these news sources. Creating mechanisms through which users can select or populate feed with views different from its own could ameliorate the spread of alternative narratives. It’s necessary to understand that one can only control the spread and not eliminate such purveyors of such narratives. Such narratives if in the right amount could be part of the entertainment part of our information diet.
Another design element which could be considered is showing a report of “information diversity” of people at regular intervals. This could be effective nudging to promote diversifying information diet.
But how does one create barriers for such content especially in places where moderation by an informed and unbiased party is not possible. IM services are a good example of such grounds. I do not have a solution for spread of misinformation through such channels but given its impact is one where focus has to be given.
Creating an alternative business model although a hard task to perform I believe an essential step to move forward. Any of the above strategy discussed above which might prove effective in the short term are stop gap mechanisms. To put things in perspective, the CPM model we follow at the moment was introduced by the team at Hotwired in October 1994 when the number of people on the internet was less than 0.4% of earth’s population compared to more than 50% right now.
[2] Van Prooijen, J. W., & Acker, M. 2015. The influence of control on belief in conspiracy theories: Conceptual and applied extensions. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(5), 753-761
