The unexpected “events” of 8 November 2016 in the United States have prompted sudden concern about “fake news”. I see this mostly as a squabble over market share. Traditional suppliers of fake news are alarmed at the inroads being made by new entrants. They thought they had a monopoly.
I am kidding, but only partly.
The internet has long been hailed as a decentralizing and democratizing influence that enables the public to circumvent the “gatekeepers”, among them political leaders, prestige academics and elite or traditional mass media. The desirability of this was based on a recognition that gatekeepers, as the name suggests, had at the very least the means to manage or craft a prominent (if not dominant) social narrative, even if only by virtue of consistent decisions as to what to omit or “overlook” or what interpretation to place on events that were open to multiple, valid interpretations. There was also a strong suspicion that where the gatekeepers had the means to credibly sustain a preferred narrative (as opposed to a strictly accurate one), the motivation to do so would almost inevitably follow. It was not certain that the gatekeepers would be virtuous enough to resist these temptations.
The internet facilitates direct access by individuals to a much wider range of individuals, including potentially a mass audience, to convey and attempt to forge an alternative consensus or narrative, to fact-check old media, to “blow the whistle” and to give voice to otherwise ignored or suppressed views. The ability of gatekeepers to sustain a preferred narrative is thus reduced. The need for traditional media to retain legitimacy in the face of this reduced power also reduces the incentive for them to even attempt it.
To put it bluntly then, the internet was widely seen as something that would reduce any opportunities and incentives present for old media to be propagandistic and less than fully honest — i.e., to produce fake news. While it is certain that there exists “news” that is accurately characterized as fake and that a portion of it emanates from new or alternative media, it is also true that old media have an incentive to exaggerate the extent of fake news from those sources in an attempt to shore up their crumbling gatekeeper status. One also discerns an attempt to stretch the definition of fake news to include competing opinions, narratives or interpretations. These and the previously mentioned concerns regarding the opportunities and incentives facing old media therefore raise the possibility that the allegations of widespread fake news might themselves essentially be fake news. But the more important point is that the potential for fake news to appear in new entrant alternative media is an unavoidable consequence of the mechanism by which new media disciplines both old media and itself — i.e., lower barriers to entry.
We therefore have two options:
Option 1: a substantial risk of fake news, with (a) limited opportunity to discover that it is fake, and (b) its source primarily being prestige media (the old media model);
Option 2: also a substantial risk of fake news, but with (a) reduced means/incentives for old-media-originated fake news, (b) greater opportunity to discover/test/debunk fake news, and (c) a portion of it originating from what are already generally recognized to be less credible sources (the new media model).
The potential for fake news is present under both scenarios. The potential for it to be disciplined is not.
7 December 2016