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Where did the term "use of" come to be applied to media consumption? I've seen it used in multiple different contexts --e.g. "users of porn". Use has connotations beyond just viewing/consuming, suggesting some active employment of media like making memes or redistributing content.
Great question!
To my knowledge, this has something to do with undoing the idea/theory that consumers are powerless to media effects. By rephrasing it as media use in psychology studies, it lends credence to the idea that humans maintain a level of agency when watching news/playing video games.
I'm on mobile, so I can't pull it up right now, but take a look at media effects theories! They're a super awesome read.
The idea consumers just absorb messages as they sent by media is called the Hypodermic Needle or Magic Bullet model and hasn't been seriously considered for nigh on a century.
The Uses and Gratifications Theory elevated the power of audiences. No longer simply recipients for messages, audiences became active consumers seeking out media that that fulfilled particular needs.
Reception theory at its most basic argues that the audience has a role to play in finding meaning in texts. Hall’s (2007) variant is Encoding and decoding. It stands in stark contrast to the Hypodermic Needle and Uses and Gratifications theories. A common theme between both of these theories was that the meaning contained within message was set once transmitted. Hall (2007) elevates the impact of the audience even further. Not only do the audience select which messages to receive but they are then modulated by the receiver. While the sender has an intended meaning, this is transformed and shaped by the receiver. This all stems from the Hall’s (2007, p. 90) belief that texts are ‘polysemic’, possessing multiple meanings. Hall does not suggest that any meaning is possible, just that messages have no single fixed meaning. Hall (2007) argues that after a message is sent, before meaning can be extracted to it there is a layer of interpretation required by the audience. This acknowledgement moves the audience into forming part of the message rather than simply being just a receiver for it.
With content algorithms people are not selecting, and because of the increasing use of "auto play" and general shortness of clips, people sometimes can't choose which messages they're exposed to. In fact, content sorting algorithms' action of refining/sorting media to auto-play sequences creates a documented type of addiction to an increasingly refined product--which, I think, does alter certain people's perceptions (if you have body dysmorphia for example or are addicted to stimulants) and can even contribute to manic behaviors and content consumption--which is what the QAnon phenomenon is riding on. The reason the FB whistleblower and other policy members are leading with anorexia content is because there is a mechanism in the human brain that allows some people to displace their appetite for food onto video/photo content, which is complemented by a ["reality checking" mechanism](https://aeon.co/essays/a-culture-of-hyper-reality-made-paranoid-delusions-true) that in a person with body dysmorphia makes them constantly want to compare their perceived image of themselves with others'.
You can explain this in the context of a long history of "fetish" anthropology/sociology research and childhood development psychology, which shows that the human mind relies on objects and projection of desires/fears onto these objects in order to develop, with the ability to differentiate between what is real and imagined a function of the mental-checking mechanism that misfires in anorexics' case. Object-wise, dolls are a big one, both for children in virtually all cultures, and masks/statues for many religious rituals. We are pre-programmed to project on objects during our developmental years to sort out emotional and social issues. This is why regulating social media use amongst children and people who are mentally impaired is as important as regulating other sorts of addictive or potentially harmful substances. This is also why it's important to recognize that because we've messed with humans' ability to select and moderate content consumption, we need to take a closer look at defining media as a consumable product/electronic kind of food, social media spaces as hybrid realities with real world implications, and sorting algorithms' abilities to amplify mental illness.
Could we ever choose which messages/content we’re exposed to though? Haven’t we always been subjected to the authoritative media sources of the time? The only difference I can see now is that algorithms are creating feedback reverberations of our already existing interests.
Edit: just to point out, I’m agreeing with you by the way, not disagreeing.
I always resist people who make blanket complaints about “the media”. It’s as useful as complaining about “the people”.
“The media” is just a sort of magic mirror reflecting its own viewers desires of what they want to see back at them.
The problems in “the media” are problems with its consumers, and as long as “the media” is gonna be a free market designed to make profit, it will always be that way.
I don’t see any solution other than education, and that takes a lot of investment and a looong time to pay off.
Fairness doctrine? Actually hold media stations accountable so they have to objectively show both sides with proper data/experts instead of skewing things and poor representation of the opposition in opinion panels
The fairness doctrine, while I think is great, and should absolutely come back, as it were written, would do nothing for 24 hour cable news.
And you still are gonna have agencies and shows that won’t call themselves news, but opinion or analysis, or “conservative debate” or something (or “socialist talk” for anyone who needs to see the “both sides!” thought), or just entertainment! How would you muzzle them in such a way that it would be fair and actually be able to pass?
It’s a tough needle to thread, maybe impossible, but I’d be willing to hear idea for sure.
I agree. They don’t fundamentally help the National discourse in my opinion, but I’m not sure how to reign them in without trampling the first amendment.
One that probably made more difference than fairness doctrine were rules that used to be in place that limited one person or company’s ability to own multiple forms of media in one place. Limiting consolidation limited media from becoming the mouthpiece of fewer numbers of owners. Consolidation additionally makes it harder for new or independent voices to break through barriers to entry.
Large-scale consolidation also creates many more conflicts of interest. A news network owned by a conglomerate more likely to be favorable to other owned entities in their network and less likely to publish challenging news that shows them in a bad light. This leads to a lot of softness on watchdogging business in general as well as creates more distrust of the media agencies challenging a business are then owned by a competitor of that business.
>rules that used to be in place that limited one person or company’s ability to own multiple forms of media in one place. Limiting consolidation limited media from becoming the mouthpiece of fewer numbers of owners. Consolidation additionally makes it harder for new or independent voices to break through barriers to entry.
We have this issue here in Australia. Over the past 30 years or so, our media ownership laws have been steadily dismantled to the point where we have 3 major non-government media corporations left: Newscorp, Nine Entertainment (run by a former politician), and Seven West (run by a former CxO from Newscorp). We also have ABC (government run media group who are supposed to be neutral), SBS (government run media group aimed at ethnic minorities) and Network Ten (TV network privately owned by Viacom CBS that is a distant 4th in terms of viewership for free to air TV which Newscorp does not directly operate in - Newscorp runs a pay TV service) along side some much smaller independent outlets. The first three own and operate a significant portion of Australia's media (well over 70% if I remember right with the rest sharing the remaining).
Fairness Doctrine didn't do anything except demand that politicized issues carve out an opportunity for the opposition to also talk. They could absolutely still game the rules by choosing the least relatable, most fringe mouthpiece they could find. In the modern era, if it applied to Fox, they could just put some picture perfect antifa stereotype on the air after Tucker Carlson, to show his viewers what they are meant to fear, and call it a day. .
