The most memorable outcome of the 2016 Presidential election in the US was not the election outcomes but the role fake news played to subvert democracy. For centuries, fake news has been accepted as part of any political process that different groups would engage in. Fake news was then known as propaganda. According to Zompetti (2019), fake news was described by Aristotle over two and a half millenniums ago as the red herring fallacy, where fake news could be used as a rhetorical technique to deflect and dodge an opponent’s argument. The red herring fallacy is also closely related to the technique reductio ad absurdum that exaggerates an opponent’s argument or premise then mocking them to reduce their credibility (Novaes, 2016). The 2016 Presidential elections, however, introduced a new and more dangerous meaning to fake news: labelling any argument as fake because it disagreed with one’s philosophy or political views. As a result, fake news has become an existential threat to democracy as we know it for it attacks democracy from its foundations: information transfer.
Throughout history, different definitions (and names) for fake news have existed. The 2016 US Presidential election is not the only democratic process that was impacted and determined by fake news. In the 1804 campaigns between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, the attacks against carried out against the candidates ended Burr’s political career (Zompetti, 2019). Even the well renown Joseph Pulitzer with whom the prestigious Pulitzer Prize is named after was involved in a form of fake news with William Randolph Hearst as part of their rivalry. In the Vietnam War, the US’s contributions to starting it and the one-sided news reporting was later discovered to be an intentional act to steer the opinions of the American public. Therefore, fake news is not a new concept. Furthermore, its definition and use has changed over the years. However, a question remains: what is it about people that leaves them susceptible to fake news?
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In a survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, it was discovered that American adults are more likely to be fooled by and believe fake news headlines three quarters of the time (Zompetti, 2019). Furthermore, Lee (2019) established that social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter are increasingly serving as both news sources and platforms to connect individuals to like-minded people. Zompetti (2019), therefore, establishes two psychological reasons why people are more likely to believe fake news and distrust legitimate sources. First, motivated reasoning makes people seek like-minded information sources to justify personal beliefs and stereotypes. This opens people up to all types of external influence. McIntyre explains motivated reasoning better in the following excerpt.
If we are already motivated to want to believe certain things, it doesn’t take much to tip us over to believing them, especially if others we care about already do so. Our inherent cognitive biases make us ripe for manipulation and exploitation by those who have an agenda to push, especially if they can discredit all other sources of information (McIntyre, 2018, p. 62)
Secondly, confirmation bias makes people more likely to believe ideas that are aligned to their stereotypes and political ideologies. When the internet and social media are added to the mix, everything is exacerbated as it becomes very easy to create and disseminate fake news. Furthermore, with repeated exposure, the targeted individuals are more likely to believe the lies, especially after they are confronted with the truth. Therefore, what is it about the contemporary definition of fake news that makes it a threat to democracy as we know it?
Democracy, as a political and economic process is built on one important premise: reliable information. Fake news and other disinformation techniques, like Russia’s firehose of falsehood, subvert and threaten democracy at its foundations as they make it unclear what is true and not. For citizens to make clear and rational political decisions, they have to be given the room to form their opinions and all the accurate information they need (Lee, 2019). Fake news, however, ill alienate the people and promote political cynicism. Furthermore, due to the proliferation of fake news, Americans are increasingly losing their trust in mainstream media while being politically polarized. Two things are bound to happen. First, Americans will be more likely to believe in different facts and no room for conversation. Everyone will believe their views are correct, thus forming the basis of anarchic and absolutist thought.
What is interesting is that some of the Americans already are affected by fake news without knowing it. In a 2016 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, Americans revealed that they were confident in their ability to identify fake news and treat it appropriately (Lee, 2019). However, Americans will not know what to believe in as the number of fake news articles and items start to eclipse legitimate news sources, thus polarize Americans (Lee, 2019). This is worse by some orders of magnitude as it would reduce participation by some individuals and groups in the democratic process. As a result, the country’s democracy will no longer be representative as the views and opinions of a select group of people will continue to be ignored. As more time goes by, more people and groups will continue to be confused by what to believe in. In the long-term, the country’s democracy will end up serving those who used fake news as a tool to alienate participants. Ultimately, fake news has the potential to destabilize American’s trust in government policies, citizen-media interactions, and their trust in democracy as a form of governance (Lee, 2019).
Anyone opposing the arguments made in the previous section might use the contemporary definition of fake news (labelling any argument as fake because it disagreed with one’s philosophy or political views) to ask one question: how does the author presume to know what the Americans are thinking when consuming fake news or how they know they are being affected by it? The answer is simple: it is impossible to know what people are thinking about or even collect quantitative data on their thoughts. If the author’s premise about how Americans interact and consume fake news is questionable, their arguments about the impacts on democracy will also be questionable. The answer comes in the form of Gramscian hegemony that uses common sense to understand the appeal of fake news and the underlying fallacies (Zompetti, 2019).
As a result, fake news has become an existential threat to democracy as we know it for it attacks democracy from its foundations: information transfer. Fake news is not a new concept and definition and use has changed over the years. On the other hand, democracy, as a political and economic process is built on one important premise: reliable information. However, fake news subverts and threatens democracy at its foundations by make it unclear what is true and not. As a consequence, Americans are increasingly losing their trust in mainstream media while being politically polarized. Two things are bound to happen. First, Americans will be more likely to believe in different facts and no room for conversation. Secondly, Americans will not know what to believe in as the number of fake news articles and items start to eclipse legitimate news sources, thus polarize Americans. When there is no longer any room for democratic discussion in American, fake news will have ended American democracy as we know it.
References
Lee, T. (2019). The global rise of “fake news” and the threat to democratic elections in the USA. Public Administration and Policy .
McIntyre, L. (2018). Post-Truth. doi:10.7551/mitpress/11483.001.0001
Novaes, C. D. (2016). Reductio ad absurdum from a dialogical perspective. Philosophical Studies , 173 (10), 2605-2628.
Zompetti, J. P. (2019). The Fallacy of Fake News: Exploring the Commonsensical Argument Appeals of Fake News Rhetoric through a Gramscian Lens. Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric , 9 .
