The concept of “misinformation” is deeply condescending. As commonly used in our discourse, it says the following to and about the public: “You’re getting the wrong information, and it’s causing some bad behaviors. We’re going to get you better information, pat you on the head, and tuck you in.”
It’s not nice to talk to and think about other adults that way, but many of my fellow elites often do, albeit a little more subtly than in the language quoted above. There are ways of addressing the problem represented as “misinformation” that respect people and align better with democratic norms. Some new research into a particularly stark form of inaccurate thinking suggests avenues.
“Conspiracy theories aren’t just the result of misinformation,” a report on a recent study says. “Some people believe in conspiracy theories out of spite that emerges when people feel disadvantaged or threatened.”
The study, Spite and Science-Denial: Exploring the Role of Spitefulness in Conspiracy Ideation and COVID-19 Conspiracy Beliefs, identifies three motives that predict conspiracy theorizing: “a need to explain the world (i.e., epistemic motives), a need for security (i.e., existential motives), and a need to feel valued in society (i.e., social motives).” A conspiracy theory is “a unit of meaning constructed from a collective and reflective attempt to fulfill the aforementioned epistemic, existential, and social motives.”
Why would people adopt a theory that is at odds with (our) reality and common sense? “Spiteful behaviors are triggered by competition, especially when individuals are—or are in danger of—being disadvantaged,” the study says. A way of getting back at the more powerful is to adopt outré, contrary, and—frankly—wrong beliefs about past events, institutions, the natural world, and so on. People may do this even though it is bad for them and society. “Conspiracy theory beliefs certainly fall into the category of a harmful cultural product.”
All this nests within the political science concept of rational ignorance—the idea that it is not worth it to learn more about a subject when you can’t do anything about it. Ordinary people can’t affect something as large and complicated as our federal government, for example. So why not make stuff up? That is not actually satisfying, and it may make things quite a bit worse. It seems to me that ignorance and anger are strong and growing strains—siblings—in our national politics.
If conspiracy theories and other wrongheadedness are increasing, that may signal the next stage in a politics that has been working poorly for at least 30 years. (I took phone calls from constituents in a congressional office during the government shutdowns of 1995-96, and many people wanted the shutdowns to be permanent.)
But the majority of thinkers on “misinformation” seem to lay the problem at the feet of other actors. In their 2018 book, Network Propaganda, Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts name the dramatis personae who they see producing manipulation, disinformation, and radicalization in American politics. For them, it’s fake news mongers, Russians, Facebook and online echo chambers, the right-wing media ecosystem, mainstream media, and Donald Trump. They do not point to people deeply frustrated with the remote, imperious government their taxes support—a government that routinely tut-tuts them about how they live, think, do business, recreate, and so on. For these authors, people just move through channels carved for them by the media they consume. That may be an overstated reading of an earnest and careful book.
My sense is that people have reasons to be unhappy, some of which are suggested above. Unhappiness and disempowerment lay the groundwork for people to engage with conspiracy theories and other forms of rejectionism. And they enable the political and social entrepreneurs Benkler et al. cite to ply their trade.
There is no small irony in psychologizing about people as I do here. It may be more elitism, flavored by my limited-government priors. What difference is there between prescribing the information diet of the common folk and psychologizing about them so you can convince them to seek out better information practices? Well, the latter at least holds out the possibility of honoring what people actually want in life and politics.
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