When memes, fake accounts, bots, and algorithms unite and trade up the chain, the average is unable to critically examine this content and use it to make decisions. When it is picked up by journalists, the rumor becomes fact.
🤔 The case for quarantining extremist ideas
The emphasis of strategic silence must be placed on the strategic over the silencing. Every story requires a choice and the recent turn toward providing equal coverage to dangerous, antisocial opinions requires acknowledging the suffering that such reporting causes. Even attempts to cover extremism critically can result in the media disseminating the methods that hate groups aim to spread, such as when Virginia’s Westmoreland News reproduced in full a local KKK recruitment flier on its front page. Media outlets who cannot argue that their reporting benefits the goal of a just and ethical society must opt for silence.
danah boyd and Joan Donovan explain that sometimes not sharing is in fact caring, especially if ideas being shared are extreme and doing so will simply amplify them further. It is also interesting reading this alongside Ian O’Byrne’s discussion of trading up the chain.