The Genesis of Misinformation

 

I just stumbled across an article by Peter Pomerantsev that explains the genesis of one of the weirder rumors about France I’ve seen reported as fact in the US media: The idea that one in six people in France support ISIS. The notion is so outlandish that I was astonished anyone could believe it, but I’ve seen this so-called statistic repeated over and over — albeit never by anyone in France. The article is about cyber-propaganda. As Pomerantsev puts it,

The internet has transformed propaganda. No longer do the state and media elites have a monopoly on public opinion — now anyone has the power to be their own Murdoch, Churchill, or Goebbels. This has empowered both crusading dissidents and the darkest sides of the ideological spectrum, posing new challenges for how democratic governments should respond and opening up new opportunities for states willing to mess with other countries’ information environment.

Many countries are. As he reports,

The internet has put governments, and authoritarian governments especially, on the back foot. But while they have had to surrender absolute communication control, many are learning how to use the internet to their own advantage. David Patrikarakos, author of Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State, looks at how the regime in Tehran has gone from describing social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as “enemy spaces” to experimenting with using the internet to attack dissidents domestically and spread the Islamic Revolution abroad.

Russia has also been experimenting with manipulating the global information environment. One “cognitive hack” saw Kremlin propaganda skewing Google’s search function to the degree that if you typed “ISIS France” into it, the first recommendation was “ISIS France Support.” “This happened,” explains Patrikarakos, “not because of any genuinely high levels of support in France for ISIS, but because the most sophisticated algorithm in the world…was effectively hacked to produce this result.” A Kremlin propaganda network had wrongly reported that one in six French people supported ISIS. The story was picked up by the news website Vox in the US, and quickly spread further.

It spread so far that even though I’m in France myself, Americans on the Internet will insist to me that they know for a fact that I’m surrounded by ravening jihadis.

But I’m still not clear how this happened. I get it that Vox is a little credulous, but I can’t imagine they’d knowingly source a story to a Kremlin propaganda network. Does anyone happen to remember seeing that statistic, and if so, can you remember where you saw it? I’m curious enough now that I want to see if I can track down the way this ludicrous idea spread and became a “well-known fact” — about a country that’s easy to visit, full of journalists, and a top American tourist destination. So this statistic should have made anyone who looked at it say, “Pardon?”

 

Published in General
Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 42 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Austin Murrey Inactive
    Austin Murrey
    @AustinMurrey

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: So this statistic should have made anyone who looked at it say, “Pardon?”

    Oh there’s a lot of that going around. There was that video the other day of Rubio’s “support” for cap and trade in 2008.

    Granted Rubio’s made some dubious legislative charges but that made me stop and go “Really? Really?” I thought someone would have brought this up before now.

    Turns out he was supporting cap and trade in Florida in the same way Dutch workers used to support mechanization by showing up to work and throwing wooden shoes into a factory’s gears.

    I increasingly regard polls as suspect and try to keep the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect in mind at all times when reading the news. Which, if you haven’t heard of it, is proposed by the late Michael Crichton:

    Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

    In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

    • #1
  2. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    Austin Murrey: Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

    We’ve discussed that extensively here. It’s a very real and strange phenomenon. But I’d swear these stories are becoming more and more outlandish. Is it the Internet? Is it that people are becoming better at planting these rumors? I find Russia’s command of the information space particularly spooky.

    • #2
  3. kylez Member
    kylez
    @kylez

    I haven’t seen that statistic. It is absurd on its face. Though I could believe 1/6 of Muslims in France do.

    • #3
  4. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Women earn 77¢ for every dollar earned by men. This has been repeated ad naseum to the point that no amount of serious scholarly work can persuade anyone on the left that it’s simply not true.

    In politics it boils down to the “Liberty Valance Rule.”

    Ransom Stoddard: You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?

    Maxwell Scott: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

    • #4
  5. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    The Chricton anecdote is in line with a story about the actress Jennifer Tilley who talked about how she loved reading gossip rags. Whenever she read a story about herself she was infuriated at how inaccurate or wholly made up the story was. But she would then dive into the next article and enjoy the “true” story about someone else.

    In reality all of our information streams are polluted to some degree. This suggests that we should all do something few of us really enjoy: consuming information from many sources including those that offend our personal sensibilities. This is the correct marketplace approach. But confirmation bias is real, so we really don’t enjoy having our ideas and perceptions challenged.

