Politico Op-Ed Calls out Conservatives for ‘Fake News,’ but They Missed the Mark Again – Opinion

You’ll find this one interesting.

Authors Hemant Kakkar and Asher Lawson, a professor and student at Duke University, respectively, penned a piece for Politico in which they reported on the results of a study they recently conducted that was designed to identify the group that was most likely to share “misinformation” online. Now, we already know that, for these folks, the definition of “misinformation” typically means “opinions with which we disagree.”

But let’s put that to the side for a minute.

According to the authors, they have identified who most often shares false information online about issues such as COVID-19 and vaccines. Not surprising, the authors list conservatives as the main source of fake news. But in a surprising moment of intellectual honesty, they acknowledge that blaming most Republicans or conservatives for the dissemination of misinformation is an “oversimplified” and “misguided” generalization. They say:

In newly published research, we found that it’s not conservatives in general who tend to promote false information, but rather a smaller subset of them who also share two psychological traits: low levels of conscientiousness and an appetite for chaos. Importantly, we found that several other factors we tested for — including support for former President Donald Trump — did not reliably predict an inclination to share misinformation.

According to the researchers, their “findings suggest it is misguided to assign blame for misinformation to the political right broadly,” and they acknowledge that using these arguments “risks increasing polarization.”

Instead of blaming the conservative movement as a whole, the authors suggest it is more “productive” to focus on what they call “low-conscientiousness conservatives” (LCCs). Then they wrote:

It is clear that research shows that conservatives are more inclined to misinformation than the liberals. As an example, people with a conservative leaning were more inclined to use Twitter and Facebook to spread misinformation during the 2016 elections. Likewise, in the early months of the pandemic, conservatives were more likely to believe Covid-19 was a hoax, and to downplay the virus’ severity.

After concluding that conservative ideology doesn’t explain why one might spread false news stories, the researchers decided to “investigate the role personality traits might play” and focused more on conscientiousness, which they define as “the tendency to regulate one’s own behavior by being less impulsive and more orderly, diligent, and prudent.” Their working hypothesis was that conservatives “with lower levels of conscientiousness would be more inclined to spread fake news and that there would be no difference between highly conscientious conservatives and their liberal counterparts.”

It appears the authors’ findings were in accordance with their original hypothesis; low-conscientiousness conservatives were far more likely than those who fell into the other groups to share misinformation. “On average, they were  2.5 times more likely to share misinformation than the combined averages of the other three groups,” the authors wrote.

The researchers also sought to discover what motivates LCCs to share fake news stories and realized it had nothing to do with “support for Trump, time spent on social media, distrust of the mainstream media,” or even “endorsement of conservatives social and economic values.”

Instead, they found that the “only reliable explanation was a general desire for chaos – that is, a motivation to disregard, disrupt, and take down existing social and political institutions as a means of asserting the dominance and superiority of one’s own group.”

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Participants indicated their appetite for chaos by using a scale to express how much they agreed with statements like, “I think society should be burned to the ground.” For LCCs, we concluded, sharing false information is a vehicle for propagating chaos.

They then tried to figure out whether LCCs could be stopped from spreading fake news stories. It was not possible to stop LCCs from sharing fake news stories through social media, according to the authors. “LCCs continued to share fake news stories at a higher rate compared with liberals and high-conscientiousness conservatives, despite being told the news was inaccurate,” they explained.

In the end, they conclude that the “onus fall primarily on social media companies” to deal with the problem. The authors aren’t advocating more censorship but it is clear that leftists want to go there.

As with all articles this kind, something is missing. In the article, the authors state that this research was done because misinformation is an important issue and should be dealt with. Indeed, the majority of us would concur.

While they recognize that conservatives don’t share fake news, many fail to acknowledge the falsified news stories shared daily by mainstream media. They take it for granted that outlets like CNN – which has repeatedly been caught reporting fake news stories – are not a pernicious force in American society.

However, there are left-wing media activists who work at MSBNC. The Washington Post and The New York Times, ABC News, and several others routinely skew their reportage in a way that is clearly designed to favor the left — even if it means deceiving their audience. It is more sinister than conservative fake news because it is supported by credibility.

Fake news stories insisting former President Donald Trump called Nazis “fine people” are dangerous to society. It is dangerous for society to deceive the public by telling them that an MAGA-hat-wearing group of high school students was harassing an elderly Native American man. It is dangerous for society to reinforce the belief that police officers of color are active in hunting down unarmed black men and firing on them every day. To tell Americans that Trump’s 2016 Presidential election was stolen by Russia is an abomination to the society.

The false narratives propagated by left-wing propaganda factories are an important part of America’s division right now. If the researchers truly wished to mitigate the damage that fake news causes, they would not only focus on low-conscientiousness conservatives. The researchers would examine the impact of fake news on society by examining how journalists disguised as charlatans are also damaging it.

These researchers should take note of the fact that these mainstream media outlets, which are activist media outlets, have a greater reach than LCCs. They share conspiratorial theories about vaccinations on Facebook. RealFake news is a problem. But perhaps performing a study on this matter isn’t quite as lucrative as blaming chaos-loving right-wingers. After all, most academics would prefer to remain employed, wouldn’t they?