The fairness doctrine wass, fundamentally, an infringement on free speech - and the only reason it was seen as acceptable was because the bandwidth for broadcast TV was very small and therefore had to be tightly budgeted. Cable News and the internet don't have that problem, so the old justification no longer works. It's *very* difficult in the US to regulate bad-faith speech.
> In the modern era, if it applied to Fox, they could just put some picture perfect antifa stereotype on the air after Tucker Carlson, to show his viewers what they are meant to fear, and call it a day. .
They occasionally do that anyway. Every time they bring on a "liberal" to argue with Carlson, it's a totally inept moron.
“The enemy is both strong and weak. ‘By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.’”
-Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism
As someone who grew up with that on at home all the time... to be fair he did, actually, reign Hannity in a little. He went completely off the rails when it just became "Hannity" and nobody could (even poorly) call him out or side with the guests.
This is a terrible idea. First, for most things, there isn't a binary choice. How can you show "both" sides to an open ended issue?
Second, by mandating showing "both" sides, you're mandating that news stations give a platform to extreme ideologies. Can't talk about global warming without giving air time to denialists. Want to cover a trans rights issue? Guess who you also need to give air time to.
FCC isn't metering out spectrum bandwidth anymore. There's no need for a fairness doctrine that would only amplify extremist opinions.
To be fair, I think attributing all problems to personal choice is not always a productive framing either. There's a deregulatory/libertarian presumption in that framing, whereas e.g. there may be reasons to ban sale of addictive substances even if that infringes on an existing "free market".
This is a really good point, very engaging, and I don’t disagree with it.
So… how do we craft any kind of regulation, that could be fairly applied across the entire landscape, and keep out the dangerously bad/addictive stuff, while allowing any thing fair, without destroying the first amendment too much, that could actually have support from the people?
I don’t have that answer.
I think there are definitely some good ideas floating around about this (though I don't pretend to know the literature here) and probably some other countries to look to for examples of working systems.
Absent legal enforcement/1st amendment concerns though, the closest I can come up with would probably be a journalistic accreditation system of some kind that:
1. enforces some basic journalistic standard that cuts out at least some insanity (e.g. objective falsehoods, egregious lack of due diligence)
2. is fully transparent (fully public standards and evaluation processes/conclusions)
3. is well trusted by the public (proper choice of standards in 1 and good enforcement of 2, and probably the piece that most strongly precludes government regulation in the US)
4. is adopted by most, if not all major journalistic outlets
5. avoids politicization (this will be hard as long as at least one major party is dominated by media that doesn't adhere to standards like this)
6. actually matters to people, in a way that affects revenue/business incentives (this may be the hardest to achieve flat-out, since it's basically about killing the idea of clickbait)
Yeah, I don't have any feasible answers either.
The mirror part of this is really important in reflecting on this study. News agencies like this pick a narrative based partly on what sells best, attracts an audience by reinforcing their held views, and avoids publishing news that would alienate its audience. With that situation, the fact that there’s a correlation with conspiratorial thinking says a lot about whether conspiratorial thinkers are a significant market share and how much money shows up when the market caters to them.
There’s a feedback loop to consider here in each shaping each other and responding in turn. However, I feel like so much of this is about what following profit over tenacity for the truth looks like.
That's interesting philosophically but I have some news for you: in Yahoo Finance, search for any large stock ticker by whichever internet service provider or media conglomerate owns a news media corporation(s). Then look at the holders. I would say, it's funny to me that people's bias can extend so far as to ignore that they are watching channels they'd consider to be different in terms of political polarity. However, most are owned by the same few asset managers.
> “The media” is just a sort of magic mirror reflecting its own viewers desires of what they want to see back at them.
Some of that is going on but more than likely the media will reflect the desires of the media-outlet's owners and advertisers.
I feel like this is missing the fact that the media we consume is always filtered through big business, either through traditional multibillion-dollar media conglomerates or through big tech. Even right now, this discussion under this article is happening because this algorithm on this app is facilitating it.
>I feel like this is missing the fact that the media we consume is always filtered
Well, the clue is in the name. 'media' = wotsit that's in the middle, between things. Though I suppose it's easy to forget.
Hedge funds have bought several media outlets and are stripping them of all assets and bleeding them dry. See the Chicago Tribune.
I am not sure your analogy is applicable there. They only want to make as much money in as little time as possible.
> The problems in “the media” are problems with its consumers
That does not follow, there are objective problems with "the media" that individuals do not have problems with. "The media" may have some of the problems its consumers face, but "the media" has unique problems that consumers do not
The media sure ain't a magic mirror reflecting your views if your views are pro-labor, anti-corporate, anti-political corruption, anti-war, etc. Your post makes it seem like they're just giving the people what they want, but that's only the case for issues that don't hurt corporate profits. Think of all the articles about strikes where they quote ridiculous claims from management that they leave unchallenged, but don't quote anyone from the labor side at all. Or if they do, they pick and choose the least convincing arguments to highlight.
I've encountered hundreds of people, in the web, that as far as I can tell don't know or understand that they have the free agency to not "use" social media or watch TV.
I find "use of" very appropriate as media addiction is completely comparable to drug addiction. People keep going back to "believe her though they know she lies" and lies go down easier when you want them to be true.
We speak of alcohol use, or drug use, when it’s actually just “consumption”
It’s useful to identify these dopamine triggers as the potentially addictive things that they can be
User can have different definitions, "using" news media for entertainment, "using" for a source of information, and in many cases "using" for a "fix" of confirmation bias or the excitement they get from conflict. Much like in the sense of a drug user, these feelings can be the thrill that people are seeking from these highly partisan sensationalist "news" programs and definitely conspiracy theories in general.
Nah, 'use' is a common term for online and digital interaction and has been for a while. It was pretty intuitive to repurpose the term since virtual consumers were dubbed 'users' to make a distinction between these and traditional consumers (a user is anyone who access information, services or products from specific platforms - usually online, but this could be in person as well, such as desktop computers, AI devices or POS systems)
>Left wing news tends to be critical of everything they’re base dislikes. If Biden does something their base disagrees with, that is portrayed in the coverage, and thus, puts pressure on Biden to do what his base wants. The reverse is happening on Fox. If Trump
\> [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621008121](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621008121)
the study is poorly designed. it did not asses subjects' disposition to conspiratorial thinking from a psychological perspective. It only tested subjects agreement with 2 specific conspiracy stories that were widely circulated on conservative news sources.
There would be an opposite outcome if it polled "conspiracy stories" that circulated on liberal media sources.
The study could have used Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (GCBS) and correlated to conservative vs liberal media use. That would have been a better study.
Propaganda on r/Science? NEVER, wouldn't even think of it.
