2.2
Political and social factors: polarization and decline in trust in expertise and authority
Ruxandra Buluc | ANIMV - Aitana Radu | Univeristy of Malta
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10064038
2021-1-RO01-KA220-HED-000031158
DOMINOES Course © 2023 by URJC, MVNIA, UoM & NSC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the National Agency and Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Political and social factors: polarization and decline in trust in expertise and authority
The present section aims to uncover the main societal reasons for which democratic systems seem to be more and more contested at present. To this end we explore the link between three types of trust: epistemic, institutional and interpersonal, disinformation and the evolution or involution of democratic societies. It is important to examine the causes for shifts in trust relations in democratic societies and the role that disinformation plays in subverting this trust with a view to cancelling democratic processes and demobilizing democratic actions. We also propose a list of measures that could be taken to prevent further corrosion of the democratic societies because of disinformation and to restore trust in epistemic and institutional authorities.
Ruxandra BULUC | ANIMV
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Unit objeCtives
- Planning of counter-narratives and positive content
- Understanding the relationship between democratic systems and trust.
- Analyzing types of trust.
- Being aware of declining levels of trust in knowledge and institutions and their effects on democracies.
- Evaluating the types of trust the students consider more important.
- Adopting behaviours that foster the development of trust.
Aitana RADU | UoM
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Democracy and trust
Societal systems in democracies such as the government, the economy, healthcare, education, the military, etc. rely on specialists’ expertise and citizens’ trust for their well-functioning.
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Features of democracy
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Fosters the development of close(d) communities of like-minded individuals, where opinions are always reinforced and never challenged (echo chambers
Makes constructive debate and dialogue impossible because of a lack of common understanding & elimination of core democratic values such as pluralism and inclusivity
Plays on the citizens’ emotions, enticing to anger and stirring anxiety
Reduces/limits citizens’ ability to access and recognise trustworthy information
Subverts knowledge and trust
Creates social polarization as there is no common understanding of facts and opinions and emotions prevail
Blurs the lines between facts and opinions
How does disinformation affect democratic systems?
Threatens freedom of thought, the right to privacy and the right to democratic participation
Distorts core democratic processes, such as elections
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1.3 Institutions work to align policies with societal evolutions
1.2 Societal progress is ensured
Legitimizes democratic institutions
Presupposes a power/knowledge imbalance between the trusted and the trustee
2.1 Mitigated by alignment of interests
1.1 Elected officials act in the citizens’ best interests
Implies a mental leap and acceptance on the part of citizens
4.1 Trust needed to enable effective democratic governance
“paradox of democracy” (Moore, 2019)
3.1 Reliance on experts to handle complex issues
4.2 Safeguards needed to control what policy-makers do when in power
3.2 Reliance on policy-makers to implement the best knowledge into public policies
4.3 Control mechanisms
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Imagine the following situation
Who do you rely on for your understanding of the subject?
The news reports. You watch the news on as many channels as possible and read online from various sources. Your government spokespersons who explain what is going on and what measures they propose to adopt. Your uncle who worked in the private sector until 15 years ago as a building contractor who explains that, based on his experience, climate change is not real, and it is all an attempt to get individuals and companies to pay more taxes to the state. Experts in climate change and sustainable development who, based on an analysis of field data, explain that such measures are necessary otherwise we could be facing potentially devastating environmental consequences (e.g. droughts, storms). explain that one side in the conflict should be supported because otherwise the opposing side could not stop there and extend the conflict even further on your continent. Your best friend who says that the referendum is obviously used as a decoy to hide the terrible state of the economy and to keep people from complaining about it.
A referendum is organised in your country on the topic of tighter climate goals. Should the referendum pass, this would lead to the adoption of a comprehensive set of legal measures with significant impact at both micro (citizens), and macro (public and private sector) levels. When forming your own opinion, in preparation for voting in the referendum, who do you rely on for your understanding of the subject?
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Types of trust
Epistemic trust
Institutional trust
Interpersonal trust
1.1 Trust in the legitimacy, competence, expertise of authorities in various fields, from science to culture
2.1 Trust in democratic institutions that are responsible for promoting the individuals’ best interests
3.1 Trust each individual places in those around them, in the people they personally know and interact with, in their close community
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Which do you believe?
The influential public figures who claim that the extreme weather phenomenon was deliberately orchestrated by the globalists in order to undermine the country’s economic progress and destabilise it.
The scientists who repeatedly explain that producing an extreme weather phenomenon of this magnitude is not technologically possible.
A native of that country who works with you at your company and who explains that this is all a conspiracy meant to throw his country into poverty and topple the current government.
The spokespersons from the EU and NATO who express their regret for the crisis and explain what support measures will be taken and what assistance will be provided.
TV presenters who argue on public TV that this crisis was human-made to scare European audiences who might consider voting to leave the EU and NATO.
