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.
J.D. Vance tripled down on his debunked claims that Haitian immigrants are killing and eating local pets in Springfield, Ohio, while also admitting, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Also in - blatant baldfaced fabrications from their candidates don’t matter to R any more than racism, bigotry, misogyny, or convicted felon status*.
*as long as it’s a Republican felon
We know.
We’ve known this for a long time.
The question is, what can we do about it. Because clearly what we’re doing isn’t fucking working.
Violence. All of modern American society is fundamentally based on getting large numbers of humans to interact with a minimum of harm based on principles of intellectual honesty and a (theoretical) support of civil rights. When someone fundamentally rejects both concepts there is one inevitable conclusion and the only question is how one sided it will be.
Which is why we don’t trust a word those motherfuckers say…
Cool, they’re still set to take over the country in a month though. Perhaps not trusting them is an insufficient response.
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.
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.
Note that while this study examines statements made by politicians, is actually analyzes the behavior of the general public:
We verify our findings in three online studies where we surveyed U.S. adults who identified as either Republican or Democrat.
The way I read this is not that Republican politicians lie, and Democrats don’t. Rather, I think it means that ordinary Republicans have no problem spreading statements on Social Media that have no basis in fact, if it matches their preconceived notions. While Democrats are less likely to do that.
This does have an effect on politicians, as Democratic politicians understand that it is harder for them to make blatant lies go viral than it is for Republican ones. It is a lot easier to craft an effective media message when it doesn’t need to be consistent or truthful.
Why is this? I think it’s because a large part of social media these days is making content that gets echoed by someone’s followers. And from my personal experience, Republicans in general are much more likely to blindly forward rage-baity stuff without checking into it first. Some Democrats, by contrast, are likely to actually read the content first and only forward on things they believe might have a basis in fact. They may not always do this, and may not always be correct when they do. But just this small check has the effect of minimizing blatantly false Liberal propaganda on social media. (Except possibly here, lol!)
The book “On Bullshit” lays out a specific definition of bullshit. It’s not just lying, because lying implies you know truth exists. Bullshit disregards truth entirely. If you are a bullshiter, you might mention something that happens to be true, but it’s almost an accident.
That’s the difference. Democrats might lie, but Republicans bullshit.
So Republicans knowingly lie to Republicans for their vote? clutches pearls
I keep saying it. Republicans can twist, misportray, and outright lie. Dems are beholden to the truth.
Republicans can twist, misportray, and outright lie.
It’s a winning strategy. Truth, no so much.
Its a shame they’ve already succeeded in destroying education in this country or this wouldn’t be a problem.
Who needs an education when your high school biology class from the 1970s makes you more qualified than the epidemiologists to speak on matters of health and disease in the population?
I’ve tried their conclusions with my family. Results negative.
Maybe some are more open than others but I found just not bothering with them at all is making more of an impact that trying to explain tariffs.
“Toddlers lash out because of feelings”
On the other news, water is still wet.
I haven’t read the study yet but hope to later. As a Democrat, this seems suspicious, though. It isn’t as bad as on the right, but I certainly see plenty of bullshit coming from the left, too.
One example of a news source that frequently bends the truth or lies to make rage bait is RawStory. They drive me nuts since you don’t need to lie to make Trump and his ilk look bad.
Didn’t we just have an election where internal party polling showed Harris never had a chance of winning, yet they kept lying and fundraising as if she did?
This whole thing reeks of pseudo-science in order to reach a pre-determined conclusion…
It’s open access, so name the part of the article you didn’t read a single word of before commenting that you take umbrage with.
You would be wrong, I read the article. I didn’t read the complete research article (my guess is neither did you). I would like to point out that this is an article written by two candidates in Marketing. Please stop and pause here and read that again, emphasis on marketing. Now why would two doctorates in marketing be used for “republicans repeat propaganda and democrats don’t”-article…
I won’t write the answer, because you should be able to figure this one out for yourself.
“Republicans repeat propaganda and democrats don’t” isn’t even the conclusion of this paper, which you’d know if you had actually looked at it. In fact, we already knew that republicans spread more disinfo than democrats, it’s been demonstrated in multiple studies that are cited in this paper.
This particular study’s interest is about what triggers it : “Our research enhances our understanding of when and why conservatives tend to spread more misinformation than liberals. We find that an ideological asymmetry emerges when politically polarized situations trigger conservatives’ desire for ingroup dominance. Acting on that salient desire, conservatives spread ingroup-skewed political misinformation, which is of uncertain accuracy, but not definitively false. In less polarized situations, conservatives’ desire to achieve ingroup dominance is tempered, along with their misinformation conveyance.”
This is literally the headline of the Article “Republicans Respond to Political Polarization by Spreading Misinformation, Democrats Don’t”.
I don’t even like republicans (nor do I like democrats) but articles like this are just so blatantly biased, I don’t understand that people believe it. Do you really believe that D or R determines how good someone is to spot misinformation and also determines how likely it is for that person to share it… Come on. People are too similar, we have more in common than we like to admit. I’m just at likely to be suckered by marketing, as are you, as is a republican.
Source: your ass.
You have the correlation backwards. Being a Republican doesn’t make you bad at critical thinking, but being bad at critical thinking really makes you susceptible to Republican propaganda.
My point, completely glossed over, is that this open article was written by two doctorates in marketing, which is sketchy and should trigger your spidey sense… Or you could slightly shrug, continue your day and don’t challenge your preconceived notions.
It makes a kind of sense. Marketing is basically Applied Psychology. Who better to study the grifters and the mechanisms by which they grift?
Yes, I 100% do. If R or D was arbitrarily assigned to everyone at birth, then no it wouldn’t make sense, but this isn’t a double-blind control study. Roughly 2/3 of those who never attended college–which for many reasons (reading comprehension, exposure to new ideas, exposure to media literacy training) probably correlates pretty strongly with ability to spot misinformation–voted R in the last election. 2/3 of those with advanced degrees–the other end of that spectrum–voted D.
