Right Builds an Alternative Narrative About the Crises Around Trump

Well I’d like to see an article like that showing the NYTimes narrative about Hillary compared to their narrative about Bernie.

I just cant take the NYTimes seriously anymore.

That’s all true, but with this difference. Fox, you can count on them lying no matter what, and in doing so they serve direct particular partisan interests.

With the NYT it depends on the topic, writer, and article in question. You actually have to find out. They can be as blatant as when they backed Bush in the run-up to that war. I remember at the time there were some who did not believe you couldn’t just count the NYT as golden. BUt then with them, it’s a different thing. It’s not direct lying in the name of partisan interests. Rather it’s a general pro-establishment ideological framing that begins in their own heads and looks like reality to them. It’s not lying, it;s predetemined ideological framing. Though recently the NYT was rightfully blasted for hiring an anti-climate change columnist. So at times they do provoke scandal.

But we learned long ago the way to deal with these issues is to read different sources all at the same time and sort out what the best “real story” is. Quite often there won’t be an actual article that does what we need/want.

There were articles about how the mainstream giants covered Hillary v. Bernie btw.

I forget where this study is so I can’t post it. But I did post it once and I remember it.

The way the study worked was this. First they divided people into how they primarily got their news–tv, print, or the internet. The internet source was not just blogs. It especially includes things like basically headlines sites–where you go and daily they provide new headlines and you click on the articles you want to read.

They then asked people a series of questions based on statements. It was basically a true/false format. Many of the statments were deliberately based on common and active misperceptions. For example, one was, the USA did find the WMD in Iraq, true or false.

They divided the people into who had the most and who had the least percentage of misconceptions, based on their answers. They then matched them up with their primary news source.

The group with the highest percentage of misconceptions in their answers got their news primarily from tv. And mostly it did not matter what the source was–Fox, CNN, NBC, etc. Within the tv category, the group that had the lowest percentage of misconceptions got their news primarily from The Daily Show.

Print was better than tv but it was not the best. All sorts of sources counted–newspapers, news magazines. The people who got their news primarily from print were better than those who relied primarily on tv but they still had a fairly high percentage of misconceptions.

The internet group had the lowest percentage of misconceptions.

The theory was this. Those who rely primarily on the internet for news tended to get their news from headline sites. The reason this was the group with the lowest percentage of misconceptions was because internet readers tend to read more than one source on the same issue. So they click one headline, and it’s in The New Zealand Herald, and the next article on the same topic is from the LA Times, and the next article on the same topic is from the Belleville News-Democrat, etc.

Print readers stick with a narrow range of sources (for example someone who always reads the local paper). As a result they tend not to notice slant or ideological vision.

Internet readers, in contrast, by getting their news from (as it always turns out) a wide range of different sources (because they click more than one headline on the same topic_) are very used to seeing stories reported in different ways with different frames. So they are used to looking for differences in framing and take it that that is just a normal part of reading news. They are always comparing accounts, not simply passively absorbing a single account or 2. They read with this “comparing differences” mindset.

AND among those who tend to get an array of sources on any given issue–which as we all know is easy to do on the internet–it does not matter as much WHAT the sources are. It can be just the LA Times and the NY Times. By reading news this way, these people are always in a position to actively compare accounts. They don’t just passively absorb one favorite source or 2. So reading comparatively trumps the source. For example, the NY Times article you pull up might approach the issue one way, the McClatchy paper you read next might approach it another way, and each has things in it the other doesn’t (even if they are minor things). Doing it this way means people are less likely to have misonceptions about the news than someone who just reads the Chicago Sun Times every day. So someone who relies primarily on print can get unconsciously absorbed into a particular way of framing the news, while the comparative reading on the internet type is well aware of framing and so is used to sorting through and accounting for differences.

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The Online Radicalization We’re Not Talking About

http://nymag.com/author/Alice%20Marwick/

When you hear the word radicalization, what usually comes to mind is young people turning to Islamic fundamentalism. The internet has proven to be an effective platform for radicalization of this kind; ISIS has a host of YouTube channels, chat rooms, and Twitter accounts that are extremely effective at channeling the energy of disaffected and disenfranchised young people.

But the far right is doing virtually the same thing — and possibly even more effectively. In fact, a recent study shows that white-supremacist Twitter accounts have increased more than 600 percent since 2012, and outperform ISIS accounts by every possible metric. We’ve already seen the violence that can emerge from this trend: Dylann Roof and Elliot Rodger were both radicalized in online far-right communities before their respective shootings.

For the last six months, we’ve been researching how far-right groups, such as the alt-right, white nationalists, and men’s-rights activists manipulate the mainstream media to amplify their ideas and shape news narratives to their advantage. (You can read the report we produced here https://datasociety.net/output/media-manipulation-and-disinfo-online/ ) These communities gather on boards like 4chan and the Reddit clone Voat, where they collaboratively develop ideas and draw up messaging strategies. Then they use Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to popularize hashtags, spread talking points, and boost news stories coming from their favorite media figures.

