Summary
A new Journal of Marketing study finds that political polarization drives Republicans to spread misinformation to gain partisan advantage, while Democrats do not exhibit this behavior.
Republicans value winning highly and are more likely to share misinformation, even when its truth is questionable.
Six studies, including analyses of fact-checked statements, surveys, and presidential speeches, support these findings.
The spread of misinformation undermines democratic processes, such as increased restrictive voting laws after the 2020 election.
Researchers suggest reducing polarization, investing in fact-checking, and expanding media literacy education to combat misinformation’s impact.
Because they’re taking over the country I should start trusting them? Will they all of a sudden start telling the truth? They have been lying demonstrably for at least the last 60 years. The fact that they gain power won’t affect their honesty. Your “gotcha” comment fell flat because it doesn’t make sense. I’m going to continue the distrust because truth isn’t relative to who is in power.
In a world where the media is already changing their tone and coverage of Trump to be more favorable towards him, do you honestly think you’ll even be able to tell what the truth is soon? Who do you think is going to be willing to report the truth when doing so could lead you to being investigated or jailed on trumped up charges?
Remember, we just had a case where a judge explicitly stated that trump committed rape as most people and most jurisdictions defined it, and ABC had to cough up $15+ million and apologize to him for simply repeating the judge’s words and reporting on it. What kind of effect do you think that’s going to have? I’ll tell you what kind of effect it’s going to have: It’s going to cause media outlets to stop reporting objective truth, or at least spin it to make it much more favorable for Trump, out of fear of multimillion dollar lawsuits, boycotts, and threats of criminal investigations and/or prosecutions. The “Truth” will simply become whatever Trump says it is, because media outlets will be either unwilling or unable to report otherwise.
How in the world did you read my comment to mean that you should trust them? That’s explicitly the opposite of what I said.
You are right. I misread your comment. I reacted to the tone, and misread what you said. I apologize for that.
You are forgiven. I probably could have chosen my words more carefully. Thank you for the civil response.
What is the point you want to make?
That nothing will change until a stronger response than “it’s too bad Republicans have a tendency to spread misinformation” is made. We’ve known that to be a big problem for at least a decade and yet we categorically refuse to do anything about it. If government won’t address it then perhaps it’s time for more direct citizen involvement in the solution. I’ll leave the specifics of that suggestion to your imagination but I will say that social media execs have a very similar view to health insurance executives regarding the responsibility their industry has to address the damage they cause to society as a whole.