Over coffee, Captain Fractal considers a civilisation whose communication systems increasingly reward the behaviours that undermine its survival. The machinery isn’t broken. That’s the problem.
Tag: disinformation
Trump depends upon the opposing media he seeks to exclude. Its opposition generates the conflict through which his political identity acquires force. The wizard needs the curtain, but he also needs someone on the other side insisting that we look behind it.
Communication systems can make an interpretation familiar before it has been examined, significant before it has been understood, and consequential before anyone establishes whether it is true.
An account can be accurate in every detail it gives and deceptive in what it leads people to believe.
Counter-disinformation has a structural problem: engaging a message often helps keep it alive. While this is generally unsurprising dynamical behaviour, it remains widely misunderstood.
Disinformation does not persist because individual false claims survive. It persists because the communicative relations that make those claims meaningful continue to reproduce themselves.
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