Poppy Noor, The Guardian; Does suppressing online conspiracy theorists work? Experts weigh in
"Russell Muirhead, who co-authored the book A Lot of People Are Saying, which digs into how misinformation spreads online, says that social media work to validate and legitimize conspiracy theorizing and misinformation.
“On a platform like Twitter, and to some extent on Facebook and YouTube, repetition comes to substitute validation. If enough people like the tweet, or watch the video, or like the video on YouTube, it confers a kind of legitimacy,” he says.
He gives the example of a common refrain of Donald Trump’s to exemplify this: Trump will say “I don’t know if it’s true but a lot of people are saying it” – as if people simply repeating misinformation means it must have some truth to it.
“That’s very threatening to our ability to understand the world and to democratic politics. Because anything people retweet enough times seems true – regardless of whether or not it is,” he says."
Showing posts with label conspiracist mindsets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conspiracist mindsets. Show all posts
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