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Here's an interesting take on fake news by Tim Harford, the "undercover economist".

It doesn't appear to be behind a paywall to me. I hope it isn't for you...

I worry about a world in which many people believe lies, but I worry far more about one in which many people instinctively refuse to believe the truth.

https://www.ft.com/content/2c962eea-050 ... 4d49afbbe3

As an aside, Tim Harford presents "More or Less" on BBC Radio 4 and also the podcast "50 things that made the modern economy" which is a set of 50 (51 actually) 9-10 minute podcasts.

Paywall for me.

From empirical observation I can relate to the quote all too easily....

riverrock wrote:Paywall for me.

Sorry, I clicked on a link in a tweet which I now can't find!

Salient paragraph: "A study conducted by economists Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow found that fake news simply wasn’t as widely shared, seen or remembered as many people think. Close as the 2016 election was, it is unlikely that these stories swung it. "

Not behind a paywall, but on the same topic, Sam Harris's latest podcast. https://samharris.org/podcasts/145-information-war/e


Basically, they are all saying that fake news being a thing that influences people and elections is, err, fake news.

Certain politicians though, spout constant untruths. Do these not influence elections?

riverrock wrote:Certain politicians though, spout constant untruths. Do these not influence elections?

Salient paragraph: "A study conducted by economists Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow found that fake news simply wasn’t as widely shared, seen or remembered as many people think. Close as the 2016 election was, it is unlikely that these stories swung it. "

riverrock wrote:Certain politicians though, spout constant untruths. Do these not influence elections?

Clearly some think not, if we are to believe what we are told is in the article, and if we are to believe the article is accurate.

However I have heard a lot of people repeating fake news as justification. Seemingly they don’t wish to bother checking or thinking.

I do wonder if fake news is so ineffective why do we hear so much of it? Or do we?

One of my friends put something on FB yesterday. When told it was not accurate he responded. “Didn’t think it was but I thought I’d post it anyway”

The Stamford University stuff can be found here

From the article by the university:

Now there’s concrete data proposing that false news stories may not have been as persuasive and influential as is often suggested. But the economists behind the research do not conclude one way or the other whether fake news swayed the election.

Which is slightly different from what @eltonioni wrote...

I didn't write it. Tim Harford did. His analysis draws a reasonable and caveated conclusion, but the caveats are about the definition of "fake news", not whether the results of elections were swayed - as explicitly said in the Stanford article.

For a hapless onlookers like us it's reasonable to conclude that fake news influencing voters isn't much of a thing, if it is a thing at all.

Economists do like their error bars, but hapless onlookers often jump to the margin of error that suits their preconceptions.

So it looks like someone has been repeatedly repeating unjustified conclusions.

eltonioni wrote:..... hapless onlookers often jump to the margin of error that suits their preconceptions.

I think we have seen that happening.