and linked to his manifesto. Worryingly, this information caught on:
the stories that were widely shared on Facebook were far more likely
to have broken reporting guidelines.[123]
This shows we need to rethink about how we interact with
malicious ideas, and who is really benefitting when we give them our
attention. A common argument for featuring extreme views is that
they would spread anyway, even without media amplification. But
studies of online contagion have found the opposite: content rarely
goes far without broadcast events to amplify it. If an idea becomes
popular, it’s generally because well-known personalities and media
outlets have helped it spread, whether deliberately or inadvertently.
Unfortunately, the changing nature of journalism has made it
harder to resist media manipulators. An increasing desire for online
shares and clicks has left many outlets open to exploitation by people
who can deliver contagious ideas, and the attention that comes with
them. That attracts trolls and manipulators, who have a much better
understanding of online contagion than most. From a technological
point of view, most manipulators aren’t abusing the system. They’re
following its incentives. ‘What’s insidious about it is that they use
social media in precisely the ways it was designed to be used,’
Phillips said. In her research, she has interviewed dozens of
journalists, many of whom felt uneasy knowing they are profiting from
stories about extreme views. ‘It’s really good for me, but really bad for
the country,’ one reporter told her. To reduce the potential for
contagion, Phillips argues that the manipulation process needs to be
discussed alongside the story. ‘Making clear in the reporting that the
story itself is part of an amplification chain, that the journalist is part of
an amplification chain, that the reader is part of an amplification chain
- these things need to be really foregrounded in coverage.’
Although journalists can play a large role in outbreaks of
information, there are other links in the transmission chain too, most
notably social media platforms. But studying contagion on these
platforms is not as straightforward as reconstructing a sequence of
disease cases or gun incidents. The online ecosystem has a massive
number of dimensions, with trillions of social interactions and a huge
array of potential transmission routes. Despite this complexity,