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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 Earth being flat is easy to disprove.
Obama being a US Citizen that can run for President is not. The weirdly published birth certificate from the Obama White House honestly made things worse to someone being honest with themselves. Parts of it were very clearly manipulated, which honestly made me wonder about it more than I had before it was released.
That's because the media is fully deserving of the #FakeNews joke that has been around. Regardless of what candidate you support: Hillary versus Trump, both sides of the media were racing to publish stories before actually determining if they were based on reality.
The biggest conspiracy on the left is the conspiracy of silence, like Ellen Degeneres saying "Obama gave us eight years of no scandals."
See kids, if you can truly convince yourself that everything your side is accused of either is purely partisan bickering or has a totally innocent explanation, you're fine.
Sweden and Germany rank substantially better at press freedoms than the US:
Yeah, if the rater are a communist rather than a "nazi" or "white supremacist."
Also I never claimed the freedom of press was very bad in Sweden. I kinda made fun of the idea of trusting the media in Sweden.
Just because the media could tell the truth and report negative stories and information about immigration doesn't mean they actually do that. They are free to choose the perspective they want to tell and what data or claims they want to do. They are even allowed to lie. That's not illegal. But it make people trust you less.
Media in Sweden shouldn't be trusted. But no, it's not that they HAVE to lie or tell dishonest stories. They just do that anyhow.
Regardless do accept that 0.25% of Swedish GDP go to fund public service which is the channel which in general has had the most trust and which is basically only run by socialists and environmentalists/libtards. Beyond that a smaller amount is given as support for the press but they want to increase that and set up a group of media companies/representators whom themselves are supposed to figure out who will get the money or not and as you can imagine those people will decide to support their own rather than those with a different opinion. And then we have private social media and search giants with their agenda deciding which opinions they let through and a climate where you definitely risk losing your job if the left go after you because you have the wrong opinion and that kinda effectively shut the voice of normal people down.
Sweden isn't far off from North Korea, Turkey, Iran and Russia.
The government may not do it but they are definitely considering it and their allies in the press and social media do it regardless, and where it's not done the activist communists make sure it get done anyway.
Also do accept that the Swedish government decided that it wouldn't be good if it by itself went after the people trying to shut them down for raising their opinions. Instead they decided it would be better if third parties did that and as a result they ARE financing third parties which do exactly that.
So "anti hate" and "anti racist" groups who act to shut people down get public funding to act. As such the government can still kinda claim they do allow it and that Sweden is a democracy and that we've got whatever freedoms and not too harsh laws but that's definitely not the case. Sweden is a democrature and the media is lying and fooling people.