We are going to be deluged with disinformation. I plan to work through particular examples to show how to evaluate it. The evaluation won’t always be unambiguous, as in this first example.
There’s a Twitter thread making the rounds. It looks like it’s from just an ordinary guy who wants to help defeat Trump.
I won’t post the whole thread. The gist of it is that he knows “the magas” and can tell “liberal Twitter” what needs to be done to get their vote. It’s not different from what we’ve heard from a lot of Republicans – don’t be too liberal, and try to sound welcoming to defectors from Trump.
First: Who is behind this account? The Twitter profile isn’t useful at this point. The thread has been widely circulated, which has probably inflated the follower numbers. The account was created in November 2018, which is pretty recent.
The self-description may or may not be true. We have no way of knowing. And thus we have no way of knowing whether the rest of the thread is accurate or useful. Even if the description is true and the rest is that person’s perception, how do we know it’s generalizeable?
Second: The argument in the thread is not original, just framed in a folksy way from someone who sees “the magas” close up. It privileges white reactionary men and excludes everyone else.
Third: Although the argument that Democrats should aim their electoral strategy at white working-class men is widespread, I have seen no data to back it up. Is it better to go for those marginal voters in swing states or to get out a diverse vote as widely as possible? I’d seriously like to see some data on this.
Fourth: Points the second and the third are potentially divisive. They are a basis for arguing – over nothing, since the argument so far has been data-free – and, further, they tell everyone who isn’t a white working-class man that they don’t count. That’s a way to demoralize them and suppress their vote.
That divisiveness and demoralization is the purpose of disinformation. The argument appeals to preconceptions and devalues those not holding those preconceptions.
Is it disinformation? 7/10 it is. To be honest, the first tweet, an anonymous person posing in a particular way, ready to tell us how to handle something, was enough for me to reject the whole thing.
Is This Disinformation? – The First In A Long SeriesPost + Comments (85)