(2017-02-17) Caulfield Misinformation Is A Norovirus And The Web Is A Cruise Ship

Mike Caulfield: Misinformation Is a Norovirus and the Web Is a Cruise Ship

I thought I’d offer my take on a frame for the problem of misinformation on the web.

When you listen to historians talk, it can be pretty uplifting, in a weird “we’re screwed but we always have been” sort of way. Fake news and slanted news has been around since day one of our species. If you believe theorists like Dan Sperber, our reasoning power evolved not to solve problems, but to slant news. So this is nothing new, and maybe our reaction to this is a moral panic.

For me, the appropriate way to think about problems of web-based misinformation (Fake News) is through a Public Health lens. Through the lens of epidemiology, which looks at the spread of disease.

My view is that Misinformation is a stomach bug, one that has existed since the dawn of time in various strains. And the web, it’s a cruise ship.

There’s absolutely something to be done: prevent the room from having 701 people in it. The primary focus is on the people outside that room.

What cruise ships do is try to stop the spread of the virus.

Fact-checking isn’t a cure for misinformation. It’s prevention.

What fact-checks don’t do is influence true believers. And that’s OK. That’s not the battle we’re fighting.

The larger point is if we want to deal with misinformation on a network, we have to think in network terms. And in network terms, the most important stuff happens before a person adopts a Belief.

There’s the design of the web environment, for example. Open a browser like Chrome and go to a page and right click into a context menu. The context menu is so-named because it changes based on the context. But what if it gave you Context?

I’ve been working with Jon Udell on just such an extension for the Digital Polarization Initiative.