On Digital Disinformation and Democratic Myths
David Karpf,
MediaWell,
Dec 14, 2019
This is a really good article on the impact of media manipulation and fake news. David Karpf contrasts two narratives: on the one hand, " a story of digital wizards... capable of producing near-omniscient insights into public behavior," and on the other hand, a "more mundane" but more accurate story of "messy workflows, incomplete datasets, and endless trial and error." He also points to the "myth of the attentive public", that is, the idea that people are watching and will hold civic leaders to account for misdeeds (a 'myth' because "American democracy has never had a well-informed public"). The danger, he writes, of telling the first story is that it undermines the myth. "If the public is so easily duped, then our political elites need not be concerned with satisfying their public obligations. If real power lies with the propagandists, then the traditional institutional checks on corruption can be ignored without consequence." Image: CBC. Via Ian O'Byrne.
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