The Fake News Era

The 2016 Presidential election race was controversial for many reasons ranging from voter fraud to Russian involvement and of course the election of a presidential candidate who,in of himself, was a compilation of controversy. Despite the controversy, what was clear was that the outcome of the election, no matter which candidate was elected, would alter the course of America moving forward. This is because the outcome of the election rang in a new era that would directly affect the way Americans understand news in the country as well as American society overall.

The fake news era was conceived out of the events that unraveled during the 2016 Presidential election. Social media , major news sources, and the communication between Americans all contributed largely to the spread and sharing of fake news throughout the election which has seeped into the everyday conversation in American society well after the election. Okay, but what exactly is fake news?

Well, fake news consists of “false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke” according to the Cambridge Dictionary.

The problem that fake news poses to civic discourse is immense as it provides people with information that is presented as fact in order to manipulate the audience to either alter their political stance on an issue or intensify their already extreme political stance. As touched on in my previous post regarding social media as well as in the Cambridge Dictionary’s definition of fake news, it is spread across media within seconds and often becomes viral in that same amount of time. This way too short of an amount of time to check the sources in which the story came from, the truth of the information in the story, and even to just read and comprehend the full scope of the story if you were to believe it to be true. Obviously this poses a huge threat to the main pillars of civic discourse as it hinders people’s ability of becoming informed without them even knowing. What does that mean? Well, when someone reads a story on Twitter or Facebook that has thousands of shares and likes within minutes of being posted they believe that since it is popular it must be true or someone must have already checked the facts and then read it believing whatever the story is. This is the most dangerous form of being uninformed a person can be. When thousands of people read that same story and then go to discuss it either over social media or in conversation they form a position and opinion on the basis of information that is false but they believe to be true. Therefore, if someone tries to argue the opposite or even to argue that the information is false the person who first presented the information must re-evaluate his entire position he just formulated off the basis of fake news. But rarely do we ever see people change their mind. Instead they accept the false information blindly as fact and then proceed to defend that information and deny those that dare to compromise the integrity of a fake news story. This is the world we currently live in. An era with fake news spreading like wildfire onto the screens of millions of Americans and being hostilely discussed and argued among one another. This is the largest threat to civic discourse our nation currently faces and a threat that people need to be aware of.

So, in order to spot fake news it is vital you consider all of the factors shown in the info graphic as well as cross reference the story with major news sources such as CNN, The New York Time and many other online forms of obtaining ne

How to Spot Fake Newsws. It is vital to stay vigilant, when something seems wrong it is important to take the extra time to check it out and make sure everything c

 

hecks out rather than just sharing or retweeting it and then embarrassing yourself by using the false information in a discussion with others that are informed. Or even worse would be to have a discussion entirely surrounding a fake news story which is often what most discourse in the United States is today. Ultimately, follow the golden rule of fake news that is in the words

of the greatest American comedian with two first names, Jon Stewart, “if you smell something, say something”. If something smells like it is not right, i.e. smells like BS, like it is too good of a story to be true even in the eventful world we live in today well it probably is too good to be true and you should check it. Once, the sources are checked it is your obligation to let others know. If more and more Americans did this, we can salvage civil discourse.

Sources: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/fake-news

https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/11174

The Black Mirror: Season-Civic Discourse, Episode 1

Every morning millions of Americans wake up to the sound of their alarm which serves as the signal to get ready for the day and whatever responsibilities, work, and trivial tasks that need to be tended to. At some point during the process of getting ready many Americans usually take a shower, wash their face, brush their teeth and fix their hair. Hopefully. Nonetheless, there’s something all of these tasks have in common. They all involve a mirror. In fact mirrors are vital to the functioning of American society and are used in even more tasks throughout the day. With the mirror being such a vital tool contributing to the functionality of our society it comes with no surprise that it has shaped our society in more ways than we know, all with the help of a little disguise. Technology.

We hear about it all the time, how technology is affecting our society and how it has become effortlessly intertwined in our daily lives. According to a Pew Research Center study, one of the most commonly used items is none other than a smartphone with 77% of Americans having one in their pocket which is a huge jump from the 35% of Americans who owned one in 2011. What does this have to do with civic discourse?

Well, with more smartphones in the hands of Americans there comes an increase of communication and communication across through various mediums. One of those mediums being social media. Interestingly enough, the same research study aforementioned showed a positive correlation between the increase in smartphones and a similar spike in social media usage. From the modest 5% of Americans using social media in 2005 the amount has jumped to an impressive 69% in 2016. With a continuously growing number of people using smart devices and accessing social media comes the increase and ease of communication.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     (graph 1)

As I mentioned in my previous post, communication is a fundamental  aspect of civic discourse which would make and with social media making it ever so easy to share information, opinions, and entertainment to an audience of almost three quarters of the country it should be helping civic discourse. But is it?

A prime example of the power social media has to affect discourse occurred during the 2016 Presidential race. Facebook and Twitter were two social media sites that effected the conversations surrounding the election the most. Both sites provided users with an overwhelming amount of information, opinions, and news. Consequently, this lead to Twitter and Facebook becoming the battlefields for millions of Americans to argue with each other over various issues and candidates every second of the day. Thus creating an even more hostile and polarized political arena than ever before and suffocating civic discourse.

