7th April 2022
This post is just to set a quick thought (as I am recovering from illness).
It is to contrast and compare two things, which seem to be leading to a common end.
The first is Putin-style censorship – the sort which means Russians generally do not appear to have true information available about the invasion of Ukraine.
This suits the authoritarian nationalist populist Putin.
The second is the anything-goes babble of social media and 24-hour online news and comments, where few are actually censored.
The effect of this babble appears to be that liberal and progressive voices are drowned out, with hyper-partisan shouts of fake news and ‘balance’.
This suits the authoritarian nationalist populist politicians in many other countries.
So we have two modes of media which seem very different, but which have the same authoritarian effect of undermining and restricting critical voices.
Anyway, just a quick thought. What do you think?
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“The second is the anything-goes babble of social media and 24-hour online news and comments, where few are actually censored.
The effect of this babble appears to be that liberal and progressive voices are drowned out, with hyper-partisan shouts of fake news and ‘balance’.
This suits the authoritarian nationalist populist politicians in many other countries. . . ”
Er, Yes to the Authoritarian type of censorship
I’ve yet to see evidence one way or the other of liberal/progressive type censorship
During the course of the Brexit referendum, many of us moderate leavers felt censored by the legacy media yet it was likely more perceived than real
Just my pennyworth
I suspect the most remarkable thing is that this happens far more than we realise, perhaps because we only tend to notice the more extreme examples.
On September 11th, 2001, Labour “Spin Doctor” Jo Moore infamously sent an email, as the drama in New York unfolded, declaring to the Labour Government that it would be “a good day to bury bad news”.
During the earliest days of his presidency in 2017, Donald Trump was completely broad-sided by the disclosure that his National Security Advisor, retired General Michael Flynn, had been arranging back-channel communications with Russia. The President’s response was to call for a press interview and declare – without any shred of evidence – that Barak Obama had ordered a phone tap of Trump Tower in New York.
So yes, I think you’re right with your observations, but I wonder if I might suggest a slight riff: active, actual dictators have the luxury of being able to control the media via censorship; wanna-be dictators, or would-be authoritarians stuck with the ignominy of being elected to office in a democracy that thwarts their ambitions… have to rely on The Babble.
It’s certainly all misdirection, that’s for sure.
A quote that comes to mind from reading your post is: “Collective wisdom can be distilled from the chattering of the masses.”
Which sounds very clever, but lacks somewhat in the practical application.
The “Anything goes babble of social media” is something that we must accept, and make the best of. Aside from the bounds of decency, I cannot see any way that it can be sensibly restricted.
What we need are better sorting mechanisms.
Easy means by which to identify the idiots, and defined protocols by which a decided argument can be advanced.
When the idiots in question are the idiots in charge, they ought to be obliged to properly argue their position with somebody, and that body ought to be the electorate at large.
I think it is not difficult: we have the technology, it’s simply a question of deciding how to use it.
Consider the engines they used to track down and micro-target vulnerable voters in the Referendum and Trump election, and imagine them put to work looking for the good arguments…
I think there’s a parallel with the way that the Internet has changed cultural production. In the Bad Old Days, there was a whole series of gatekeepers between a new musician (say) and the public: get an agent, get a record deal, get press coverage, get radio play, and at the end of all that – with luck – you’d be one of the fortunate few whose music the wider public could hear, and who could make a living out of it (both for themselves and for the gatekeepers).
Now, of course, the gatekeepers are irrelevant to getting heard: new musicians can put their music online at barely any cost, where an audience of billions can – potentially – find and listen to it, also at negligible cost. The only trouble is, thousands of other musicians are doing the same, and – with no gatekeepers – there’s no way for that enormous audience to know what’s out there, or what’s any good. Moreover, the flattened and frictionless production process that enables any musician to find a virtual stage also makes it almost impossible to make any money out of music. The result is, paradoxically, a greatly diminished popular music sector, with established superstars continuing to sell millions and a constantly changing roster of ‘breakthrough’ artists who can only scrape a living.
There is, perhaps, an optimal number of gatekeepers – or an optimal ratio of gatekeepers to ordinary people – in politics as well as culture. The number of gatekeepers should not be in single figures, but it should also not be identical to the number of ordinary people.
Another Phil wrote
>”There is, perhaps, an optimal number of gatekeepers – or an optimal ratio of gatekeepers to ordinary people – in politics as well as culture.”
These gatekeepers are gatekeepers of information, in politics or culture or elsewhere. But it is commonly said that “information is power” and also that “power corrupts”.
Therefore I posit that for us ordinary mortals the optimum number of information gatekeepers is zero. Information should be free to circulate to anyone that wants to receive it.
On the other hand, for an authoritarian the optimum number of information gatekeepers is 1 (one), although he’ll probably need to delegate a lot of the effort to minions who will implement the rules he specifies.
