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Someone suggested I post this here. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR400/RR453/RAND_RR453.pdf quote:Radicalisation in the digital era I think the following bit is relevant, because we see these exact same types of behaviors here on the forums. quote:In Chapter 3 we learned that the internet allows individuals to seek material that they are interested in, and to reject that which does not support their worldview. The internet can give the illusion of strength of consensus in numbers and, as such, can act as a normalising agent (Bjelopera, 2011). Of course, everyone thinks that it is other people who are close minded, and it is other spaces that are echo chambers, so the practical value of the paper's findings may be limited.
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May 9, 2021 00:36
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fart simpson posted:if you think biden is doing all he can to fix a certain problem with immigration, that means you need to provide evidence. simply declaring that there isn’t any more he can realistically do is not evidence. It has nothing whatsoever to do with base assumptions. No one in the immigration thread assumes, or has ever claimed, that Biden is doing everything he can. Virtually everyone in this subforum agrees that his administration needs to do better, and he has been relentlessly criticized for things like not allowing lawyers and qualified media personnel into refugee centers/camps/whatever. The differences pertain to a combination of:
That last attitude by a minority of posters is at the root of most of the bitter exchanges in this forum, and it is what makes the rest of us regularly question whether those posters are posting in that specific thread in good faith (i.e. to learn how our immigration system works, to understand how the various pieces interoperate, to gain additional insights into current challenges, etc.), rather than to constantly fling "see? we loving told you guys Biden is an evil rear end in a top hat who is the architect of all these problems and he is only barely better than Trump!!  " type gotchas.
Slow News Day fucked around with this message at 17:36 on May 27, 2021 |
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May 27, 2021 17:27
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Sekhem posted:If anything, Chomsky is notorious for his collection of data and scholarship in accounting for events to the point of tedium. That's again not to say he is always successful at this, but that has nothing to do with the reliability of the propaganda model. Because that's simply not what the model is for - Chomsky and Herman do not use their model of propaganda as a heuristic to speculatively determine the factual basis of current events. They use their methods of political and historical analysis in order to critically assess the reality of events, and use the propaganda model to investigate in what ways the political reality (as they understand it) is presented and communicated in the media. Sekhem posted:I don't know where your understanding of them as using the propaganda model as some kind of totalising heuristic to determine the factuality of events is coming from, because you just assert that this is how they use it without actually ever discussing or providing evidence for their flawed methodology. When the vast majority of people, including posters on this forum, consume media coverage, they do so with the aim of learning the factual basis of events and issues. A media analysis framework that does not help them determine the underlying facts — by sorting lies and spin from truth — is kind of useless as a practical tool. If it expects the user to first independently seek and discover the facts (by consuming scholarly resources like Chomsky & Herman did) before it can be used, it is not valuable to laypeople, who don't have the time or the expertise to undertake such research and fact-finding endeavors for everyday events, and it is not useful for understanding current events, for which scholarly resources won't yet exist and real-time accounts will be unverified and unreliable. I think for purposes of a debate forum, and this thread, what matters is this: when the mainstream media is covering an event or an issue, is it valid to dismiss that coverage as propaganda, and the claims therefore misleading or false, solely on the basis that the outlets are mainstream? It seems the answer is no, unless one has independently determined the underlying facts via scholarly research first. Is it valid to doubt or question the credibility of mainstream sources? The answer to that also appears to be no, since as you yourself said, the purpose of the Propaganda Model is not to speculatively try to determine the factuality of events. That's why so many people roll their eyes when Manufacturing Consent is brought up in political debates: neither its underlying claims, not the way they are regularly applied, are useful or even interesting. It just leads to tired derails about things like what is propaganda and what isn't, and that's why it's not even worth bringing up.
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Jun 22, 2021 16:45
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Red and Black posted:This is a truly bizarre thing to say. You don't need the Propaganda Model to "doubt or question or credibility of mainstream sources". There is an abundance of evidence that the mainstream press engages in propaganda and deserves skepticism (for hard statistical evidence see the tables on the last page). If there is an abundance of evidence that the mainstream press engages in propaganda on a given topic, then you should use that evidence to make your case when that topic is being discussed. You should not invoke the Propaganda Model to presume that whatever is being reported is propaganda, because doing so gives you an excuse to refuse to engage with the source and conduct actual analysis. fool of sound posted:I really don't read the people in this thread arguing in defense of MC as doing so to pull a rhetorical trick, though certainly it has a reputation for that elsewhere. Criticism of media doesn't imply that the critiqued media is entirely or even predominantly valueless and I don't think any posters at present are trying to argue that in MCs case it does so. But the broader validity of MC shouldn't really be relevant, because the claim that the media is biased is not controversial, interesting or insightful. What we're primarily interested in is the applicability of PM as a media analysis tool with regards to debates that take place in this forum. Right? I mean, this is from your OP: fool of sound posted:This thread is intended for goons to cooperatively improve their ability to navigate the fraught modern media landscape; assisting one another separate fact from editorial, guiding each other to quality information, and teach each other to avoid the pitfalls of confirmation bias. As it has been stated, Propaganda Model helps with literally none of these. It does not help people separate fact from editorial, since neither its goal nor its appropriate and intended usage is to determine facts. It does not guide people to quality information, but arguably away from it to alternative and often fringe media outlets. And it does not teach people to avoid the pitfalls of confirmation bias — just the opposite, in fact: it is frequently used, here in D&D, by posters to validate and reinforce their own confirmation biases (specifically, anti-corporate and anti-state biases) and reject information that does not fit their worldview.
