News Literacy: What Counts as Evidence?

During a discussion of the news coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing in the last month of classes, I learned that several students believed (or at least remained open to the belief) that Sandy Hook and the Boston bombing were not perpetrated by the suspects most of the mainstream media (and most Americans, I would guess) blame for the attacks. The students were willing to acknowledge that these are "conspiracy theories," and they seemed aware of the negative connotation of the word "conspiracy", and yet they were at least open to believing in these theories. I hadn't confronted belief in conspiracies in the classroom before. When the Virginia Tech shooting happened while I was teaching at Emerson College, none of my students believed that anyone other than Seung-Hui Cho was responsible.

People often disagree about the meaning of an event. In fact, it seems that most events are "politicized" by individuals inside and outside of the media: it seems as though many people need to initially share in mourning or jubilation around an event, and then orient the event within a partisan framework that makes it easier to understand and integrate with their existing knowledge of the world (I say "seems" because I think the case for the increasingly partisan nature of the populous may be overstated). But this is something different. This is disagreement about particular factual elements of the event itself. It seems healthy to have some dissent about the interpretation of events (though not as healthy to use one's group identity to dictate how one feels about a new event), but having a society in which large numbers of people can't agree on the basic facts of an event seems potentially harmful.

Before, I was able to dismiss "truthers" as a tiny segment of the population unlikely to have any long-term, large-scale effect on anything, as a curiosity for the mainstream media, bloggers, audiences, and comedians to gawk at. But the idea of some of my students being open to these views of reality caused me to consider the phenomenon anew. Why do some people believe these theories? What does it say about trust in authority? Is it related to the number of sources for information? What does it say about how people are persuaded to believe some version of events?

As always, there are pre-existing factors; characteristics of the individuals: the extent to which they trust mainstream media, trust in government, general trust of other individuals. Most of these, I would guess, are related to demographic factors. There is evidence of an overall decline in perceived credibility of major news sources. People who do not trust these news sources always confused me: surely, they believe something about current events. If they don't trust these sources, where do they get their information? Are more and more people performing some selective filtering of the information they receive, believing some of the basic facts while rejecting others? There is a lack of nuance in the data from Pew about what, exactly, information consumers who say they don't trust the media are doing when they gather information about current events. At any rate, I imagine that a lack of trust in others, particularly those in authority positions, accounts partially for the willingness to believe in conspiracies. Being raised in a family or community which was made up of members who never occupied positions of authority probably encourages this kind of thinking.

This brings me to the next factor: The social factor. Humans are social creatures, surprisingly dependent on social cues in forming their beliefs about the world and their behaviors within it. It is thus important for an "alternative" belief about an event to be endorsed by many others in order for individuals to adopt this belief. Once upon a time, most information came to us either from people we knew and trusted (locals, family members, friends, co-workers) or from mass media or the government. There was a kind of mass endorsement that was implied when facts about an event were broadcast via mass media. It wasn't merely a matter of blind trust in the few sources of information. I imagine that people also took into account the fact that many others were seeing what they saw and believing it as they did. Thirty years ago, how did someone who did not believe the mass media's account of the basic facts of an event connect with like-minded others? Through hard-to-find underground magazines? Now, with the blogosphere, it is easier to connect with others who believe these alternate versions of events and what's more, their existence and agreement with these versions are not implied but are real. Of course, people who follow these "alternative versions" blogs know that their view is not a majority opinion, but it is assumed that this group views itself as just ahead of the curve in some important way. There exists some precedent: sometimes, the masses and the mass media have been wrong about the basic facts of events. As long as their are some events in the past that bear some resemblance (no matter how vague) to the current situation, small groups of people can imagine themselves as today's version of those people who knew what was really going on. Again, it is essential that they are a group, and not individuals. Individuals who believe in alternate versions of events are labeled as mentally unstable. Small groups are labeled as conspiracy theorists (one step up on the hierarchy of legitimacy). But if they can reach a certain number of adherents, these groups can gain more legitimacy, perhaps as a political party that contends for positions of power.

But this technique of digging around in the past to cherry-pick a somewhat similar situation in which a beleaguered minority eventually became the majority and likening your own group's plight to theirs represents another interesting piece of the conspiracy puzzle: the rhetorical techniques used to persuade others of their beliefs. My students often point to YouTube videos that show "evidence" that the mainstream account of events must be wrong. There's something important about the way that my students treat video footage and images as more credible than words. Whether it is words, images, sounds, or video, alternative accounts of events lack a few things that mainstream sources of information possess: a stable identity, a long-standing reputation, and expertise. If you were truly interested in determining which of two sources that disagree about the facts of an event is right (if, say, there was something real, immediate, and of great value at stake, like the life of a loved-one), you would try to determine how frequently they have been wrong in the past. Here, the mainstream sources of information and the bloggers are playing two totally different games. Bloggers, for the most part, don't possess any of these. When they tell some version of events that turns out not to be exactly true, they do not suffer for it. They could start a new blog under another name and gain a following by telling a small group of people what they are pre-disposed to believing. But it usually never comes to that. The revelation of the truth is most often endlessly deferred: the cover-up continues. Therefore, the true trustworthiness of these sources can never be judged.

I think those who shuddered as the prospect of photoshopped images of events circulating among a gullible public had it all wrong. The real threat to a single, accepted view of events is cherry-picking and confirmation bias. Any blogger or YouTuber willing to dig around long enough can find images or accounts of past events that bear some resemblance to current events and favor their proposed course of action or set of beliefs. If the trustworthiness of these sources cannot be judged, then there is no penalty for doing this. They're simply playing a different game, with different rules, than mainstream sources of information.

Despite all of this, I remain skeptical that things are any different than they ever were in regards to beliefs about the basic facts of events. Are conspiracy theorists any more numerous now than in the past, or are they merely more visible to the rest of us? Are they in greater conflict with the mainstream view of events than ever before? Whether we're talking about an increase in partisanship or an increasingly powerful and numerous conspiracy lobby, I remain skeptical that things are any worse than they ever were, or that, despite the sound and fury from the conspiracists and those worried about them, they're much of a threat to the social order. But when small, well-informed students start giving these ideas credence, it does make me want to know more about it, to keep an eye on it.