What I find very strange is why the bbc world service radio has to have a news bulletin EVERY 30 MINUTES. Programmes are interrupted. It is completely unnecessary, twice a day of sound, in-depth, well composed news is quite enough. The BBC seems not to have the self-confidence to resist the clamour of the baying crowds.
John wrote :
> “What I find very strange is why the bbc world service radio has to have a news bulletin every 30 minutes.”
You have to consider that the BBC *World* service don’t know what is the time schedule in the day for most of their listeners. Many may only have a brief period to be able to tune in and listen to a reliable source of news. A frequent bulletin should ensure that everyone has a chance get up-to-date news.
Regular users of social media will know correspondents they can trust, or will be able to sieve wheat grains from wheat chaff.
Developing your own triage system for primary and secondary news sources is possible.
Just as most people could probably learn to provide first aid, or to keep their car running temporarily.
Whether you think most people really could cut out the middlemen for news with better results probably depends upon your view of traditional news outlets and their products.
Reuters is free for the ordinary punter.
I subscribe to the NY Times, and the Guardian, and waft my way over myriad other news sources as things pique my interest.
Luckily enough, my social media contacts are people I know and trust not to be foolish or believe in made-up news. The past few years have seen one or two fall out of favour, but it was interesting how they revealed themselves.
I don’t think hyper partisan voices on social media drown out liberal and progressive voices over this because the overwhelming commentary on social media is pro Ukrainian and against Putin’s actions. From what I’ve seen anyone who questions this majority view is immediately jumped on as being pro-Russia and a war crimes apologist. This isn’t helpful to informed liberal debate either. Better to engage with and argue against what was said with facts. Assuming it isn’t a bot of course.
Social media is never a reliable source of news and this is no different in wartime. Now more than ever we need reliable independent news reporting to ensure the truth is told and is as widely available as possible.
Also, we should accept that disinformation will be used by both sides, though only one side is using state censorship. We shouldn’t automatically treat every announcement by the Ukrainian government as wholly true. For example, reports that a supermarket in Kyiv had been hit by a Russian strike naturally caused outrage as an attack on civilians but evidence later emerged Ukrainian army vehicles were parked there, so it was arguably a legitimate military target.
In the rush to get the latest information out, it might be better to find out what actually happened first. News of what actually happened yesterday is much more reliable than “reports just coming in”.
“Social media is never a reliable source of news…”
This, I think, speaks to the heart of the challenge. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, even Google’s all-pervasive search engine, have developed the habit of “curating” news for their users.
In this context, “curating” means, “copying content paid for an hosted by traditional news service providers, often without attribution, and then hosting it on their own platform”.
In some countries – such as Australia – these “social media” platforms are required to pay for the news they take:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/16/google-and-facebook-the-landmark-australian-law-that-will-make-them-pay-for-news-content
But beyond even the concept of paying for this content, there is a larger and more dangerous issue that Kevin takes us to. Which is that if you find a genuine, accurate news feed as part of your {Social Media Platform of Choice} news feed, you may come to view the content and establish that it is accurate and therefore trustworthy.
Once that platform has convinced you to trust what is hosted on their platform, it becomes much easier for both the platform owner and other users to place content into that ecosystem which are *not* accurate, truthful facts – and to make it harder for you to differentiate. Especially when some of the most dangerous purveyors of falsehoods lie so extravagently and excessively.
I wonder if it might be possible to enact some form of legislation that would require social media platforms to divest all news carrying activities, or at minimum to host them in an entirely separate part of their platform. This would mean that users would have to make a conscious choice to access the “factual news” as opposed to the “curated opinion”?
I note, for reference, that during President Trump’s tenure, the Fox News host Sean Hannity was redefined from being a “news anchor” to an “opinion based show” (my terminology), to deflect complaints that he continued to state known falsehoods under the guise of a “news broadcast”.
This sort of wilful disinformation would seem to be particularly dangerous for a democracy, yet at the moment the “free speech” and “freedom of the press” principles that we hold so dear seem to have been distorted to pave the way for systemic abuse.
Obviously it is very easy to point at an imagined wrong and think “it should be easy to legislate and prevent that”, but we know from experience that writing good, robust laws that will stand the test of time is extremely hard. Such difficulty, however, should not discourage us from at least trying.
Especially if our democracy and our freedoms are at stake.
My old Dad used to say “Newspapers should be called Viewspapers because that’s what they publish”.
I suppose this can be applied to all social media platforms.
At least the papers and MSM generally report facts (though they may spin them and omit inconvenient facts or even whole stories as convenient). So a story in the Guardian will have essentially the same factual basis as one covering the same thing in the Mail. It will usually be the headline and prominence of the story in the paper that differentiates things.
