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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.
People who understand that mass media is nothing more than a branch of some corporations PR department, tend to not believe the unverified B.S.spouted by mass media.
Film at 11.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Sometimes the conspiracies are true and worse than we ever imagined.
No. I'm being serious. Having a deep understanding of yourself, having an identity that goes beyond "I am for X" & "I am against Y" provides an bulwark against propaganda and conspiracies. Watch kids. They start out believing everything parents tell them. Once they take on traits that their parents don't have, you can see them begin the first phases of critical self-assessment.
All of this can be achieved in many ways. The best comes in the form of exposure. Exposure to philosophy. Exposure to culture. Exposure to other people and their lives.
You want to stop conspiracies and propaganda dead in its tracks? Get your kids out of your comfort zones and into the real world.
When you look at the "conspiracy nuts" you will notice a pattern. It is usually people who feel that they are "left out", that they're not in an "in" circle in whatever way that may be defined. Usually, it means that they're left out of being one of the "knowing ones", the ones that share a secret or at least something that elevates them above the others, something that gives them an "edge", if only a perceived one.
And a conspiracy theory allows them to feel that they belong to the "knowing ones" for a change. Because they now know something, something "secret", that everyone else doesn't know. And they knew it first!
Funny enough, whether that's true or even possible doesn't really matter. What matters is that they know it, and they knew it before the "smart" people did.
This is a powerful motivator. Because it lets you feel superior. You "get" it, you understand, you are one of the knowing ones, and the others, those sheeple, they don't. They are clueless, they don't understand, they don't know.
If you're usually the clueless one who neither knows nor understands, this can motivate quite a bit. And it can motivate you to cling to it, no matter what. Because letting go would require you to admit that you've, as usual, been the clueless idiot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How to tell if someone is trustworthy:
1) When they make a statement, for example that parts of a birth certificate were clearly modified, they back it up with specifics, ideally a copy of the evidence and another, comparison copy to show the difference between modified and not-modified.
The shmucks that don't provide this proof are either a) Morons, or b) paid to lie
2) They spend more time establishing their own trustworthiness, rather than simply claiming that other sources - such at 'the media' are not trustworthy. When they not only refuse to do this, but insist on their anonymity, then they are either: a) Totally paranoid or b) paid to lie. In either case, they are not trustworthy.
3) Being a citizen is fairly easy for most people to prove. It happens all the time in courts of law. Able to run for President is not supposed to be a harder to prove, it should be easier (otherwise the Constitution would have discussed it further). Genetic tests, established records, even newspaper announcements etc. are all considered proof. People reject them only if they are a) Morons b) being paid to lie.
Given these simple fact, there is the possibility that you are being paid to lie. But I don't think so. Frankly you did such a poor job of it, I can't think of anyone so desperate as to pay you to lie. If they did, they should get their money back.
That kind of leaves only one explanation for your post. Most states offer guaranteed employment for people like you, though usually they don't pay minimum wage.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This "journal" is a McCune operation; the ultra wealthy widow of a banker that funds all manner of establishment approved non-profits and academics. In addition to being the ultimate paymaster of no end of well connected non-profits they fund lots of (D) campaigns in the North East [1,2].
1. https://www.followthemoney.org...
2. https://www.followthemoney.org...
Enjoy your establishment kool-aid. It's telling you want you want to hear so I'm sure the fact that it's 1% "bankster " funded "research" won't be an issue as it ricochets around the liberal echo chamber.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
They make much of (supposedly) a quarter of Republicans "willing to state" that Obama was born in the U.S. (citation needed).
However in the meantime 100% of Democrats seem to STILL think Trump has some kind of magical tie to Russia, even though it turns out Hillary paid for the report the FBI used to make that claim. Even though Trump keeps doing things Russia does not like at all.
Someone still has a long ways to go before they shed "conspiratorial thinking", but it's apparently not the people who "know how the news is MADE" (Freudian slip emphasized).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It must be true, just ask any Democrat.
That's not how conspiracy theories work. Conspiracy theories exist outside the realm of facts. You cannot use facts, reason, or logic to refute them -- because if someone has performed the requisite mental gymnastics to believe in one in the first place, any additional facts that come their way will be dealt with in similar fashion. Further, the more facts/arguments that are piled on, the more entrenched they become (because after all, if there wasn't something to the conspiracy, why would people expend so much energy to refute it?)
So, you can either argue till you're blue in the face (and get no where) or simply ignore them, and they'll fade away on their own.
People who have actually run a business (or at least been involved in the higher-level management of one) are a lot less likely to believe that typical corporations make money hand over fist for doing next to nothing, are deliberately looking for ways to screw over their customers, and so on.
...the famed "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" in 1998?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
-Styopa
And not just friends who think like you do. Get out of your comfort zone, away from your echo chamber. Find something in common with people who are different from you. Play racquetball at the gym with that liberal hippie neighbor. Go on camping trips with the conservative guy from work. Go rock climbing with your old roommate's gay cousin. Talk with them, get to know them, become friends with them.
Once you do that, you start to learn that we all have more in common with each other than differences. A lot of the propaganda will then become transparent - the usual MO is to dehumanize the "enemy" prior to tearing them down. But if you see, no, if you know those people are human, it's impossible to dehumanize them.
Noting that (sigh), even as of December 2017, people still believe Obama was born in Kenya
You know, the really sad part is that since his mother is a known American citizen, none of that "where was he born" nonsense ever mattered in the slightest; yet, socially, we allowed the mass media to convince us that it did.
True and I imagine the whole "he was born in Kenya" thing was/is actually code for "he's black" - which, if so, is, quite frankly, stupid - but let's not overestimate people...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In North Korea, China, Russia, Turkey, Syria, Sweden, Iran, Germany what could go wrong?!
Sweden and Germany rank substantially better at press freedoms than the US:
https://rsf.org/en/ranking_tab...
It's facile to put them in the same grouping as North Korea and so on.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The bigger conspiracy is that of political partisanship. All of that bickering is based on the actions of people who aren't you, and aren't the person you argue with. You make politics mean something about yourself, when it doesn't, and are trapped into defending something that means nothing. Your ego tricks you into carrying water for a bunch of rich elitists that do not care one single whit about your life and/or your death. They only care for your money and your support so they can continue to ride herd on you without recourse.
You poor simple bastards. If you only knew how much power you give up when you divide yourselves and fight yourselves.
Of course, I am wrong and just a conspiracy theorist. Partisanship is as natural as sexual preference. You're born a democrat or a republican. No cultural indoctrination is necessary, no grooming is needed, no reinforcement is required. No politicians ever spent hundreds of millions of dollars on focus groups, wedge issues, decoding the American electorate's psyche, for the ultimate purpose of fracturing the natural coalitions and commonalities between our American brothers and sisters. Nope, doesn't happen. Ever.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
His father was not a citizen. The constitution requires a "natural born citizen" to be president. The debate surrounds whether or not (as it plainly did, once) require both parents to be natural citizens. It was intended to reduce the prospects of foreign influence/loyalty. The framers recognized how often European leadership was influenced by family ties to foreign governments.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
True and I imagine the whole "he was born in Kenya" thing was/is actually code for "he's black" - which, if so, is, quite frankly, stupid - but let's not overestimate people...
What if it's just "code" for "he had a really strange upbringing"?
Anyway, he's not black; he's half black. And half white. It seems to be you guys who are obsessed with the black half.