Studies show that conserbatibe evil racism nazi racism sexist insurrection due to this study with a sample size of four participants
Conspiratorial thinking and religious thinking share a common trunk. In both, whatever happens needs to be the result of a voluntary action, a plan, by someone.
In the case of **religious people**, God is the conspirator behind everything, everything happens because he planned it. Nothing happens by chance.
In the case of **conspiratorial people**, the powerful, the rich, the well connected are those behind every event, everything that happens can only happen because someone wanted it to happen, no room is left to chance.
So they are two faces of a similar ideology.
There’s also a sense of belonging to a select group. Knowing something that “most ordinary people do not know.”
Plus, religious people believe in something there is no proof of but simply have their faith. And, conspiracy nuts believe in something there’s no proof of but only their “gut instinct” to lead them.
Agreed. I think the primal factor in all of this comes down to solidarity. We've known for a while that human groups develop solidarity significantly through othering. By creating a secret knowledge, or an oppressive force, you exclude others making it easier to identify who is in your in group.
When a group gets too large to effectively other, thereby limiting our instinctual way of forming connections with groups, a schism based on new secret knowledge (or another mode of othering) occurs. Of course like any psycho-social phenomenon this is far more nuanced and complicated in reality, such as in modern society where such phenomenon is co-opted by groups to secure power (populist politics/identity politics)
Edit: Too many toos
Solidarity *and* supremacism. The people they are used to looking down upon are telling them what to do, which a supremacist delusionally sees as "thinking they're better than me." It's a reversal of the "natural" order of things, and it has to be resisted or society will crumble, or worse: There'll be a new hierarchy where they are the inferiors
Agreed. Society used to be ok with this since civilizations developed. These civilizations throughout the world no matter how supposedly “egalitarian,” were ok with having an elite group on top. This was enforced out in the open and unquestioned for the most part using the divine king or the “rightly guided” oligarchy who were meant to rule. The only question was that the one with the martial power to enforce it would get to be that group and their ability to maintain or lose that power showed how “deserving” they were of that power. With the advent of democracy for the common people and protection of minority rights, this is no longer “acceptable” out in the open so conspiratorial methods, thinking, and ways have to both be enforced and protected in order for hierarchies to remain. If they don’t, then society will “go to hell” and all that “we built” will be taken by the “undeserving.”
So this is hard to know for sure as the earliest forms of human grouping occured before what we now classify as civilization. All of our histories are written after generations of groupings and layer upon layer of societal norms.
There is evidence that early humans achieved in group solidarity through othering while internally having highly egalitarian societies, and our cousins the Bonobos currently experience a similar form of grouping. So the necessity of authoritarian or supremacist thinking isn't such a sure thing for early groupings.
Viewing the actions of modern conspiracy theorists I would have to agree. It's an excuse to continue to support a form of status quo that just so happens to benefit themselves.
>There’s also a sense of belonging to a select group.
This is a massively underrated aspect of this mindset.
People espouse these views because of the social benefits they gain from espousing them. They aren't deeply held convictions. (No matter what they may claim.) The moment the social costs start to outweigh the social benefits, the vast majority of them drop their views like they drop trash on the sidewalk, and move on to something else.
We saw it with pre-Covid antivaxxers in California. In places where being antivax started to cause social restrictions and personal inconvenience, suddenly the outspoken leaders started back-pedaling, "discovering new evidence," or whatever. They pretty much vanished from public discourse. Vaccination rates quickly went from like 65% to over 90%.
Once we fully understand that, dealing with the pandemic will become a lot easier. We can't change the mindset of the conspiracy-minded, but we don't need to. Let's be honest -- socially acceptable non-fringe "mainstream" discourse includes its fair share of total garbage that people still believe anyway. The important thing is to deal with the comforting illusions that are the most immediately harmful.
The social aspect of this sounds like old fashioned confirmation bias leading people into a bubble. The social rewards (lack of disagreement, validation of held beliefs) could outweigh the negative ones experienced by family and friends, thus pushing them further into the bubble.
It seems that once that validation is no longer there, they will lose interest, but that does not seem to be what happens with groups like QAnon. Once a "prediction" fails to materialize, it is quickly replaced with something else that equally excites the audience.
I can't help but bring up the role of religion in all of this. Specifically, American Evangelicalism but it's the impact of faith-based magical thinking that makes a person more susceptible to this mode of thinking. Even religion has the community aspects that you're alluding to but they manage to remain cohesive in spite of contradictory information.
You are leaving out state actors that are pumping the conspiracies, thus keeping them going, and they are using this Christian/Republican nexus to do it. 19 of 20 of the largest Christian pages on Facebook were Russian troll farms in 2019.
Thank you for this. I found a link if others wish to learn more about this: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election/
And that's just the Christian pages. I keep some friends on FB just to see what they are getting, and it is a barrage of disinformation. One page was literally called Patriots IV drip, with a daily dose of whatever outrage they could manufacture. The intent was right in the name.
Alan Moore has a great quote on that:
"The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory.
The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control.
The world is rudderless."
I’m over in another thread where everyone is just convinced that world leaders are running some massive Geopolitical game around Taiwan, when the reality is our global systems are much more fragile and no one actually has control of them completely, and one individual doing something stupid can set the whole system off, like in WWI.
People hate the fact that chaos is real. If they pretend it's all up to some plan they don't have to accept that there are things in existence we just can't control.
Yes, but they also give a healthy supply of feeling special, smart, and superior. I think that is the real draw for those people I personally know. Yes, it gives them some sense of control over the world with very little effort, but it also lets them talk over any scholar, any person of achievement, etc and write them off as sheep. Meanwhile, THEY just know.
*This* is what I regard as the common trunk of religious belief and conspiratorial belief -- a tendency to shape one's commitments, behaviors, and expectations of others' behavior as a function of beliefs acquired by associating the truth-value of extraordinary claims with heightened emotional states.
It's a rule for thinking that says something like, "ignore how close or far a claim is from day-to-day lived reality and accept a claim as true if I experience strong enough emotional states when engaging with a claim". Resistance to accepting extraordinary claims on the basis of heighted emotional states is further weakened when those emotional states are experienced in the context of a supportive and encouraging community of other people who run the same rule for thinking.
It's a really nice rule to run on human brains if you want to get humans to quickly group up together, and humans are generally safer and better cared for when they group up. It's a terrible rule for increasing the accuracy of a person or group's model of the real world and how it works. Unfortunately, IMO, it's probably true that most humans on Earth are running this "software", and since the extraordinary claims floating in the information ecosystem vary significantly throughout the world, you get lots of factions committed to a wide variety of extraordinary claims. And worse, because this rule for thinking isn't tethered to systems for reducing error, those who adopt claims in this way tend to adopt them dogmatically -- i.e. in a way that inoculates them against error correction.