The problem with social media is there is no accountability or regulation at all and anyone can set up a news site and report complete garbage. It’s the wild west in comparison yet many regard it as more reliable than MSM. It’s no wonder politics has become more extreme as it reflects public opinion.
Much of what you say is true.
The simplest way to put this is that you get what you pay for.
It is simply impossible to separate the economics of news gathering and publication from the development of news.
If news outlets were the highly profitable main carriers of news and advertising that they were in the 1990s or before, it would be possible for them to carry editorial teams, subs, and copy-editors, and proof-readers.
People paid for serious content, which was seriously presented. And I don’t make spurious distinctions between broadsheets and tabloids here.
That world has gone. If you consume free news, it is likely that you are the product. Their algorithms will follow your consumption patterns – and package you up for advertisers to address. Dog owner. Parent of small children. Etc etc.
Nowhere in this world is any commitment to news quality. Or breadth of coverage.
You may think that we “should” cover foreign news – because every so often it becomes front page news.
But analysis of people’s reading/consumption shows that media gossip and celebrity news is far more popular. So channels invest limit resources where there are clicks.
The problem is that even subscription news channels get thinner and thinner.
This is the world we live in. I would argue that mass participation democracy requires decent education and high quality news. And that moves to remove public news provision by C4 and budget cuts at the BBC will have negative effects more broadly.
The irony that it is happening with two former journalists as two of the most powerful ministers is not lost on me.
Brace brace indeed.
You are right to point that, in the case of the current Ukraine drama, ANY pro-Russian view will be drowned out, and much the same happens to an extent in the very different contexts of climate change and Covid vaccinations. I think, however, that it comes down to the reliability of sources in these and other cases: some sources (ie the people who claim to provide information) simply are more reliable than others, and the greater the number of mutually independent sources the more likely they are to be reliable. Other criteria for assessing source reliability include, such as in the cases of climate change and vaccines, the proven academic standing of sources, since some sources are likely to be more qualified than others; and other criteria involve the likely greater reliability of sources who lack any vested interest in lying. SO, why would we trust the Russian government’s denial of atrocities in Bucha when the objective evidence like satellite images seems to disprove their denials, and when this government’s moral position is already weakened fatally by its unprovoked attack on a sovereign state and its past record of brutality to civilians? Unless of course one subscribes to a conspiracy theory which lumps ALL non-Russian news services as mere puppets of countries which desire the downfall of the Russian state – and this is hard to maintain.
The problem is proving the validity of sources. For example, a lot of anti-vax sources list academic qualifications. Even academics disagree. Conspiracy theories are very seductive and once hooked on them even well qualified people are utterly convinced. When someone posts on twitter do you really expect everyone reading it to spend time researching there background, history and qualifications? It simply isn’t going to happen. Trust in social media reports requires each indiviual to have their own filter system for who to believe. With MSM reporters it’s much easier to decide whether you trust the news outlet they work for.
I wasn’t talking about trusting obviously pro-Russian sources because they blatantly follow the propaganda line. However I’ve seen people on twitter branded as apologists for war crimes because doubted one aspect of initial reports of mass graves. People should challenge them of course but that kind of accusation is unnecessary.
The evidence of mass murder of civilians in Bucha and other occupied places is indisputable since the flat denials by Russia do not stand up against the forensic evidence and drone photographs.
The broad thesis is clearly true, of course. But which of us, this blog excepting is qualified to determine which critical voices should be heard? Not Elon Musk, I’d hypothesise.
I’d like hear more authentic, dispossessed voices. But can any of us be fit to determine which are valid? I’ve neither the time, the expertise or the mandate.
‘Critical voices drowned out’: it has gone much further than that…
A key element is Political Culture, something which is ‘meaningfully’ shaped over decades and has different core components that are not ‘evenly distributed’ (as a weighting of ‘national importance’) amongst different groups within a society (in any country) using demographics like class, affluence or job / position.
Democratic Political Cultures can be strengthened or weakened (with large amounts of people ‘not caring’ – this can be ‘tolerated’ by ‘many’ if a society is ‘working well’ democratically for ‘most people’. Others will be more concerned with a bread and butter ‘existential’ life including security / law and order. This is one reason why Putin is strong in the Russian countryside and even to some extent why ‘downtrodden’ UK citizens may vote Conservative (the late Members singer Nick Tesco articulated this concept well: vote for those that promise to help with their law and order living hell ie ‘the alternative is perceived as being worse’ – reject a speeches instead of security approach!
Then pile on ‘wide and varied’ propaganda – where in any country only ‘a small number of people’ have a ‘broad worldview’: it’s very far away from a morning broadsheet with a coffee!)
