Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, "Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
Nov 6, 2023
auto_awesome
Dr. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young explores the manipulation of social identities by political leaders and media organizations. She discusses how individuals are motivated to seek misinformation that aligns with their needs for comprehension, control, and community. The chapter also explores the vulnerability and honesty of a story compared to a diagram, and the influence of reasoning and previous experiences on our actions and decisions. It also highlights the correlation between evangelical Christianity and the Republican party, as well as the dynamics between black Americans and evangelical churches. The speakers examine the relationship between media, politics, and identity, and discuss strategies to counteract misinformation and improve the media and political landscape.
Social and cultural identities play a significant role in driving political polarization and the spread of misinformation.
Journalists should shift their focus from elite displays of identity and conflict framing to a more institution and citizen-based approach.
Deep dives
The Impact of Social and Cultural Identities on Political Polarization
In the podcast episode, Dr. Danigal Goldthwaite Young discusses the role of social and cultural identities in driving political polarization in the United States. She explains how individuals seek information that satisfies their need for comprehension, control, and community, even if it means embracing misinformation that aligns with their political team. Dr. Goldthwaite Young emphasizes the importance of recognizing the role of both supply and demand in the spread of misinformation, and how political leaders and media organizations exploit social and cultural identities to mobilize people. Through her research, she suggests solutions such as journalists abandoning conflict framing in political coverage, social media platforms increasing transparency about algorithms and ad targeting, and individuals cultivating intellectual humility and disrupting performances of political identity to increase demand for democracy-centered political information.
The Historical Shifts in Political Parties and Media Landscape
The podcast highlights the historical shifts in political parties and the media landscape. Over the past 40 years, lawmakers in the two major political parties in the United States have taken increasingly extreme positions on ideological issues, leading to greater polarization among voters based on race, religion, geography, and culture. Dr. Goldthwaite Young explains how this polarization has been capitalized by political leaders and media organizations to separate and mobilize people based on social and cultural identities. She emphasizes the need to understand the socio-demographic composition of the parties and how it amplifies identity-driven dynamics in the political and media ecosystems.
Factors Influencing the Spread of Misinformation
In the podcast episode, Dr. Goldthwaite Young explores the factors that contribute to the spread of misinformation in American society. She argues that the desire for comprehension, control, and community motivates individuals to seek information that aligns with their political team, even if it is false. She highlights the role of confirmation bias and the tendency to fill in informational gaps with misinformation, leading to the formation of empirically false beliefs. Drawing from tools of political science, communications, and social psychology, Dr. Goldthwaite Young creates a model to explain how public officials, journalists, and social media platforms encourage what she calls 'identity distillation.'
Steps Towards Disrupting Identity-Driven Wrongness
In the podcast episode, Dr. Goldthwaite Young provides suggestions on disrupting identity-driven wrongness. She recommends journalists to shift their focus from elite displays of identity and conflict framing to a more institution and citizen-based approach. Additionally, she calls for the expansion of a robust independent public media infrastructure and investment in local journalism. Dr. Goldthwaite Young emphasizes the importance of individuals actively challenging dominant mega-identities, cultivating intellectual humility, and disrupting performances of identity online. By actively engaging with democracy-centered political information and being honest in self-presentation, individuals can contribute to the transformation of the political information environment.
Over the past 40 years, lawmakers in America's two major political parties have taken increasingly extreme positions on ideological issues. Voters from the two parties have become increasingly distinct and hostile to one another along the lines of race, religion, geography, and culture. In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), Dr. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on social and cultural identities to separate, enrage, and mobilize people. Because humans are motivated to comprehend, to feel in control, and to be part of a community, they seek information that satisfies these needs – including misinformation that favors their political team. They don’t want to be wrong.
Bringing together tools from political science, communications, and social psychology, Dr. Goldthwaite Young creates a model to explain how public officials, journalists, and social media platforms encourage what she calls identity distillation. Dr. Young both describes the dynamics and provides suggestions for how to disrupt “identity-driven wrongness.” These include journalists abandoning conflict framing in the coverage of politics, social media platforms increasing transparency about their algorithmic content rankings and ad targeting, and individuals cultivating intellectual humility and disrupting performances of political identity to increase the demand for democracy-centered political information.
Dr. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young is a professor of Communications and Political Science at the University of Delaware. Her areas of expertise include political media effects, media psychology, public opinion, and the psychology of misinformation. I’m delighted to welcome her to the New Books Network.
George Lobis served as the editorial assistant for this podcast.
Susan Liebell is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
