Thread by @Pamacious

1/ Excerpts from "A cognitive neuroscientist explains how fake news gets into your mind — and what you can do to resist it."

💭 Not necessarily in order.

2/ "Only a small amount of fake news is needed to disrupt a conversation, and at extremes it can have an impact on democratic processes, including elections."

3/

4/ 💭The i̶n̶s̶t̶a̶l̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ inauguration of Trump and Pence

5/ 💭Same place, day, event, different angle

6/ 💭Fox News viewers think Fox is a News source, when Fox itself has characterized it as 🎈entertainment.

7/ 💭Part of the reason Fox is often mischaracterized as news is surely due to our habit of sharing and citing it along with legitimate news sources (image).

We don't treat with the National Enquirer or Cartoon Network as news, but they don't have "News" in their names, either.

8/ "Fake news often relies on misattribution – instances in which we can retrieve things from memory but can’t remember their source."

💭Is the quote familiar?

9/ "Misattribution is one of the reasons advertising is so effective. We see a product and feel a pleasant sense of familiarity because we’ve encountered it before, but fail to remember that the source of the memory was an ad."

💭Recognize these symbols? Can you identify them?

10/ "Repeated exposure can increase the sense that misinformation is true."

💭Remember these? Which one is the real one?

11/ "Repetition creates the perception of group consensus that can result in collective misremembering, a phenomenon called the Mandela Effect."

💭 Which one is correct?

12/ "Creative people that have a strong ability to associate different words are especially susceptible to false memories. Some people might be more vulnerable than others to believe fake news, but everyone is at risk."

13/ 💭 Which one is a misquote?

1. "Luke, I am your father" -Darth Vader
2. "Life is like a box of chocolates" -Forrest Gump
3. "Mirror, mirror on the wall.” -The queen in Snow White

Answers: buzzfeed.com/christopherhud…

14/ "How bias can reinforce fake news

Bias is how our feelings and worldview affect the encoding and retrieval of memory."

💭What do you think of this?

15/ 💭How about this?

16/ 💭And now?

17/ "We might like to think of our memory as an archivist that carefully preserves events, but sometimes it’s more like a storyteller."

18/ "Memories are shaped by our beliefs and can function to maintain a consistent narrative rather than an accurate record."

💭Dobby the House Elf enchanted the pudding to drop on the unfortunate Mrs. Mason's head. Harry was trying to stop it w/o drawing attention.

19/ "An example of this is selective exposure, our tendency to seek information that reinforces our pre-existing beliefs and to avoid information that brings those beliefs into question."

20/ "Our brains are wired to assume things we believe originated from a credible source."

💭For reference, here are some actual photos of children caged at the border:

21/ "Belief echoes are a related phenomenon that highlight the difficulty of correcting misinformation."

22/ "Fake news is often designed to be attention-grabbing."

💭"The Daily World Update website published an article reporting that freshmen U.S. House Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar had 'praised' the destruction of the Paris landmark"

23/ 💭Progressive Dems, esp @AOC, are targeted by the far right & 👀fake resisters w/ cuckoo conspiracy theories: she's backed by Russia, target of an FEC complaint, & that an old photo of her giving the OK👌 symbol was racist... years before its use as a racist dog whistle. 👎😒

24/ 💭About those fake resisters... Rupert Murdoch gave us Fox News🎈entertainment, and now we have Louise Mensch and knows how many others? One connecting thread is the #TeamPatriot hashtag.

Can we give them all back now? Australia?

Thread:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Pamacious/status/1107978958988029952

25/ Fake news "can continue to shape people’s attitudes after it has been discredited because it produces a vivid emotional reaction and builds on our existing narratives."

💭 Yes, they're really 64 floors up, but the iconic high rise lunch image was staged. These are actors.

26/ "Corrections have a much smaller emotional impact, especially if they require policy details, so should be designed to satisfy a similar narrative urge to be effective."

💭A photo of 'Muslims laughing' in front of Notre Dame is doctored
politifact.com/facebook-fact-…

27/ "Tips for resisting fake news

...One approach is to start thinking like a scientist. This involves adopting a questioning attitude that is motivated by curiosity, and being aware of personal bias.

💭What or who is the source? Who corroborated it?

What's the full context?

28/ "For fake news, this might involve asking ourselves the following questions:

What type of content is this?"

💭News
Opinion or editorial
Humor
Satire

29/ "Where is it published? 

If something is a big deal, a wide variety of sources will discuss it."

💭 What are the biases of the sources? The election commission rumor about @AOC originated from a far right lobbying front group and was reported in multiple extremist sources.

30/ 💭As of 4/21, there's still no FEC filling under Ocasio-Cortez

Here's my adventure trying (unsuccessfully) that an FEC complaint was filed relevant to @AOC:

https://twitter.com/Pamacious/status/1120175332315811840?s=19

31/ Who benefits? Reflecting on who benefits from you believing the content helps consolidate the source of that information into memory."

/32 "Some people tend to be more susceptible to fake news because they are more accepting of weak claims."

💭 Observe:
Type of content
Source
Quality/bias of source
Who benefits
rawstory.com/2019/04/cognit…