this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024

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‘Stakes are really high’: misinformation researcher changes tack for 2024 US election (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave to c/news

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Kate Starbird says attacks have made research difficult, and claims of bias arise because of prevalence of lies from the right

A key researcher in the fight against election misinformation – who herself became the subject of an intensive misinformation campaign – has said her field gets accused of “bias” precisely because it’s now mainly rightwingers who spread the worst lies.

Kate Starbird, co-founder of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, added that she feared that the entirely false story of rigged elections has now “sunk in” for many Americans on the right. “The idea that they’re already going to the polls with the belief that they’re being cheated means they’ll misinterpret everything they see through that lens,” she said.

Starbird’s group partnered with Stanford Internet Observatory on the Election Integrity Partnership ahead of the 2020 elections – a campaign during which a flood of misinformation swirled around the internet, with daily claims of unproven voter fraud.

Starbird and her team helped document that flood, and in return congressional Republicans and conservative attorneys attacked her research, alleging it amounted to censorship and violated the first amendment.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It looks like the US right has been pretty successful in framing the debate:

She says she now refers more to “rumors” than to “misinformation” – both because “rumor” has more historical context, and because “misinformation” is a much more politicized term, co-opted by people outside the field, similar to how the legitimate phenomenon of “fake news” on social media before the 2016 election got twisted by Donald Trump into an insult to journalists.

Her team will probably not flag content to social media platforms, either. “That piece of the work has been so effectively twisted into a censorship narrative that it becomes hard to help out in that way,” she said.

[–] antidote101 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

because “misinformation” is a much more politicized term, co-opted by people outside the field

Whose outside the field of politics?

similar to how the legitimate phenomenon of “fake news”...

Ahh yes, legitimate ever since Hitler's use of "Lügenpresse".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

There was a brief period around 2016 when it actually meant what it sounds like—lies promoted by "news" organizations like Fox News

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I wonder if someday in the future anyone will be able to untangle the mess America has become and point to the one person who started it all.

[–] antidote101 11 points 1 year ago

Ronald Reagan.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I doubt it was one person who started it.

And I suspect it began long ago - US political coverage in the 1990s was full of talk of partisanship. For that to have taken effect, I'm guessing it must have started ten or twenty years before.^(but I don't know what I'm talking about)

[–] captainlezbian 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah it was in the Nixon era.

[–] JustAManOnAToilet -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Papa Joe was able to have his daughter lobotomized then go on to promote his family to the point of getting his son elected president.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You're not wrong about the lobotomy (see Rosemary Kennedy), but I'm unsure what you're referencing here.