Kate StarbirdDiscourse around misinformation doesn't always line up w/ our research team's findings re: how falsehoods actually spread in online spaces. Here, I provide a more nuanced view, describing the problem of misinformation as one of collective sensemaking gone awry: https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/12/06/rumors-collective-sensemaking-kate-starbird/
Lorenzo T. R. FloresWe often see the problem of misinformation described as an issue of bad “facts” — but our research suggests the problem is not just one of bad facts, but faulty frames. Though fabrications and outright lies contribute to the challenge of misinformation, we are more often misled not by false evidence but by misinterpretations and mischaracterizations.
Here, we explain how collective sensemaking — our social processes of making sense of the world through interactions between evidence, frames, and interpretstions — can be manipulated (disinformation) or lead to maladaptive, patterned sensemaking (conspiracy theorizing).
The article ends with some recommendations for public communicators, especially related to elections. The TL;DR is this: The communicative solution to pervasive misinformation is not better facts, but better frames.
The article also sets up, but doesn't carry through (yet) a related insight emerging from conversations with Mike Caulfield and others, that our current misinformation problem isn't just about speed and scale, but about the profileration of "evidence" that can be assembled to fit just about any theory or frame.
Jon (now at neuromatch.social)@katestarbird Excellent article! Really appreciate the point about the strategy of shaping frames - which highlights a direction for an effective counter-strategy
@krisnelson@katestarbird This is an excellent write-up of the concept of collective sense-making.
Instead of the common focus on modern tech as *the* problem, either implicitly or explicitly suggesting we wouldn't have our mis/dis-info problems w/o our tech, I very much like how this ties current issues into deeper/older research and theories like rumors and oral traditions.
As a lawyer-historian, I appreciate the recognition that what we face today is both new and not new at all. That's powerful.
Eaton@katestarbird this was a hard-learned lesson growing up in a fundamentalist religioous group during the satanic panic. Individual facts are no match for frames, particularly conspiratorial and self-reinforcing ones with a narrative that can turn both pro and con information into “evidence” of the frame’s unique trustworthiness