Choosing what to amplify vs. media manipulation

September 15, 2018 6:35 AM

danah boyd (previously) delivered a keynote speech (available as text or video) to the Online News Association. It’s about manipulation of the media and how extremists and conspiracy theorists try to get their phrases covered so that they can get people to search for their terms and be indoctrinated.
posted by larrybob (29 comments total)

Never in their wildest imaginations did the creators of major social media realize that their tools of amplification would be weaponized to radicalize people towards extremism, gaslight publics, or serve as vehicles of cruel harassment.

Citation, please.
posted by chavenet at 6:50 AM on September 15, 2018 [11 favorites]

Never in their wildest imaginations did the creators of major social media realize that their tools of amplification would be weaponized to radicalize people towards extremism, gaslight publics, or serve as vehicles of cruel harassment.

Yeah, but do they consider it a feature or a bug?
posted by a complicated history at 7:17 AM on September 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

Citation, please.

No kidding. Extremism, gaslighting (remember "there are no women on the internet"?) and cruel harassment all existed from the dawn of the internet – right there in front of everyone's eyes.
posted by fraula at 8:55 AM on September 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

I think this is a really interesting and perceptive article about a very specific trend in how hate groups are spreading their ideas, and I think it'd be a shame if all we wound up discussing was generalities based on one-liners derived from a single pull quote.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 9:12 AM on September 15, 2018 [31 favorites]

Ideally, newsrooms reflect the norms of society, but that doesn’t mean that this has worked perfectly in the past.

This is almost a more troubling pull quote, to me. I haven’t finished RTFA yet, so maybe I’m about to step in it, but it seems to me that she handwaves this as a cureall when in fact the problem, historically, is the norms of society.

If the norm is racism, misogyny, or any other number of ills, a newsroom reflecting that is part of the problem. There’s no magical approach where you can let nature take its course and then be comfortable in the knowledge that you have Done It Right. Not making a choice is still making a choice.

There’s no room for the myth of neutrality, anymore, and norms are a part of that.

There is room for journalistic standards and the scientific method. It’s weird that even in an essay arguing for a return to those methods that help us achieve some sort of shared reality, she still falls victim to these conflated assumptions about how you arrive at “fairness.”

It’s because it’s not about fairness so much as it is about facts.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:34 AM on September 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

Uh... you should read the rest of it.
posted by codacorolla at 9:37 AM on September 15, 2018 [6 favorites]

> No kidding. Extremism, gaslighting (remember "there are no women on the internet"?) and cruel harassment all existed from the dawn of the internet – right there in front of everyone's eyes.

I think part of the illusion of Facebook and Twitter was that they would 'civilize' the internet. What we are seeing right now is more of a reversion to the mean as opposed to something completely novel. The novel part is that there are now many orders of magnitude more participants and more participant-hours than there were a decade ago.
posted by cirgue at 9:38 AM on September 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think part of the illusion of Facebook and Twitter was that they would 'civilize' the internet.

I don't think anyone was ever under that illusion. Facebook & Twitter were there to monetize, not civilize.
posted by chavenet at 9:47 AM on September 15, 2018 [7 favorites]

Metafilter: all we wound up discussing was generalities based on one-liners derived from a single pull quote
posted by tobascodagama at 9:47 AM on September 15, 2018 [26 favorites]

I think she (he?, I don't know) makes a good point - people have used made-up keywords, 'crisis actor' for instance, because a made-up keyword doesn't have any google traction. No alternative definitions, no Explainers, no nothing. Fresh, green fields for sowing bullshit.
posted by hap_hazard at 9:56 AM on September 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yeah, this is a rich, dense piece that walks through how extremists manipulate both tech platforms and journalists to propagate their beliefs. She makes the argument that journalists need to be conscious of what they choose to amplify, and why; that the pretense of neutrality is harmful and delusional. She does not really address the issue of norms, and given the density of this, I can see why.

And only once did her carefully measured voice seem to crack, ever so slightly:

I understand that the term “incel” was provocative and would excite your readers to learn more, but were those of you who propagated this term intending to open a portal to hell?

More of this, please.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:07 AM on September 15, 2018 [15 favorites]

To expand upon my objection to the norms handwaving:

It follows that if journalists and other media figures should be held accountable for what they choose to amplify, how they got about making those choices matters. In that context, reflecting the norms of society seems like a dangerous goal, even if it’s not the only goal.