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Jun 22, 2021 22:54
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A Buttery Pastry posted:A model that groups victims into a "worthy" and "unworthy" category based on how the perpetrating group aligns with Western interests can not transform a victim into a perpetrator. If someone uses it that way, they're using it wrong. Even if it is one of the authors. Though as has been mentioned, was that the model used to determine the veracity of genocide claims? Or did the author use other methods to arrive at faulty conclusions? The answer should be self-evident: the authors having repeatedly misused their own model, both in Manufacturing Consent itself and their future works, is a strong indication that they created it primarily as a framework to legitimize and support their pre-existing biases. This makes it fundamentally flawed as a tool to identify media bias: if you wear gold-tinted glasses, of course you will see everything in shades of yellow. You have not gained some sort of profound or even useful insight about the world, or in this case, the media.
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Jun 23, 2021 16:11
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Red and Black posted:And yet, you have consistently failed to provide even one concrete example of either Herman or Chomsky using the Propaganda Model to "deny genocide". Something which literally can't be done, because as you have been repeatedly told, the PM predicts aggregate media behavior. It cannot be used to predict whether an individual news story is true or false, and never has been used to make such a prediction. genericnick posted:This has been stated repeatedly, but no one has shown anything as far as I can tell. Where have the authors misused their model? Red and Black posted:That's fine, just provide quotes from his book then showing the application of the PM Are you guys doing a bit? Look here.
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Jun 23, 2021 16:59
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The Propaganda Model cannot really be used as a media analysis tool predict media behavior, just like "it is the will of God" cannot be used to predict future events. Both are totalizing in nature and unfalsifiable. The Will of God can justify any event by attributing it to interest or non-interest by God, and the Propaganda Model can justify virtually any statement or instance of media coverage by attributing it to interest or non-interest by "elites". In other words, the way religious people switch between "God wanted it" and "God is too busy to care about such trivial matters" to make events fit their worldview, proponents of the Propaganda Model use "the elites want media coverage to be this way" and "this outlet is too marginal for elites to care about" to make all media coverage fit their model.
Slow News Day fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 17:44
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A Buttery Pastry posted:It predicts media trends, not individual pieces. Which seems fine if you're intending to read multiple different articles on the same incident, rather than sourcing all your news from a single source. Saying the Propaganda Model predicts media trends and not individual pieces is like saying The Will of God Model predicts droughts, not whether it will rain in any individual location tomorrow. The same logical flaws apply.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:06
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fool of sound posted:Understanding biases in reporting is a valid topic for the thread, though I agree that there are serious flaws in how MC is applied, and I've been pretty blown away by its misuse by its own authors. It is valid for the thread, yes, but I thought the purpose of the thread itself is to inform more general guidelines regarding what types of sources can be used in D&D, and what types of criticisms can be applied to those sources in a way that will help goons separate fact from fiction. Again, from the OP: fool of sound posted:This thread is for analysis and potentially debunking of competently constructed articles. So if the Propaganda Model does in fact not allow us to determine facts, or even predict coverage of issues by individual outlets, then it is completely useless as a tool to debunk anything.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:44
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:I haven't read any argument ITT that seriously challenges Sekhem's post here. From what I can gather from this thread, it would need to be shown that the PM is intended to be used to verify the validity of individual events or pieces of reporting, in order to prove that Chomsky/Herman's genocide denial claims were the outcome of using the PM. Otherwise, it seems fairly clear that the methodology of the PM is distinct from the methodology of Herman's individual work, and if the methodologies are different then I don't see how the latter delegitimizes the former. I think we're going in circles. If you cannot use PM to validate individual events or pieces and help guide us to the truth, then what use is it in D&D? I'm not talking about the way it is almost exclusively misused as a tool to dismiss individual articles or claims one disagrees with, in favor of alternative or fringe sources they agree with. I'm talking about its correct usage, as discussed. Because we saw that the broad claims the model makes with regards to Western media having pro-Western biases, and the mechanisms of those biases: a) are not that interesting or insightful or even useful as actual analysis of media coverage (quoting evilweasel, "who cares?") b) cannot be used to discredit and dismiss individual articles or claims (because that is a misuse of the model)
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Jun 25, 2021 18:40
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Sekhem posted:Indications of directions of bias in an aggregate sense inform the pragmatic judgements we make about what biases are likely to present in a particular article. This reads like an attempt to have your cake and eat it too: when people (including those defending PM) point out that PM is very bad at predicting or explaining individual media coverage, you respond with "well, of course: that is not its proper or intended usage", but then when they say "okay then why is it useful in D&D where people regularly use it to try to refute media outlets they don't like", you respond with "well, indications of bias in an aggregate sense inform our judgments about likely biases in a particular article." These statements contradict each other. And if they somehow don't, then that proves the fundamental criticism leveled against the Propaganda Model: you can use it to try to justify and explain any mainstream media behavior: it becomes a hole into which you try to jam pegs of various shapes and sizes, except the hole in this case is fluid and can change size and shape to accommodate any peg. Here, let's use a specific example. This article was posted earlier in the Immigration thread: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57561760.amp What does the Propaganda Model tell us in terms of "indications of directions of bias in an aggregate sense that can inform the pragmatic judgments we make about what biases are likely to exist" in this article?
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Jun 25, 2021 20:45
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hobotrashcanfires posted:How about you demonstrate how you're actually an authority on the subject in any way whatsoever instead of whatever the gently caress this is. This is grossly inappropriate.
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Jun 26, 2021 08:04
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:I think some of the heat your dismissal has been getting comes from the imputation of bad faith to the authors of the book. What convinces you that the authors have this specific goal and aren’t to be taken at their word? The fact that they both have engaged in repeated genocide denial, both in MC and their previous and future works, using the Propaganda Model or its various bits and pieces. In other words, the fact that the authors repeatedly misused their own model or its components to deny genocide (on the basis that any coverage of events by Western media was labeled as genocide, and was therefore propaganda and false) is evidence that they created the model to legitimize and support their preexisting biases. We have covered this already, I think. No need to re-litigate it.