A successful story is one that moves from far-right sites like Breitbart and Infowars to mainstream newspapers or cable news. If you’ve read this week’s conspiracy-mongering stories about the supposedly suspicious death of DNC employee Seth Rich — or if you’ve read in the past about the rise of White Student Unions on college campuses, or “Pizzagate” — you’ve seen the fruits of their efforts.

As internet and media scholars, we began this project focused on media manipulation and the spread of misinformation. But as we delved into these spaces, we noticed that one of the biggest trends taking place had been flying under the radar. And that is far-right radicalization.

They don’t call it radicalization, of course. They call it “taking the red pill.” This metaphor comes from The Matrix, where the protagonist, Neo, is offered a red pill or a blue pill by his mentor Morpheus. If Neo takes the blue pill, he goes back to his cubicle-dwelling, workaday life. If he takes the red pill, the reality of the Matrix is revealed to him.

“Red-pilling the normies” is a primary goal of far-right movements. They want to convert people — especially young men — to their way of thinking. What the red pill actually reveals depends on who’s offering it. To men’s-rights activists, being red-pilled means throwing off the yoke of popular feminism and recognizing that men, not women, are the oppressed group. To the alt-right, it means revealing the lies behind multiculturalism and globalism, and realizing the truth of isolationist nationalism. To conspiracy theorists, it may mean accepting the influence of the New World Order on society. To white supremacists, it means acknowledging that Jewish elites control the culture and are accelerating the destruction of the white race. Red-pilling is the far-right equivalent of consciousness-raising or, in today’s lingo, becoming “woke.”

The far right plays on a much broader dislike of “political correctness” among many young men who feel alienated from mainstream culture. These men may have a hard time finding like-minded friends in their day-to-day lives, or connecting with romantic partners. Some have economic challenges, and refer to themselves as “NEETS,” an acronym for “Not in Education, Employment, or Training.” As a result, they are often very resistant to the idea of “male privilege” or “white privilege,” as they don’t recognize themselves as privileged. In fact, they may see what economic and social capital they do have slipping away. These disillusioned men are perfect targets for radicalization, and it’s a surprisingly short leap from rejecting political correctness to blaming women, immigrants, or Muslims for their problems.

Thanks to the internet, these men are more accessible to the manipulations of extremists than ever before. Like radical Islamists, the far right has developed strategies that exploit the sweet spot between disillusionment and extremism. One of their main tactics is purposely diluting their most extreme views to woo a broader audience. The neo-Nazi blog the Daily Stormer hosts a “memetic Monday,” where community members create image macros designed to be shared on Facebook and Twitter; these images, which espouse ideas from the openly racist to the mainstream conservative, function as “gateway drugs” to more radical ideas.

It helps that the extremists are also extremely adept at making their ideas palatable, by using irony and humor. Internet trolls have been using racist and sexist language as a shock tactic for years, giving it a veneer of edgy irreverence. Actual hate groups can draw people in using humor, while also normalizing their most extreme ideas.

What concerns us most is that this radicalization seems to be spreading across the internet — and once groups have been red-pilled on one issue, they’re likely to be open to other extremist ideas. Online cultures that used to be relatively nonpolitical are beginning to seethe with racially charged anger. Some sci-fi, fandom, and gaming communities — having accepted run-of-the-mill anti-feminism — are beginning to espouse white-nationalist ideas. “Ironic” Nazi iconography and hateful epithets are becoming serious expressions of anti-Semitism.

Countering the burgeoning far-right extremism is difficult. Extremists may be using new technologies, but any effective response will require tackling long-standing racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic beliefs. The movement is intrinsically linked to misogyny and investments in traditional masculinity, which aren’t disappearing anytime soon.

However, given the similarities between far-right and Islamic radicalization, it’s worth examining the efforts by political scientists and counterterrorism experts to combat the latter. They recommend staying away from heavy content moderation (which fuels accusations of censorship), and instead crafting and spreading messages that speak to young men’s alienation and disenfranchisement, without using scapegoats. Since criticism from the mainstream media — or worse, the left — is easy to dismiss out of hand, former far-right extremists who’ve since rejected the red pill can be enlisted to provide counterexamples and point out inconsistencies in extremist worldviews.

This is a hard problem, but it needs to be examined head-on. Despite the clever memes and the shock content, embracing far-right beliefs isn’t edgy or rebellious or funny. It’s simply continuing a disgraceful and all-too-current thread of American history. And we must recognize it in order to effectively confront it.

PA Ram wrote:

I’m not hopeful.

In a world where anyone can find the truth they like–there is no truth. There are no facts. There is no tether to reality.

Collectively it’s a mental illness.

The world reflects that.

I blame Zygmunt.