New Orleans Recently we looked a misinformation. In the same way that some programs, institutions, and people are putting their heads now in duck-and-cover maneuvers calling diversity “belonging,” climate change is now “extreme weather,” and for some misinformation is better labelled as “rumors.” Maybe that’s right. We can argue about what we understand to be misinformation, but we all know a rumor when we hear one or have been plagued by some whether in the schoolyards of our memories or the world of work.
Lizzo has song about that that nailed the problem, if there was a way I could clean it up and share, it included these verses:
Last year, I thought I would lose it
Reading s**t on the internet
My smoothie cleanse and my diet
No, I ain’t f**k Drake yetSick of rumors
But haters do what they do (uh)
Haters do what they doAll the rumors are true, yeah
Fake ass, fake boobs, yeah
Made a million at Sue’s, yeah
Y’all be runnin’ with fake news, yeah
Stopping rumors is a thankless, Sisyphean job, but some are willing to take it on. Turns out there’s a rumor clinic of sorts called the Center for an Informed Public run by Dr. Kate Starbird at the University of Washington in Seattle. She has developed a gumbo research program that combines data science, journalism, and political analysis. This isn’t ivy tower stuff, as Science reports:
“Starbird and her colleagues have spent more than 4 years studying the rumors that swirl around elections. It’s not purely an academic interest: As they amass data, the team writes rapid research blogs explaining to journalists, election officials, and the public what rumors are circulating and where they are coming from – and correcting the record.”
These days this kind of work is vital and almost dangerous, given the amount of abuse that is heaped on any truth tellers and their like. A falsehood can spread like a prairie fire, fueled by social media. Science mentions a concept in neuroscience called “Hebb’s law: What fires together, wires together.” In the context of rumors, once they start these days, it’s off to the races.
The researchers chart the way the process evolves. A rumor may start with something that has a kernel of truth to it, for example a wrong estimate of the number of overseas voters that was in Democratic National Committee memo. Someone in a conservative publication claims that’s an effort to pack the ballots with such votes. It sits there for days without much action, even though it’s clickbait. Then all of a sudden a Trump or a Musk sees it, retweets or puts it on their own media streams, and it goes viral as it wires together all of the like minded and takes on a life of its own. Even though totally false it takes on the veneer of truth within a closed circle of adherents.
We need more of these kinds of rumor control operations, but it seems a bit like they are fighting a forest fire with a garden hose.