The Fog of Fake News

The Fog of Fake News. As the conservatives were gathering in Orlando, Florida a golden statue of Donald Trump appeared on the scene and was placed at the registering room. Never a retired or defeated President has been the prey for such adulation. As 3/4 of the Republican voters still believe that the elections were stolen, one must understand how such a state of denial is existing in the mind of 50 Million people. How could such a thick fog have materialized?

Even before he became President, Trump always spread rumors about rigged elections. In 2012, he claimed that Mitt Romney had been defeated because voting machines had been programmed to wipe out Republican votes. During his own campaign, in August 2016, he warned on several occasions that the election would be rigged against Republicans. He was already seeding the arguments that dead people and illegal immigrants were voting. Not content with his surprising electoral college upset, he claimed that he had won the electoral vote alleging that Hillary Clinton had got millions of illegal votes this time accusing the media of not doing their job. Of course, he also claimed at the time that more people had attended his inauguration than Obama’s. That was the birth of alternative facts. True to form he would say during a pre midterm election rally in August 2018 “I’m afraid the election’s going to be rigged, I have to be honest.” Insinuating there would be Russian interference. We need not spend any time on the 2020 pre- and post-elections declarations are they are still fresh in or minds. However, this a striking example of how the famous Goebbels propaganda law: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, works so well.

As we described in Social Media, Psychology and Politics, lies cold be spread not only through conventional but through social media which provide a fertile ground for propagating rumors. We will attempt to explain the mechanisms which intervene into the embedding of fake messages into the mind of targeted voters.  Just as in industry when marketing a product, the bait is some advertisement that will get the social media user, mostly Facebook to click on the image and then being guided towards the firm website. With fake news it cold be images as the ones reproduced below which are self explanatory

The schematic diagram below explains fairly well the various phases involved in the process.

• An individual publishes false information on a Fake News website, then pays to advertise a link to the post in Facebook users’ newsfeeds.
• Facebook profits from advertising on its platform, earning money for every person who clicks the link or every 1,000 users who see the ads.
• When Facebook users click on the advertised links and go to the Fake News website, generating an impression for each display ad on the website. This in turn generates additional income for face book. while the fake news advertiser whether political operator, extremist or con-artist increases his market penetration, promoting his page to gain fans.
• Fans can share these links to their own Facebook networks, furthering the organic reach of Fake News and increasing the advertiser’s organic traffic This snow-ball chain effect enables the most controversial news however false they may be to “go viral.”

One should look at what has happened over the past quarter of a century following the advent of the internet 1989and the birth of the social media in 2004.

Looking at the graph above where the percentage  participation of the public  in the internet world to get political news has been plotted at the bottom of graph showing the split between the liberal and the conservative views , it is noticeable that ten years between 1994 and 2004 there was no very substantial shift in the divide between liberal and conservative when on line participation increased by a factor of 10 Conversely between 2004 and 2017 while the on line participation not even doubled the shift has widened in a schizophrenic like manner. This is confirmed by the impact of the “Big Lie” on the 75% of the Republican voters.

Up to 1980 the main source of news had been the three traditional tv channels (CBS, NBC, ABC) that concentrated on news rather than opinions.

Did the reader notice that Facebook was first created in 2004? Any coincidence? Although the internet was in existence since 1993. Up to 2004 all seekers of news could search individually through the internet using various search engines such as Yahoo in 1994 or Google in 1997 and others that did not survive. The three traditional tv channels (CBS, NBC, ABC) that concentrated on news rather than opinions providing the public an almost carbon copy information from which they drew their own conclusions. Even though in the 70’s there was a liberalization of topics previously considered taboo such as racism, bigotry or even homosexuality opened the way to more diversified coverage it would not be sufficient to stem the lassitude of the public for these traditional channels. The 80’s witnessed the advent of cable television which meant greater choice of programs and the loss of exposure to the three major networks. The emergence of CNN, a 24/7 cable news channel would be after a few years the death nail of the traditional channels. This became particularly apparent after their live transmission of the Space Shuttle disaster challenger in 1986 Baghdad bombing at the beginning of the American attack on the 16^th of January 1991. In 1996 it was taken over by Time Warner and two new competitors emerged Fox News on the conservative side and MSNBC on the liberal side which as more opinionated channels would overtake CNN in the US audience, but CNN remained the prime international channel. Although there was some polarisation it was not so evident. 2004 would be a watershed year with the birth of the first social media network: Facebook, a tool to find and connect with the people that one cared about Initially used in Harvard and other campuses it spread amongst the young people. The rise of Facebook was phenomenal by the end of 2004 it had already 1 million users and 4 years later it was 100 million which pales in comparison with his audience today of 2.5 Billion. But Facebook was not alone. It would be YouTube, Twitter, snapchat and a series of others that would be engulfed through acquisition by Facebook such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Chat that became Facebook Messenger. The ability to communicate within groups stimulated the establishment of group-chats where ideas could be debated between people of similar following. The advent of the social media enabled politicians to have more input and establish a closer relationship with the voters. The real shift in polarisation occurred during the 2016 Presidential campaign with the techniques of psychometrics and voter targeting. It is probably this that caused such a political divide.

As Washington Post’s Kate Woodsome said:” Political Tribalism has been taken over by Political Sectarianism”.   Political Tribalism i.e., “which values group we belong to” has always been a modus operandi by politicians eager to gather votes. It was most visible during the Obama campaigns. However, over the years, fanned by social media, adversarial propaganda on both sides the political divide has been pushed to such a level, first by amplifying the political tribalism to its maximum possible level and then mutated into political sectarianism which, beyond party lines, links values with race or social class. In addition to social media and group chats a number of web sites and cable news have emerged and serve as platforms for the political ideologies of each side where politicians can appear and reinforce the ideologies.

Readers are already familiar with the right-wing TV channels from FOX News and the even more extreme OAN and NEWSMAX but may only have heard of Breitbart the ultraright website, a mine for conspiracy theories, very much shaped by Steve Bannon who headed Trump’s campaign. On the other side headed by MSNBC a cable version of NBC, one can find a number of liberal websites such as TPM Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post Started by a Greek naturalized American, Daily Kos started by a Greek American, TYT started by Turk American and Democracy now a daily one-hour broadcast by journalist Amy Goodman. On the main shows the tribunes or porta voce are Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow. Most TV interviews of Donald Trump were with Fox news and affiliates. MSNBC although much more anti Trump than CNN was awarded one whereas CNN probably the least unobjective of the three channels had one. Was it that Trump hates CNN because they see the truths and are more dangerous to wavering supporters?

Over the past 5 years, the constant bashing of the public with distorted news, conspiracy theories or plain fake news has created a political texture where balanced views are not only absent but not permitted. The present world of unreality that has poisoned the right has paralyzed the political process The Republicans are now prisoners of the surreal world they have built, and their electorate’s views are so gelled that they cannot disperse the fog of fakes without risking being displaced at the next elections. The US in a deep state of political illness which if not cured will weaken its world leadership. President Bidden is well aware of this but to really reconquer the worlds moral leadership he has to find ways to guide the Republicans to embrace more bipartisan politics and wane the party from the divisive Trumpian philosophy.

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