Thread by @MollyMcKew

Narrative builds networks on social media, and those networks can expose us & instrumentalize us to disinformation campaigns. Accounts/personas that aggregate news play a role in making us unwitting accomplices in disinfo campaigns

My latest for @SURfdn

standuprepublic.com/what-lessons-h…

We should all be aware of how information is filtered and biased before it reaches us — and the impact that has in shaping the information domain as we see it. We should be more conscious of when these filters as skewing what we see too much.

Accounts that aggregate news to interest groups, & named personas who are high-volume posters/commenters on news & current events can skew perceptions. Not all are bad actors, of course, but they introduce witting and unwitting bias

Analysis of the IRA campaigns from 2016 shows how this is effective.

IRA trolls:

-exploited our trust in local & familiar news

-embedded in target communities, ingratiated themselves to individuals in those communities

- rewarded people who promoted disinformation narratives

These tactics built networks that have persisted when after the IRA troll accounts have been deleted.

Disrupting those networks is the key to disrupting information campaigns. So far, this is a distant goal.

Accounts that aggregate news exploit our lazy information habits (someone else is collecting information, yay!), and lower our defenses against malign actors doing the same with more focused narrative goals. We become used to them, then accept what they tell us without scrutiny.

This is how bad information spreads fastest on twitter internet: good intentions gone awry.

So why can we do to ensure aggregation and curation aren’t biasing the information we see?

1- Try muting or unfollowing high-volume accounts as an experiment, see how much it alters your timeline/reduces selectivity bias.

2- Understand the power of social media is building networked communities, good and bad. The way you participate in information identifies you as parts of networks. This makes you a target of certain information campaigns. Be aware of this as you follow accounts/engage content.

3- Understand the role you play as a node in disinformation networks and amplification. Be conscious of groups that seem to be building narrative communities with purposes you don’t quite understand. Mute, block, or unfollow to dissociate from corrosive narratives and campaigns.

4- News aggregating accounts are risk/reward. Understand that balance, watch for bias, & never let them dominate the curation of information in your feed. Rely on accounts that link to original sources + accurately represent content. Follow outlets, journalists, experts directly