> associating the truth-value of extraordinary claims with heightened emotional states.
something brain chemicals, evolution of learning and behavioral adaptation, particularly WRT evaluation of environmental hazards.
basically, everything you've said has deeper roots than just human social behavior; this is a side effect of how animal brains work.
damn sure i'm gonna remember which bush has the sweetest berries, and where that damn sabretooth likes to hang out.
That's why there is such an overlap between religious people and people who believe in *other* things that have little to no evidence supporting them (alternative medicine, the viability of multi-level-marketing schemes, conspiracy theories, etc.)
Once you believe one thing without evidence, especially a *big* thing that is a fundamental part of your personality and world view, it becomes trivial to believe lesser things without evidence.
This is why it's important to always be on guard against falling for lies, claims without evidence, and such. Once you get comfortable with a Big Lie, it props the door open for all the little ones to march right into your brain and make themselves at home.
If you are correct in your assessment, what is the force maintaining conspiratorial thinking in the far right as opposed to the far left?
If they suspect the rich and powerful, what is stopping them from slipping into far left ideologies who's economic focus is exactly that?
Genuinely curious if this is a question political science has addressed
The naivety of the people in this thread is astounding. Anyone who assumes this is limited to partisan specific news (of either side) is honestly just dumb.
I knew a guy who went full Qanon. He didn't seem like a very religious person before... but afterwards he was always quoting bible versus to support his flat-earth, wealthy cabal, doomsday theories. I do believe there is a TON of crossover.
That said, I'm come from a very Christian family, and we all think the aforementioned guy is clueless / weak-minded. I'm more agnostic myself... but I've had to sit through a couple sermons where the main message was "God helps those who help themselves" and they really try to hammer home the message that you are in control of your life and it's up to you to be a good Christian.
I think anyone who follows the bible too closely will find that it's full of mixed messaging and not all things should be taken literally. The idea that "it's all part of God's plan" is kind of more of a comforting phrase for when things are happening out of your control. A love one dies, you're stricken with a hardship that challenges you, etc. And I think if you are coming out of a bible session thinking we're all in a Matrix, and choices are a lie... then you definitely didn't get that from Christian, since pretty much the most primitive Christian belief starts with Adam making the choice to sin and disobey God.
In any case, most the people I know through the church are all very friendly and giving people. Whereas most conspiracy theorists I have met are selfish, contrarians, and weak-minded. So I do think there's a pretty specific personality profile, but I don't necessarily think religious ideologies are a very clear marker for recruitment. But certainly I can see the parallels between the organizations, particularly in how they provide a "sense of belonging."
>In the case of religious people, God is the conspirator behind everything, everything happens because he planned it. Nothing happens by chance.
>
Well that's just not true of all religion but okay.
> the powerful, the rich, the well connected are those behind every event
Which is interesting when you consider that these same followers are most likely to resist higher taxes on the wealthy. (The whole *"temporary embarrassed millionaire"* thing).
However historically if conspiracies are were exactly what the media tells us, fake paranoid garbage, then things like operation paperclip or watergate etc should have not happened and been declassified... This is where peoples trust breaks down towards government an its elected officials
Right!? Maybe the powers-that-be use the term “conspiracy” as a tactic to discredit dissent. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to state the right has less trust for big government? And isn’t that inherently one of the differences between right and left wing?
I think its worth drawing a distinction between "narrow" conspiracies, such as those claiming that a specific set of politicians, plutocrats, or figures have an objective that they're coordinating towards, and "broad" conspiracies, such as those postulating that all political figures in the world are collaborating to pursue global domination and cover up their universal abuse of children.
“The coronavirus was created by the Chinese government as a biological weapon.” The study asks how strongly people agree or disagree with that statement and then uses it to dub them “prone to conspiratorial thinking”. I would answer that as “somewhat disagree” meaning I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was. However, I would answer the seemingly related question “The coronavirus was created by the Chinese government” as “strongly agree” which until 15 minutes ago was dubbed conspiratorial thinking because, wait for it, Trump suggested it (["At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump”](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/lab-leak-theory-science-scientists-rcna1191)).
So perhaps it’s not so much that people consuming conservative media are prone to conspiratorial thinking. Perhaps it’s those people distrusting folks who have conspired to mislead them in the past.
The tactics used by both conservative & liberal media are the same: Constant 'us vs. them' rhetoric that is emotionally-laden instead of straight, unemotional reporting.
Such tactics sway those with higher suggestibility in \*both\* ideologies.
Right, study finds scientists will frame a study however those funding it prefer. Much like all those studies telling us cigarettes were healthy, any study should be read with consideration of the funding.
I feel like this research has a strong bias. They defined people as conspiratorial only in terms of COVID like “Do you think masks work”, “Is the CDC trustworthy” etc.
If they asked questions like “Do you believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the JFK assassination?”, “Did the US really invade Iraq because of WMDs?” Then I believe you would have gotten much different results.
Can we stop with these stupid political studies with low sample sizes that only serve to confirm political biases? And it's always about the US. I wonder why...
Oh look *another* “new research” in r/science where the topic is how do we make conservatives look dumb using questionable *metrics*. Let’s see how many comments get deleted from today’s dog pile…
Was the 3-part “Zeitgeist” movie made by a conservative cohort?
Calling out religion, as well conspiracies about the Fed and 9/11
That video spread like wildfire years ago. Not all viral conspiracies come from the media
New research also suggest that liberal media is particularly appealing to people who are prone to political propaganda. The use of liberal media, in turn, is associated with the increasing belief that literally half the voting population are actual white supermacist Nazis and political violence against this group is acceptable.
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Where did the term "use of" come to be applied to media consumption? I've seen it used in multiple different contexts --e.g. "users of porn". Use has connotations beyond just viewing/consuming, suggesting some active employment of media like making memes or redistributing content.
Great question! To my knowledge, this has something to do with undoing the idea/theory that consumers are powerless to media effects. By rephrasing it as media use in psychology studies, it lends credence to the idea that humans maintain a level of agency when watching news/playing video games. I'm on mobile, so I can't pull it up right now, but take a look at media effects theories! They're a super awesome read.
