view the rest of the comments
News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
That's actually my point: educating them doesn't really work, and the failure of the information deficit hypothesis (and the ensuing understanding of the Backfire Effect) has pretty much proven it.
We need to pivot from trying to inform people and focus on changing their minds.
Fascists don't bother with facts, because they don't really work. They've realized that people's brains aren't computers, they're rationalization engines that are just trying to make sense of the world and align it with ones precepts and social groups.
What would go a long was is coming down on the media and how it frames issues as having two sides, with equal validity. That'll at least prevent the more toxic ideas from getting an audience, and thusly credibility.
This is a contradiction. People's minds will only change with new information. In the long term, some minds can be changed. In the short term, such as between now and the general election, the Backfire Effect is a huge problem. We need to get true information to people first, before fascists get out their false information. Educating is essential, because so many people are uniformed on issues. Most people are going to tune in to the election between now and election day, so these next few months are crucial.
If we try to change the minds of fascists, in the short term we will be disappointed. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try though. People have demonstrated that it is possible to help people out of the MAGA cult, but this has been done on a case by case basis. Meanwhile, Fox News and conservative media in general blasts the airwaves with fascist propaganda. Mainstream news get it right occasionally, but a lot of the time they are still both-siding fascism. We are going to have to pick up the slack and get the word out to people on political issues. Fascists know they just have to trick people in the short term to win. We have to spread the truth to people who are sleep walking into fascism.