The information war keeps heating up as the years and months go by. The attempts to disparage and dismantle independent and alternative media that speak counter-narratives to the establishment is being justified more and more after Alex Jones and InfoWars was banned and de-platformed from several location online. The mainstream's battle-cry for 'fake news' has always been a smokescreen to silence the information that contradicts their "official" "authoritative" narrative.
Many people on social media are praising the banning of Alex Jones. And some are calling for more to be done to get rid of other information they don't like. The Guardian has a writer blaming Facebook for allowing a video that is against the climate change consensus to be allowed to reach 5 million users, saying "Facebook is still spreading fake news". As if Facebook itself the company is doing it and is somehow responsible for allowing information someone else doesn't like to get around. People like the writer at the Guardian want Facebook to control the information across the site so that what they determine to be "fake news" is not accessible to others.
Obey the Consensus!
The assumption many make is that a consensus like climate change, or another narrative that is being propagated by the mainstream, can't possibly be wrong. Anyone who dares to question or stand against it is some sort of deviant that shouldn't be allowed to spread their filthy message of misinformation.
I wonder how that would have benefited humanity when the consensus of "experts" said the earth was flat. Anyone who tried to question it would be silenced and prevented from doing so. Oh wait, that did happen, and people were killed for trying to go against the mainstream narrative that ended up being false.
Question Things to Think Critically
Pretty much everything should be allowed to be questioned, otherwise when one side is silenced then if the only side talking is wrong then the falsity perpetuates even longer. And if it's right, then there is nothing to worry about, as the truth will out in the end. People should be thinking for themselves and hear out the diverging points of view. If not, then forget about critical thinking being employed as people will just accept whatever the single version they are told is.
Control the Flow of Info
Trying to silence voices seems to be akin to fascist control, which is what much of the Left seems to want to do: to silence the conservative voices. Media Matters, a mouthpiece globalists, is also marching in the war against counter-information that contradicts their narratives, calling it "fake news" and calling for it's removal from Facebook in order to prevent it from reaching anyone's eye's or ears.
Combating fake news is key to combating climate change. As an editorial in the journal Nature Communications argued last year, "Successfully inoculating society against fake news is arguably essential" if major climate initiatives are to succeed. Facebook could be a big part of the solution. But by kowtowing to conservatives, prioritizing profits over accuracy, and maintaining open-door policies toward misinformation, Facebook is entrenching itself as a major part of the problem.
Although they think they are doing the world a service, their inoculation is against information that they deem to be invalid and unworthy of possibly tainting those they deem as having feeble minds who will accept what they declare as misinformation or "fake news". They want to inoculate society from certain points of view, is what it is. This is where the information war is heading. They want to control the information you have access to, like Orwell's 1984. They want to erase certain information and not allow people to access it to even be able to question their dogmatic "authoritative" "official" narrative.
Psychological 'Vaccine' to 'Inoculate' People from Accepting 'Fake News'
Many people are serious about inoculative society against certain points of view. Psychologists from the University of Cambridge, Yale University and George Mason University thought of ways to vaccinate people from climate change misinformation, as they call it. This idea comes from medicine and virology where exposing the body to a weakened version of the virus allows it to build a tolerance. The point is to tell lies and expose them as lies, not to tell lies as if they were truth.
Social psychologists researching "fakenews" have come up with a strategy published in the journal Global Challenges. They want to inoculate the public against misinformation, specifically the "fake news" websites such as those they deem to be propagating myths about climate change.
Previous research has shown that counteracting politicization of science can be done through high-level consensus forming among experts to convey the reality, yet other research indicates that public opinion on climate change to be shaped with limited external validity. The current research wants to explore how people doing the evaluating process the consensus information while they are in a polarized information environment (like one political party vs. another).
Changing Behaviors
In order to get people to address climate change, people will need to change their behaviors and how they make decisions in life. Researchers and scientists see a problem through the increased politicization of climate science and the attempts by certain disinformation campaigns to undermine the "scientific consensus". Researchers wanted to identify an effective way to engage the public about issues across the political spectrum.
Injecting Misinformation
In presenting facts followed by misinformation, the false material cancels out the previous accurate statement in people's minds and end up back where they started. Lies canceled out the facts. Researchers decided to add some misinformation to the delivery of their own facts through distortion tactics used by other groups. For some reason, this helps shift and hold people's opinion closer to the truth when follow-up exposure to "fake news" was introduced.
Once falsity takes root in our consciousness, we can become attached to it and it becomes a mind virus that we unknowingly spread to other consciousnesses through the words we use to influence them into accepting the mind virus.
By injecting a small amount of misinformation, this acts as a vaccine that preemptively exposes people and warns them, although subconsciously, about the misinformation and helps them to preserve the facts. The idea is that a cognitive repertoire is built up that acts as a resistance to misinformation and reduces susceptibility to accepting it the next time it is encountered.
The Study
Participants there were only shown the climate change consensus showed an increased agreement with the scientific consensus by about 20%. Those were shown misinformation alone resulted in a 9% drop in accepting the scientific consensus. Other participants were shown the accurate information followed by the false petition and there was neither an increase or a drop in accepting the scientific consensus. Conflicting messages can leave people unsure of what is what and it brings them back to square-one where they started off not knowing what was what.
Two groups were given the information "vaccine" of a general-correction of the false data, which showed a 6.5% increase in acceptance towards the scientific consensus, despite exposure to fake news. A more detailed correction served as an inoculation to achieve a 13% increase in acceptance.
The misinformation was not presented as information, but was demonstrated to be false through either general or more specifically detailed corrections, which sowed seeds of doubt and undermined the claims. Tobacco, fossil fuels and chemical companies have long used psychological inoculation to undermine scientific facts in the public consciousness. The same process can be reversed to promote facts instead.
In looking at Republicans, Independents and Democrats, inoculation messages were all equally effective in shifting their opinions to be consistent with climate science conclusions. The normal backfire effect where people reject information did not occur when inoculation messages were used. Including the misinformation in the presentation of facts helps to preemptively warn people against the spread of misinformation that can influence them into accepting falsity.
Show Both Sides, but Say the Other Side is False to Win
Changing minds is hard. To inoculate society from looking into things some don't want them to consider again, it's best to get them to accept your initial message first by implanting some information you present as false from the get go so that they don't get so influenced by it.
This technique works regardless of whether the alleged false misinformation is actually false or if the message that is desired to be accepted it true. You just need to present a position with a bit of the counter position and make it look false and your position more accepted as true. Then your message is accepted, and they will remember to to reject the contrary "false" info like a vaccine that rejects the virus. Problem solved, right? No more need for contrary or counter-information to be seen or heard ever again. See it once and move on, forget about that "false" misinformation.
The other more radical camp exemplified by the Guardian writer doesn't even want the counter-information to be presented though. If they get their way, it's just one-sided an censorship to prevent people from being exposed to the alleged "misinformation" at all. Then we can all live happily ever after, right?
If there was a real vaccine that would prevent people from thinking against the official "authoritative" narrative, or had people reject the counter-narrative info, I bet they would demand it be given to everyone in order to save society or "Democracy". Democratic Senator Chris Murphy has called the de-platforming of InfoWars from various sites as necessary for the survival of democracy. The fear of contrary information is bringing out calls for the total control of the information flow.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
If you appreciate and value the content, please consider: Upvoting, Sharing or Reblogging below.
me for more content to come!
My goal is to share knowledge, truth and moral understanding in order to help change the world for the better. If you appreciate and value what I do, please consider supporting me as a Steem Witness by voting for me at the bottom of the Witness page.