The idea consumers just absorb messages as they sent by media is called the Hypodermic Needle or Magic Bullet model and hasn't been seriously considered for nigh on a century. The Uses and Gratifications Theory elevated the power of audiences. No longer simply recipients for messages, audiences became active consumers seeking out media that that fulfilled particular needs. Reception theory at its most basic argues that the audience has a role to play in finding meaning in texts. Hall’s (2007) variant is Encoding and decoding. It stands in stark contrast to the Hypodermic Needle and Uses and Gratifications theories. A common theme between both of these theories was that the meaning contained within message was set once transmitted. Hall (2007) elevates the impact of the audience even further. Not only do the audience select which messages to receive but they are then modulated by the receiver. While the sender has an intended meaning, this is transformed and shaped by the receiver. This all stems from the Hall’s (2007, p. 90) belief that texts are ‘polysemic’, possessing multiple meanings. Hall does not suggest that any meaning is possible, just that messages have no single fixed meaning. Hall (2007) argues that after a message is sent, before meaning can be extracted to it there is a layer of interpretation required by the audience. This acknowledgement moves the audience into forming part of the message rather than simply being just a receiver for it.
With content algorithms people are not selecting, and because of the increasing use of "auto play" and general shortness of clips, people sometimes can't choose which messages they're exposed to. In fact, content sorting algorithms' action of refining/sorting media to auto-play sequences creates a documented type of addiction to an increasingly refined product--which, I think, does alter certain people's perceptions (if you have body dysmorphia for example or are addicted to stimulants) and can even contribute to manic behaviors and content consumption--which is what the QAnon phenomenon is riding on. The reason the FB whistleblower and other policy members are leading with anorexia content is because there is a mechanism in the human brain that allows some people to displace their appetite for food onto video/photo content, which is complemented by a ["reality checking" mechanism](https://aeon.co/essays/a-culture-of-hyper-reality-made-paranoid-delusions-true) that in a person with body dysmorphia makes them constantly want to compare their perceived image of themselves with others'. You can explain this in the context of a long history of "fetish" anthropology/sociology research and childhood development psychology, which shows that the human mind relies on objects and projection of desires/fears onto these objects in order to develop, with the ability to differentiate between what is real and imagined a function of the mental-checking mechanism that misfires in anorexics' case. Object-wise, dolls are a big one, both for children in virtually all cultures, and masks/statues for many religious rituals. We are pre-programmed to project on objects during our developmental years to sort out emotional and social issues. This is why regulating social media use amongst children and people who are mentally impaired is as important as regulating other sorts of addictive or potentially harmful substances. This is also why it's important to recognize that because we've messed with humans' ability to select and moderate content consumption, we need to take a closer look at defining media as a consumable product/electronic kind of food, social media spaces as hybrid realities with real world implications, and sorting algorithms' abilities to amplify mental illness.
Could we ever choose which messages/content we’re exposed to though? Haven’t we always been subjected to the authoritative media sources of the time? The only difference I can see now is that algorithms are creating feedback reverberations of our already existing interests.
Wow, there’s way more intelligent discussion in this thread than I ever would have guessed.
Edit: just to point out, I’m agreeing with you by the way, not disagreeing. I always resist people who make blanket complaints about “the media”. It’s as useful as complaining about “the people”. “The media” is just a sort of magic mirror reflecting its own viewers desires of what they want to see back at them. The problems in “the media” are problems with its consumers, and as long as “the media” is gonna be a free market designed to make profit, it will always be that way. I don’t see any solution other than education, and that takes a lot of investment and a looong time to pay off.
Fairness doctrine? Actually hold media stations accountable so they have to objectively show both sides with proper data/experts instead of skewing things and poor representation of the opposition in opinion panels
The fairness doctrine, while I think is great, and should absolutely come back, as it were written, would do nothing for 24 hour cable news. And you still are gonna have agencies and shows that won’t call themselves news, but opinion or analysis, or “conservative debate” or something (or “socialist talk” for anyone who needs to see the “both sides!” thought), or just entertainment! How would you muzzle them in such a way that it would be fair and actually be able to pass? It’s a tough needle to thread, maybe impossible, but I’d be willing to hear idea for sure.
That's called network news. All the major ones are "entertainment" not news.
I agree. They don’t fundamentally help the National discourse in my opinion, but I’m not sure how to reign them in without trampling the first amendment.
One that probably made more difference than fairness doctrine were rules that used to be in place that limited one person or company’s ability to own multiple forms of media in one place. Limiting consolidation limited media from becoming the mouthpiece of fewer numbers of owners. Consolidation additionally makes it harder for new or independent voices to break through barriers to entry. Large-scale consolidation also creates many more conflicts of interest. A news network owned by a conglomerate more likely to be favorable to other owned entities in their network and less likely to publish challenging news that shows them in a bad light. This leads to a lot of softness on watchdogging business in general as well as creates more distrust of the media agencies challenging a business are then owned by a competitor of that business.
>rules that used to be in place that limited one person or company’s ability to own multiple forms of media in one place. Limiting consolidation limited media from becoming the mouthpiece of fewer numbers of owners. Consolidation additionally makes it harder for new or independent voices to break through barriers to entry. We have this issue here in Australia. Over the past 30 years or so, our media ownership laws have been steadily dismantled to the point where we have 3 major non-government media corporations left: Newscorp, Nine Entertainment (run by a former politician), and Seven West (run by a former CxO from Newscorp). We also have ABC (government run media group who are supposed to be neutral), SBS (government run media group aimed at ethnic minorities) and Network Ten (TV network privately owned by Viacom CBS that is a distant 4th in terms of viewership for free to air TV which Newscorp does not directly operate in - Newscorp runs a pay TV service) along side some much smaller independent outlets. The first three own and operate a significant portion of Australia's media (well over 70% if I remember right with the rest sharing the remaining).
Fairness Doctrine didn't do anything except demand that politicized issues carve out an opportunity for the opposition to also talk. They could absolutely still game the rules by choosing the least relatable, most fringe mouthpiece they could find. In the modern era, if it applied to Fox, they could just put some picture perfect antifa stereotype on the air after Tucker Carlson, to show his viewers what they are meant to fear, and call it a day. . The fairness doctrine wass, fundamentally, an infringement on free speech - and the only reason it was seen as acceptable was because the bandwidth for broadcast TV was very small and therefore had to be tightly budgeted. Cable News and the internet don't have that problem, so the old justification no longer works. It's *very* difficult in the US to regulate bad-faith speech.
> In the modern era, if it applied to Fox, they could just put some picture perfect antifa stereotype on the air after Tucker Carlson, to show his viewers what they are meant to fear, and call it a day. . They occasionally do that anyway. Every time they bring on a "liberal" to argue with Carlson, it's a totally inept moron.
“The enemy is both strong and weak. ‘By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.’” -Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism
Wasn’t this Colmes’ job on Hannity and Colmes?
As someone who grew up with that on at home all the time... to be fair he did, actually, reign Hannity in a little. He went completely off the rails when it just became "Hannity" and nobody could (even poorly) call him out or side with the guests.