Add in this: Political Psychologists like Karen Stenner assert (rightfully) that about one third of people in any society have Authoritarian Personalities (where they willingly agree to trample on other people’s rights). Where these types of people ‘dominate’ to the exclusion of ‘all else’ it’s a bad place for those of a ‘live and let live’ hue (and it unites people of wide gaps in wealth etc ie they all join in a ‘common authoritarian-populist purpose’ (something not understood enough about why Brexit Ideology has such a foothold in the UK).
It’s an area that has a long been explored by academics – a seminal work is Almond & Verba, eds. The Civic Culture Revisisted – Princeton
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/tpavone/files/almond
The general point (from where it all goes from here) is that so much has been thrashed and destroyed in terms of civic culture (in lots of countries) that just making ‘reliable news’ available to everybody (again) will only make a limited difference as it needs years of nurturing (within a body like the European Union for most countries to hone their democratic models). This supra-national model is not an option for Russia but a more balanced internal Federation has to be the future: maybe Japan after WWII offers some food for thought (on what might be possible at some point?)
Garry Kasparov also frequently touches on these inter-related themes in his tweets and wrings.
Get well soon, DAG – I tested positive for you know what this morning. Hope you’re feeling better than me.
In reply to this, I thought of mentioning a certain Cambridge PhD and her large twitter following but you already know who I mean and it’s all a bit depressing really.
I think the issue of self-censorship rather than being ‘drowned out’ is also a factor, and helps those who are vocal – on whatever side – assume that everybody thinks like that.
When you want to avoid the pile-on, keeping quiet can be a wise move.
I am aware that, socially, some issues are dynamite – and if you don’t belong to one of the two factions, you are a target for both sides. (Yes, I may be mixing with the wrong people.)
From my perspective, it seems that quite a few people use social media (and news media) to get evidence to support the views they already hold rather than to get information or news.
That seems to be part of the problem: people think that they are being informed but they are often just cherry-picking what they want to hear. (And, yes, I probably fall into that trap at times.)
I can recommend a sabbatical from social media (you can still get DAG by email – and get well soon, by the way) so that you can see that it is only a part of the picture.
The obvious mechanism leads to “underground” channels which are more trusted. The drowned out in the babble simply means that “serious views” may as well never be espoused since they are quickly subsumed into a sea of noise, but the punters have “had their say”. It does pose a very serious problem that has few obvious solutions. Your contributions attract a relatively small, but seriously minded readership, but it is doubtful that any views expressed here, no matter how brilliant, will gain traction and change any major, public conversations.
Slightly, off tangent, one of the few positive outcomes of the pandemic is that some organisations have taken to streaming what would have been physical meetings, online. Whilst participation is far from ideal, at least you can inform yourself on some key topics. The European Movement broadcast an interview with Ian Lucas (ex MP) on his book Digital Gangsters which looks at use of social media to subborn democracy (available online from their YouTube channel as of tomorrow for the curious).
This is to do with ‘memetics’ in the sense meant by the guy who coined the term ‘meme’ (Dawkins – The Selfish Gene – 1979). ‘Memes’ propagate in human minds like genes do in organic species. They exhibit two important properties that impinge on their probability of propagation: 1. How good they are at getting themselves copied into people minds, 2. How accurate the copies that are made tend to be.
The second factor tends to impact complex memes ( like constitutional law concepts ) negatively. What most people know about it is often inaccurate due a lack of recall fidelity and the relevant supporting memetic structures that make any such recollections coherent.
Trying to invent memes that have a good basic tendency to get copied is what advertising executives and political campaign organisers do. What you see on social media is an unfiltered resource which can tell you a lot about which memes have in fact been ‘copied’ prolifically. What social media does is provide a way for individuals to report the state of their ‘memeplexes’ en-masse to memeticists, advertisers, politicians and criminals, giving them a powerful ‘unequal information’ advantage over the public.
Why people do this is beyond me.
The important point is that the ‘fitness’ (and therefore pervasiveness) of the meme has only a tangential relationship to the abstract qualities it represents such as logic, truth, ethics, quality or value.
“Meme” fitness – bat shit crazy meme or not – defines popular opinion and voting intention. Liberalism just isn’t as good a meme as ‘bat shit crazy’ and it seems most of our government know that.
There is a connection between censorship and the babble but it is not that they function in the same way, it is that arguments against the babble will tend to lead to censorship, with the censors appointed as fit to filter out the dross. If one abhors censorship as I do one should tolerate the babble. No one is infallible and that is the unspoken assumption we all tend to forget. In tolerating the babble we should prefer good hard to vary explanations of phenomena and recognise that our every observation is theory-laden as Karl Popper put it. The theory could be wrong.
All an argument in favour of a BBC whose funding is independent of government and governed by a truly independent and broadly based oversight body?
The water analogy: with drought one must dig deep, with flood one needs to rise above it.