    • #5
  6. Austin Murrey Inactive
    Austin Murrey
    @AustinMurrey

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    Austin Murrey: Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

    We’ve discussed that extensively here. It’s a very real and strange phenomenon. But I’d swear these stories are becoming more and more outlandish. Is it the Internet? Is it that people are becoming better at planting these rumors? I find Russia’s command of the information space particularly spooky.

    It probably is the Internet because the Internet allows, for lack of a better word, kooks to congregate and humans are social animals so we tend to defer to large groups because we want to belong.

    Or to put it another way: When one person says something crazy you think he’s just crazy; when five people say something crazy you think they’re crazy; when five thousand people say something crazy you start to think maybe you’re the one that’s crazy.

    • #6
  7. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    I vaguely remember a web video that tried to illustrate the process of meme propagation online. I wish I could remember where I saw it, because it was a pretty good primer. It tracked a particular false news report from it’s origin on some very obscure blog as it propagated and reproduced across the Internet until it was reported by big name “serious” global news operations.

    • #7
  8. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    I haven’t seen that “fact”but I would assume it was a ridiculous rumor. I think the internet is part of the reason these ideas spread. I think that when items show up in print, such as newspapers, or are seen on the t.v. news, they “must be true.”When we have a whole set of ideas that we “know” are true, and one more shows up, then it must be true, too. People are lazy; looking to confirm information through multiple sources never occurs to them or doesn’t interest them; what they’ve heard somehow makes sense. I think, too, that world events seem so “crazy” that anything is possible to the average consumer. On the other hand, 9/11 couldn’t possibly have happened, so it must have been a conspiracy. From a dark side, people grab onto ugliness, the uglier the better: it confirms that they live in a terrible world and it’s getting worse all the time. And of course, they get to celebrate secretly that their own lives are better than “theirs.” Yes. Pretty dark. And yet somehow I remain a positive person. Go figure.

    • #8
  9. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    Rodin: something few of us really enjoy: consuming information from many sources including those that offend our personal sensibilities.

    I do enjoy that, actually. I often read left and even hard-left oriented websites. I closely read the news organs of the world’s most bat-guano insane countries. Even though I might not agree with it, I like a good contrast with my own views — and I get a lot of insight into what other people are being told that way.

    • #9
  10. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Common unsourced and untrue statements:

    I can see Russia from my house.

    Islam is a religion of Peace.

    Helicopters don’t actually fly: they are so ugly, the earth repels them.

    Oh, sorry. That last one is true.

    • #10
  11. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    The earth is running out of petroleum.

    • #11
  12. Doctor Robert Member
    Doctor Robert
    @DoctorRobert

    Perhaps 1 in 6 French muslims supports ISIS.  Anyone have trouble believing that?

    1 in 5?

    1 in 2?

    • #12
  13. Eric Hines Inactive
    Eric Hines
    @EricHines

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: but I’ve seen this so-called statistic repeated over and over — albeit never by anyone in France.

    Say it three times, and it’s true.  Over and over makes it gospel.

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: [From the link:] A Kremlin propaganda network had wrongly reported that one in six French people supported ISIS. The story was picked up by the news website Vox in the US, and quickly spread further.

    This is another source: the gullibility of so much of the general public.  And (a hobby horse of mine) an American (at least) public school system that no longer teaches its students how to think.  Indeed, after a distinction drawn by a junior high school (I think–it’s been a couple of years) history teacher of mine, our public schools any more don’t even have students, only pupils.  Including in our colleges and universities.

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: I get it that Vox is a little credulous, but I can’t imagine they’d knowingly source a story to a Kremlin propaganda network.

    Sure they can.  This is the state of the American Left even more so than the general public.  Surely, you listened to Obama’s SOTU and heard how detached he is from reality?  Surely, you’ve heard more than one of Hillary Clinton’s campaign speeches and heard how detached from truth she is.  And surely you’ve heard how those speeches, by either of those two, are lapped up by an unthinking public and press.

    And that goes back to that education thing.

    To answer your question, I haven’t heard the 1 in 6 bit, but I have heard outlandish similar claims.  And with France in particular, it’s part of a general France-bashing.  Recall how France closed its borders after last November’s terrorist attack.  Closed: tightened security.

    Eric Hines

    • #13
  14. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    The other day I posted an article to Facebook regarding a rape in South Africa that never happened.  But many people believed it happened because they saw it in the “twitterverse.”  My comment on that post was simply “Stop using Facebook as your newspaper!”

