Let's take a look then. Firstly, is it replicable? Many academic papers aren't because their methodology either isn't specified, or the methodology isn't derived logically from the hypothesis.
Here they are relying on Wikipedia and "Media Bias/Fact Check" to decide if a source is factual, and then decide anything published by any such source is wrong, and then that anyone who refers to any such article is also wrong. This is replicable at some surface level - you could use the same sources and same tweets to compute the same numbers, but lacks any form of deeper replicability because the choice of these two meta-sources doesn't follow obviously from the hypothesis and they don't specify how they chose them (beyond citing other papers that made the same choice).
So an obvious criticism is how do you know these meta-sources aren't junk? They thought of this, and say:
> To ensure the robustness of our methods, the factuality measure was manually validated to ensure that the articles shared in fact contain misinformation (see Supplemental Information File). We selected a stratified random sample of 50 articles from each of the five predefined factuality levels, totaling 250 articles. These were manually analyzed ... The results are reported in Supplemental Tables S6 and S7,
But if we check the Supplementary Tables then we find no such validation. Ironically, this study itself contains misinformation. The articles they checked aren't listed, nor is how they decided what was or was not true. The tables are a masterclass in circular logic, comparing how accurate articles are against their "factuality group" and discovering that, shock, the academics who chose the sources agree that they are good sources. Nothing is presented that can actually be refined or refuted, because this entire "manual validation" boils down to circular reasoning of the form "the sources we chose are accurate because we checked and say they are accurate". It's just a restatement of the rest of the paper, dressed up with some tables to look sciencey.
In the penultimate paragraph they do inch towards an actual evaluation, but it just shows how pseudo-scientific this paper is. They admit that in many cases sources they put in a low factuality group do report accurate news, but justify the decision by saying (about RT):
> Although each individual article may be factually correct in its reporting on individual battles, the overall story is thus a false narrative of a highly successful ‘special military operation.’ This underscores the limitations of assessing factuality solely based on the accuracy of individual articles, offering further support for the validity of relying on media outlet-level analyses.
This is a Kafka trap. If you report accurate stories you are nonetheless inaccurate because you don't report the things we think you should, and therefore anyone who cites you for anything at all, ever, is "spreading misinformation" regardless of topic or correctness of the statement made. The only type of source anyone is allowed to use is one that promotes the academics preferred slants, regardless of the accuracy of the information published.
There are tens of thousands of studies like this coming out of academia every year that are little more than Guardian-bait. Zero of them are scientific, yet all are presented as if they are. When people call them out on this behavior, they're accused by the left of being "anti science". Where are the intellectual standards?
It's a paper by people who get paid by the government because they claim to be doing political science: that is, studying politics and society in a neutral, scientific way to obtain generalizable conclusions. They present what they claim is a novel finding, in fact they say that "little is known of the relationship between party politics and the spread of misinformation" and that their paper addresses this problem.
In this case one of the authors is funded by my local government yet they claim at the bottom of their article they received no funding to do this work, so that's yet more misinformation and it's my money being used for this, which is pretty irritating.
If they wanted to write a personal politics blog there's Substack. They aren't: they're pretending to be scientists, like in tens of thousands of other papers out there on the same topic.
I wonder why tho; humans by themselves should have an intrinsic interest in knowing how things work and behave, and being sure of it. Or maybe that's just influenced by my personality? Like I couldn't fathom doing things without being sure of it, due to being afraid of failure.
Are Far-Right populists considered those fear-/hatemongering? I can imagine that when you have a scapegoat defined to push any issue to, you lose the first appeal of actually understanding things?
This is quite an interesting topic, which would be fascinating to deeper understand, because from a superficial look it does appear that introducing directed hate makes masses much more susceptible to being controlled. Also helps my theory, that whilst the left did like Elon for quite some time, that doesn't mind they blindly trusted him and pointed out his issues when they came up, which pushed him to a more... comforting? right wing embracement.
