The phenomenon of reading an old newspaper is known, which is read with great interest until the eyes fall on the number. This suggests that news is not particularly news, it reflects and confirms the model of the world, where only deviations from it are significant, which stop our attention.
News can perform different functions:
- reflect the world more or less objectively,
- deliberately distort certain aspects of the world,
- build an exclusively positive or negative picture of the world,
- keep the audience's attention on the necessary aspects of the world,
- deliberately switch the audience's attention to other aspects of the world.
Today's fake news has taken over everyone. 23% of Americans said they had to spread this kind of story, with 14% knowing it was fake and 16% finding out later.
A fake can be a random set of information, or it can be created deliberately for a variety of reasons. For example, it can be launched to divert from the truth, in which the perpetrators of some negative event may be interested.
Fake can also work to change the picture of the world as a whole, undermining its foundations at its weakest points. For example, the American intelligence community in these words formulated the goals of Russian cyberattacks against the US presidential elections in 2021 - "to undermine public confidence in the democratic process in America ." The American countermeasures plan is 15 pages long, quoted entirely by Time magazine. As a result, a Gallup poll showed that only 66% of Americans trust the election results.
These interventions did not necessarily have the same effect, but they were among those that were aimed at a similar result. The world has ceased to be correct both in reality and in information and virtual spaces.
Not only people, but also the so-called social bots are working to introduce "cracks" into the picture of the world. These robots generate 60% of online traffic today, which is 20% more than in 2021.
In this regard, there are three problems that are generated by the active use of bots:
- influence can be distributed among many suspicious accounts,
- the political debate is polarizing,
- the spread of disinformation is increasing.
American sociologists give a figure of 41% of users who were exposed to such an impact. Moreover, 18% experienced severe forms such as physical threats or sexual harassment.
There is a difference in the perception of this online deviation between men and women. 70% of women see this as an important problem, but only 54% of men. Young women (from 18 to 29 years old) perceive this especially painfully: for 83% of them, it is important, while for men in the same age group, only 55% say it is important.
The manipulative aspect of information was taken to new heights by the US presidential election. Journal of Time comes out with a portrait of Steve Bannon on the cover with the words "The Great Manipulator". In an article in this issue, Bannon's colleague says, "In fact, if no one is opposed to what you are doing, you are probably not doing anything that matters."
By the way, there is an opinion of the Americans about another innovation of the campaign - the use of Twitter. 69% of Americans said Trump uses Twitter too much. True, during the campaign, Trump himself realized that by doing so he removed journalistic censorship between himself and the voters. And billionaire Thiel defended Trump by saying, "The war on Twitter is not real war."
Fake news breeds the same fake life. And we have to react to it as if it were real. Elon Musk sees an even greater danger in the future, when artificial intelligence will be able to generate any messages. He says: “Robots can start a war by issuing fake news and press releases, tampering with email accounts and manipulating information. The pen is mightier than the sword."
One study of online discussion uses a good understanding of this phenomenon, expressed in the following words: personality attacks. There you can also see interesting results of the research done, for example, anonymous comments are six times more likely to be attacks. And one more observation: since a personal attack triggers a response, it becomes very important to engage a moderator earlier, which can stop a lot.
Another problem adding fuel to the fire was the political division of the population. Within the United States, Democratic and Republican supporters believe a variety of news sources. They pay more attention to news this year than they did in 2016. 49% follow the news very seriously. And on news consumption: 15% of Americans believe news from friends and family, and 16% of online news consumers also receive news from people close to them often.
Analysis of the cyber troops of the governments of different countries showed the following areas of their work. First, they generate positive messages that strengthen and support government positions. Israel, for example, enters into polemics with those who are critical of the state's position, for which there are even student scholarships at universities. Officials say this: “We will receive official information and information and add to make it move virally. We will not leave negative stories online unresponsive, we will also spread positive messages. What we are doing is revolutionary because we are putting public diplomacy in the hands of the people. "
Secondly, such cyber troops are engaged in trolling against those who criticize the authorities. Political dissidents are often subjected to this attack. Thirdly, the posted messages can be neutral, although in fact their purpose is to divert attention from the issues discussed (about troll farms and bots in Russia, on the intervention of Russian trolls in the presidential race in the United States, which is already interference in the internal affairs of a foreign country, as well as about the inner workings of creating news and political talk shows in Russia itself).
There is only one quote that reflects the “non-informational” component of such an impact in Russian political talk shows: “What infuriated me especially in that work was that the leadership used the term“ handing over”. You have to provide faces for the air and these new (or new) faces spoil the mood, cheat - they have to yell. The bosses asked about the new experts: "Is he a weapon?" This is one of the main indicators, and any intelligent adequate person, when he hears this chorus on the air, immediately ceases to perceive information, and the bosses consider this to be aerobatics."
All of this reflects the generation of a huge number of fundamentally negative messages at the exit. So the fake reflects the same trend - basically it is negative news, which is more widespread for this reason.
Why is negative news more important? Because we do not particularly believe in positive stories, considering them not natural, but the result of pushing, for example, from PR services. And here our feeling does not deceive us, according to various estimates, 70–80% of the messages around us can be such. And negative news is retold much more than positive news. This is a result that came to us from the past. For survival, knowledge of the negative is more important than knowledge of the positive. So today, when we read stories on social media about how credit card holders are fooled or how fraudsters operate in the subway, this information is often more important than any other information for us.
It is quite common for people to try to get away from news altogether. The leaders among the countries here are Greece (57%) and Turkey (57%), and Japan looks the best, where this figure is quite small (6%). The reasons for this behavior are in plain sight. 48% believe that news has a bad effect on their mood, 37% attribute this to the fact that they do not believe the news.
News surrounds us everywhere. We are so used to them that even fake news gradually ceases to embarrass us. News, news, news ... Fake news tells about fake life. But how does it differ from the story that Angelina Jolie gave birth to twins, or stories about another divorce in Hollywood ... Although they are real, this news, but they tell about events completely remote from our life, creating mountains of "garbage "in our heads.
By the way, we have here the author of our regular column on NLP.