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Jun 26, 2021 08:33
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Sekhem posted:You've been consistently just repeating these points without responding to any of the objections against them. This is an odd thing to say. No one has raised objections to the extensive list of problems with PM that Discendo Vox posted on the previous page, as far as I can tell. Only two posters acknowledged his post, one got probated for obvious lack of interest in debate and the other said they found DV's arguments convincing in that PM is invalid, and further admitted that they have never read or used it. You, on the other hand, have completely ignored it, which is ironic coming from someone complaining about people not responding to objections... Sekhem posted:What strikes me as particularly unusual about them is that from my readings on the scholarly debate about the PM, these arguments are pretty much never raised by its detractors. Even its vociferous critics generally seem to quite clearly accept that it's an empirically testable hypothesis, but are critical at its success in doing so. You claimed that you were unaware of it being used to provide any testable predictions (which is unusual because from my reading, it's presented in a pretty straightforward fashion in the MC) and I gave you an example of such. This is the "example" you posted for "testing" PM: Sekhem posted:Here's a quick example that directly attempts to test it, but really any look at the secondary literature and debates should make these kinds of predictions clear. In other words, you posted the top result for a "testing manufacturing consent" search on google, but did not even try to explain why it is a valid and proper test of the Propaganda Model in relation to the points Discendo Vox made. Nevertheless, I read it. It is farcical. The author — who at the time was a graduate student in history — looked at US mainstream media's treatments of Venezuelan and Colombian governments. He then attempted to apply the Propaganda Model by noting that because the US viewed Chavez as an antagonist and Uribe as sympathetic to US interests, one could expect that US media coverage would also reflect that bias when covering events in those two countries. The article starts with this sentence: quote:The mainstream media is howling over Hugo Chávez's bid to change the constitution for a third term, while coverage of Colombia's Álvaro Uribe, a staunch U.S. ally, to do the same raises few, if any, questions in the media. Then, just a few paragraphs in, it contradicts itself: quote:2. Presidential term limits. Between 2004 and 2007, both Chávez and Uribe attempted to extend or abolish presidential term limits in their respective countries; Uribe was successful, Chávez was not. Their proposals differed in three respects: first, Chávez included his request within a larger package of social, economic, and political reforms, whereas Uribe did not; second, the Chávez proposal and reforms were defeated by a popular referendum, whereas Uribe’s request was granted by the Colombian Congress and upheld by a Supreme Court ruling; and third, Chávez proposed to eliminate term limits entirely, whereas Uribe proposed to extend them. Nonetheless, both were proposals to expand executive power. In other words, the two were not in fact the same: Chavez tried to abolish term limits entirely via a failed popular referendum, whereas Ubile proposed extending them by one term, which was approved by Columbian Congress and upheld by their supreme court. But the author did not think that this was an important difference. Regarding the Inravisión vs. RCTV comparison, there are paragraphs that should immediately evoke parallels for anyone who paid attention to right-wing media coverage of BLM protests of last summer. For example: quote:Even more so than the Times’, the Post’s coverage tended to glorify the protesters as freedom fighters confronting the repression of the Chávez government. During the two-week stretch immediately before and after RCTV went off the airwaves, the Post featured six updates in its World in Brief section that all cast Chávez in a decidedly autocratic light. Several also portrayed government forces as having violently repressed the protests in Caracas. The May 29 update reported that “[p]olice fired tear gas and plastic bullets into a crowd of about 5,000,” but the report did not mention that many of the protesters had themselves committed acts of violence. One later update noted that the protests were “sometimes violent” and another mentioned that “[a]t least 30 [protesters] were charged with violent acts.” Wow, the protests were not peaceful, you say? Some of the protestors themselves had committed acts of violence? Just like... Antifa? But, wait, we know that that particular talking point regarding BLM protests by right-wing media was pure horseshit — so why should we take it seriously in this particular context? Could it be that the US media did not report the violence committed by protestors not because it has an imperialist bias, but because the talking point itself would have been a lovely and bad faith attempt to undermine the protestors? Makes you think. The article has other similar objections to US media coverage of Venezuela in particular that should raise a few eyebrows. For example, the author cites language from NYT and WaPo editorials that state that the constitutional changes sought by Chavez would extend his presidency for life, and would greatly strengthen his already considerable influence. The author's objection? Oh, but Chavez would still have to be elected for each successive term!  And then has the audacity (or stupidity — I can't tell which) to point out that US allies such as Canada and Japan have no term limits, and that the US itself had no term limits until 1951. As if Venezuela is in any way comparable to Canada or Japan or pre-1951 US. It is not much different from the "why should Iran not have nukes, when the US and the UK have them?" argument that we see bandied about every now and then, and is equally laughable.Anyway, look, what should be clear is that this article is not a "test" of the Propaganda Model. The author, just like Chomsky and Herman, is using the Propaganda Model to support his own biases (which are obvious from literally the first sentence of the article, i.e. the mainstream media is "howling") by selectively picking media coverage and pointing at what he perceives as imperialist bias (and some of it surely is). Here's the issue: Propaganda Model does not merely claim that mainstream media is biased and that its coverage of events slanted towards US interests — that itself is not a controversial claim, nor is it unique to PM or even originally pointed out by PM. Rather, the Propaganda Model makes much broader categorical claims regarding mass media about the how and why. That is what is meant by "the assumptions the model makes, which are its underpinnings, are unfalsifiable". If the explanation for something is that a group of shadowy elites want events to be covered in mass media a certain way, or (in the case of absence of bias or even anti-corporate or anti-state coverage) that they don't actually care about those events, how is that any different than "God wanted it this way" or "this matter is too trivial for God to care about", respectively? The Will of God theory, as I called it earlier, could similarly be "tested", and doing so would be equally meaningless because every test would support the theory, while the underlying assumption, i.e. that God exists, would remain unfalsifiable.
