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Friday, October 20th, 2023

Disinformation Researchers Are Feeling The Heat Ahead Of 2024

Author:     Matt Shuham
Source:     HuffPost
Publication Date:     Oct 13, 2023 | 04:25 PM EDT
 Link: Disinformation Researchers Are Feeling The Heat Ahead Of 2024
Stephan:  

The MAGAt world lives and thrives on disinformation. I think the weaponization of lies, as I have published in SR, is the largest threat to the continuation of our democracy. Yet Congress and the Supreme Court is doing nothing about this. Young people spend 4.8 hours a day on social media, it is the main way they take in information, and most of it is crap. The parents aren’t much better and it is clear that most are woefully improperly informed. This is a new situation and it needs new laws. I think if you distribute false information you ought to be held accountable. Will this happen? I doubt with this Congress and this Supreme Court.

“Next year might be one of the worst times we have seen, and maybe the worst time we have seen, for the spread of election-related mis- and disinformation,” one expert told HuffPost.
Credit: Maddie Abuyuan / Huffpost

Kate Starbird had been studying online conspiracy theories for years when she realized last year that she was at the center of one.

“I can recognize a good conspiracy theory,” she recalled to HuffPost. “I’ve been studying them a long time.”

Right-wing journalists and politicians had begun the process of falsely characterizing Starbird’s work — which focused on viral disinformation about the 2020 election — as the beating heart of a government censorship operation. The theory was that researchers working to investigate and flag viral rumors and conspiracy theories had acted as pass-throughs for overzealous bureaucrats, pressuring social media platforms to silence supporters of former President Donald Trump.

The year that followed has changed the field of disinformation research entirely.

Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives last fall, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — a key player in Trump’s […]

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1 Comment

  1. Albus Eddie on Friday, October 20, 2023 at 5:56 am

    I have far more fear of the government attempting to regulate free speech than I do of misinformation. The root cause, in my opinion, are not the bad actors behind misinformation, and they certainly exist. The root cause is the laziness and disengagement of the American voter. This laziness benefits both parties who are free to focus upon mobilizing their base rather than engaging the public in substantive policy discussion.