{"id":68798,"date":"2018-03-04T15:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-04T20:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=68798"},"modified":"2018-03-04T18:31:58","modified_gmt":"2018-03-04T23:31:58","slug":"nieman-lab-disinformation-spread-online-is-so-disorienting-that-its-messing-with-the-researchers-who-study-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=68798","title":{"rendered":"(Nieman Lab) Disinformation spread online is so disorienting that it\u2019s messing with the researchers who study it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week I got to hear\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/katestarbird\">Kate Starbird<\/a>, assistant professor at the University of Washington and director of its\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/emcomp\/\">Emerging Capacities of Mass Participation (emCOMP) Laboratory<\/a>, speak about her\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/hci-design-at-uw\/information-wars-a-window-into-the-alternative-media-ecosystem-a1347f32fd8f\">research into how online disinformation spreads during crisis events<\/a>\u00a0(like shootings and terrorist attacks) and what she\u2019s learned about the networks spreading this information and the tactics that they use.<\/p>\n<p>A few of the intriguing bits from Starbird\u2019s talk:<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 She and her team have looked a lot at the language that conspiracy theorists use both in tweets and on sites like 21stCenturyWire.com. This is \u201cquestion-mark language,\u201d Starbird said. \u201c\u2018I\u2019m not gonna tell you what to think, I\u2019m just gonna put the evidence out there and you can make up your mind yourself\u2019 \u2014 this way of talking persists across different events\u201d from Sandy Hook to the Boston Marathon bombing to the Orlando shooting.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Starbird spent a lot of the time reading the sites that were spreading these conspiracy theory posts \u2014 the sites behind the links being tweeted out. (\u201cI do not recommend this.) Stuff she looked at: Homepages, about pages, ownership, authors, common themes and stories. She developed coding schemes for theme, political view, and so on. Common themes: \u201caliens, anti-big pharma, chemtrails, anti-corporate media, geo-engineering, George Soros, anti-globalist, anti-GMO, Flat Earth, Illuminati, Koch Brothers, anti-media, 9-11 truth, New World Order Cabal, nutritional supplements, pedophile rings, Rothschilds, anti-vaccine, anti-Zionist.\u201d (On the subject of GMOs, by the way, please read\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AlanLevinovitz\/status\/968836006106497024\">this tweet thread<\/a>, which is not about conspiracy theories but\u00a0<em>is<\/em>\u00a0really interesting to keep in mind as you read about Starbird\u2019s work.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.niemanlab.org\/2018\/03\/disinformation-spread-online-is-so-disorienting-that-its-messing-with-the-researchers-who-study-it\/\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week I got to hear\u00a0Kate Starbird, assistant professor at the University of Washington and director of its\u00a0Emerging Capacities of Mass Participation (emCOMP) Laboratory, speak about her\u00a0research into how online disinformation spreads during crisis events\u00a0(like shootings and terrorist attacks) and<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=68798\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433,175,94,168,129,95,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-networking","category-anthropology","category-blogging-the-internet","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-psychology","category-science-technology","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68800,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68798\/revisions\/68800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}