> There's something wrong with mainstream reporting if mere exposure to social media turns people far right. It really strikes me that people are trapped in some pretty strong filter bubbles to the point mere exposure is enough to change political belief.
A different conclusion to draw from this is that far-right interests are responsible for the majority of the objectionable content on social media. One might further suggest that said content is deliberate propaganda, designed to push people to the right, and that this is a central pillar of their strategy that isn't shared to the same degree or extreme by other political factions.
This isn't "mere exposure". I haven't read the article so please correct me if I'm wrong but this is a job, a place they go to sit every day to be bombarded with this crap. To some extent they have to sit and let it wash over them—I don't imagine the people doing these jobs have much career mobility. IMO it's not realistic to suggest that if they were just better-informed, they wouldn't suffer these effects. The mind is not an inviolable fortress—no matter how strong you think your defenses are, they can be worn down.
>One might further suggest that said content is deliberate propaganda, designed to push people to the right, and that this is a central pillar of their strategy that isn't shared to the same degree or extreme by other political factions.
This is certainly part of it. I've literally watched Russian propaganda around the Syrian war featuring a "Canadian independant journalist". Yet overall this explanation strikes me as unsatisfying. From what I've heard from the researchers propaganda techniques have been less about promoting the right wing specifically and more about spreading social discord generally. The Russians had efforts to promote Jill Stein that were promoting left wing rather than right wing propaganda. I've never really bought that propaganda efforts weren't getting overwhelmed by the influence of regular users generally. It's possible but I haven't seen serious attempts to prove it.
>I don't imagine the people doing these jobs have much career mobility.
This is actually a more interesting criticism to me. Perhaps internet moderators are more drawn to far-right thought than others because of their life circumstances? This is a population that's lower income and tech savvy.
I'm right-leaning and I see extreme amounts of propaganda backed by false information on the left side of American democracy while the right merely questions beliefs with statistics, facts, and law. I've never once seen any kind of propaganda that was right-leaning use false information. In fact, the right typically debunks left-leaning news reporting by finding more detailed information on the news at hand, while the left usually cuts away bits & pieces of information from their stories that would otherwise disprove their narrative. Also, I've noticed that left-wing news uses psychology to manipulate their audience by victimizing obviously crooked politicians within their stories to make them look like good people when they've been stealing from the public for decades.
You won't catch me defending anything so broad as "the left" but your statement that "the right merely questions beliefs with statistics, facts, and law" is laughable. Literally I am laughing at the absurdity of it, that anybody would say such a thing. You needn't look any further than the American right wing's top man, who e.g. routinely uses public social media to broadcast trivially falsifiable statements, dubious and unsourced "statistics", and other total nonsense.
You should seek to expand the boundaries of your model of reality.
A different conclusion to draw from this is that far-right interests are responsible for the majority of the objectionable content on social media. One might further suggest that said content is deliberate propaganda, designed to push people to the right, and that this is a central pillar of their strategy that isn't shared to the same degree or extreme by other political factions.
This isn't "mere exposure". I haven't read the article so please correct me if I'm wrong but this is a job, a place they go to sit every day to be bombarded with this crap. To some extent they have to sit and let it wash over them—I don't imagine the people doing these jobs have much career mobility. IMO it's not realistic to suggest that if they were just better-informed, they wouldn't suffer these effects. The mind is not an inviolable fortress—no matter how strong you think your defenses are, they can be worn down.
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