Resources of Hope

As we head into the Trump-Musk inauguration... some brief thoughts.

In late 2019 I was lucky enough to be asked to do a keynote at the biannual Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff. At the conference dinner that night Adrienne Russell and I had a long conversation about the post-2016 fireball that was starting to burn through media systems.

We picked up some of the themes from a 2018 panel at the ICA conference, Social Media Platforms: A Crisis of Democracy?. (Interesting aside: a lot of the Q&A in that 2018 panel was devoted to forward-thinking solutions, such as new alternative platform model—only Mastodon at the time—and potential new regulatory proposals; I'll return to this.)

A few weeks after Cardiff, Adrienne got in touch to ask if we could revisit the dinner conversation. The plan was that she'd publish the transcript in a journal issue that Colin Porlezza and Philip Di Salvo were editing.

Here we are, five years on, after the pandemic dis/misinformation, January 6, and now the newly intense social media dysfunction that's crowded in over recent months.

It’s been five years, but so much has happened. Looking back, I have mixed feelings. It saddens me to say that the worst of the developments Adie and I discussed back then have only intensified. And, as we've seen over recent months, they have been joined by new, even worse dysfunction.

But on the upside, back then, responses to the crisis were inchoate. Yet today we have a range of responses around the world, whether it's research, public advocacy, regulation, a lively reporting beat, or heightened public awareness.

So, there's optimism, too. Resources of hope (to borrow from Raymond Williams). It's easy to forget this.

You can read the interview here.

Many thanks again to Adrienne and Colin and Philip for putting it out.

Coda: If Allacademic’s website doesn’t flake out (it often does), you can read a summary of that 2018 ICA panel, which featured great talks from Nick Couldry, Daniel Kreiss, Shannon McGregor, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Sarah Ganter, Samantha Bradshaw, Lisa-Maria Neudert, Phil Howard, and Dave Karpf here.

Presenting at the American Sociological Association's Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section Annual Symposium

The Everyday Misinformation Project team will be presenting its latest findings at the American Sociological Association (ASA) Media Sociology Symposium on August 4.

Our talk is entitled ‘“I Would Always be Careful About What I Receive”: Online Misinformation, Epistemic Norms, and Social Distinction,’ and is by Natalie-Anne Hall, Andrew Chadwick and Cristian Vaccari.

In this latest study from the project, based on a thematic analysis of longitudinal, in-depth interview data (N=182) we reveal some key epistemic norms governing the everyday consumption and sharing of information and the social distinctions these norms establish. In the qualitative phase of our fieldwork, many participants who said they did not frequently encounter misinformation through personal messaging were well aware of its existence, and willingly expressed views about those they believed were taken in by it. Deception was presented as a problem experienced by others who are more “naïve,” “biased,” or less “media literate” than themselves. These narratives reflect a keen awareness of the normative epistemic value placed on objectivity and media literacy in today’s societies. However, they simultaneously reveal that those making such social distinctions are less likely to value anti-misinformation interventions because they are deemed irrelevant to their individual everyday practices. This conflicts with the reality that addressing misinformation must inevitably be a collective and inclusive social endeavour.

The symposium will be held virtually, and our session will be at 10am PDT, which is 6pm BST. Registration details and the programme can be found here.