Section 3.2 Understanding the Issue
In 1475, in the city of Trent, in what is now Italy, a two-year-old boy named Simon was brutally murdered. The body was found in the cellar of a Jewish family. A rumor quickly spread around town that the Jewish community had murdered the child and used his blood for their religious ceremonies. The local authorities of Trent rounded up Jewish members of the community, tortured them into false confessions, and executed some of them. Representatives from the Roman Catholic Church investigated and found no evidence of the involvement of any of the town’s Jewish community, but the local authorities convicted the community of the crime. Kristeller describes the rise of anti-semitic writing of poems and articles written about the incident that were printed in multiple languages in Europe [3.10.1.26]. This spread of Simon’s story reminds us that “fake news” and the use of it to oppress minorities has a long history.
The scholars Lazer et al. defined fake news as “fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent” (p. 1094) [3.10.1.27]. It’s information that looks like real news, but is not. These scholars go on to note how easily such misinformation spreads online where anyone can post information and it can potentially reach millions by being shared on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
When the misinformation is about whether or not a particular celebrity is romantically involved with another celebrity, the potential for harm is not high. But attempts at social justice can be thwarted by the spread of false or misleading information. One issue concerns which problems a given society faces. Is crime going up or down? If it is going up, then it is easier to convince people to divert public funds towards policing. If it is going down, perhaps such money could be spent on rehabilitation of criminals. A related question is whether or not police in a given area disproportionately kill people of color. If a problem does not appear to exist, it is difficult to build political will towards solving it. The same difficulty occurs with global climate change. Is the global temperature average increasing? Are humans causing it? Will it cause problems? If the public believes that the answer to any of these questions is “no” then the public will not support climate change abatement efforts.
The other side of this coin concerns solutions. Even if people have an accurate view of what the problems are, false information can make it harder to build support for workable solutions. For example, what are the effects of programs designed to reduce poverty? If misleading information is publicized that seems to show particular programs fail, then the public will not support those programs and the poorest members of our community will suffer more. Similarly, if proposed methods of reducing carbon emissions are inaccurately portrayed as failures, then such methods will not be adopted.