So over the holidays we were in the DC area and went to the Newseum. It’s a great museum by the way, if you haven’t been. On display was an exhibit on the recent presidential election. There was a board which asked the following question: Do you believe that fake news had an impact on the presidential election? There were colored sticker dots that you could peel off and place in a column under YES or NO. Based upon the number of responses, it appears that they clear off the columns at the end of the day and let each day be a new poll from visitors attending that day. On the day we attended later in the afternoon, it was overwhelmingly YES, by about 75% to 25%, based upon my visual assessment of the dots.
Now I found it interesting that you were asking people to assess other people’s behavior instead of their own. I follow up question that I thought would be telling, would have been, Did fake news impact your vote or decision on the presidential election? I believe that the results of that poll would have been very different than the previous question.
Of course my assumption is based upon my view that we assume that most everyone else is more gullible, less astute, etc. than ourselves, and that others were more likely to be taken in by fake news than I would.
I very much doubt that people who believe fake news know, even know, that the stories were fake.
I don’t think for a second that fake news made any impact, but perhaps another way of looking at it, and a possible response to the OP, is that people who readily accept fake news did impact the election. In other words, fake news is a symptom, but not the cause, and maybe that’s what people are thinking.
Anecdotal evidence of they guy heading to Maryland pizza joint, doesn’t support the conclusion that the election was impacted by fake news.
Okay, if you want to quibble over the definition of impact. Were there voters that believed fake news that voted? Then yes. Was the election’s outcome swayed because of fake news? I don’t believe there is any evidence of that.
If there were voters who believed fake news and voted (consistently with their beliefs, I assume), then how can you claim fake news did not have an impact on the election?
Fake news is likely to only fool those who want to be fooled. Thus it reinforces prejudices instead of changing minds. No one who was a fan of Hillary was persuaded by Pizzagate to vote against her, and no one who had planned to vote for Trump was persuaded by the idea that the Russians had fabricated fake Podesta emails and sent them to wikileaks.
Reinforcing prejudices with fake news is how we find ourselves hip deep in morons and racists. If we are able to reduce sources of fake information, then factually correct information will have a better chance of informing those uninformed by facts and thus serve to correct biased opinion.
I agree that some of this will have a positive effect only around the margins; those who are not 100% committed racists and willful idiots. But in this election cycle, that might have made enough of a difference to change the unfortunate results.
I believe that a well informed society is a better society. Fake news works to undermine this.
The people in my city/neighborhood who listen to fake news believe EVERY word!
This is the same as gossip about neighbors which is misinformation. They believe EVERY word!
These same people are misinformed about local laws. Trying to correct the misinformation in their heads is an almost impossible challenge. They don’t want to hear it. Will deny, deny, deny, and insist they are correct.
People like this learn with time. Like you tell a kid to not touch a hot flame because they will get burned… The more intelligent will listen. The ignorant will go ahead and stick their hand in.
Poorly worded question. You think news people would be able to know that.
Think about “had an impact.” To me that could mean anything from “completely changed who won the election” to “it would have made the popular vote 0.001% different.”
You’re overlooking other avenues of impact, like turnout. An impact to turnout would be a statistically notable impact, even if the final percentages and effective outcome turned out exactly the same. (Although, practically, that would be very unlikely – differences in turnout almost always affect outcome because turnout changes seem to follow lines of established voting blocs.)
No one calls it “fake news,” but the mainstream media regular print or air stories that are not true (or are grossly distorted), and those stories often spur people to vote a certain way or to take certain actions.
Black Lives Matter was based on a false story: that Michael Brown was a sweet, “gentle giant” who was shot by a cop while he had his hands up and was trying to surrender.
That strikes me as fake news, and it HAS had a political impact. But significantly, that story didn’t change anyone’s mind. It just confirmed what millions of black Americans already believed (that cops are trigger happy racists).
Fake news almost never changes anyone’s vote. It just invigorates people who were already wedded to a certain perspective.
There are plenty of people (including certain failed politicians and their supporters) who are heavily invested in the idea that “fake news”, Russian interference or other factors beyond their control decisively swung the election against them.
It relieves them of responsibility and sets up the failed candidate(s) for another run at the brass ring.
This.
This is the primary effect of fake news and biased news in general.
Winning elections is all about 2 things: create the right climate or background support in the years prior to the election, then re-enforce that view in the months running up to the election. The party/candidate who does that best wins. Fake/biased news is a key component of part 2.