U.S. news media amplified disinformative tweets by quoting them as representative of public sentiment
The Russian-sponsored Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) use of social media to influence U.S. political discourse is undoubtedly troubling. However, scholarly attention has focused on social media, overlooking the role that news media within the country played in amplifying false, foreign messages. In this article, we examine articles in the U.S. news media system that quoted IRA tweets through the lens of changing journalism practices in the hybrid media system, focusing specifically on news gatekeepers’ use of tweets as vox populi. We find that a majority of the IRA tweets embedded in the news were vox populi. That is, IRA tweets were quoted (1) for their opinion, (2) as coming from everyday Twitter users, and (3) with a collection of other tweets holistically representing public sentiment. These findings raise concerns about how modern gatekeeping practices, transformed due to the hybrid media system, may also unintentionally let in unwanted disinformation from malicious actors.
Journalists are constructing public opinion when they use social media accounts to tell the story of politics
Public opinion, as necessary a concept it is to the underpinnings of democracy, is a socially constructed representation of the public that is forged by the methods and data from which it is derived, as well as how it is understood by those tasked with evaluating and utilizing it. I examine how social media manifests as public opinion in the news and how these practices shape journalistic routines. I draw from a content analysis of news stories about the 2016 US election, as well as interviews with journalists, to shed light on evolving practices that inform the use of social media to represent public opinion. I find that despite social media users not reflecting the electorate, the press reported online sentiments and trends as a form of public opinion that services the horserace narrative and complements survey polling and vox populi quotes. These practices are woven into professional routines – journalists looked to social media to reflect public opinion, especially in the wake of media events like debates. Journalists worried about an overreliance on social media to inform coverage, especially Dataminr alerts and journalists’ own highly curated Twitter feeds. Hybrid flows of information between journalists, campaigns, and social media companies inform conceptions of public opinion.
When it comes to misinformation, fact-checking is not just ineffective - it's an accelerant
Verrit, like Snopes, Politifact, and a host of other fact-checking sites, reflect fundamental misunderstandings about how information circulates online, what function political information plays in social contexts, and how and why people change their political opinions. Fact-checking is in many ways a response to the rapidly changing norms and practices of journalism, news gathering, and public debate. In other words, fact-checking best resembles a movement for reform within journalism, particularly in a moment when many journalists and members of the public believe that news coverage of the 2016 election contributed to the loss of Hillary Clinton. However, fact-checking (and another frequently-proposed solution, media literacy) is ineffectual in many cases and, in other cases, may cause people to “double-down” on their incorrect beliefs, producing a backlash effect. This paper uses active audience approaches to media consumption to investigate and critique the phenomenon known as “fake news.”