It is not just 'interesting' it is in fact essential to prevent disaster on the scale of the Second World War or worse. It seems there are people who are intrinsically motivated to hate. These are the ones who are on the far right even in peaceful times. I think they are pretty much the high school bully who never grew up. Then there are those who are uncertain about the future and therefore inciteable to mistrust/hate. Then there are political leaders who estimate the size of both groups and notice that if they add them up and maybe add some violence around the elections in the mix, they might just reach a majority. Actually being interested in how things work is the business of none of the people described here.
You and I may prefer not to operate from a place of ignorance or naiveté but there genuinely are people who do not give a shit about knowledge, learning, logic, reality, or sanity.
They couldn’t give a shit about anything that doesn’t impact them negatively.
I used to know several of these people and they were utterly exhausting. If ever I tried to answer a question, the question was suddenly rhetorical and I was somehow a weirdo for being able to answer it. They would say things like “I don’t actually care” in response to attempting to answer a question or engage in honest dialogue. About anything.
Totally cynical, off-the-cuff, knee-jerk response: we're social monkeys, and group membership is more important than abstract concepts.
I received a hard lesson in this topic during Covid, when I didn't start wearing a mask until everyone else did. I knew I should, but I didn't want to stand out from the crowd.
The left also has its shibboleths. As I'm sure do stamp collectors, submariners, cryptozoologists, forensic accountants, etc etc etc. Human nature.
(Did you see how the conversation got poisoned, then flagged? Call me paranoid, but...)
I mean, the narrative pushed by right wing politicians is often more vibes based than the one by the left. Look right now: "the immigrants are ruining America/Europe" Vs "the ultra wealthy are hoarding capital which is ruining the economy and breeds economic injustice".
The far right Swedish party says (more or less) "all the problems are the immigrants' fault". The left says "can we expect the government to do as much as it did 30 years ago when we cut taxes by 500 billion sek (adjusted for inflation and population size)".
The can be some points to both, but I do think the second one has more merits with regards to explaining the health care problems.
At least in the US, it's interesting to see that the far-right has gained so much political power while accusing moderate/centrists of being far-left, and benefiting from the perception that the deep state is controlled by radical leftists. The most left-leaning politician (Bernie Sanders) has been shafted at least twice by the supposed far-left party. Meanwhile, the sitting president just signed a blanket pardon of 1500 individuals involved with the Capitol attack, including Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
What's even more interesting is to see the amount of Putin-apologists on the American right, with Putin literally being former-KGB.
Just from the heading "far-right" already a buzzword to signal to the left who the "evil" people are. And who determined who is "far" right. In propaganda news, this term is used for 10 years or whatever to describe everyone who dares to have a single opinion that is not left. "Far-right" is now used to everyone who is actually just right (often double meaning).
The heading also says "the left" so did the study compare an actual small group of "far right" people vs "the left". What were the metrics used for saying someone is "far-right"? And if they actually made the group small, then OF COURSE they get the outcome they wanted.
Or did the compare vs the "far-left"? Let me guess, of course not!
Or did they just compare "the right" vs "the left" and the Guardian just calls them that in the headline.
I frankly do not really care, I do not buy this shit. If someone wants to tell me in the comments guess I care, but I am not looking at that study because I know the outcome was already pre decided.
Only dump people still read the Guardian and other legacy media.
// Bahahahaah "Dutch study of tweets by MPs in 26 countries" says someone in the comments. Yeah, it's even WORSE than I thought. See I do not even to look into shit like this, I already know from the stupid headline it's complete utter bullshit.
I wonder why I even come to HN? Political stuff is supposedly against the rules. Yet pretty much only left wing legacy propaganda media makes it to the homepage all the time.
Always NYT, Guardian and the usual suspects, always leftist stuff. Well of course Silicon Valley is infested with woke leftist BS, I should not wonder. I guess I am here for tech news and not politics, but it always comes up anyway.
I am sad to hear that. I, on the other hand, am capable of distinguishing between people I have disagreements with and people who are far-left or far-right populists.
That sentence is very often seen online as a dismissal of someone calling out far-right opinions. Either the poster is just parroting others, or they are a part of a concerted effort to minimize being perceived as far-right activity and maximize the end effect of said activity.
I suppose the study is based on facts, and they are checked, so it must be uncomfortable and even dangerous to the side choosing fantasy arguments. But I might be wrong of course.