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Jun 27, 2021 23:10
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Sekhem posted:This will probably be a disappointingly boring answer, but I don't think there is any particular best approach in media analysis, I think the best approach is being cognisant of a broad variety of different perspectives and conceptual models while being aware of their conflicts and shortcomings. Can you suggest some alternative conceptual models? I think everyone here would appreciate the opportunity to move on from PM.
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Jun 28, 2021 07:41
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Sekhem posted:[RE: sealioning] I don't think this a good faith objection. I would say your approach and stance are extremely confusing and also odd. You said you don't particularly like Chomsky and are not familiar with Herman's other works, then followed up with a platitude of "there is no best framework in media analysis, they all have shortcomings" — yet you have dozens of posts in this thread defending the Propaganda Model, more than anyone else, including the poster who originally brought it up. Furthermore, you didn't post anything until after they did so on page 5 (the thread had been going on for two months by then), and perhaps most confusingly, your posts in this thread also constitute the vast majority of posts you have made since becoming an active poster again last year, and they are also your first and only posts in D&D to boot! Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being passionate about a particular subject, but the reason some of us are frustrated by your latest revelations and hand-waving is that they strongly indicate that you been breathlessly defending a model merely on the basis that you don't think it is as bad as the rest of us are making it out to be. The vehemency of your posts is something one would expect from a dissertation defense, yet you have also somewhat distanced yourself from PM. This, combined with language such as "there is no argument being made here" and "I think you're just fundamentally misinterpreting me" and "I'm not quite sure what you're specifically trying to say here", really does evoke the image of the sealion from that one comic. So, to respond to the quoted bit above: I think it's a good faith objection. Slow News Day fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 16:04
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Sekhem posted:I think this looked like a hyperpartisan closure of debate which seemed deeply unproductive. Is defending the broadening of scope of discussion to credible opposing views, even if I'm not completely sold on them, really so alien a stance? I'm far more passionate about that than I am about any particular individual model or school of thought. I can't speak to what the conversation looks like to someone who is normally a lurker and is participating in a D&D thread for the first time. If you perceive hyperpartisanship, that may be due to the various contexts in which the Propaganda Model is used to minimize or outright deny horrific crimes against humanity, both in the past and in the present, both by the authors and other users of the model, simply on the basis that Western media shined or is currently shining a spotlight on those crimes. We have moved past genocide denial since the moderator requested it, but the enmity might still exist since it is a topic that triggers strong feelings in people. The explanations provided by the model all suck. For example, the model would "explain" the coverage of China's genocide of Uyghur people and culture as "the US government is starting to manufacture consent for an eventual war with China, which is why they are signal-boosting the horrific stuff in what are simply re-education camps, like forced birth control, while ignoring the good stuff like teaching the Uyghurs important labor skills!" If you think about it, you'll notice that line of reasoning to be along the exact same vein as the one provided by Kevin Young in his 2008 essay (linked earlier as a "test" of PM) in which he said NYT and WaPo described Venezuelan protestors as freedom fighters, while not reporting on their violent acts. It is all incredibly lazy, the purported motives and explanations absolutely unprovable, and designed to fit one's existing notions and biases and assumptions about the US government, its goals and its motives. And it has no explanations for conflicting interests of and disagreement between different groups of "elites". For example, the Propaganda Model cannot reconcile the assertion that the US government is trying to shape public opinion by building support for a war with China, with the fact that a war with China would be the very last thing US corporations would want, since the two economies are so tightly integrated to the point of co-dependence. Sekhem posted:You've stated that the "elite interests" are broadly and nebulously defined, leaving the only process to determine such as a reasoning backward from conclusions. I disagree with this, I think MC identifies very specific actors with very specific relations to each other, which make interests determinable independent of subjective readings of pieces of media. When MC directly points out the intertwined relationships of specific state institutions and specific media companies, is this not clearly defined? If specific actors and their relationships are identified, surely that opens the possibility of identifying material-economic incentives independent of media scrying? It's not just using some vague identifier of "elites," it uses specific examples, categorises them and defines their relationships with each other. MC does not identify specific actors. It only identifies advertisers (corporations) and state actors generally, and broadly. It glosses over or completely ignores the fact that different corporations have different, often competing and conflicting interests, and those interests may or may not fit the goals of the government and its own plethora of different groups and even individuals, not to mention those of thousands of NGOs. I seriously don't understand how you can read the Propaganda Model and come to the conclusion that "elites" as a category is not nebulously defined. From the preface: quote:We use the term 'special interests' in its commonsense meaning, not in the Orwellian usage of the Reagan era, where it designates workers, farmers, women, youth, blacks, the aged and infirm, the unemployed- in short, the population at large. Only one group did not merit this apellation: corporations, their owners and managers. They are not 'special interests', they represent the "national interest." This terminology represents the reality of domination and the operational usage of "national interest" for the two major political parties. It's actually worse than that though. Not only is "elites" broadly and nebulously defined, conflict and disagreement between them is one of the boundary conditions of the model. If something does not fit the model, one possible explanation is that it's because there's conflict between the elites! Who are those elites? What is the exact nature of the conflict, and which elites are on which side? The model