Today’s post is from Michael Hampton.
Often we look to our governments for answers, a historic sanction of power hinged not on heuristics of availability, but facts. At least we thought such. In recent years, we’ve found our own government pushing against irrefutable truths, issues involving climate change effects, racial injustice, and imbalanced opportunity. An unfortunate reality. So, when our own leaders purport false claims and ideologies, whom do we turn to next? Who is left to be arbiter amidst arrogance?
As a country outlined in “by the people, for the people”, we’ve had to look to new guards for future security, citizens that have utilized their means to fulfill a purpose beyond individualistic pursuit. Within the recent election and its “build-up”, we’ve already witnessed a discernable focus on fact-checking entities, with examples including Politifact, Snopes, and FactCheck.org. Bolstered by investigators whose purpose is to draw honest lines through false sand, we have some idea for what truth has become. Even among these champions of transparency, a deeper problem weave between them. An article published by The Atlantic covered a study looking at fake news circulation and its parallel to accurate journalism stories and found daunting implications. Where Russian bots or domestic agents of chaos could be mistaken originators, misinformation’s true heartbeat has its pulse in the American people. Meyer, the article’s author, articulates best this understanding in writing that, “[the] authors found that accurate news wasn’t able to chain together more than 10 retweets. Fake news could put together a retweet chain 19 links long—and do it 10 times as fast as accurate news put together its measly 10 retweets” (Meyer, 2018). It’s now made clear that false information finds believers better, based on message content, emotional charge, and timing. However, we still do not have an answer to what can mitigate this trend.
Without truth, what hope is there for reality itself. We ourselves, humans, have evinced a design that is holds clause for self-defeat. Where the hard understandings are ugly and cruel when we stare at them in the face, before choosing to either turn away or continue looking. So, we find ourselves now asking constantly: What is truth?
Citation(s):Meyer, Robinson. “Huge MIT Study of ‘Fake News’: Falsehoods Win on Twitter.” The Atlantic, The Atlantic, 8 Mar. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104/. Accessed 13 Nov. 2020.