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Maria Bustillos: Dismediation, revisited (Popula)
Maria Bustillos: Dismediation, revisited (Popula)
Disinformation, once it’s done telling its lie, is finished with you. Dismediation is looking to make sure you never really trust or believe a news story, ever again [...] Dismediation is a form of propaganda that seeks to undermine the medium by which it travels, like a computer virus that bricks the whole machine. Thus, for example, Information: John Kerry is a war hero who was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star; Misinformation: John Kerry was never wounded in the Vietnam War; Disinformation: John Kerry is a coward; Dismediation: ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’ are disinterested sources of information about John Kerry, equivalent in integrity to any other source that might be presented on the evening news. These four narratives were distributed simultaneously across various channels during the 2004 election, though only one of them (the first) is true. [...] The lasting harm of this unfortunate episode, however, was not to Kerry’s reputation or to his candidacy. It was that afterward, millions of minds were uncertain as to what really constitutes “news,” or “reporting,” or “fact-checking.” This state of uncertainty hasn’t ever been adequately addressed, let alone mended. [...] Dismediation isn’t discourse. It doesn’t disinform, and it’s not quite propaganda, as that term has long been understood. Instead, dismediation seeks to break the systems of trust without which civilized society hasn’t got a chance. Disinformation, once it’s done telling its lie, is finished with you. Dismediation is looking to make sure you never really trust or believe a news story, ever again. Not on Fox, and not on NPR. It’s not that we can’t agree on what the facts are. It’s that we cannot agree on what counts as fact. The machinery of discourse is bricked. That’s why we can’t think together, talk together, or vote together. [...] Dismediation is hard to combat, as it distorts not the facts, but the means by which facts can be understood. It’s like trying to win a chess game when the board has been flung into the air and the pieces scattered; quite often the bewildered victim finds himself trying in vain still to play e5 Qxe5 or whatever.
·popula.com·
Maria Bustillos: Dismediation, revisited (Popula)
Andy Baio: Why You Should Never, Ever Use Quora
Andy Baio: Why You Should Never, Ever Use Quora
They are hoarding knowledge and blocking preservation. At some point, the investors who dumped a quarter billion dollars into it will want a return on that investment. Last year, founder Adam D’Angelo indicated they expect to eventually IPO. But market conditions, combined with the results of their ad platform, may force them in different directions — a pivot, merger, or acquisition are always a possibility. When Quora shuts down, and it will eventually shut down one day, all of that collected knowledge will be lost unless they change their isolationist ethos.
·waxy.org·
Andy Baio: Why You Should Never, Ever Use Quora
Maria Bustillos: Erasing History (Columbia Journalism Review)
Maria Bustillos: Erasing History (Columbia Journalism Review)
Absent that microfilmed archive, maybe Donald Trump could have kept insinuating that Barack Obama had in fact been born in Kenya, and granting sufficient political corruption, that lie might at some later date have become official history. Because history is a fight we’re having every day. We’re battling to make the truth first by living it, and then by recording and sharing it, and finally, crucially, by preserving it. Without an archive, there is no history.
·cjr.org·
Maria Bustillos: Erasing History (Columbia Journalism Review)
Mack Hagood: The Real Problem is Not Misinformation (Culture Digitally)
Mack Hagood: The Real Problem is Not Misinformation (Culture Digitally)
If Trump’s rallies operated according to affective dynamics, should we assume that online spaces work differently? Trump supporters did not vote for him because they were misinformed online—rather, they consumed and circulated misinformation because they loved Trump, because it was an enormously pleasurable thing to do, and because they imagined (correctly) that it drove the educated classes crazy. Like the rest of us, they deployed their abilities to reason and select information in accord with their affective investments, worldview, and sense of self. For better and for worse, digital technologies are rechanneling and amplifying these aspects of human nature that we all recognize, but have a difficult time integrating into our “infocentric” research models.
·culturedigitally.org·
Mack Hagood: The Real Problem is Not Misinformation (Culture Digitally)
Stewart Berman: Sun Kil Moon's Benji: A Glossary
Stewart Berman: Sun Kil Moon's Benji: A Glossary
Though the musical components of Sun Kil Moon’s Benji rarely amount to more than Mark Kozelek’s voice and acoustic guitar, its lyrical universe is incomparably vast, spanning countries and decades, populated by dead relatives, high school friends, indie-rock peers, serial killers, and corporate-franchised eateries alike.
·pitchfork.com·
Stewart Berman: Sun Kil Moon's Benji: A Glossary