It’s a new era. According to the authors “Technological processes beyond the control of any person or country – the convergence of social media, algorithmic news curation, bots, artificial intelligence, and big data analysis – were creating echo chambers that reinforced our biases, were removing indicia or trustworthiness, and were generally overwhelming our capacity to make sense of the world, and with it our capacity to govern ourselves as reasonable democracies.” In this book, the authors discuss these issues by applying a wide range of tools and data sets along with review of literature that developed before and after the 2016 election. We see how the party of Reagan and the two Bush presidents was defeated by the party of Trump, Breitbart, and billionaire Robert Mercer. Their work explains how a media ecosystem that initially benefited the GOPs gain of power ultimately spun out of control.
The first part of the book is entitled “Epistemic Crisis.” The authors use many charts and diagrams to make their points. These charts are very enlightening. Part of the problem was the “adoption by major media of the framing and agenda-setting efforts of the right wing and the Trump campaign.” The Clinton scandal consumed the bulk of the media news – not good if you want to win an election. An interesting point made by the authors concerning the Russian interference, Facebook algorithms and such is that these things depended on “the asymmetric partisan ecosystem that has developed over the past four decades.” In other words, technology can exacerbate existing conditions to the point of crisis only if the existing underlying fabric of society is already frayed. The authors continue with definitions of propaganda and it elements – words such as, manipulation, disinformation, network propaganda, propaganda feedback loop, propaganda pipeline, and the attention backbone. There are then the effects of propaganda such as, induced misperceptions, distraction, disorientation, and misinformation. This is followed by enhancing our understanding of “the entire ecosystem: the outlets and influencers who form networks, the structure of networks, and the flow of information in networks.” What is interesting is the virtual absence of the center-right. Further right, we see how Facebook, for example, gave a large audience to Breitbart with a more normal distribution of sites on the left. Once again, the authors make good use of charts and diagrams to illustrate the data. I also found interesting that the authors concluded “that architecture and the institutional character of the media outlets that constitute it, more that the Russians, more than the fake news entrepreneurs, more than Facebook advertising, and more than Cambridge Analytica, are most directly responsible for the relevance and success of disinformation, propaganda […] in the American media ecosystem.” A consistent pattern becomes discernable from the data: there is not left-right division, but rather a division between the right and the rest of the media ecosystem. The right wing behaves as predicted by models – exhibiting high insularity with susceptibility to information cascades, rumor and conspiracy. A system of correcting falsehoods is not in play here. On the left, however, there exists a media system exhibiting structural features that are more robust to propaganda efforts and offer more avenues for self-correction.
Part Two gets into the dynamics of network propaganda. Here the authors discuss three primary mechanisms by which media ecosystems affect politics: agenda setting, priming, and framing. One chapter delves into immigration and islamophobia, where we see the agenda is about immigration. After the 2005 to 2007 years of bipartisan efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, we see views on this subject diverge sharply. Again, the authors provide a plethora of charts and tables to support their research. Breitbart sticks out as a bridge between white nationalists and the rest of the media ecosystem, and again the center, center-left, and left seem to form a single media ecosystem. Another chapter is devoted to discussing three detailed case studies “of how Fox News actively used its position at the core of the right-wing media ecosystem to support the president in the central political controversy of his presidency.” Discussed is the “deep state,” the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, and the Uranium One story. What I found interesting is that the theme of mainstream media bias touted by the right has existed at least since the 1944 launch of the right-wing magazine Human Events. Another interesting revelation is that the pattern of coverage of Clinton’s email scandal show little difference between top right-wing publications and top center and center-left publications. Through many charts and diagrams, the authors showed just how, “Conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and rumors that fit the tribal narrative diffuse more broadly and are sustained for longer on the right than in the rest of the media ecosystem.”
In Part Three, attention is turned to “the primary culprits that have received more sustained public attention as the alleged causes of our present moment of information disorder.” We are given examples of the “propaganda pipeline,” which is the path from the periphery to the core though various “amplification sites.” We learn also that because of their insular nature, sites and social media diffusion networks that traffic in politically motivated falsehoods make the right wing more susceptible to penetration and less capable of self-correction. This allows Russian propaganda efforts consistent with right-wing American framings to insert themselves and gain credence in their media system. There is more discussion about sockpuppets, bots, cyborgs, and ads and their influence in the election. This discussion corners around Facebook, Instagram and the Internet Research Agency. We see the distinction between white and gray propaganda and useful idiots. In the end, authors tended to conclude that the hacking, doxing, and DNC leaks may have had minimal effect in the end. And, like span, politically-inflected commercial clickbait will be more of an irritant than a crisis. Instead, the authors note that “technological, institutional, and political dynamics have been interacting for over 40 years to lead the Republican Party and Republican voters to gradually become more extreme versions of themselves.” Another important point made is that while political elite and political activists have been growing apart ideologically, the majority of the public actually continue to hold moderate positions. What I find scary is the conclusion that most voters are generally disinterested in politics and ill-informed about political matters. They are “likely to make their voting choices based on a set of factors that have no relationship to the proposed agenda and competence of their favored candidate.” In many cases, they choose their favorite leaders, and then adopt the political views and stances of these leaders.
The authors then segue into the origins of the asymmetry in the architecture of the American public sphere in the final part. We’re taken way back to Father Coughlin and his unfettered access by the FCC to the American public. By the 1960s, mainstream newspapers were already seen as biased by the right. Out of an interaction between technological and regulatory changes, we see emerge other mediums of communication such as cable, televangelism, and AM talk radio. Most of this benefited the conservative movement. In the discussion about the decentralization afforded by the internet and how it can support democratization, the authors mention a susceptibility to five major failure modes. Knowing these failure modes allows us to find possible solutions for our current epistemic crisis. Following this, we are given possible solutions to the matter. “The American online public sphere is a shambles because it was grafted onto a television and radio public sphere that was already deeply broken,” the authors say. Nevertheless they feel their study is both optimistic and pessimistic about the possibilities for democracy in an age of ubiquitously networked communications.
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