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People Who Know How the News Is Made Resist Conspiratorial Thinking (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Conspiracy theories, like the world being flat or the Moon landings faked, have proven notoriously difficult to stomp out. Add a partisan twist to the issue, and the challenge becomes even harder. Even near the end of his second term, barely a quarter of Republicans were willing to state that President Obama was born in the U.S. If we're seeking to have an informed electorate, then this poses a bit of a problem. But a recent study suggests a very simple solution helps limit the appeal of conspiracy theories: news media literacy. This isn't knowledge of the news, per se, but knowledge of the companies and processes that help create the news. While the study doesn't identify how the two are connected, its authors suggest that an understanding of the media landscape helps foster a healthy skepticism.
[...] "Despite popular conceptions," the authors point out, "[conspiratorial thinking] is not the sole province of the proverbial nut-job." When mixed in with the sort of motivated reasoning that ideology can, well, motivate, crazed ideas can become relatively mainstream. Witness the number of polls that indicated the majority of Republicans thought Obama wasn't born in the U.S., even after he shared his birth certificate. While something that induces a healthy skepticism of information sources might be expected to help with this, it's certainly not guaranteed, as motivated reasoning has been shown to be capable of overriding education and knowledge on relevant topics.
[...] As a whole, the expected connection held up: "for both conservatives and liberals, more knowledge of the news media system related to decreased endorsement of liberal conspiracies." And, conversely, the people who did agree with conspiracy theories tended to know very little about how the news media operated.
[...] "Despite popular conceptions," the authors point out, "[conspiratorial thinking] is not the sole province of the proverbial nut-job." When mixed in with the sort of motivated reasoning that ideology can, well, motivate, crazed ideas can become relatively mainstream. Witness the number of polls that indicated the majority of Republicans thought Obama wasn't born in the U.S., even after he shared his birth certificate. While something that induces a healthy skepticism of information sources might be expected to help with this, it's certainly not guaranteed, as motivated reasoning has been shown to be capable of overriding education and knowledge on relevant topics.
[...] As a whole, the expected connection held up: "for both conservatives and liberals, more knowledge of the news media system related to decreased endorsement of liberal conspiracies." And, conversely, the people who did agree with conspiracy theories tended to know very little about how the news media operated.
The Birth Certificate was verified by the Republican Governor of Hawaii personally, something no Governor had ever done before. The inconsistencies didn't exist. And more than one site proving them was proven to have introduced them themselves, just to point them out.
There is lots of evidence he was born in HI, and no evidence he wasn't. Even if he wasn't born in HI, the law today would have granted him citizenship at birth (And yes, you can retroactively apply that to a birth before a law change). So, he was born in HI. All the evidence says he was. No evidence exists that he wasn't. And even if he wasn't, he'd still have been eligible to be president.
Learn to love Alaska
Exactly, He didn't even need to be born in Hawaii, born to 1 American Parent is all it takes. Obama could have been born in Kenya but it wouldn't have mattered.
What made it weird was people didn't know what a short form birth certificate was, why it took weeks to be verified, should have been an open and shut news article.
Of course, eventually even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while, and there are a lot of journalists out there, so in aggregate, mistakes tend to be self-correcting eventually, but it's a very real problem, and IMO is getting worse with each passing year.
As of last week, CNN was continually bandying about this story, that the Trump administration had handed down a list of "banned terms" to the CDC.
Thing is, there is no such list, and no one ever said any terms were banned... but CNN has yet to announce any sort of retraction for the blatantly and demonstrably false claims they're perpetuating.... and they're far from the sole villian in this regard (looking at you, MSNBC and Fox).
Ergo, I don't expect much if any self-correction in the near future, any more than I expect banks to self-regulate without destroying the economy.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Hey you know what's funny? That dossier was funded by Republicans first! Ha ha!
So those 4 grand jury indictments so far are just what? Imaginary? The emails? The meetings with known Russian operatives? I guess all that is just imaginary as well?
And let's not forget that Trump refuses to divest himself from his business and won't divulge his tax returns. I wonder what one would find. Maybe Mueller will shed some light after taking most of the Trump cabinet to the cleaners after digging through Deutsche Bank.
But sure, it's all just a big conspiracy.
Obama not being American was a conspiracy. Clinton running a child sex ring under a DC area pizzeria (and then, on Mars) was a conspiracy. People don't get indicted by a grand jury based on conspiracy.
~X~
As a "neutral" non US-citizen observing from the outside, I think me and the rest of the world agree that it is not quite fair to compare Democrats with Republicans one to one.
The Republican party has a much greater affinity for science-denial, spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation among its supporters. Something like the Tea Party movement or an unqualified millionaire real-estate mogul like Donald Trump being president is only possible in an environment that the Republican party fosters.
If I listen to a right-wing commentator on Fox News and compare it to a left-wing commentator on, say, MS-NBC, both might use hyperbolic and emotionally loaded language, but while what the left-wing guy will say is mostly based on -real- facts and a healthy dose of critical thinking, the right-wing talk is based mostly on warped facts using cherry-picked information and their all-time favorite: suggestive questions. Suggestive questions that spread uncertainty and propagate what the audience is supposed to believe while giving plausible deniability when confronted, because you didn't state any facts - "it was just a question after all".
Questions like:
"Is Obama really not a muslim?"
"Is Obama's birth certificate actually real?"
It's so obvious to me as an observer of US politics and society, and its just baffling how naive most conservatives are and how resistant to criticism when confronted with how backhanded and manipulative the conservative media is.
This leads to outcomes like what is mentioned in this article. The abundance of Republicans is shockingly uninformed about some basic facts such as Obama's religion or climate change.
The irony of it all is that the Republican party has its greatest followers among the lower-income classes - exactly those people who would benefit the most from more social policies. It's the textbook example of the super-rich controlling the hearts and minds of the serfs so that the super-rich can stay in power. Because make no mistake - conservative policies are mostly designed to benefit the top 2%.
Here's the actual story, so we are on the same page:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12...
Can you state specifically which sentences are inaccurate? It seems to be correct, there is a list and it did come from Trump's administration. It was later clarified by the CDC that the ban is only on the budget reports for Congress. CNN reported that too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The debate surrounds whether or not (as it plainly did, once) require both parents to be natural citizens
No, that's wasn't "the debate". The debate was whether or not he was actually born in Hawaii, whether his birth certificate was falsified, and other nonsense. Heroes like Arpaio were supposed to be hot on that case. So don't gaslight us with this shit about what "the debate" was all about. I think the folks around remember what people said when the topic was debated, and it wasn't this pseudo-intellectual hand-wavery about what legal guidelines USED to be followed for citizenship.
There wasn't a "debate" over the citizenship of his father, and there wasn't a "debate" over whether his father's lack of citizenship meant Obama wasn't a citizen. These weren't part of the narrative because they are all part of settled law.
No, your own story is inaccurate.
What the CDC director actually said was "There are NO banned words at CDC." emphasis mine
That statement was reported by sources across the media spectrum, from Left to Right. So why did you get it wrong?
Follow the link to CNN and read the story. It includes that quote and others.
Both statements are true, it just took some time for the full facts to come out.
So why did you get it wrong? Didn't read the article before condemning it?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC