Based on last week’s readings along, I think we should be critical before drawing finite conclusions about the ignorance of the American public when analyzing the Pew Center’s surveys. Statistics showing low percentages of specific facts the American public knows support the on-line processing model that we reviewed last week. If we support this model, then we must accept that, in general, people do not recall specific facts, but they can infer relevant political information based on facts they once processed, but likely forgot. Kuklinski and Quirk even pointed out last week that the human brain does not have the mental capacity of maintaining the amount of information most political scientists expect or want them to. Thus, for so many American not to recall certain facts about the political world is not surprising.
And regardless of the validity of the on-line processing model, I can’t help but feel that “What Americans Know,” tells us what we already know about ourselves: again, that the American public is fairly ignorant about political knowledge. Perhaps more interesting is that the level of knowledge, or lack thereof, hasn’t and isn’t changing. The Pew Report writes, “On average, today's citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago.” Thus, we might infer that even with the “information revolution” and the consequent widespread availability and accessibility of information on the Internet, that the combination of factors that contribute to collective ignorance are immutable. As Jerit and Barabas find in even their very specific experiment, a combination of individual factors related to education and willingness and collective factors related to the quality of the media environment and strength of political rhetoric all contribute in varying and uncontrolled ways to this ignorance.
Given this reality, I would have liked to have read more about are the explicit consequences of misinformation beyond a skewed policy debate. How misinformation or low levels of information translates into the political arena is clearly difficult to empirically and casually pinpoint, but I can’t help but think about how these distortions function at a larger level: the extent to which the lack of debate and accountability of leadership led us into a protracted conflict in Iraq, for instance. Or, more generally, how misinformation about the Muslim and Arab world fuels the kind of hatred that justifies not only military intervention, but also mistreatment of Muslims in the U.S. Recalling names of politicians and estimating percentages “of Americans who…” are associated with important policy and institutional knowledge, but the aggregation of a lack in knowledge seems to contribute to more general beliefs that are detrimental to our domestic and foreign policy.
And although the Pew research demonstrated that collective ignorance has not changed dramatically in the past two decades, I can’t help but believing (thus, perhaps I’m a victim of misinformation myself) that misinformation has become more prevalent with the polarization of media audiences and the rise in prominence of figures like Glenn Beck or even Sarah Palin. While the left has its share of loud pundits, misinformation – not just partisan or biased information – seems to emanate most loudly from the conservatives, fueling a widespread sentiment of distrust of our government and fear of foreigners, taxes or anything deemed remotely liberal. While Americans might have always made “inferences that fit one’s existing beliefs and attitudes,” as Kikluski tells us, these existing beliefs and attitudes seem to be sharpening and deepening to a perhaps inescapable point. Many Americans process information and thus, make inferences about the shared world we live in within entirely different and often opposing information vacuums. Whether this is simply a passing trend or a new standard in our information environment can probably not yet be determined, but it must be hazardous to our democracy in some palpable way.
Most frustrating is the hopelessness of countering widespread lack of and mis- information.
I think this example about the Iraq War and attitudes toward Arabs demonstrates the danger of misinformation. When people in power use popular misconceptions to invoke passion and fear, they create a following for themselves without considering the ramifications for others. When people act on false beliefs, real problems can arise. This makes being misinformed more dangerous than being uninformed.
ReplyDeleteIn reference to the Pew Reports, I thought it was interesting that education levels were consistently a strong predictor of performance on the polls. This raises a point we've touched on several times, which is that schooling matters. It is a place where people not only learn the structures of government, but how to be critical of what they read and the value of staying informed. Many of the authors we've read seem to support the notion that education serves to empower people to better understand and participate in democracy.