While the social media users in America wield their new found power that comes with the benefits of trigger happy thumbs, a screen to hide behind, and a platform to be heard; the social media sites themselves face their own controversy. Facebook and Twitter know all too well how influential they are to their users and lead both to being compromised by some form of biased censorship. For Facebook this was in the form of their promotion of trending news. A study conducted, yet again, by the Pew Research Center found that 42% of American adults got their news from Facebook making it the top social media platform to get the news. So when the scandal broke that the team of employees who were in charge of creating the section “was routinely told to suppress news stories of interest to conservative readers”, according to a Guardian article, the affects were huge. This revealed how Facebook overstepped its boundaries in terms of censoring the sites content by consciously making an effort to favor the Democratic Party. Situations like this cause an even greater divide within the country as Facebook made one party’s voice louder than the other and with a polarized political atmosphere the only thing that seems to matter is whose voice is louder. Losing the shouting match as a result of the Facebook team’s clear bias, supporters of the Republicans party began to spread articles with false information regarding both sides. Thus began “The Fake News Era”. Supporters of both parties went back and forth sharing multiple sources with false information across social media as found by a Buzzfeed News study that found 38% of posts shared on three right-wing Facebook pages to contain false information and 19% of posts by similar Facebook pages on the left did the same.

 

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Twitter has also shown some bias when creating their trending stories by accompanying Tweets in favor of the left with their top political news stories. Again  causing a similar shouting match as the one on Facebook leading to its own fair share of fake news influx and increased hostility between parties. For example, go on Twitter right now and find any political new article and then look at the thread of tweets under it. What you will most likely find are many users going attacking one another back and forth as fast as their fingers can type.

Ultimately as more and more Americans are using social media and being exposed to these types of dialogue between parties it is becoming the norm for us to think that political conversations are just shouting matches where the side with the loudest voice and the best insult wins. This is not something that our society should accept as the norm and it has made social media one of the largest threats to civic discourse.

No civic discourse is not dead because of social media, but it is slowly being lost covered by the exponentially growing cloud of fake news and hostile twitter threads that plague the conversations surrounding politics.

The Basics

What exactly is civic discourse? Where does it occur? Is it failing or is it successful? These three questions are the foundation to understanding civic discourse and its significance in our political arena.

First it is necessary to understand that civic discourse is the conversing about world issues. However, for the purpose of this blog civic discourse is going to be more focused on conversing about political issues as this is a blog about politics. With the focus on politics it is difficult to not associate civic discourse with political engagement as when discussing political issues these two go hand in hand.

Beyond its definition, civic duty has a few requirements that if recognized when participating would result in a successful discussion that in today’s political arena is scarce. As the President of the University of Connecticut,  Susan Herbst recognized that the first thing to understand is that civic “discourse is not an argument in the common sense but an educated argument that has a position—a central thesis, which is identified, supported, and presented for response and reaction”. This ground rule of civic discourse explains how it is meant to be an educated discussion in which both parties of the conversation are well grounded on the issue at hand and have a clear point with assisting facts to back up their point. Although this may seem as quite elaborate requirements for a conversation about political issues, it is much simpler than that.

As President Herbst elaborates, another requirement of not only civic discourse but conversation in general is listening. Listening, defined by Herbst is “being willing to listen open oneself to the ideas of others”. Listening is not just about hearing, it is about understanding what the other party has to offer in their argument and forming a well developed response using the facts known and the facts presented. To.  listen and be able to hold a good conversation it is required that both sides be willing to be influenced by the other side when a valid, logical, and influential argument is presented with enough supporting facts to change one’s view on the particular issue. When this is the case and people do open their minds to other perspectives, which very rarely happens in our political arena, civic discourse has been conducted right and both parties have truly listened. When this is not the case then the conversation is no longer a conversation but a shouting match that is often too commonly portrayed in the media through news talk shows for example.

In today’s political world the animosity between people who identify with the Republican party and those who identify with the Democratic party is at an all time high. According to the Pew Research Center those who identify, or lean towards the Democratic party and those who identify or lean towards the Republican party have distanced themselves further apart in regards to values and issues which are important to them.

The graphs to the left show the feelings of Democrats towards Republicans in the above graph and the graph below depicting the feelings of animosity of Republicans towards Democrats. Both graphs show that over forty percent of people who identify with both parties have a very unfavorable feeling towards the other party. Given this statistic it is easy to see how it might be hard for those from opposite parties to listen to one another during a conversation regarding political issues. Because of this difference in values, issues important to them, as well as their growing animosity towards one another both parties have become more polarized. With an increase in party polarization comes a decrease in the members’ ability to listen to the perspectives of those in the other party. Ultimately this all leads to a political atmosphere scarce of civic discourse as it is plagued by closed mindedness of people from both sides un-willing to listen.

Civility is another key property of civic discourse. In fact civic discourse is just a more focused branch of civil discourse.  In order to be civil the skill of listening must be well developed and an open mind is a must. To be civil is not to say that the conversation must be formal, boring, or dry. In fact being civil can mean to have a conversation full of excitement, commitment and passion. However as President Herbst says “passion must be communicated between a framework of civility”. If we look at the talk shows on Fox, CNN, or MSNBC often there is a lot of passion which exceeds the framework of civility.

Given this look at the definition of civic discourse and what fundamental pieces it is made of, it is much easier to see how complicated it is, especially in the political arena. Nonetheless, some questions still remain. Are we doing better than in the past in terms of civic discourse? How has civic discourse evolved over time? Does technology have an effect on our civic discourse? Is civic discourse a dying language or a lost art? If so can it be saved?

 

 

Sources:

Click to access Civility-Civic-Discourse-and-Civic-Engagement-Inextricably-Interwoven-Susan-Herbst-Journal-of-Higher-Education-Outreach-and-Engagement.pdf

Rising tide of partisan antipathy