So I can see a journalist reading this piece and going ok yes, I’m manipulated, I get it, I need to be more aware of how I make choices and own those choices. Now how do I make them?
posted by schadenfrau at 10:12 AM on September 15, 2018

In that context, reflecting the norms of society seems like a dangerous goal

Society has plenty of norms, some mutually exclusive. Journalists can (and should) choose which ones to reflect.

I need to be more aware of how I make choices and own those choices. Now how do I make them?

This is a million dollar question and I think everyone is responsible for their answer to it.
posted by hat_eater at 11:46 AM on September 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Phrases like “crisis actor” don’t spread naturally through word-of-mouth networks, even on social media. To get them into the public lexicon, media manipulators must convince major media amplifiers to work on their behalf.

One might argue that the same is true of many words and phrases such as "austerity program", "pepsi blue", "operation enduring freedom", "hope and change", "lawful access", "data void", and especially the outlandish "unoperationizable" which has two hits on google (now three).
posted by sfenders at 11:49 AM on September 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

I don't forsee the media changing the tiniest bit just from this one speech. My suggestion is for the progressive side to use this as a blueprint to beat the radicals at their own game. Forget all this "but we can't stoop to their level" crap. Thats why they are winning.
posted by ambulocetus at 12:17 PM on September 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

I know Metafilter likes to take it as given that those identifying and mapping the spread of a disease should under no circumstances be listened to unless they're also peddling a cure, but maybe we can acknowledge that those two things require different skillsets?
posted by tobascodagama at 12:24 PM on September 15, 2018 [19 favorites]

I think if she’d advocated for anything at all it would have been a built in excuse to dismiss everything she had to say.

Using the same methods for “our side” doesn’t work because we need a shared reality and they need a fractured reality in order to be able to divide and conquer many different marginalized groups — they are attacking the very ontological infrastructure of a secular, pluralist civil society. We can’t just...also attack that same infrastructure.

I don’t know how to counter it, honestly, except via regulation. Much like with climate change and carbon emissions, there are massive externalities to tech platforms that haven’t been priced in yet.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:47 PM on September 15, 2018 [5 favorites]

I think this is one of those rare cases where "regulation" is not a magic word that fixes everything.
posted by sfenders at 1:36 PM on September 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

"You wouldn’t give your readers a phone number to join the KKK, so why give them a digital calling card?"

I think this is a really good way to frame this concern - that media are getting manipulated into spreading terms that aren't mere information, instead they're active conduits to hate groups.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:32 PM on September 15, 2018 [8 favorites]

Self organizing hate groups are the inadvertent side effect of what big tech wanted. Now they're throwing their best brains at the problem.
posted by infini at 3:44 PM on September 15, 2018

I think I largely agree with boyd's analysis. She also wrote recently about why teaching and promulgating 'media literacy' isn't going to solve our problems (on MetaFilter here). I experienced it personally in the earlier article on media literacy, but I can imagine a similar reaction here: what's she's proposing is at first somewhat irritating, as it is counter to liberal (as in economics and culture, not colloquially as 'the left') approaches to problem solving.
posted by codacorolla at 3:59 PM on September 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

The local papers have a policy of not naming gangs when reporting on them, whenever possible. The articles will be filled with references to "a local street gang" or however they can describe it the most generically.
posted by RobotHero at 4:26 PM on September 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

Right now I'm reading the bottom of CNN; past news articles written. There is literally 1 in the 10 stories listed that I would consider actual news.

So if 10% of the stories on a news site are actually news, then CNN is amplifying a TON of bullshit that they shouldn't be. The online media is failing miserably at it's job - miserably. Certainly amplifying racist and conspiracy theorists is one toxic way the media is failing, but it is far from the only toxic way the media is failing. More than the amplification of dangerous bullshit is the important stuff they are not covering (eg: what various cabinet level agencies are doing to promote Trumps agenda, or the cabinet leader's personal agenda; US military action overseas, etc, etc)

Fun game: find the news story in the below headlines; *maybe* there are two, maybe one, certainly not three.

NFLer's fines are more than his game check

Stephen Miller criticized by childhood rabbi

Sears just gave investors one more reason to worry

MLBer hits 500-foot home runs after swing change

How these newlyweds survived a harrowing romance

Record number of immigrant kids are in US custody

5 places you should visit in the Asia-Pacific region

Obama says he was booted from Disney

68 players drafted ahead of NFL's 'best pass-rusher'

posted by el io at 5:10 PM on September 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

I agree - I think the flaw in boyd's analysis* is that she doesn't fully consider the role that neo-liberalism plays in getting us into this mess. CNN gave thousands of hours of free press to trump, and I'm sure that if you administered some sort of truth serum their board and said, "are you happier with him or without?" they'd yell from their yachts, "with!"

