We did it, reporters! We came out the other side of the 2020 U.S. election. Unfortunately, there’s still something hinky going on.
Joan Donovan, a world-renowned Harvard researcher and major general in the Meme War, just published a magnificent site called the Media Manipulation Casebook.
Journalists have been scrabbling to stay on top of fabricated information, but unfortunately, have often laid themselves WAY too open to being manipulated. Sorry, fellow journos, but oftentimes the fringes on the web know how to manipulate you, and they do it well.
The Media Manipulation Casebook is an academic undertaking but also a guide to this underworld. For example, remember that Plandemic thing? What was that about? Was it popular? Should we report on it?
The Casebook will tell you that it originated from a single conspiracy theorist and used the “distributed amplification” and “Muddy the Waters” methods to get the press to cover it.
The casebook isn’t quite ready to have an on-demand fact-check of stuff like this, but it will help you decide what to cover and how to cover it. And if tactics like these are new to you, now is a very good time to dip your toes in!