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There’s no simple fix to a problem [of right-wing propaganda media] generations in the making. As the benefits from Democratic ARPA and infrastructure bills made clear, quality policy (when it actually does materialize) isn’t enough in the post-truth era. Reality desperately needs a better PR department. That begins by recognizing that we’re under a well-funded, well-coordinated information assault.
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“The tricky part is that we need to build our own infrastructure,” Victor Pickard, an American media scholar at the University Of Pennsylvania tells me. “Overly relying on existing corporate and commercial-driven social media platforms has continued to pose major constraints for progressives. But there is no easy fix for that, obviously.”
We can try and detach U.S. journalism from the corrosive nature of advertising engagement. We can take a cue from Finland and shore up our education standards with an eye on media literacy and combating propaganda. We can encourage FCC regulators to restore media consolidation limits and protect diversity in media ownership.
We can embrace public funding for journalism, given data indicates public journalism funding helps protect democracies. Democrats can completely retool their feckless public messaging efforts with an eye on simplicity, redundancy, creativity, and brutal repetition. Activists and consumer groups can do a better job exploiting social media virality to reach young Americans.
We can build decentralized social-media platforms more resilient to the whims of erratic billionaires. We can restore trust in institutions by fighting corruption. We can find, fund, and amplify ethical journalists and influencers of conscience wherever possible. We can embrace antitrust reform and local alternatives to consolidated corporate power.
We can exhibit greater personal discipline when it comes to amplifying outrage engagement bait on social media. We can stop pretending that authoritarians are interested in a good faith debate on policy. We can stop watching cable-TV news empires that threw the public welfare under the bus a quarter century ago. We can realize we’re under attack and act accordingly.
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You have got to be fucking kidding me. Some 54% of U.S. adults read at a sixth-grade level or less? We all saw this coming from the '80s on, but I forgot that it’s been 40 years, and education has been properly gutted.
https://i.imgflip.com/53zmh4.jpg
In all seriousness though, you have to fight this the same way anti abortion lunatics spent decades fighting for their shit. Because there’s a loooooong way to fall before we even start getting close to a “failed state” classification. And your quality of life will plummet profoundly if we don’t fight back against the idiocy seeking to defile our country and destroy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Activists and consumer groups can do a better job exploiting social media virality to reach young Americans.
I actually doubt they can, as the algorithms controlling visibility are all about money and they can’t compete in that regard with those big actors actively working for the stultification of people.
Also: not an US problem at all, but a global one.
I like how now is referred to as the “post-truth era” as if there were pre-truth and truth eras as well… the internet and newspapers in general have never been infallible. Journalistic Integrity was a bigger deal, but it was pretty easy to find false, dubious and inflammatory statements in printed papers and news programs. As someone who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, I remember having to site multiple sources in papers due to inconsistencies and straight up lies and opinions being wide spread.
What we’re seeing here is less about truth, and more about the speed of information spread, truth or not. Coupled with the lack of questioning from the general public and the acceptance of marginal information by the masses. Anything that fits someone’s personal narrative is championed and distributed as truth. I feel that it’s partly due to the online bubbles that promote such community echo chambers, but we had those in the past as well. Perhaps they just didn’t work quite as well as those that can be both world wide and easily influenced by outside actors.
I’d agree that some of the perceived lack of journalistic integrity could be exaggerated by the AI and click bait tactics to drive views and revenue.
I’m all about decentralized social media, but I don’t think it’s a panacea as Lemmy has plenty of echo chambers and questionable information just as any other social media network.
the acceptance of marginal information by the masses. Anything that fits someone’s personal narrative is championed and distributed as truth
This is the much bigger issue IMO. The quantity of disinformation is irrelevant if people don’t fall for it, and Americans fall for it in far greater numbers that other western countries. That points to a failure of education and perspicacity at the individual level.
The quantity of disinformation is irrelevant if people don’t fall for it
I don’t know about you, but I find it increasingly difficult to find unbiased takes and find myself spending more time digging than I previously did. Because of this I find myself increasingly mislead about things, because the real truth might be so obscured that I need to find an actual academic to parse what information is out there and separate primary source from other mislead individuals.
Not to say I don’t disagree with your point, I think you make a fair one, but I do believe that the quantity of disinformation is absolutely relevant, especially in an age where not only anyone can share their misinformed belief online, but one where this is increasingly happening by malicious actors as well as AI.
That’s true, I was being too reductive with my comment. What you’re describing is the Steve Bannon “flood the zone with shit” strategy.
Which is entirely intentional on the part of the people who actually run this country. Uneducated citizens who don’t or can’t think critically are very easy to spoon-feed bullshit against their best interests. Republicans have been openly attacking public education for decades on behalf of Rupert Murdoch and friends, and at the same time parents have been foisting the rearing of their children off on educators because they work two or more jobs to support the household. The community mentality has entirely eroded as a result - nobody will step up to take care of neglected children because everyone’s too busy working, educators come under attack from both parents and administration for trying to be anything more than state-sanctioned babysitters, leading to mass resignations, reinforcing the idea that education should be privatized and/or run off of a bullshit voucher system.
America failed a long time ago, it’s just a question of who realizes it and who doesn’t. If you want to live through the next couple of decades, start building your communities ASAP. Mutual funds, community gardens, canning and other food preservation. Unionize, coordinate, run for office if you think you can hack it.
The one thing I like with Lemmy and Mastodon (and decentralized in general) is that there’s no economic incentive to push echo chamber/inflammatory stuff. Doesn’t mean it can’t be there, of course, but at least there’s no one making more money by pushing it in my face. My feeds are tame and boring compared to those on “algorithmic” social media. And that’s how I like it. :)
If the President controls the Press, and arguably Trump does, the US is in big trouble. It’s grim.
And yes, we can do all that stuff to fix it, but let’s be honest: we (as a country) are not going to.
Reality desperately needs a better PR department.
Indeed. And that also applies to getting left-wing politicians to recognize reality, not just the electorate.
