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Scientists show how ‘doing your own research’ leads to believing conspiracies — This effect arises because of the quality of information churned out by Google’s search engine (www.vice.com)

submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Scientists show how ‘doing your own research’ leads to believing conspiracies — This effect arises because of the quality of information churned out by Google’s search engine::Researchers found that people searching misinformation online risk falling into “data voids” that increase belief in conspiracies.

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

In college I took a journalism 101 course as an elective, and we spent at least a couple classes on checking if sources were valid.

For one of the assignments the teacher gave us a list of websites and we had to determine which were legit, and why we thought so.

This kind of thing could easily be taught more broadly and earlier.

Though I imagine the right wing would be upset because they rely on a lot of falsehoods.

[–] vexikron@lemmy.zip 5 points 11 months ago

I cannot find the study at the moment, but a few years ago a media literacy test was done to a statistically useful amount of Americans as a scientific study.

If you count 'being able to read multiple news articles from multiple different sources, be able to recognize the history and motivations of the outlet and author, be able to notice differences in vocabulary and phrasing and also be able to notice what is left out of some articles, and what is left out of all articles' as totally literate...

Then only either 8 or 3 percent of the adult American population is totally literate.

(There were two threshold levels at the top and i cannot remember if the 8 or the 3 percent applied to the description i just gave.)

Further, something approximately /half/ of all adult Americans perform at what is functionally a 7th or 8th grade level of literacy, or worse.

[–] ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Left wing mainstream media may be pro science, but they rarely report good scientific articles. They report science headlines because their target demographic trusts scientists. So it can be more influential in setting an agenda

[–] GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Mainstream media.. left wing.. all corporate media is neo liberal and firmly on the right.

[–] trolololol@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The whole media and us population is right wing, except Bernie which tones it down so he has a fiddle of hope to get elected. So US POLITICS range from right to far far right

Change my mind

[–] SpookyUnderwear@eviltoast.org -1 points 11 months ago

The majority of mainstream media, save for Fox News (and perhaps one or two others) is left wing my American standards.