social media-sharing

Study: How Breitbart Media’s Disinformation Created The Paranoid, Fact-Averse Nation That Elected Trump

seandotpolitics:

Right-wing media evolved into a hall of mirrors in 2016, when Breitbart displaced Fox News as the key agenda-setting and attack-leading epicenter of a disinformation-filled, paranoid ecosystem promoting Donald Trump and his pro-white America agenda.

Breitbart not only led the right’s obsessive, hostile focus on immigrants, it was also the first to attack professional reporting such as the New York Times and Washington Post. Breitbart’s disruptive template fueled the political and information universe we now inhabit, where the right dismisses facts and embraces fantasies.

There is no corollary dynamic on the left or among pro-Clinton audiences in 2016. The left’s news sources, media consumption and patterns of social media-sharing are more open-minded and fact-based and less insular and aggressive. Still, Breitbart’s obsessive focus on fabricating and hyping scandals involving Hillary Clinton (and Jeb Bush early in the primary season) pushed mainstream media to disproportionately cover its agenda.

These observations are among the takeaways of a major study from Columbia Journalism Review that analyzed 1.25 million stories published online between April 2015 and Election Day 2016. While the study affirmed what many analysts have long perceived—that right-wing media and those who consume it inhabit a paranoid and dark parallel universe—it also documented shifts in the right’s media ecosystem; namely, Breitbart supplanting Fox News as the leading purveyor of extreme disinformation.

For years, and almost always mainly just for fun, I’ve listened to conservative talk radio hosts. I’ve also always wanted to understand how others see things. Seeing both sides is, of course, necessary for critical thought

Today, I watched a few Breitbart video clips (stolen content with their branding in a frame, btw) in an attempt to grok the perspective of other folks I know who still insist on towing that line. Right after seeing that video, I saw this as it was freshly posted. Here I am reading it again late night and just befuddled at how things have changed.

I used to see these “wingnuts” (right wingers) as something remote and distant. Now it seems as though they’re fully entrenched. It’s sick and sad.

Clive Thompson on the Instagram Effect

Mobile photo apps aren’t just playthings, notes Wired’s Clive Thompson. They’re a whole new way of seeing.

Wired

Clive Thompson on the Instagram Effect

austinkleon:

As I used the app more and more, something surprising happened: I became increasingly observant of the world around me. Walking to the subway the other day, I spotted a backhoe parked on a corner and got curious—what could I do with that? Presto: Hefe helped me turn it into the dirty claw of a weary dragon. Later that day, a filtered snap of my living-room floor revealed how it secretly looks like the wood on a country barn….Critics sniff that filters are mere retro-chic nostalgia. That’s partly true, but it misses the creative urge here—and how filters affect what gets photographed.

Related: Clive on Instagram tags and “How Instagram Changes The Way I Look At Things”

I’d argue that Instagram’s filters are only a small factor in this “increasingly observant” mindset: having a tool — any tool — that makes it easy and fun to capture and share the ephemera of daily life pushes you to look a little more closely at boring old daily life.

A little more than four years ago I had this to say about my first few weeks of using Twitter:

…about ten years ago I had a writing regimen: among other things, I had to document one moment per day. It didn’t have to be anything significant, but at some point during the day I had to pull out the notebook and record something. The side effect of this was that I found myself going through the day in a more observant and thoughtful manner. I was looking and listening a lot more, thinking more about what was happening around me.

And now Twitter has started to do the same thing for me. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve already done my share of “it’s raining, and my butt itches” tweets, but to put it in Holmesian terms I’m observing more, rather than just seeing.