Film directed by: Andrew Rossi
Where to watch: rent for $5 CAD on Google Play or Youtube
Buzzwords like the “age of misinformation” and the “post-truth era” are common in analysis of democracy, politics, journalism, news, conspiracies, and social media today.
After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News, a 2020 documentary directed by Andrew Rossi, is a deep dive analysis into events surrounding the state of online conspiracies and misinformation around and beyond the 2016 United States Presidential election.
The documentary opens with an exploration from the beginning to the end of “Pizzagate,” a well-known conspiracy theory started with an email leak and feuled by platforms like Reddit and 4Chan that eventually lead to a heavily armed man storming a family neighbourhood pizza shop in Washington DC. This conspiracy illustrates several key themes throughout the other examples and notable figures explored throughout the documentary:
Social media platforms, namely Reddit, 4Chan, and Facebook
The roles played by political advocates and pundits
Attacks on centrist and left-leaning news corporations, including CNN
Emergence of far right wing media shows and hosts, like InfoWars
Spiking of production and virulity of new conspiracy theories
In a similar pattern as Pizzagate, the next U.S. political conspiracy rose up fast: the murder of Seth Rich. We’ll get to that one in a moment.
One of the central conclusions of this film is how the meaning of “fake news” itself has become meaningless, since on either side of the political spectrum it means such different things. For Trump supporters, “fake news” is virtually any news or journalist that is against Donald Trump, while for the opposite side of the aisle, “fake news” is anything published online that is verifiably untrue. With people not being able to even agree on this, it’s believable why a “post-truth era” might be where we are.
The Age of Misinformation & Post-Truth
Our world has never been more connected than it is now.
While globalization and connectivity have caused many great innovations for human society, the unprecedented level of production and distribution of information has fostered some very big issues as well.
“Everyone on the Web can produce, access and diffuse contents actively participating in the creation, diffusion and reinforcement of different narratives. Such a large heterogeneity of information fostered the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews and narratives.” (Bessi, Petroni, et al., 2015)
Theories that we are in the “age of misinformation” stem from this phenomena: that increased access to platforms and information has made the perfect environment for misinformation to thrive.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts.”
The documentary highlights both this unfettered flow of information and the shift in how people are making decisions. From Pizzagate to the murder of Seth Rich and the virality of InfoWars, we can observe how platforms play a role in the creation and dissemination of information, and how quickly people drop everything to believe it.
What Causes Conspiracy Theories and Why Do So Many People Believe Them?
Conspiracy theories are no longer the “tinfoil hat” phenomena they might have been years back. Instead, they are online – everywhere.
“In the last years, a new online phenomenon is emerging i.e., the spreading of unsubstantiated and false claims through online social networks.” (Bessi, Petroni, Vicario, et al., 2016)
Additionally, Bessi et al. (2016) draw on the work of Mocanu, Rossi, Zhang, et al. (2015) who summarize that conspiracy theories are reverberating online just like real, true news stories do.
The documentary draws its own conclusions to why people are so tempted to believe and spread conspiracy theories: hate. After all, it's a lot easier to believe a falsified story about a group of people if you want to see their downfall.
While the film covers many real-life (and recent) examples of how platforms like Reddit and Facebook become perfect homes for spiralling conspiracy theories, Bessi and other scholars works from 2015 and 2016 summarize three key strategies that these theories benefit from:
Half-truths: it's much easier to believe a theory if some of it is true.
Uncovered topics: if you can’t fact-check the theory because there’s not much information on it, is it really untrue? Maybe lack of coverage means it is true.
Rejection of reality:
“Narratives grounded on conspiracy theories tend to reduce the complexity of reality and are able to contain the uncertainty they generate”
(Byford, 2011; Campion-Vincent, et al., 2005; Hogg & Blaylock, 2011; as cited by Bessi, et al., 2015).
The murder of Seth Rich is a great example of this last point. Getting people to reject reality and the status quo of what was once unquestioned reliable journalism is the easiest way to spread false information. As the film details, even once proof (investigative proof) had come out disproving the far-right's claims about the Democratic Party having Seth Rich killed, InfoWars and other fake news pundits kept going. Ignoring the facts and all new information coming out about the Democrats death, this proved it's not the truth they were really looking for at all.
Then what were they trying to do? Why go to all of this trouble to work against the very publicized proof?
Fake News as a Weapon
As Joel E. Dimsdale writes in the conclusion of his new book Dark Persuasion,
“Social media has gone from techno-utopianism to dystopic weaponization.”
After Truth examines the possibility of fake news being a political weapon, showing how both the left and the right have been approaching this concept. Jack Burkman, a far-right political pundit, even compared fake news to chemical weapons in World War 1; “people are using them so you use them.” On the other side, left-wing-run research firm New Knowledge sought to understand the mechanics of fake news by spreading misinformation about the Republican candidate in the Alabama senate race of 2017. The democratic candidate won and New Knowledge’s chief executive of research, Jonathan Morgan, said this was a success.
Media experts interviewed in the documentary didn’t see this the same way. Either way, this research and examples of both sides experimenting with intentionally spreading fake news does prove one thing for certain: “dystopic weaponization” might be an ideal adjective for social media’s role in democracy.
So, Who Is Responsible?
One of the big questions that After Truth tries to answer in its conclusion was who is at fault? Who is responsible for fake news?
As they toured through the actions of the biggest social media platforms in 2018, the wide-scale banning of Alex Jones (InfoWars) and the Senate hearing of Facebook’s (Meta’s) CEO Mark Zuckerberg were the most notable stories. The main conclusion? Platforms value and prioritize growth over any responsibility they have towards slowing or stopping the spread of misinformation.
Bessi et al. (2015) agree with this and detail why the spread of misinformation and platform growth are linked.
Their study found that “users of conspiracy pages are more prone to share and like on a post.” Conspiracy theorists are more “committed” to the spread of what they believe, so they will spend more time on the platform and dish out more interactions.
“Correlation values for posts of conspiracy news have higher values than those in science news. They receive more likes and shares, indicating a preference of conspiracy users to promote their liked contents.”
After Truth never came to a conclusion about who is responsible, since this isn’t the fault of a single player. A rather dissatisfying yet understandable conclusion to an hour and a half of watching American democracy crumble.
Research
Bessi, A., Coletto, M., Davidescu, G. A., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2015). Science vs conspiracy: collective narratives in the age of misinformation. PloS One, 10(2), e0118093–e0118093. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118093
Bessi, A., Petroni, F., Vicario, M. D., Zollo, F., Anagnostopoulos, A., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2016). Homophily and polarization in the age of misinformation. The European Physical Journal. ST, Special Topics, 225(10), 2047–2059. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2015-50319-0
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