cannot say, and does not care. An actual analysis of media that both specifically defines the elites, and can be falsified, would be something like this: "event happened in country A. Outlet B covered it as such and such, while minimizing or ignoring opposing viewpoints. Corporations C, D and E, which all have business interests in A, are major advertisers of outlet B and their ads collectively make up X percent of B's ad revenue, which would be jeopardized if B covered those events by taking the opposing stance (and here's a list of how exactly they would be jeopardized). And we have interviewed insiders from those corporations and/or the media outlet to corroborate and confirm this theory in this particular instance of media coverage — provided here is an outline of the interactions as they occurred between the parties and how those interactions influenced coverage... you'll note that shortly after Corporation D used 'flak' because they didn't like a particular framing of the issue, the framing was changed..." A model that can be applied to media coverage of events to produce something like the above would be more useful as a media analysis tool, because it would allow the user of the model or the consumer of its outputs to actually understand the underlying mechanisms in a way that is verifiable. The Propaganda Model not only falls far short of that, but is frequently harmful because it gives the audience the illusion of insight and helps them reinforce their biases, rather than understand and counter them. Slow News Day fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 21:41
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Nix Panicus posted:So, if a high proportion of stories about a topic can be sourced back to a handful of people (or, more worryingly, just one guy) or a state actor with an axe to grind we should question the truthfulness of those stories and examine them for signs of propaganda, right? Claims about the state of glaciers in Antarctica and the rate they are melting can often be sourced back to a handful of geologists and glaciologists (who spend long months in the region for measurements and analyses), and they certainly have a deep interest in spreading that message. Does that mean we should question the truthfulness of what they are saying? No. The tweet/article you quoted in your gotcha attempt talks about a shady company that offered money to influencers to pretend they are deeply passionate about Covid and to use their platform to spread fear and doubt about the vaccines. They were also explicitly asked not to mention they had a sponsor, and they disappeared when the influencers told the media about it. Here's the most relevant bit: quote:Fazze's brief told influencers to share a story in French newspaper Le Monde about a data leak from the European Medicines Agency. The difference between this and the Chinese genocide/ethnocide of Uyghurs is that our knowledge of the latter is not based on mere stories and anecdotes anymore. We now have an overwhelming amount of evidence for it, coming from different sources and corroborated by many Uyghur refugees who have managed to escape. CCP officials themselves have referred to "washing brains" and "cleansing hearts" to "cure" Uyghur's "extremist thoughts" in leaked government documents, and even Xinjiang regional law openly outlines some of the mentioned "de-extremification" practices such as the banning of names and even beard styles (that are deemed to be "too Muslim"). So at this point it is undoubtedly a "where there is smoke there is fire" situation, and the only question pertains to the specifics of what is going on in the Uyghur concentration camps. It's worth noting that what you are espousing — doubting and distrusting information based solely on a single superficial quality (i.e. that it is purportedly aligned with Western interests with regards to "containing" China) — is the very opposite of media literacy. The term I've come across elsewhere that describes the practice is "mid-brow dismissal": rejecting information based on what appears to be deeply profound insight, but is actually rooted in the person's preconceived notions (i.e. America is evil and bad, therefore China/Russia must actually be good, and anything America claims about them is probably just propaganda).
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Jul 29, 2021 16:56
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Good article by The Guardian on how oil and gas companies are using astroturfing and concern-trolling tactics to undermine efforts to fight climate change. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/09/big-oil-delay-tactics-new-climate-science-denial quote:Oil companies stopped pushing overt climate denial more than a decade ago. And while conspiracy theories claiming climate change is a hoax may surface occasionally, they are no longer an effective strategy. quote:Of all the messaging geared toward delaying action on climate, or assurances that the fossil fuel industry has a grip on possible solutions, Lamb and other authors agreed that one theme was far more prevalent than the rest: “the social justice argument.” quote:Discourses of delay don’t just show up in advertising and marketing campaigns, but in policy conversations too.
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Sep 11, 2021 19:21
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Mooseontheloose posted:I think the contention here is that people don't want to believe that they are susceptible to media manipulation or their own biases. If you believe that inherently anything the US does is not trustworthy than a source saying yep, here is something to prove your point means you are more likely to believe it. That's what happened in 2016. Wikileaks had a lot of goodwill in certain circles because of the information they were leaking. They go against American hegemony and orthodoxy, they are to be believed and trusted. Case in point, this is from the immigration thread just yesterday: Ciprian Maricon posted:It's a bad story I guess and I'm deeply sorry for derailing the breakneck pace of discussion here. It resonated with my experience as an immigrant. Congrats though, you've successfully defended the needlessly cruel immigration apparatus of the United States, maybe you should think carefully about why you're interested in doing that before posting here. You can click for context, but the gist of it is that the story in question was sourced from the Examiner and had already been thoroughly debunked in USNews by Discendo Vox. When this was pointed out, the poster "apologized" and said they believed the story because it "resonated with their experience". Then they got real pissy and claimed that the reason DV debunked the story was because he was motivated to defend the administration's policies. To me, media literacy is about applying critical scrutiny to a source regardless of its ideological or political alignment, or its alignment with your experiences and worldview. That's not the same thing as "be equally skeptical of everyone!!!" or "never trust anything you read!!1" — it means actually reading articles, knowing how to identify load-bearing language and getting in the habit of looking for confirmation from other outlets, among other things.