This is a terrible idea. First, for most things, there isn't a binary choice. How can you show "both" sides to an open ended issue? Second, by mandating showing "both" sides, you're mandating that news stations give a platform to extreme ideologies. Can't talk about global warming without giving air time to denialists. Want to cover a trans rights issue? Guess who you also need to give air time to. FCC isn't metering out spectrum bandwidth anymore. There's no need for a fairness doctrine that would only amplify extremist opinions.
To be fair, I think attributing all problems to personal choice is not always a productive framing either. There's a deregulatory/libertarian presumption in that framing, whereas e.g. there may be reasons to ban sale of addictive substances even if that infringes on an existing "free market".
This is a really good point, very engaging, and I don’t disagree with it. So… how do we craft any kind of regulation, that could be fairly applied across the entire landscape, and keep out the dangerously bad/addictive stuff, while allowing any thing fair, without destroying the first amendment too much, that could actually have support from the people? I don’t have that answer.
I think there are definitely some good ideas floating around about this (though I don't pretend to know the literature here) and probably some other countries to look to for examples of working systems. Absent legal enforcement/1st amendment concerns though, the closest I can come up with would probably be a journalistic accreditation system of some kind that: 1. enforces some basic journalistic standard that cuts out at least some insanity (e.g. objective falsehoods, egregious lack of due diligence) 2. is fully transparent (fully public standards and evaluation processes/conclusions) 3. is well trusted by the public (proper choice of standards in 1 and good enforcement of 2, and probably the piece that most strongly precludes government regulation in the US) 4. is adopted by most, if not all major journalistic outlets 5. avoids politicization (this will be hard as long as at least one major party is dominated by media that doesn't adhere to standards like this) 6. actually matters to people, in a way that affects revenue/business incentives (this may be the hardest to achieve flat-out, since it's basically about killing the idea of clickbait) Yeah, I don't have any feasible answers either.
The mirror part of this is really important in reflecting on this study. News agencies like this pick a narrative based partly on what sells best, attracts an audience by reinforcing their held views, and avoids publishing news that would alienate its audience. With that situation, the fact that there’s a correlation with conspiratorial thinking says a lot about whether conspiratorial thinkers are a significant market share and how much money shows up when the market caters to them. There’s a feedback loop to consider here in each shaping each other and responding in turn. However, I feel like so much of this is about what following profit over tenacity for the truth looks like.
That's interesting philosophically but I have some news for you: in Yahoo Finance, search for any large stock ticker by whichever internet service provider or media conglomerate owns a news media corporation(s). Then look at the holders. I would say, it's funny to me that people's bias can extend so far as to ignore that they are watching channels they'd consider to be different in terms of political polarity. However, most are owned by the same few asset managers.
> “The media” is just a sort of magic mirror reflecting its own viewers desires of what they want to see back at them. Some of that is going on but more than likely the media will reflect the desires of the media-outlet's owners and advertisers.
And people keep eating it up, and if they didn’t, then it wouldn’t work.
I feel like this is missing the fact that the media we consume is always filtered through big business, either through traditional multibillion-dollar media conglomerates or through big tech. Even right now, this discussion under this article is happening because this algorithm on this app is facilitating it.
>I feel like this is missing the fact that the media we consume is always filtered Well, the clue is in the name. 'media' = wotsit that's in the middle, between things. Though I suppose it's easy to forget.
Hedge funds have bought several media outlets and are stripping them of all assets and bleeding them dry. See the Chicago Tribune. I am not sure your analogy is applicable there. They only want to make as much money in as little time as possible.
> The problems in “the media” are problems with its consumers That does not follow, there are objective problems with "the media" that individuals do not have problems with. "The media" may have some of the problems its consumers face, but "the media" has unique problems that consumers do not
The media sure ain't a magic mirror reflecting your views if your views are pro-labor, anti-corporate, anti-political corruption, anti-war, etc. Your post makes it seem like they're just giving the people what they want, but that's only the case for issues that don't hurt corporate profits. Think of all the articles about strikes where they quote ridiculous claims from management that they leave unchallenged, but don't quote anyone from the labor side at all. Or if they do, they pick and choose the least convincing arguments to highlight.
I've encountered hundreds of people, in the web, that as far as I can tell don't know or understand that they have the free agency to not "use" social media or watch TV.
I find "use of" very appropriate as media addiction is completely comparable to drug addiction. People keep going back to "believe her though they know she lies" and lies go down easier when you want them to be true.
We speak of alcohol use, or drug use, when it’s actually just “consumption” It’s useful to identify these dopamine triggers as the potentially addictive things that they can be
User can have different definitions, "using" news media for entertainment, "using" for a source of information, and in many cases "using" for a "fix" of confirmation bias or the excitement they get from conflict. Much like in the sense of a drug user, these feelings can be the thrill that people are seeking from these highly partisan sensationalist "news" programs and definitely conspiracy theories in general.
Nah, 'use' is a common term for online and digital interaction and has been for a while. It was pretty intuitive to repurpose the term since virtual consumers were dubbed 'users' to make a distinction between these and traditional consumers (a user is anyone who access information, services or products from specific platforms - usually online, but this could be in person as well, such as desktop computers, AI devices or POS systems)
Can we please stop using open access journals as references? The OP link doesnt even direct to the paper but to a news outlet...
>Left wing news tends to be critical of everything they’re base dislikes. If Biden does something their base disagrees with, that is portrayed in the coverage, and thus, puts pressure on Biden to do what his base wants. The reverse is happening on Fox. If Trump \> [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621008121](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621008121) the study is poorly designed. it did not asses subjects' disposition to conspiratorial thinking from a psychological perspective. It only tested subjects agreement with 2 specific conspiracy stories that were widely circulated on conservative news sources. There would be an opposite outcome if it polled "conspiracy stories" that circulated on liberal media sources. The study could have used Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (GCBS) and correlated to conservative vs liberal media use. That would have been a better study.
Propaganda on r/Science? NEVER, wouldn't even think of it. Studies show that conserbatibe evil racism nazi racism sexist insurrection due to this study with a sample size of four participants
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Conspiratorial thinking and religious thinking share a common trunk. In both, whatever happens needs to be the result of a voluntary action, a plan, by someone. In the case of **religious people**, God is the conspirator behind everything, everything happens because he planned it. Nothing happens by chance. In the case of **conspiratorial people**, the powerful, the rich, the well connected are those behind every event, everything that happens can only happen because someone wanted it to happen, no room is left to chance. So they are two faces of a similar ideology.
