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Mis- and Disinformation Online: a Taxonomy of Solutions

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Mis- and Disinformation Online: a Taxonomy of Solutions FACULTAD DE COMUNICACIÓN Departamento de Marketing y Empresas de Comunicación Mis- and Disinformation online: a Taxonomy of Solutions TESIS DOCTORAL Autora: Anya Stiglitz Director: Ángel Arrese Pamplona, 2020 2 To my parents and my husband 3 4 Acknowledgements A dissertation does not get written without an enormous amount of support and help. There are dozens of colleagues, friends, students, who generously gave their time by reading sections and commenting, recommending readings, arguing with me, sharing their ideas or even giving practical advice about how to get to the finish line. Some who helped are people I’ve known for years and some I met over email and offered to look at sections even though we had never met in person. I am grateful to all. Despite being busy with her own studies, Chloe Oldham assisted with research and handled the citations even as the Covid 19 pandemic got under way and we were quarantined together for six weeks. In that same period, and before, Michael Schudson managed to read several chapters, point out omissions and give me a list of readings. From the first, Schudson, Susanna Narotzky and Richard John encouraged me to write a dissertation and gave me solid, practical advice about how to do it. Andie Tucher graciously read sections and sent detailed comments even as she was racing to finish her own book. Hawley Johnson sent endless references and ideas and useful articles. My advisor, Ángel Arrese, lived up to his reputation for being smart, insightful and kind. His commitment to his students is unparalleled, his comments always on point and his care and attention remarkable. I’ve read his work for years but, as his student, I also learned from his example and his diligence. PHD programs can be lonely places but Professor Arrese brought me into a collegial and supportive community. Spending time at the communications department and, going to lectures with the faculty of University of Navarra, was an experience unlike any other and very different from my daily life at Columbia University in New York. I hope to return regularly. Colleagues around the world who read chapters and sent comments include Mark Hannah, Lili Levy, Jacob Nelson, Phil Napoli, Ryan Whittington, Allison J. Head and 5 Margie Macmillan. Dozens of people let me interview them and shared their ideas. Most are listed in the appendix in the back. All were knowledgeable, generous and inspiring. My father, André Schiffrin, died in 2013 so Jonathan Cole took over my father’s role of telling me what to read and sent lists of book recommendations that gave me valuable background for my research on Clyde Miller, McCarthyism and American Universities. Ellen Schrecker talked with me about certainty and interpretation as I read through the archives at Butler library. At times I felt I was back to the period I researched while doing my undergrad thesis on the newspaper PM at Reed College with Richard Fox. This gave me an excuse to re-start some old conversations with Richard and Sarah Berry. I learned much from conversations with Guy Berger, Gordon Crovitz, Vera Franz, Tom Glaisyer, Ellen Goodman, Ellen Hume, Justin Hendrix, Hawley Johnson, Peter Micek, Joel Simon, Peter Micek, Christoph Deloire, Camille Grenier, Olaf Steenfadt, Maria Kattaui, Tim Karr, James Deane, Mira Milosevic, Mark Nelson, Courtney Radsch, Alejandro Romero and Philippe Narval. Zack Exley, Todd Gitlin, Michael Vachon shared their ideas about politics and the media and over the years I’ve absorbed many of the ideas of Julia Angwin, Emily Bell, Tim Besley, Yochai Benkler, Joan Donovan, Michelle Ferrier, Rana Foroohar, Phil Howard, Tim Karr, Phil Napoli, Jill Nelson, Renée di Resta, Ann Ravel, Amartya Sen, Kara Swisher, Zeynep Tufekci, Heidi Tworek and Ethan Zuckerman. Some of the PHD students at Columbia were writing their dissertations while I was writing this one and so we helped each other. Efrat Nechushtai and I share an interest in media trust and community engagement. Alex Gonçalves and I have become co-authors and teach together. Javier Sauras and Ava Sirrah and I cheered each other on throughout. My colleagues at SIPA were particularly supportive including: Ester Fuchs, Claudia Dreifus, Hollie Russon Gilman, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Suzanne Hollman, Sarah Holloway, Dan McIntyre, Jenny McGill, Sara Tjossem, Alexis Wichowski, Merit Janow and Colleen Toomey. Special thanks to the people who agreed to serve on my defense committee, as active or backup members,: Javier Lesaca, Karolina Koc-Michalska, Susana Narotzky, Laura Moore, Andrea Prat. Conversations with Julia Stiglitz and Vijay Karunamurthy about Silicon Valley and with Jed Stiglitz and Kendra Bischoff, about