Misinformation, Redefined Beyond All Meaning
Graphic by Wesley Fryer, CC BY 2.0
It would make news media and social media as it exists in the Year of Our Lord 2024 much better if we could just yeet the term “misinformation” into the sun. Or at least out of the vernacular.
The bloated, decaying corpse of the word formerly known as “misinformation” has been laying out in the open for all to see, but the stench of it is starting to get to the point that someone really should remove the remains to six feet underground with a healthy layer of lime. The exact time of death is unknown, but the cause of death based on the physical condition of the body was clearly repeated blunt force trauma.
Merriam-Webster simply defines “misinformation” as incorrect or misleading information. That’s it. Clear, concise, straight to the point.
But Merriam-Webster makes their money by defining words, not by propagating them. The socio-political world of news media and social media does strange things to words, though. Like the Borg collective on Star Trek, the Clickage Class takes the original meaning distinctiveness of a word as their own, adapting that word to service. What remains is a hybrid word that kind of looks like the old word, but is used however it’s new Clickage Class masters want to use it.
Depiction of a Borg at the Star Trek Experience (Las Vegas). Photo by Marcin Wichary, CC BY 2.0
Frankly, it is too exhausting for most folks to keep up with which words have been hijacked to what meanings, what terms are/are not void of original intent, what integrated grifter network has co-opted what words, on and on.
The same is true with flags and symbols, but that’s another matter for another time.
Anyhoo…Borg words like “misinformation” and such.
Traditional news media, and to a lesser extent the new media and social media that has come to compete with them, are in the meaningful signals business. Not just the stories or breaking news but how it is presented in order to context to an audience. Everything from tone of voice, music used, the graphics surrounding the screen, the placement of the segment in the broadcast, all those things are signals as to the importance and meaning of the story being covered.
The problem with buzzwords, and using “misinformation” as a specific example here, is once the term loses all meaning those outlets have gone from gatekeepers of information to the wrong side of the moral of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The meaningless signal having become the norm – the lie that the wolf was coming – meant the meaningful signal lost all meaning and bad things happened – the wolf really did come.
The professional grifter class has added another stack to the media “misinformation” Matryoshka doll. It used to be that truly crazy nonsense was just pointed and laughed at, if not missed all together because – by and large – news media just ignored it. Social media changed that. Now the news media, needing the symbiosis with social media, has a habit of taking the looney, the wackadoo, the what-the-hell, and running think pieces and fact checks on such nonsense. Going out of the way to do so has the perverse effect of elevating otherwise unseen garbage into newsworthy “misinformation” by default, regardless of intention. And by doing so, the full power of the news media just helped spread the very thing they are condemning as unworthy to a much larger audience. Self-fulfilling prophets make bad tv, and even worse gatekeepers of information.
Folks stop paying attention to bad gatekeeping, especially information gatekeeping in a world where more options to get that information are available than ever before. But ignorance is only bliss in the modern media world if the buzzwords stay meaningful only for algorithmic purposes, and not the actual damage of perceived meaningless signals that turned out to be very important indeed.
Since we can’t really yeet the artist formerly known as “misinformation” into the sun, at least we can perk up our discernment antennas when it is being used as the lead item on the news, or in commentary, or in some important diatribe about whatever. One person’s misinformation is always going to be another’s monetized key word in this day and age. Best we can do is try to know the difference.
Originally published at the authors Heard Tell SubStack and excerpted from the authors News, Notes, and Notions Sunday newsletter.
The fundamental problem, of course, is the whole issue of recent Type I and Type II errors when it comes to what was called misinformation (but wasn’t) and what was misinformation (but none of the misinformation experts flagged it).
And, of course, the “after”.
“Why did you call this misinformation when it was true?”
“TRIGGERED? LIKE YOU NEVER MAKE A MISTAKE? HEY EVERYBODY LOOK AT MISTER PERFECT OVER HERE!”
“This was obvious misinformation, why didn’t you flag it?”
“There are only so many hours in the day.”
“Is there a form that people like me can fill out to have it flagged?”
“Oh, so you can abuse the system and flood it with false flags?”
Kinda gives the game away.Report
“Traditional news media, and to a lesser extent the new media and social media that has come to compete with them, are in the meaningful signals business. Not just the stories or breaking news but how it is presented in order to context to an audience. Everything from tone of voice, music used, the graphics surrounding the screen, the placement of the segment in the broadcast, all those things are signals as to the importance and meaning of the story being covered.”
What if, and hear me out here, this is a significant part of the problem.Report
HeardReport
This whole post is fake news about misinformation propaganda.Report