Believability and Feelings in Fake News: A Mind Genomics Cartography

Abstract

Respondents evaluated vignettes combining varieties of messages, with the vignettes defined to be aspects of so-called ‘fake news.’ Each respondent rated a unique set of 24 unique vignettes, systematically varied by an experimental design with the vignettes comprising 2–4 elements. The respondent rated each vignette on a 5-point anchored scale, measuring two factors, feeling (angry vs happy; do not believe vs believe). The data suggest dramatically differences among elements in the degree to which the elements drive both emotion and believability, respectively. Various pairs of mind-sets or different ways of thinking about the information emerged from the clustering of patterns of linkages of elements to emotion, to believability, and to consideration time (response time.) The emergent mind-sets differ on the primary axis of topic (what, how) versus motivation (why.) Introduction We depend upon the daily news for a lot of our information, ranging from the weather and what to wear on to the state of our economy, and of course what actions we should take. The common view is that to a great degree the news that we consume, whether from papers or from electronic modes of presentation are ‘objective.’ That is, we recognize that people may slant the news, but we accept their slanting as ‘part of the news itself,’ recognizing that people have a confirmation bias [1], believing that which agrees with their feeling. When we say that we accept the ‘bias,’ we mean that we accept bias which is not conscious, but rather part of the ‘earnest seekers after truth,’ albeit a seeker who must by the human condition have some bias. The great gift of reporters is that they have the luxury to describe the news after it has happened. It is understood that the reporter will change the story a bit, polishing it to make it attractive for the news consumer to consumer. Polish may be simple, such as better organization of the raw information, out to better, more felicitous but not necessarily ‘faithful’ reportage of the happened. And, of course, we accept the fact that the news may be presented in a new context. What we think may be a virtue, such as the warm pictures of dictators receiving flowers from children, may actually be horrible in its true context (e.g., agitprop, agitation propaganda [2]. The literature of the news, the reporter, and the emerging world of ‘fake news’ comes on top of this tradition of respecting the fundamental honesty of the reporter, perhaps at the same time taking into account some of the predilections of the reporter to present information which is not important, but which is perceived to help along a ‘story.’ The topic of Fake News is not new. Fake news, albeit of a strategic nature for war, is well known. One needs only look at the history of espionage, and the ‘fake news’ fed to the enemy by agents who have been turned. One need not even use a living person. Ewen Montagu’s riveting book, The Man Who Never Was provides a detailed account of the WWII effort by the Allies to fool the German High Command about the deployment of troops and material, by outfitting a soldier’s body with information, news and plans. The entire effort was an elaborate hoax to fool the German enemy [3]. Issues with fake news When a historically so-called objective source of information is polluted by deceit, or perhaps even by mass access of people to create news on social media, one of the results is that the media is no longer believed [4,5] That bold statement may be cause for alarm, but the ‘numbers’ suggest that fake, or created news, is all around us. For example, according to Allcott & Gentzkow [6], studying the outcome of the 2016 US election (Trump vs Clinton), “ ... the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; .... people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media network”. Furthermore, it Fake News appears almost impossible to stop. Tandoc et. al [5] described the situation in these dire words, focusing on what cannot be done Howard Moskowitz (2020) Believability and Feelings in Fake News: A Mind Genomics Cartography Ageing Sci Ment Health Stud, Volume 2(2): 2–8, 2020 anymore.” The nature of online news publication has changed, such that traditional fact checking and vetting from potential deception is impossible against the flood arising from content generators, as well as various formats and genres.’ Fake News may be impossible to stop because it is constructed to be inherently interesting, persuasive, and propagandistic. Tandoc et. al. [5] presented a typology of Fake News, using two dimensions of classification, level of factuality, and level of deception. These are not opposites, because within the compass of Fake News are news, satire, news parody, fabrication, manipulation, advertising, and finally propaganda, respectively. A further aspect of Fake News is the nature of what people want to consume as news. People like their news in different ways. There may be a single definition of what it means to present “NEWS” in a manner consistent with the ethics and morality. Yet, an interview with 61 high school students suggested that the students may prefer opinionated rather than objective news. In Marchi’s [7] words ’This does not indicate that young people disregard the basic ideals of professional journalism but, rather, that they desire more authentic renderings of them.’ Fake News, Mind Genomics cartography and process specifics The Mind Genomics studies are called cartographies because they ‘map’ the way a person thinks of a topic. The term ‘cartography’ is used metaphorically, analogous to mapping human genome. The fundament for Mind Genomics is that every topic relevant to a person in which opinions matter can be studied by a process which reveals the way the person values and responds to information about that topic. The Mind Genomics process cuts the topic into manageable pieces and explores those pieces through experiment. The experiment reveals the specific criteria and weights of the information about the topic, leading to a decision [8, 9]. The foregoing definition is general. It is in the specifics that Mind Genomics thinking comes alive. We deal here with aspects of the emerging topic of ‘fake news,’ Our goal is to identify what specific features that we wish to investigate drive a person to ‘believe’ the news, as well as to feel angry or happy about what is read. It should become immediately obvious that there are a great many cartographic explorations possible for any topic, and that there is no specific, limited, fundamental set of aspects of the topic. We are NOT exploring a limited topic like the set of genes on a chromosome whose number is fixed by biology and nature. Rather, we are using the metaphor of genomics to explore human decision making. Step 1-Select a topic: The topic may be broad or narrow, naturally occurring or constructed, historic or modern. Our topic is the emerging world of so-called Fake News. We define fake news following one of the more recent classification [5] specifically: ... a typology of types of fake news: news satire, news parody, fabrication, manipulation, advertising, and propaganda. These definitions are based on two dimensions: levels of facticity and deception. Step 2-Define a set of four questions telling a ‘story’ about the topic, and for each question provide exactly four alternative answers: The questions and the answers are left to the researcher. Table 1 shows those chosen here. It is important to accept the fact that these questions and answers represent just a sliver of the topic. [Table 1] Table 1: The four questions and the four answers to each question developed for this first Mind Genomics cartography on Fake News Question A: What is the story about? A1 reason: politician wants to gain new votes A2 reason: politician wants to construct a new power base A3 reason: public official wants to create approval of policies A4 reason: public official wants to disguise problems Question B: How is the story presented? B1 story: created with selective false facts B2 story: interview constructed by writer B3 story: expose written to be interesting & influence feelings B4 story: breaking news taken from legitimate sources and “edited” Question C: What are specific topics? C1 topic: public works and infrastructure C2 topic: behavior of elected government officials C3 topic: issues in educating young people to question and develop critical thinking C4 topic: issues negatively affecting quality of life of citizens Question D: Deliberate distortions D1 featured: government wrongdoing D2 featured: putting positive spin on mistakes D3 featured: explaining away and denying previous history and lessons D4 featured: overplaying to distract Step 3-Create combinations of answers (so-called vignettes) using experimental design: One of the scientific foundations and thus premised of Mind Genomics research is that the respondents must be presented with the type of information that they would ordinarily encounter, namely mixtures of messages. It is the nature of researchers to isolate variables and test single variables, reducing the other information in order to suppress any noise. The data observed is thus a function of the variable being tested, or in our case the ‘answer’ being evaluated. The world of Mind Genomics begins with a different premise, namely that in order to understand the mind of the person, it is important to present information in a way that is impossible to ‘game,’ and ‘fake.’ When the respondent sees a single element or answer, the respondent can guess about the ‘proper rating’ to be assigned to that element or answer. Thus, in Table 1, one can present each of the 16 answers or elements, and the respondent may adjust