A University of Washington professor started studying social networks to help people respond to disasters. But she got dragged down a rabbit hole of twitter-boosted conspiracy theories, and ended up mapping our political moment.
"Your brain tells you Hey, I got this from three different sources", she says. "But you don't realize it all traces back to the same place, and might have even reached you via bots posing as real people. If we think of this as a virus, I wouldn't know how to vaccinate for it."
Starbird says she's concluded, provocatively, that we may be headed toward "the menace of unreality, which is that nobody believes anything anymore." Alex Jones, she says, "is 'a kind of prophet. There really is an information war for your mind. And we're losing it."
We've even seen this around here. "Hillary/Bernie paid protesters" anyone?
Starbird says she's concluded, provocatively, that we may be headed toward "the menace of unreality, which is that nobody believes anything anymore." Alex Jones, she says, "is 'a kind of prophet. There really is an information war for your mind. And we're losing it."
We've even seen this around here. "Hillary/Bernie paid protesters" anyone?
This has occurred in every instance of human communication advancement.
False stories ran rampant when printing presses were developed, radio, telephone, tv, mobile phones, and the internet.
All it means is that we are going to be experiencing a new communication form in the very near future.
Did you hear the latest thing Alex is worried about? Gay frogs. You heard me.
Gay...
Frogs...