Bourdieu spoke at length about this in the last years of his life - in fact, the neo-liberal stranglehold over the media and academia was at the center of his concern during that time. A cogent analysis of strategies going forward has to include the historical fact that capital's capture of the academy and the press (albeit friendly, culturally sensitive versions of capital) are one of the major responsible parties in the 21st century's resurrection of fascism.

*I haven't read her scholarly treatment of these subjects, if one even exists. She's an extremely talented researcher, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, however in her public press engagements she hasn't fully addressed the issue of neo-liberalism's culpability, to my eyes.
posted by codacorolla at 10:04 PM on September 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

Parts I thought were insightful, parts I think are off target with but it was worth reading.

I really think the core claim is solid and well presented: people want to manipulate journalists and journalists have not learned how to resist that.

Following the defenses offered by mainstream journalists & editors (ie, NYT, NPR) when they are called out for amplifying the wrong things shows that they have this really strong knee jerk tendency to fall back on a set of professional standards set up 50-60 years ago and only incrementally changed since. Fear of bias and charges of bias and an insistence that they aren't "allowed" to filter stuff just because it's objectionable.

@codacorolla: There's quite a bit about equity growth and capitalism driving coverage in the piece. You might be talking about more explicit editorial control, but given her audience is a group of 'respectable' journalists I think it's the appropriate level.
posted by mark k at 12:02 AM on September 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Schaden frau, I'm not taking about attacking the ontological infrastructure. I'm simply referring to using their own strategies against then. In Japanese martial arts this is known as "the strategy of the reflection of the moon on the water". The media isn't going to change. These fascists are exploiting the weaknesses and biases of the corporate media to get their message out. We can play that game too, without the anti-intellectualism they have.
posted by ambulocetus at 3:39 PM on September 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm reminded of this again while people are discussing the "theory" that Kavanaugh has an evil twin.
posted by RobotHero at 9:23 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

So I can see a journalist reading this piece and going ok yes, I’m manipulated, I get it, I need to be more aware of how I make choices and own those choices. Now how do I make them?

---

Following the defenses offered by mainstream journalists & editors (ie, NYT, NPR) when they are called out for amplifying the wrong things shows that they have this really strong knee jerk tendency to fall back on a set of professional standards set up 50-60 years ago and only incrementally changed since. Fear of bias and charges of bias and an insistence that they aren't "allowed" to filter stuff just because it's objectionable.

Unfortunately, I think more of the time journalists are going to fall into the latter camp. Literally a week after I saw this talk live at ONA, I was at another industry event (yeah, the one where this happened) where at least one high-profile journalist on a panel answered the question of how journalists might do better during the Trump era by suggesting, in so many words, that a return to shoe-leather reporting and good old-fashioned journalistic values would get us there. It will not. I wanted to make everyone on the panel watch this talk.

And yeah, I couldn't help it—I cried while listening to this talk in person at ONA. I tried to steel myself to it, but I found myself with tears streaming down my face as boyd talked through some of the statistics. The traumas journalists have faced in the past decade-plus, as newsrooms have dramatically been cut in size or in some cases lost entirely, are real, and I fell victim to both those cuts and the predatory environments created when all of us working in newsrooms started to have to fear for our jobs for years on end. That hasn't, to my knowledge, gotten any better, thus there are far fewer writers who will be at all willing to challenge editors who suggest they have no choice but to cover the next set of these search terms to pop up.

I truly do fear for the future of the fourth estate. See this thread also, where I linked this talk before I realized it had been a front-page post already. I hate the fact that so many things in the media lately have been so triggering to me, but as someone who works with journalists and journalism organizations on a daily basis and who used to be in a newsroom myself, I can say this is indeed one of them for me. I'm not sure how to get editors to listen to this and understand it and act to prevent the very real threat posed by this.

See also on this topic: Amy Webb's ONA17 10 Tech Trends in Journalism talk, which covered 10 apocalyptic scenarios in the future of the news and how likely each one was to occur. danah boyd's talk basically showed that we're already going down the path of at least a couple of the scenarios Webb talked about, which probably made boyd's talk all the more chilling for me, since I had been there for Webb's talk last year, too, and have thought about it a lot since then. Sigh.
posted by limeonaire at 5:44 PM on October 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

Media is making the mistake again in two current stories: spreading the anti-Semetic Kavanaugh flyer with unredacted URL and informing us about the election day wannabe bomber's philosophy.
posted by larrybob at 9:10 AM on October 11, 2018 [1 favorite]