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Oct 7, 2021 18:55
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Nix Panicus posted:Has there ever been actual proof that anything from wikileaks was made up by the Russians, or is it all 'well, we can't prove it *wasn't* made up by the Russians, so I choose to believe Russia did it'? I don't speak for CommieGIR but I think your reasoning here is backwards. The main reason mediators such as Wikileaks are difficult to trust is that, unlike with whistleblowers, it is usually impossible to verify the authenticity of the information and materials they are leaking, especially if there is a chance that foreign actors may be involved. And even if you could verify authenticity, there's virtually no way to tell if they may have selectively omitted other materials that came into their possession that didn't fit their general agenda and specific narrative. If you are believing Wikileaks on the basis that there is no definitive proof that they doctored materials, at that point you're presupposing their veracity, and the most likely reason is that it is what you want to hear. (This also holds true in other contexts, such as when an alt-right source leaks a video clip of Biden. Even if the video clip itself has not been doctored, that doesn't make it not propaganda.) Whereas if we turn the tables and put you in a situation where someone is showing you something that you don't want to hear (e.g. evidence of Uyghur genocide), you'll immediately assume the opposite stance by asking questions like "how can we trust these people who are claiming to be an Uyghur refugees?" or "do we have any actual proof that these materials are genuine, and have not been doctored if not outright fabricated by the CIA?" At the end of the day, I think media literacy is about the ability to put aside your own existing beliefs when consuming information. Only then can you gain the ability to tell if you're being manipulated.
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Oct 8, 2021 04:16
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Nix Panicus posted:Ok, but why are you presupposing they were elaborate Russian plants? I'm... not?
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Oct 8, 2021 04:34
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Nix Panicus posted:Ok, fine, allow me to rephrase I said I don't speak for CommieGIR, and I don't speak for "generic poster' either. Regardless, I've thought about it a bit more. I think what is reasonable to presuppose depends at least to some extent on whether you believe Wikileaks when they say they publish any and all information given to them without vetting it, no matter who and where it comes from. If you believe that, that means Wikileaks is as credible and trustworthy as the source they are acting as mediators for, i.e. the GRU. Can the GRU reasonably be described as credible and trustworthy? My impression is that most people, even staunch leftists with gang tags, will admit that the answer is no. (But if you think the answer is yes, we probably don't have any common ground and you can skip the rest of this post.) If you don't believe Wikileaks when they say they publish anything and everything without vetting it, then the questions become: what parts of the hacked trove of emails they got from GRU did they try to vet, and how? Are there parts of the trove they may have left out because it didn't align with Assange's hatred of and agenda against Hillary Clinton? How can we even tell? Wikileaks purportedly subscribes to a philosophy of "radical transparency" but apparently that only serves as justification to shame and embarrass entities they don't like (which, for some odd reason, does not include the likes of Putin), and is not something that they apply to themselves and their internal processes. Whatever your answers are to the questions above, I believe it is fair to say that, at the very least, Wikileaks willingly and knowingly aided and abetted Russian efforts to undermine the United States government and elections generally. That should not be a controversial claim at this juncture. f you have a strong dislike towards America and/or Democrats, you might find what they did acceptable, perhaps even applaud it as noble, and that is fine. But in terms of judging the credibility and trustworthiness of Wikileaks as a mediator, I think their opportunistic willingness to work with the likes of GRU alone is sufficient reason to conclude that they (or any other mediator in a similar position) don't deserve our unshakable trust and faith in every context, especially ones where the founder is quite obviously ethically compromised and is willing to sacrifice his own integrity to pursue a personal vendetta (much to the dismay and disgust of his own employees, I might add).
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Oct 8, 2021 20:27
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The Kingfish posted:Also, referring to the DNC/Clinton/any of these people a “victim” is disgusting. This is an utterly bizarre piece of criticism. In common vernacular, people who are the targets of successful attacks, such as hacks, are victims. There's no need to put the word in scare quotes. Your usage of the phrase "these people" does quite a lot of work, though.
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Oct 10, 2021 00:27
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Nix Panicus posted:Nobody is going to give you a straight answer to this, because it would undercut the entire point of the thread. Truth depends entirely on your personal attitudes towards the speaker relaying information. It sounds like you subscribe to epistemic relativism. If that's the case, we've been wasting words arguing with you because it's such a deep and fundamental disconnect. I will, however, point out that in the context of politics, "truth depends entirely on your personal attitudes" is a very convenient (and lazy) attitude because its flexibility allows you to believe what you want to believe without having to go through the difficult and messy process of critical thinking and analysis. From that perspective, a thread like this won't be very useful to you, and might even be objectionable because it will seem like an attempt to encourage and enforce (via moderation) a subjective set of standards when it comes to analyzing information reported in the media. That's what lies at the root of your disagreement, isn't it?
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Oct 10, 2021 20:02
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Going back a bit, in response to the "WaPo is owned by an oligarch" thing, interestingly enough Washington Post actually does quite a remarkable job of not giving Bezos preferential treatment. To his credit, he's known to have repeatedly insisted that WaPo cover his other companies the same way they cover everything else, and has not interfered in any way with their news coverage or editorial decisions more generally. Indeed, over the years WaPo has had extensive coverage of Amazon's terrible treatment of their workers and their unionization efforts (example), and just two weeks ago published an embarrassing piece about the toxic and sexist work culture at Blue Origin. Assange, in direct contrast, wields enormous influence on Wikileaks and uses it as a tool to pursue his own personal vendettas. "Radical transparency" is just a meaningless slogan that attracts a particular type of audience, just like Google's "do no evil" is a meaningless slogan used to attract dumb techies. Does this mean one should unquestioningly believe everything they read on WaPo? No, of course not. But it does demonstrate a certain level of integrity and trustworthiness that Wikileaks absolutely lacks, which means anything that comes from it warrants a much higher level of scrutiny, as well as a need for verification/corroboration from other sources. Of course, that's not possible to do with something like a trove of hacked emails — and that is something Wikileaks/GRU probably counted on, because the more uncertainty and doubt there was, the more effectively the leak could be weaponized, due to the previously mentioned absurdly high level of effort needed by the DNC to authenticate the materials and refute the corresponding claim or accusation.