    But that is pointless.  People do not think inductively.  They think deductively.  They have decided what they want to believe, and they grab a hold of anything that will confirm that belief, rather than starting with the facts, and drawing a conclusion from them.  this is true, really about all of us.  But the Internet, in particular social media, makes it far worse.

    Now the meme or narrative comes right to you.  You don’t have to go anywhere to get it, and you do not have to work too hard to propagate it.  You see the thing that confirms for you that Muslim’s are taking over the world, and you say “Yeah, see?” and you click the link to share it and you are good to go.  You do not think rationally about it.  You do look for other sources of the same information.  You do not look for conflicting information.  You simply regurgitate what you read.

    The joke is “If it is on Facebook, it must be true.”  And most people will laugh when they hear it, or when they see the photo of Abe Lincoln with his quote that you shouldn’t believe what you read on the Internet.  But they still propagate false information every single day.

    Claire, you and I, and the vast majority of the folks on Ricochet, we are just different than everyone else.  We want to know the truth.  We want to understand.  Most folks don’t.  They simply don’t.  They just want to get on with their lives and not be bothered by all that other stuff.

    • #14
  15. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    If you want to read one of the original primers on this sorta stuff, go read Douglas Rushkof’s Media Virus.

    He recently updated his basic thesis with Program Or Be Programmed.

    Basically, if you’re not a creator, you’re a consumer. You cannot stop memes from propagating, but you can learn how to create your own.

    • #15
  16. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: I do enjoy that, actually. I often read left and even hard-left oriented websites. I closely read the news organs of the world’s most bat-guano insane countries. Even though I might not agree with it, I like a good contrast with my own views — and I get a lot of insight into what other people are being told that way.

    This makes you rare.  Nobody else in the whole world does this.  Just you.  And perhaps Hillary Clinton.  No, I’m just kidding on that second bit.

    • #16
  17. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    Doctor Robert: Perhaps 1 in 6 French muslims supports ISIS. Anyone have trouble believing that?

    I can find no reliable statistical data based on a well-constructed survey. Absolutely everything I find when I search in English or French leads back to a “poll” conducted by Russia Today. I didn’t realize it, but yes, far-right French websites are recycling it, too.

    There are six million Muslims in France. If one in six supported ISIS, we’d all be dead. I would be stunned if it were more than one in 6000.

    • #17
  18. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: I closely read the news organs of the world’s most bat-guano insane countries.

    In  Shaul Lieberman’s introduction to Gershom Scholem’s 1957 lectures on Jewish Gnosticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary,  Lieberman quipped, “Nonsense is nonsense, but the study of nonsense is a very important science.”

    • #18
  19. Petty Boozswha Inactive
    Petty Boozswha
    @PettyBoozswha

    I think part of the problem is that even casual news readers are feeling that the mainstream press is getting more tendentious and polemical. I think the advent of Fox News and the blogosphere has allowed them to think any semblance of balance [or lack thereof] or PC paradigm cramming is fair game. Here’s one example: http://www.steynonline.com/7417/hold-the-mohamed-salad. When people are confronted with Pravda level spin and propaganda in the MSM it makes outlandish rumor even more effective.

    • #19
  20. Mark Wilson Inactive
    Mark Wilson
    @MarkWilson

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: It spread so far that even though I’m in France myself, Americans on the Internet will insist to me that they know for a fact that I’m surrounded by ravening jihadis.

    Of course I believe in the axiom spoken by one of my engineering professors in college: “There’s no substitute for being there.”

    On the other hand, it’s amazing the level of social insularity one can achieve without even trying.  “Nobody I know voted for him.”  That’s an example where you should trust statistics over your lying eyes.

    Not to say that I believe you are surrounded by ravening jihadis, only that you might not know it even if you were.

    • #20
  21. Petty Boozswha Inactive
    Petty Boozswha
    @PettyBoozswha

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    Rodin: something few of us really enjoy: consuming information from many sources including those that offend our personal sensibilities.

    I do enjoy that, actually. I often read left and even hard-left oriented websites. I closely read the news organs of the world’s most bat-guano insane countries. Even though I might not agree with it, I like a good contrast with my own views — and I get a lot of insight into what other people are being told that way.

    Claire, could you give us an example of where exposure to unfamiliar sources of information has ever changed your mind about an issue? I too like to keep up with The Nation or Mother Jones to see if left wing arguments have any merit – they have changed my mind on the minimum wage issue, for example, something I’m excoriated about here at Ricochet.