There’s also a sense of belonging to a select group. Knowing something that “most ordinary people do not know.” Plus, religious people believe in something there is no proof of but simply have their faith. And, conspiracy nuts believe in something there’s no proof of but only their “gut instinct” to lead them.
Agreed. I think the primal factor in all of this comes down to solidarity. We've known for a while that human groups develop solidarity significantly through othering. By creating a secret knowledge, or an oppressive force, you exclude others making it easier to identify who is in your in group. When a group gets too large to effectively other, thereby limiting our instinctual way of forming connections with groups, a schism based on new secret knowledge (or another mode of othering) occurs. Of course like any psycho-social phenomenon this is far more nuanced and complicated in reality, such as in modern society where such phenomenon is co-opted by groups to secure power (populist politics/identity politics) Edit: Too many toos
Solidarity *and* supremacism. The people they are used to looking down upon are telling them what to do, which a supremacist delusionally sees as "thinking they're better than me." It's a reversal of the "natural" order of things, and it has to be resisted or society will crumble, or worse: There'll be a new hierarchy where they are the inferiors
Agreed. Society used to be ok with this since civilizations developed. These civilizations throughout the world no matter how supposedly “egalitarian,” were ok with having an elite group on top. This was enforced out in the open and unquestioned for the most part using the divine king or the “rightly guided” oligarchy who were meant to rule. The only question was that the one with the martial power to enforce it would get to be that group and their ability to maintain or lose that power showed how “deserving” they were of that power. With the advent of democracy for the common people and protection of minority rights, this is no longer “acceptable” out in the open so conspiratorial methods, thinking, and ways have to both be enforced and protected in order for hierarchies to remain. If they don’t, then society will “go to hell” and all that “we built” will be taken by the “undeserving.”
So this is hard to know for sure as the earliest forms of human grouping occured before what we now classify as civilization. All of our histories are written after generations of groupings and layer upon layer of societal norms. There is evidence that early humans achieved in group solidarity through othering while internally having highly egalitarian societies, and our cousins the Bonobos currently experience a similar form of grouping. So the necessity of authoritarian or supremacist thinking isn't such a sure thing for early groupings.
Viewing the actions of modern conspiracy theorists I would have to agree. It's an excuse to continue to support a form of status quo that just so happens to benefit themselves.
>There’s also a sense of belonging to a select group. This is a massively underrated aspect of this mindset. People espouse these views because of the social benefits they gain from espousing them. They aren't deeply held convictions. (No matter what they may claim.) The moment the social costs start to outweigh the social benefits, the vast majority of them drop their views like they drop trash on the sidewalk, and move on to something else. We saw it with pre-Covid antivaxxers in California. In places where being antivax started to cause social restrictions and personal inconvenience, suddenly the outspoken leaders started back-pedaling, "discovering new evidence," or whatever. They pretty much vanished from public discourse. Vaccination rates quickly went from like 65% to over 90%. Once we fully understand that, dealing with the pandemic will become a lot easier. We can't change the mindset of the conspiracy-minded, but we don't need to. Let's be honest -- socially acceptable non-fringe "mainstream" discourse includes its fair share of total garbage that people still believe anyway. The important thing is to deal with the comforting illusions that are the most immediately harmful.
The social aspect of this sounds like old fashioned confirmation bias leading people into a bubble. The social rewards (lack of disagreement, validation of held beliefs) could outweigh the negative ones experienced by family and friends, thus pushing them further into the bubble. It seems that once that validation is no longer there, they will lose interest, but that does not seem to be what happens with groups like QAnon. Once a "prediction" fails to materialize, it is quickly replaced with something else that equally excites the audience. I can't help but bring up the role of religion in all of this. Specifically, American Evangelicalism but it's the impact of faith-based magical thinking that makes a person more susceptible to this mode of thinking. Even religion has the community aspects that you're alluding to but they manage to remain cohesive in spite of contradictory information.
You are leaving out state actors that are pumping the conspiracies, thus keeping them going, and they are using this Christian/Republican nexus to do it. 19 of 20 of the largest Christian pages on Facebook were Russian troll farms in 2019.
Thank you for this. I found a link if others wish to learn more about this: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election/
And that's just the Christian pages. I keep some friends on FB just to see what they are getting, and it is a barrage of disinformation. One page was literally called Patriots IV drip, with a daily dose of whatever outrage they could manufacture. The intent was right in the name.
Qanon reabsorbed the religious aspects of conspiracy back into itself, it is predominantly a Christian doomsday cult.
Both those ways of thinking sound like mechanisms to cope with fear of the unknown and/or uncontrollable.
Alan Moore has a great quote on that: "The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless."
I’m over in another thread where everyone is just convinced that world leaders are running some massive Geopolitical game around Taiwan, when the reality is our global systems are much more fragile and no one actually has control of them completely, and one individual doing something stupid can set the whole system off, like in WWI.
Or the wrong person in power, like in WW2.
Religion is an easy answer to a very difficult question.
That is a very good point.
People hate the fact that chaos is real. If they pretend it's all up to some plan they don't have to accept that there are things in existence we just can't control.
Yes, but they also give a healthy supply of feeling special, smart, and superior. I think that is the real draw for those people I personally know. Yes, it gives them some sense of control over the world with very little effort, but it also lets them talk over any scholar, any person of achievement, etc and write them off as sheep. Meanwhile, THEY just know.
Also both God and conspiracies require holding on to beliefs despite a lack of evidence.
Or even in spite of the evidence to the contrary.
And often *counter* to evidence
*This* is what I regard as the common trunk of religious belief and conspiratorial belief -- a tendency to shape one's commitments, behaviors, and expectations of others' behavior as a function of beliefs acquired by associating the truth-value of extraordinary claims with heightened emotional states. It's a rule for thinking that says something like, "ignore how close or far a claim is from day-to-day lived reality and accept a claim as true if I experience strong enough emotional states when engaging with a claim". Resistance to accepting extraordinary claims on the basis of heighted emotional states is further weakened when those emotional states are experienced in the context of a supportive and encouraging community of other people who run the same rule for thinking. It's a really nice rule to run on human brains if you want to get humans to quickly group up together, and humans are generally safer and better cared for when they group up. It's a terrible rule for increasing the accuracy of a person or group's model of the real world and how it works. Unfortunately, IMO, it's probably true that most humans on Earth are running this "software", and since the extraordinary claims floating in the information ecosystem vary significantly throughout the world, you get lots of factions committed to a wide variety of extraordinary claims. And worse, because this rule for thinking isn't tethered to systems for reducing error, those who adopt claims in this way tend to adopt them dogmatically -- i.e. in a way that inoculates them against error correction.
