Americans Were Primed To Believe The Current Onslaught Of Disinformation
It started with a drizzle but quickly turned into a downpour: Disinformation about the election, and in particular unfounded claims of election fraud, has flooded the internet over the past week. And Americans were primed to believe it.
Dozens of false claims shared on social media have kept fact-checkers busy and partisans energized. Pro-Trump Facebook groups that dispute the election results have attracted tens of thousands of users and become a lively marketplace for exchanging disinformation (until the social media network shuts them down). And President Trumps supporters have shown up in person as well to rail against what they perceive to be election fraud.
Meanwhile, polls show a substantial percentage of the population, particularly Republicans, believe (without evidence) that voter fraud has occurred. According to a poll from YouGov and The Economist conducted Nov. 8-10 among registered voters, 82 percent of Republicans said they did not believe that Joe Biden had legitimately won the presidential election, even though he has. This followed a Nov. 7 YouGov poll among registered voters that found 79 percent of Republicans believed voter fraud had occurred and affected the outcome of the election. Similarly, in a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted Nov. 6-9 among registered voters, 70 percent of Republicans said they didnt believe the 2020 election was free and fair double the 35 percent of Republicans who answered that way in a poll conducted before the election.
To a certain extent, disinformation about the results of the election was expected. Experts have been warning about it for weeks. But I do think the volume of the garbage and the inability of social media platforms to have effective means to stop the undermining of results of the election is really concerning, said Craig Silverman, a journalist at BuzzFeed News who has been tracking disinformation throughout the election. When it became very clear that Trump wasnt going to concede, the machinery of justifying that decision has really kicked into high gear. I feel like today it was as bad as it was leading up to Election Day.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-were-primed-to-believe-the-current-onslaught-of-disinformation/
A steady diet of Fux Noise will rot your brain.