    • #21
  22. Mark Wilson Inactive
    Mark Wilson
    @MarkWilson

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: There are six million Muslims in France. If one in six supported ISIS, we’d all be dead. I would be stunned if it were more than one in 6000.

    Depends what “support” means.  If it means materially collaborate then you’re right.  But it could mean passively, in the sense of an approval rating: “agree with their goals if not their methods” or “don’t particularly have a problem with”.

    • #22
  23. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    Mark Wilson: Of course I believe in the axiom spoken by one of my engineering professors in college: “There’s no substitute for being there.”

    May I also offer:

    • “When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.” – Voltaire
    • “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” – Thomas Jefferson
    • “A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.” – Henry Fielding
    • #23
  24. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Apropos of nothing, here’s a news story:

    MSNBC talking head Ed Schultz goes to work for Russia Times TV. Now that’s a lateral move.

    • #24
  25. Tom Riehl Member
    Tom Riehl
    @

    iWe:Common unsourced and untrue statements:

    I can see Russia from my house.

    Islam is a religion of Peace.

    Helicopters don’t actually fly: they are so ugly, the earth repels them.

    Oh, sorry. That last one is true.

    It’s not that they’re ugly iWe, they get off the ground by beating the air into submission.

    • #25
  26. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Misinformation can originate from honest incompetence or malice, but it gains currency because it is told to, and repeated by, people who find it supports their world view (iow, they like what they hear, even if it’s bad news, because it confirms something they believe about themselves and the world).  Caused by uncritical thinking or, if you will, feeling masquerading as analysis.

    • #26
  27. Herbert Member
    Herbert
    @Herbert

    Sitting at a poker table in a fairly large buy in tournament last week.  You would think that my fellow table mates would have a better than average sense of numbers.    Someone brings up that they saw on the internet that if the powerball jackpot were divided amongst all Americans, it would be 4 million apiece.  Everybody but me accepted it as factual….

    • #27
  28. Leigh Inactive
    Leigh
    @Leigh

    Funny you should post this today; this is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind in this post yesterday on Common Core and the new education law.

    How can we even have a reasonable debate about the issues when we can’t even agree on the very facts?

    • #28
  29. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    Petty Boozswha: Claire, could you give us an example of where exposure to unfamiliar sources of information has ever changed your mind about an issue? I too like to keep up with The Nation or Mother Jones to see if left wing arguments have any merit – they have changed my mind on the minimum wage issue, for example, something I’m excoriated about here at Ricochet.

    You shouldn’t be excoriated about that. I’m doubtful that my mind could be changed because the economics of it seem so intuitive to me, but if you’ve come across an argument that’s changed your mind, I’d love to hear about it and consider it.

    One of the really big issues I’m changing my mind about — partly because of new evidence and partly because I often read on the other side of the political spectrum — is the wisdom of austerity policies. Even had these policies worked in Europe (and they didn’t), the political destabilization they’ve caused has been so great that in the end I fear they’ll cost Europe its unity and peace. Europe’s an unusual case because of its unnatural currency arrangement, but the Troika’s predictions were wrong again and again, and I see the political effect it’s had. Seems to me Paul Krugman was a lot closer to right than I was. His views didn’t seem like common sense to me and still don’t, but the evidence is right in front of my eyes, so … looks like I need a rethink.

    • #29
  30. Eric Hines Inactive
    Eric Hines
    @EricHines

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: the wisdom of austerity policies.

    Define austerity.  The way the EU defines it, it seems to me, is cutting taxes and reducing social (and general government) spending–especially the spending bit.  That is idiotic.

    What’s austerity, though, is taking money away from the citizens who earned it and redistributing it to those who aren’t working.  What’s austerity, though, is government spending that crowds out the private sector.  It’s austerity to reform France’s labor laws (not to single out France; most of Europe’s labor laws are anti-business).

    What would really be useful is lower taxes–it’s not even the European governments’ money, after all–and lower government spending, including social spending.  The EU’s social spending has produced its own welfare cliff that punishes work.  If European governments got out of the way, they’d actually get more revenue from the increased economic activity, even with lower tax rates and a simplified tax structure.

    Germany does well with its taxing and spending structure?  How much better could the German citizenry do if they could keep more of their money and not have to compete with government spending into the their private economy?

    There are two things in the way, though.  One is that European elites are just like ours–they Know Better, and they’ve made up their minds.  The other is that, with the present economic structure in place for as long as it is, transitioning to a real market economy will be very much short-term disruptive, and there’s too much fear and too much political reluctance to put a nation through that.

    Eric Hines

    • #30
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.