their research, shaped my thinking too. 6 The economists in my life including Julia Cagé, Alexander Dyck, Martin Guzman, Antara Halder, Haaris Mateen, Elise Mougin, Andrea Prat, Hamid Rashid and, above all, my husband taught me a different way of looking at media effects and thinking about media systems. Overhearing their long conversations about economics undoubtedly affected my thinking about the world. I want to acknowledge the researchers who have assisted with my courses at SIPA because, inevitably, some of that work wended its way into this one: Anamaria Lopez, Anna Kordunsky, Hannah Assadi, Matthew Hughes, Susanna de Martino. Ryan Powell came into my life as my RA, became part of my brain and is now a co-author and dear friend. Other colleagues and helpers make life interesting and fun and carry a big load: Caleb Oldham, Gabriela Plump, Joe Chartier, Karine Lafargue, Monsse Motta and Ofelia Flores. Many friends including Andrea Gurwitt, Jane Folpe, Jose Antonio Millan, Nicole Pope, Michael Staunton, Ava Seave, Leina Schiffrin, Ita de la Iglesia, Leo, Lara and Katya Sands, Alex, and Tamiko Soros, Robin Stephenson, Jonathan Birchall, Mila Rosenthal and Minky Worden encouraged me over the last three years as I juggled writing this dissertation with working full time. The marvelous editor Rob Gurwitt read these pages, finding inconsistencies, making suggestions and providing the extra pair of eyes that every writer needs. Finally: my husband for his endless encouragement, enthusiasm, support and unshakable belief that this subject matters and that I have something interesting to say about it. 7 8 Table of contents Abstract Part I –Introduction and trust 11 Introduction 13 • Chapter 1: Trust, Journalism Authority and Mis/Disinformation 43 Part II—Demand-Side Solutions • Introduction 61 • Chapter 2: Media Literacy 67 • Chapter 3: Community Engagement 91 • Chapter 4: Fact-checking 115 Part III—Supply-Side Solutions • Chapter 5: Artificial intelligence, downranking, content moderation 139 • Chapter 6: intermediary liability, lessons from Europe 157 • Chapter 7: regulation of online political advertising—getting beyond transparency 201 • Chapter 8: defamation lawsuits and the marketplace of ideas 225 Conclusion 245 Bibliography 265 Interviews List 327 Appendixes 331 9 10 Abstract The premise of this dissertation is that 2016 was the year that societies began to understand the dangers of online/mis disinformation and decided to fund and implement solutions even though they had not been fully researched or tested. Many of the fixes were, in fact, based on the financial interests or belief systems of the people doing them. Facebook wanted to avoid regulation so it funded fact-checking and put the onus on audiences to become more media savvy/news literate. Journalists thought they could help the problem of online mis/disinformation by putting more effort into getting to know their audiences. Repressive regimes saw an opening to ban speech they didn’t like. We provide a taxonomy of the variety of initiatives aimed at solving the problem, with the objective of enhancing our understanding of the strengths and limitations of each. Our analysis is set in the context of the academic literature on the problems of propaganda and dis/misinformation and media trust and we provide historical context for many of the solutions. The “solutions” we compare and contrast in this research include fact-checking initiatives and projects by journalists to promote community engagement, media literacy programs, technical fixes such as using as natural language processing/AI to block false and/or inflammatory content and finally government regulation. We discuss each solution, examining the intellectual and research basis for each as well as which groups have supported the different possible fixes and why. Drawing on dozens of interviews with funders, journalists and regulators as well as archival material and including an exhaustive bibliography, this dissertation looks at the universe of solutions in an organized, structured way and concludes with policy proposals to help promote democracy. 11 Resumen La premisa de esta investigación es que 2016 fue el año en que las sociedades comenzaron a comprender los peligros de la desinformación y la misinformación online, y decidieron financiar e implementar soluciones, aunque no se hubieran investigado o probado completamente. Muchas de las soluciones estaban, de hecho, basadas en los intereses financieros o sistemas de creencias de las personas que las hacían. Facebook quería evitar la regulación, por lo que financió la verificación de los hechos y puso la responsabilidad en las audiencias para convertirlas en más conocedoras de las noticias. Los periodistas también pensaron que podían ayudar al problema de la desinformación en línea poniendo más esfuerzo en conocer a sus audiencias.
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