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Oct 13, 2021 21:30
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Josef bugman posted:Do you think that stuff like the below opinion piece is an example of "not giving our owner preferential treatment"? You linked to an opinion piece, which anyone can write. Wapo also publishes opinion pieces from Republican authors and politicians. That does not make WaPo a conservative news outlet. Josef bugman posted:Do you also believe that "oh I have no actual say in what happens, I merely own a controlling stake and have no idea what is occurring" is accurate? If you do believe this, if you honest to God believe that there is more context or a greater understanding or something else I would dearly love to hear it. I'd love to live in a world where the person who owns the newspaper doesn't, even indirectly, have influence over what it publishes. I mean, Bezos probably does know what is occurring in the Washington Post, since he bankrolls them, and they have been greatly expanding their operations since he bought them in 2013. What I said is that he does not appear to be influencing coverage. This has been corroborated by people who used to work at WaPo, and confirmed by press critics.
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Oct 13, 2021 21:51
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Ars Technica published an article yesterday that is right up this thread's alley. Hacker X”—the American who built a pro-Trump fake news empire—unmasks himself Some interesting bits: quote:The interviewers at the company told Willis that "everything was to be built with security in mind—at extreme levels." The bolded part is interesting, because it confirms that these fake news websites target both right-wing and left-wing audiences. While conservatives are statistically more likely to fall for fake news, leftists aren't immune either, especially if the content they are exposed to can be weaponized to embarrass or condemn the liberal establishment. quote:The owners of Koala Media reeled in good money at the time. Koala's main site covered "health" topics and hawked supplements and alternative cures. A tiny front-page ad would bring in $30,000 a month, Willis tells me, with mailing lists enriching the Koala Media empire further. The second bit is interesting because there is a long association between sellers of quack medicine and right-wing extremism. This is why most prominent figures on the right, from Ben Shapiro to Alex Jones, sell supplements to support their operations: the synergy works because the audiences are more or less the same. But a small Koala Media ad making $30,000/month illustrates the sheer scale of this particular operation (Ars was careful not to reveal any of their websites, probably to avoid lawsuits). quote:But as Willis came on board, Koala's stories got more controversial. So on the one hand, the staff were working towards legitimacy, which the owner was then exploiting to push crazy stuff during the best time to reach audiences. quote:Toward the end of 2015, more and more pro-Trump stories started emerging on Koala. But after Trump won the Republican primary in 2016, the focus shifted heavily toward anti-Clinton stories. During this time, Koala's already-loose editorial standards relaxed even further. Stories became increasingly bizarre or opinionated. Citations that did exist were often placed in a misleading manner, misconstruing the linked stories or pointing to existing stories in the Koala webring, making it hard for readers to fact-check the material. The "search bar" on these news sites even took users to a search engine created by Koala; it showed stories from "independent media," i.e., sites from the webring. Pieces that ran during this crucial period claimed, among other things, that Clinton had plans to "criminalize" gun owners, to kill the free press, to forcefully "drug" conservatives, to vaccinate people against their wills, to euthanize some adults, and to ban the US flag. quote:The basic approach involved the creation of a massive syndication network of hundreds of specialty "news" websites, where articles from the main Koala website could be linked to or syndicated. But these additional websites were engineered so that they looked independent of each other. They were "a web ring where the websites didn't look like they had any real associations with each other from a technical standpoint and couldn't be traced," said Willis. quote:After carefully studying the Facebook pages maintained by Koala staff, which were reaching about 3 million people weekly, Willis began using information-warfare tactics, some inspired by young Macedonians. Willis studied the connection between Koala headlines and the emotions they triggered among readers. The next time Koala Media's owners came into the office, Willis showed them a carefully outlined posting schedule.
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Oct 15, 2021 19:43
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Nix Panicus posted:Yes. I would 100% unequivocally trust the democrat party in the matter of the DNC leaks if there was definitive proof the documents were forged. Now, now... no need get naughty...
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Oct 16, 2021 05:58
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fool of sound posted:Both of you stop too. Sorry, I was just suggesting that they may want to be careful about using certain... shibboleths, considering we have this in the OP: fool of sound posted:This thread will be strictly moderated.
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Oct 16, 2021 06:09
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Here's a report that was created upon request of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to analyze and understand the influence operations of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the 2016 election season. The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency quote:Pro-Trump Operations Commence During Primaries The bolded parts are particularly interesting because they serve as confirmation that their disinformation campaigns didn't just target Right-wing audiences, but also Black audiences and Left-wing audiences, using messaging that each would be susceptible to. An example of this is given on the topic of Syria, on pages 58-61. While the underlying message was the same (i.e. the USA should get out of Syria, which is something Russia desperately wanted so that they could expand their own sphere of influence), Right-wing audiences were exposed to messaging about how foreign wars result in floods of refugees, Black audiences were exposed to messaging about how foreign wars result in waste of resources that could otherwise be used to solve domestic problems, while Left-wing audiences were exposed to messaging about general opposition to wars and meddling in other countries' affairs. Another interesting bit from the report is where they highlight IRA's efforts to undermine trust in journalism, and they paid particular attention to signal-boosting Wikileaks: quote:A sub-thread of note was the dozens of posts extolling the virtues of Wikileaks and Julian Assange that the IRA placed across Black, Left, and Right-leaning audiences on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Instagram accounts and Facebook pages produced memes teasing new Wikileaks drops (such as via IRA account @therepublicandaily, which positioned itself as a Republican news source) and reinforcing Assange’s reputation as a whistleblower with a commitment to journalistic freedom. The Twitter accounts joined in as well. There were a small number of Facebook and Instagram posts about Assange, reinforcing his reputation as a freedom fighter, on October 4th, 2016 – a few days before the major Podesta email dump occurred. Given the GRU involvement in the DNC hack with Wikileaks, it is possible that the IRA was tasked with socializing Wikileaks to both Right and Left audiences. Prior to October 4th, the last post about Assange had been in early September 2016. Once the emails were released, there were many more tweets and Facebook posts about them.  There's also the "Dismiss and Redirect" tactic they used: quote:Soon after the November 2016 election, investigative journalism began to uncover evidence of both the IRA’s social influence and the GRU’s hacking operations. As articles began to emerge about election interference – pointing the finger at Russia – the IRA didn’t shy away or ignore it. It used derision and disparagement in content targeting the Right-leaning pages, to create and amplify the narrative that the whole investigation was nonsense, that Comey and Mueller were corrupt, and that the emerging Russia stories were a “weird conspiracy” pushed by “liberal crybabies”. As facets of the investigation trickled out over 2017, the Right-targeted accounts justified, dismissed, normalized, and redirected. Consider the below message and see if you recognize the sentiment from posts on these very forums: quote:I think Donald Trump Jr had every right to meet with a Russian lawyer. First of all, she might have got really important information about Hillary Clinton. If the information is true I don’t care where it comes from Russia or China or wherever. If the Russians are able to expose Clinton’s lies then let them do it. I want to know the truth. Secondly, Donald Trump Jr published all the emails in order to be transparent and there is nothing outrageous in them. Not like he has deleted 33,000 of classified emails of smth. Third, this lawyer is a really suspicious figure who according to some news sources was spotted at an anti-Trump rally and has connections with the Democratic Party. Moreover, she has no proven connections with the Russian government. So the whole story looks like another provocation dedicated to resurrecting the dead Russian collusion story. They tried to defame the president and they lost now they are trying to use this weak ace in the sleeve against his son. Good luck with that!”
