The New Age of Media Manipulation
Tags: Manipulation, Media, Media Criticism

01 The Current age

The long history of “fake news”

The concept of the term “media,” in the first place, was created as a means of communication. Its essence was to distribute and express thoughts and information, but it is up to one’s understanding and standpoint to interpret it. Although it has been a heated discussion in recent years, marked by several significant events such as reports in the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, the creation of “fake news” was not a recent decade’s invention. During the Jacobite rebellion in Great Britain during the mid-1700s, seditious printers printed much fake news to encourage the king’s throne’s destabilization, such as King George II was ill.

Examples of misinformation

Misinformation was continuously used as a tool to create for one’s benefit. With the help of recent technological developments, there are more advanced ways to manipulate the targets. Before the infamous 2016 elections, misinformation campaigns were happening in Mexico before the US. In its 2012 election, Enrique Peña Nieto, the president, and the current president hired Hacker Andrés Sepúlveda to help his campaign. Sepúlveda registered an army of automated accounts that would talk about Peña Nieto’s presidential plan, creating Twitter trends. Not only Mexico, but his teams also worked on presidential elections in Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Venezuela. A similar situation can be seen across the globe in Kenya’s election, gubernatorial vote in Jakarta, Indonesia.

John Moore / Getty Images

Why does misinformation always happen?

According to a case study research from the Technology and Social Change research team (TaSC) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, the life cycle of media manipulation campaign could be divided into five stages:

1. Manipulation campaign planning 2. Seeding campaign across social platforms and web 3. Responses by industry, activists, politicians, and journalists 4. Changes to the information ecosystem 5. Adjustments by manipulators to a new environment

These five stages formed an enclosed circle, in which once stage five ends, stage one will happen over and over again. However, a campaign will usually not be discovered until at a very late stage, or even after it is over.

However, it is also essential to recognize that not all misinformation is created with a purpose to harm. Information disorder doesn’t directly equate to the “fake news” that the public disgust. Ranged from “falseness in information” to “intentionally harness information,” it could be falling into three main categories. Firstly, misinformation means no harm, but spreading wrong information, not on purpose, including editing mistakes, or even when a satire was interpreted in the wrong way. The second category, disinformation, refers to those who create and spread incorrect information such as manipulated images or rumors on purpose, but usually means no harm. The third category, misinformation, is publishing information intending to deceive.

Uncontrollable information spread on social media

With the complexity within the misinformation, it would be tricky for governments or companies to regulate. When one spreads the correct information but accidentally with the wrong context, or when articles use clickbait that would lead to incorrect assumptions, it is hard to claim them guilty. Facebook, for example, had announced that they would not regulate or fact-check satire. What’s more, a massive amount of misinformation happens between private chats or direct messages, which is technically out of the public realm where regulations are hard to apply, as it violates users’ privacy. Although specific laws regulate information on the internet, for example, the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which holds pornographic material, it is still tricky to identify what is “right” or “wrong” and to punish those who “make fake news.” Who will be the judge to determine the “wrongness” of information? And how do you punish those who never intentionally spread out incorrect information? A not complete regulation system might violate the freedom of speech, which is the First Amendment's fundamental civil right.

With the invention of the internet, people can talk to each other or reach a massive public audience much more effortlessly. As information travels at a faster speed, inappropriate content is also accompanied. Regulation and censorship sound different, but they are, in fact, highly similar actions. Current laws for the internet regulate copyright material or offensive material, as it does cause visible harm to certain people. Then what about those who spread information through advertisements, including serious information such as political views? They did not do anything wrong but are distorting or manipulating people’s view to one’s benefit.

The growing problem in digital media

Nowadays, one issue is: compared to the good old days when you had limited resources for news, information was spread through so many more routes. According to research conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019, 54% of Americans got their news through social media, mostly Facebook. Acknowledging that social media are not a reliable source of distribution, as “one-sided news” on social media was the biggest concern among the participants, many are still under its effects. The heavy reliance on social media as the primary news source could be dangerous, as news agencies are responsible for political news, not social media. In January 2020, Facebook announced that it would continuously allow political advertisement as long as it abides by Facebook’s community standards. Although never intended to “manipulate information,” the algorithm for many social media platforms would prioritize their business partners, which would generate similar news items for the business’s support. While algorithms learned from users’ data, they would keep caused similar information to you, leading to an incomplete or biased perspective, therefore creating a divided nation.

So does it mean that if most people follow proper news resources and the problem will be solved? Unfortunately, The answer is no. Ideally, professional journalists should be delivering the only truth and facts without bias, and there are still tendencies when different news agencies have other voices within the same topic. As a result, Americans are divided by party in the sources they turn to for political news. Thus, according to the Pew Research Center, Democrats tend to trust more of the news sources, while Republicans question the reliability of news sources more. With that being said, either side will only see the information they are willing to see and receive different opinions.