Misinformation and the Internet

How prevalent is misinformation? This is a question that Kuklinski et al. pose near the close of their article “Misinformation and the Currency of Democratic Citizenship”. I find this question particularly intriguing because generally, in both everyday political discussion and in the classroom, we tend to focus on the prevalence of uninformed citizens, but rarely do we consider those who are simply misinformed. In this new media age, where news outlets are fragmented and much reporting is done by amateur journalists or everyday citizens, it is easy to see how people could become misinformed about politics and society overall. To be clear, I do think the arrival of blogs and citizen journalism is, in general, extremely useful for democracy. I believe that it is capable of fostering a type of Habermasian public sphere in which private, individual citizens can actively participate in discourse with no regard to class, gender or race, and which can act as a valuable check on the government when necessary. However, this type of technology also has the distinct ability to create what Chris Anderson has referred to as “echo chambers”. In other words, it can enable, and even encourage, people to surround themselves with affirming political and social information, essentially making it possible for people to only ever encounter information that support their preexisting beliefs.

While this type of environment is clearly poisonous to the goals of democracy, when applied to the work of Kuklinski et al it conveys both a way for misinformation to come about, and a way for it to flourish and intensify. The scholars assert in the reading that not only are many citizens misinformed (in their study, the misinformation involved welfare), but that they are often very confident about their incorrect beliefs. This study, published in 2000, was surveying individuals who, while most likely familiar with the internet, probably did not experience blogs or online journalism like the world does today, ten years later. This leads me to wonder; has this misinformation trend grown since the study was conducted? Aside from the growth of independent journalists, the prevalence of partisan blogs and even partisan mainstream media today could certainly have exacerbated this trend by introducing or affirming misleading information.

If this misinformed sect of public has in fact grown, what can we do about it? While we strive for a public sphere in which citizens can freely communicate and spread ideas, when does this lead to the creation of “good” democracy and when does it cross over into the creation of citizens who only consume media that bolsters their beliefs? This reminds me of a point in the Carpini article that struck me; the fact that while knowledge gaps related to race, class, and gender have remained stable over the years, the gap between older and younger citizens has substantially increased. Does this relate at all to a possible rise in misinformation? Is it possible that instead of helping to create a public sphere, the internet is actually just fragmenting and misinforming us?