{"id":1450,"date":"2017-02-07T17:40:29","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T17:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=1450"},"modified":"2017-02-07T17:40:59","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T17:40:59","slug":"why-simply-countering-fake-news-with-fact-checking-may-not-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=1450","title":{"rendered":"Why Simply Countering \u2018Fake News\u2019 With \u2018Fact Checking\u2019 May Not Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fact checking initiatives against \u2018Fake News\u2019 will not work unless they take account of values differences<\/em><\/h3>\n

The news is full of reports of moves to stem \u2018fake news\u2019, for example involving Facebook, Google, French TV<\/a>, and the BBC<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0This is \u2018Fake News\u2019 Week<\/a> on the UK\u2019s Channel 4.\u00a0 New entities such as Full Fact<\/a>, are creating online tools to enable journalists and consumers to identify \u2018fake news\u2019 in various forms, and taking the methodology further<\/a> than established outlets such as such as Factcheck.org<\/a>, PolitiFact<\/a> and Snopes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile campaigners, upholders of standards of democracy, and those who did not vote for Trump in the US election or voted Remain in the UK\u2019s Referendum on the EU, are alarmed at the methods used in the Trump<\/a> and Leave campaigns<\/a> to tailor (sometimes untrue) messages to what particular psychological groups wanted to hear, and the way they \u2018got away with it\u2019 by gaming the systems and reflexes of the conventional news media.<\/p>\n

As Andrew Wigmore* who worked for UKIP and Leave funder Arron Banks, subsequently told Edward Stourton<\/a> of the BBC:<\/p>\n

\u201cwe actually were monitoring Trump, and he started sending out all these crazy messages, just to get attention.\u00a0 This was brilliant for Arron, he loved this, so we started sending out some of the most outrageously provocative tweets, and they were all immigration-led, so when it comes to the bad stuff we totally took the Trump rule book, and tried to apply it here.\u00a0 And we quickly discovered, it worked.\u00a0 And we got more and more fearless, you know, we would talk about who particularly we were going to pick on, whether it was an individual, a politician or a\u00a0 party, or a subject\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The old media assumption was essentially that there were consequences to actually lying, at least when it \u2018mattered\u2019 as when dealing with \u2018serious\u2019 things like politics, and that although spin and bias were unavoidable, \u2018news\u2019 was tested against the output of rival channels and standards of actuality, that is some form of objective truth.\u00a0 Trump and Leave demonstrated that this need no longer apply, and so the would-be fact-checking battlers against \u2018fake news\u2019 are now grappling with a new reality in the shape, particularly in the US,\u00a0 of a government which professes to believe in \u2018alternative facts<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

This domain of believing anything you want to believe because it feels right has always existed but until now it was confined to gossip, cults, conspiracy theorists, unregulated advertising and marketing, totalitarian regimes, religions, the paparazzi, controversialists, drama, fiction, and arguably if intermittently, inter-personal relations. \u00a0In public life it was suppressed and constrained by laws and media norms which are now limping after social media like a lame duck in the wake of a tsunami.\u00a0 That wave carried Trump into the Whitehouse and the UK into Brexit.<\/p>\n

The cry \u2018something must be done\u2019 is one I agree with but the problem many of these projects face, and which may well undo them, is values differences.\u00a0 Some mainstream politicians for example, are seeing the current advantages of the Alt-Fact World, and using it to try and push further against their enemies. \u00a0For instance on 6th<\/sup> February British MP John Redwood, rolled up<\/a> the BBC, scientists and climate change into one example of why \u2018alternative truth\u2019 is needed.\u00a0 By treating political differences based on ideological belief, as equivalent to belief or not in what is established by scientific method, politicians legitimize and normalize any Alt-Fact, even how many people are or are not standing in front of the Whitehouse in a photograph.<\/p>\n

The fact that John Redwood includes the BBC as an example of \u2018bias\u2019, shows the problem.\u00a0 No fact checking system produced by the BBC is likely to satisfy John Redwood.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know but he might quite like one produced at the Daily Mail<\/em> or the Daily Telegraph<\/em> but certainly not The Guardian<\/em> nor presumably New Scientist<\/em>.\u00a0 [In Britain most national newspapers have quite distinct values-profiles<\/a>. In the US it is more the TV channels that have distinct values-profiles].<\/p>\n

For any sort of global fact-checking or Truth Rating system to work, it will need to be accepted across values differences, which to put it in contemporary terms, means across the Leave-Remain divide in the UK, and across the Democrat-Republican divide in the US.\u00a0 This means involving people from different values groups from the start, not fashioning something that one lot love and then trying to sell it to those who will hate it because of the predicates, language, reference points, source and assumptions, let alone the likely consequences.<\/p>\n

It is pretty certain that the EU Referendum and the Trump election divided UK and US societies along the Power versus Universalism axis, just one but usually the most powerful one, of the many \u2018values antagonisms\u2019 found in all societies and mapped by Israeli professor Shalom Schwartz.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Converted into the Values Modes and Maslow Groups of CDSM, this looks like a horizontal cut across the \u2018values map\u2019, cleaving society along a line with Settlers on one side, together with Golden Dreamer Prospectors (pro Trump, pro Brexit), and Pioneers on the other, along with the Now People Prospectors (pro Clinton, pro EU\/Remain). It won\u2019t have been a 100% divide but it was a very strong sorting effect, of which more another time.\u00a0 (See also this previous blog<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This in turn means that to be effective, any \u2018fact checking\u2019 system will need to be supported by at least these two different (if huge) groups.\u00a0 There are ways to do this but right now all the initiatives I\u2019ve seen appear to come from individuals and institutions on the Pioneer \u2013 Now People side (the losers in both polls). \u00a0That\u2019s not good.<\/p>\n

Design Through Arbitration<\/strong><\/p>\n

With such recent polarisation in both the US and UK, some form of arbitration is going to be needed.\u00a0 In arbitration both sides agree that a third party will make the important decision, with that third party often picked by intermediaries, who are themselves trusted by the two conflicted parties.\u00a0 This may be much more complicated than just involving three individuals.<\/p>\n

Not everyone will want to play ball but that\u2019s not necessary.\u00a0 \u00a0It might mean for example finding some senior Republicans or institutions that senior Republicans trust, to pick the intermediaries from their side, or maybe even Fox News, \u00a0rather than expecting Messrs Bannon and Trump to be involved.\u00a0 On the other could be senior Democrats and maybe CNN.\u00a0 And something similar in other countries.<\/p>\n

It would be possible to sell such a system after it is up and running, if it had sufficient utility value, for example if a critical mass of media and social media adopted it as the standard, and if businesses and stock markets started to do so and if it spread globally.\u00a0 But with the funds at their disposal, it would also be perfectly possible, if for example the Settler-Golden Dreamer-alt-right wanted, for them to launch and promulgate an Alt Fact Checker, thereby simply moving the values stand-off from one place to another, into an argument about fact checking and standards systems, rather than \u2018facts\u2019 and \u2018news\u2019.<\/p>\n

* Mr Wigmore is pictured here<\/a> in this Daily Mail<\/em> photo, with Mr Farrage and others on a visit to Mr Trump in Trump Towers<\/p>\n

Thanks to CDSM<\/a> for use of slides in this blog<\/em><\/p>\n

Chris Rose<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fact checking initiatives against \u2018Fake News\u2019 will not work unless they take account of values differences The news is full of reports of moves to stem \u2018fake news\u2019, for example involving Facebook, Google, French TV, and the BBC.\u00a0 \u00a0This is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1450"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1458,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions\/1458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}