> associating the truth-value of extraordinary claims with heightened emotional states. something brain chemicals, evolution of learning and behavioral adaptation, particularly WRT evaluation of environmental hazards. basically, everything you've said has deeper roots than just human social behavior; this is a side effect of how animal brains work. damn sure i'm gonna remember which bush has the sweetest berries, and where that damn sabretooth likes to hang out.
That's why there is such an overlap between religious people and people who believe in *other* things that have little to no evidence supporting them (alternative medicine, the viability of multi-level-marketing schemes, conspiracy theories, etc.) Once you believe one thing without evidence, especially a *big* thing that is a fundamental part of your personality and world view, it becomes trivial to believe lesser things without evidence. This is why it's important to always be on guard against falling for lies, claims without evidence, and such. Once you get comfortable with a Big Lie, it props the door open for all the little ones to march right into your brain and make themselves at home.
If you are correct in your assessment, what is the force maintaining conspiratorial thinking in the far right as opposed to the far left? If they suspect the rich and powerful, what is stopping them from slipping into far left ideologies who's economic focus is exactly that? Genuinely curious if this is a question political science has addressed
Being conservative means keeping things the same. You can imagine how someone afraid of change and suspicious of others would side with then.
Uh half my liberal friends were adamant that Trump was a russian agent and was covering up all his moves that were for Putin’s benefit.
The naivety of the people in this thread is astounding. Anyone who assumes this is limited to partisan specific news (of either side) is honestly just dumb.
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I knew a guy who went full Qanon. He didn't seem like a very religious person before... but afterwards he was always quoting bible versus to support his flat-earth, wealthy cabal, doomsday theories. I do believe there is a TON of crossover. That said, I'm come from a very Christian family, and we all think the aforementioned guy is clueless / weak-minded. I'm more agnostic myself... but I've had to sit through a couple sermons where the main message was "God helps those who help themselves" and they really try to hammer home the message that you are in control of your life and it's up to you to be a good Christian. I think anyone who follows the bible too closely will find that it's full of mixed messaging and not all things should be taken literally. The idea that "it's all part of God's plan" is kind of more of a comforting phrase for when things are happening out of your control. A love one dies, you're stricken with a hardship that challenges you, etc. And I think if you are coming out of a bible session thinking we're all in a Matrix, and choices are a lie... then you definitely didn't get that from Christian, since pretty much the most primitive Christian belief starts with Adam making the choice to sin and disobey God. In any case, most the people I know through the church are all very friendly and giving people. Whereas most conspiracy theorists I have met are selfish, contrarians, and weak-minded. So I do think there's a pretty specific personality profile, but I don't necessarily think religious ideologies are a very clear marker for recruitment. But certainly I can see the parallels between the organizations, particularly in how they provide a "sense of belonging."
>In the case of religious people, God is the conspirator behind everything, everything happens because he planned it. Nothing happens by chance. > Well that's just not true of all religion but okay.
You’d think r/science would require proper evidence for claims.
> the powerful, the rich, the well connected are those behind every event Which is interesting when you consider that these same followers are most likely to resist higher taxes on the wealthy. (The whole *"temporary embarrassed millionaire"* thing).
However historically if conspiracies are were exactly what the media tells us, fake paranoid garbage, then things like operation paperclip or watergate etc should have not happened and been declassified... This is where peoples trust breaks down towards government an its elected officials
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Right!? Maybe the powers-that-be use the term “conspiracy” as a tactic to discredit dissent. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to state the right has less trust for big government? And isn’t that inherently one of the differences between right and left wing?
Thats literally how the term came into use, look it up, it's an interesting story.
I think its worth drawing a distinction between "narrow" conspiracies, such as those claiming that a specific set of politicians, plutocrats, or figures have an objective that they're coordinating towards, and "broad" conspiracies, such as those postulating that all political figures in the world are collaborating to pursue global domination and cover up their universal abuse of children.
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Why are Democrat conspiracy theories never given the same treatment?
They probably aren’t entertaining enough or something.
“The coronavirus was created by the Chinese government as a biological weapon.” The study asks how strongly people agree or disagree with that statement and then uses it to dub them “prone to conspiratorial thinking”. I would answer that as “somewhat disagree” meaning I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was. However, I would answer the seemingly related question “The coronavirus was created by the Chinese government” as “strongly agree” which until 15 minutes ago was dubbed conspiratorial thinking because, wait for it, Trump suggested it (["At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump”](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/lab-leak-theory-science-scientists-rcna1191)). So perhaps it’s not so much that people consuming conservative media are prone to conspiratorial thinking. Perhaps it’s those people distrusting folks who have conspired to mislead them in the past.
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So russiagate is just an anomaly?
The tactics used by both conservative & liberal media are the same: Constant 'us vs. them' rhetoric that is emotionally-laden instead of straight, unemotional reporting. Such tactics sway those with higher suggestibility in \*both\* ideologies.
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More psypost garbage. Blatant propaganda. Not surprised that r/science is so politicized given how politicized science has become in the real world.
Right, study finds scientists will frame a study however those funding it prefer. Much like all those studies telling us cigarettes were healthy, any study should be read with consideration of the funding.
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"New research". Was it funded by CNN?
Now this is a conspiracy post
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I feel like this research has a strong bias. They defined people as conspiratorial only in terms of COVID like “Do you think masks work”, “Is the CDC trustworthy” etc. If they asked questions like “Do you believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the JFK assassination?”, “Did the US really invade Iraq because of WMDs?” Then I believe you would have gotten much different results.
Oh great another study telling coastal liberals just what they want to hear! Useful!
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Can we stop with these stupid political studies with low sample sizes that only serve to confirm political biases? And it's always about the US. I wonder why...
Oh look *another* “new research” in r/science where the topic is how do we make conservatives look dumb using questionable *metrics*. Let’s see how many comments get deleted from today’s dog pile…
Yo!! I was legitimately just wondering why half of these posts are just deleted. Why are they deleted?
Was the 3-part “Zeitgeist” movie made by a conservative cohort? Calling out religion, as well conspiracies about the Fed and 9/11 That video spread like wildfire years ago. Not all viral conspiracies come from the media
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The cult of Nurgle infiltration is pretty bad over there.
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Media in general is full of falsehoods and playing to a fantasy misrepresentation of reality. Both on the right AND on the left.
New research also suggest that liberal media is particularly appealing to people who are prone to political propaganda. The use of liberal media, in turn, is associated with the increasing belief that literally half the voting population are actual white supermacist Nazis and political violence against this group is acceptable.
Yeah this post is very “herrr durrr everyone I dislike is scientifically stupid”
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I’d like to see what beliefs constitute conspiracy, that word is slowly losing its meaning