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Oct 19, 2021 22:02
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Probably Magic posted:Perhaps you could explain how maintaining Assad's presence, who was closely allied with Russia, would have "expanded" rather than "maintained" Russia's influence. Sure, I'm Turkish so perhaps I can indeed shed some light on this. While Syria has long been a customer of Russia for military equipment and training, things took a different dimension after the Syrian civil war began in 2011. Around this time, the USA had started to gradually disengage from the Middle East more generally. By directly intervening in the conflict and rescuing Bashar al-Assad's army from the brink of defeat in late 2015, Putin solidified the relationship and reminded both Syria and its other allies/clients that, just like the USA, Russia also has friends and cares about them. In order to understand how Russia expanded its influence, you need to be familiar with the developments on the ground. Specifically, one of Russia's objectives in intervening in Syria was to establish a forward military air base in the Middle East. They did this by converting large parts of the Bassel Al-Assad International Airport in Latakia into an air force base (Khmeimim). This is what allowed Russia to launch intensive air campaigns in the region against both ISIS and the FSA. In 2017 the Russian defense minister announced that both Khmeimim and the naval base in Tartus (which had also been substantially expanded) were going to be permanent. Lastly, one thing that is notable about the way Russia intervened in Syria is that it used much more powerful military assets than needed to fight an insurgency. We're talking about S-400s, cruise missiles launched from the air as well as from ships in the Caspian and Mediterranean, and an air "interdiction" policy over Syria. To maintain these, they set up a complex maritime resupply operation via the Turkish straits in the Marmara Sea. Their goal was/is to showcase Russia's military capabilities to other potential client states in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, where arms sales are highly competitive. This is how Russia's involvement in Syria expanded Moscow's sphere of influence, rather than merely maintaining it. (That wasn't their only objective — they had domestic reasons as well, such as reducing the risk of Islamist terrorism in Russia itself by making sure Russian Muslims, of which a substantial number had joined ISIS, would remain tied up in the Middle East, rather than returning to Russia. But that's not relevant to what you asked.)
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Oct 20, 2021 04:19
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Discendo Vox posted:Ars technica routinely reports on musk companies by uncritically repeating their advertising claims or investor relations claims, at length. A quick google gives simple examples: Here's them just repeating the content of their investor report with a very limited amount of context in a paragraph at the end; this is fairly typical; even as it runs alongside reporting of actual events happening to the company from outside. I don't know what exactly your expectations are when it comes to stuff like this. You and I have talked about this before, but, as a regular consumer of Tesla news and technology news in general, outlets like Ars Technica taking investor reports and converting them into digestible articles provide a valuable service. I'm not going to read several dozen-page PDF documents (or, god forbid, PowerPoint slides) containing a plethora of financial terms and similar jargon because I'm a layperson. I will, however, read interpretations of those reports by the tech press because they tend to highlight the important bits in ways that normal people can understand, as well as provide context. Sometimes that context is limited, as you noted in your first example, but Ars specifically has an above-average readership in terms of sophistication, and the comments sections on their articles tend to have useful discussions that add to the articles themselves. (Ars is actually remarkable in the sense that they are one of the last general-purpose news sites with fairly useful and informative comments sections.) Discendo Vox posted:Here's another similar article based on the Model S Plaid announcement. About 99% of the story is direct quotes from the press event and marketing materials, with all images provided by Tesla. This is stenography for a customer base. As opposed to... what? It is a press event, and the attendees are encouraged to take the information provided by the host and report it to their audiences. What is your ideal scenario here? Should Jonathan Gitlin whipped out his camera and taken his own pictures, or activated ~~stealth mode~~ to sneak into the backrooms and perform some top investigative journalism to uncover what Tesla must really been up to?
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Nov 14, 2021 03:48
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Harold Fjord posted:High effort feedback is clearly just as vulnerable to mod action so I don't know what else you'd expect Contrary to popular myths about D&D, typing lots of words is neither necessary nor sufficient in order to make contributions valuable. It is sometimes even detrimental, if you're trying to circumvent or ignore mod warnings by disguising your bullshit behind a thin veneer of "effort," because on top of whatever rule you might be breaking, it also makes you tedious.
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Dec 19, 2021 15:17
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