Imagine the following situation
There is an extreme weather phenomenon, which destroys all the wheat crops as well as the towns located in the Northern part of a country on your continent. The country is ruled by an autocrat who is not at all well-liked by the EU and NATO, but which people in European countries find charismatic and whose message of creating a strong nation that relies on its own economy and protects its national interests is very popular among discontent European audiences. This country is also the main exporter of wheat for the European market, however, due to this extreme weather phenomenon, the majority of their crops are destroyed for this year, and their economy will suffer greatly as a result. There are several ways in which this crisis is presented to the public. Which do you believe?
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Subverting trust: contesting facts, distrusting authority, social polarization
Promotes interpersonal trust within closed groups thus enhancing social polarization
Subverts epistemic trust
Attacks institutional trust
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Dismantling epistemic trust
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The scientific method
Mistakes can appear, but they are corrected through continuous monitorisation and replication Scientists openly admit mistakes Scientists undergo peer-review processes and present their results publicly for scrutiny.
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Manipulation of science
Best scientific data available discarded or distorted by special interest parties to serve their goals
The scientific data is drowned out by other competing data: The Tobacco Strategy
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Dismantling institutional trust
Disinformation targets public institutions
Disinformation promotes narratives about powerful actors, working in secret for their own nefarious interests
Citizens begin to distrust public institutions and their role in promoting public welfare
Citizens lose trust in democratic processes
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Disinformation affects mass media
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Interpersonal trust as a vector for spreading disinformation
- Limit the diversity of information one comes into contact with
- Lead to reinforcement of pre-existing beliefs and personalised knowledge
- Inhibit the expansion of knowledge outside one's limited social network
Interpersonal relationships
Interpersonal trust is based on emotions
READ MORE
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What Happened on Deliberation Day?
Contributing factors to increased polarisation:
INFORMATIONAL INFLUENCES
CORROBORATION EFFECTS
People with similar views grouped together for 15-minute debates
"Deliberation increased consensus and decreased diversity"
Groups included both moderate and radical views
SOCIAL COMPARISON
(Schkade, Sunstein and Hastie, 2007)
SHARED IDENTITY
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MECHANISMS
Rebuilding trust
Speak truth to disinformation!
Believe in truth!
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MECHANISMS
Rebuilding trust
Enact democracy!
Defend knowledge producing institutions!
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
MECHANISMS
Rebuilding trust
Participate in public forums!
Rebuild the media ecosystem!
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Bibliography
and useful resources
2021-1-RO01-KA220-HED-000031158
30
- Glüer, Kathrin & Åsa Wikforss. “What is knowledge resistance” (29-48) Knowledge Resistance in High-Choice Information Environments. Strömbäck, J., Wikforss, Å., Glüer, K., Lindholm, T., & Oscarsson, H. (eds.). New York & London: Routledge, 2022.
- Hardin, Russell. “Conceptions and Explanations of Trust” (3-39) in Cook, Karen, ed. Trust in society. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001.
- Kavanagh, Jennifer & Rich, Michael D. Truth Decay. RAND report. Santa Monica, California: the RAND Corporation, 2018.
- McIntyre, Lee. Post-truth. MIT Press, 2018.
- Moore, Alfred “On the democratic problem of conspiracy theories” (111-134) in Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, ed. Joseph E. Uscinski. Oxford University Press, 2019.
- Möllering, Guido. The nature of trust: From Georg Simmel to a theory of expectation, interpretation and suspension. Sociology, 2001, 35.2: 403-420.
- Muirhead, Russell & Nancy L. Rosenblum. A Lot of People Are Saying The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019.
- Nichols, Tom. The death of expertise: The campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. Oxford University Press, 2017.
- O’Connor, Caitlin and James Owen Weatherall. The Misinformation Age. How False Beliefs Spread. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2019.
- Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. Tim Duggan Books, 2018.
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Audiovisual and multimedia production:
2021-1-RO01-KA220-HED-000031158
DOMINOES Course © 2023 by URJC, MVNIA, UoM & NSC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the National Agency and Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
1. Believe in truth, fighting tyranny and upholding democratic systems starts with each citizen.
“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights” (Snyder, 2017, 65).
Each citizen can speak, assert and spread the truth.
Each citizen can uphold the criteria of judgement for democratic institutions and experts.
Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny. Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017.
Strömbäck et al (2022, 1) refer to a similar trend when analysing knowledge resistance, which they define as “the tendency to resist available evidence, and more specifically empirical evidence”. Glüer & Wikforss (2022, 30) term this rejection as a form of irrationality, which seeks to negate the link between the empirical evidence and a claim or conclusion, not on the basis of other, contradictory or refuting empirical evidence, but on motivated reasoning and preexisting beliefs. Thus polarization emerges (Glüer & Wikforss, 2022, 30) and common knowledge and truth become controversial and open to debates.
What all these concepts capture is the decline of reliance on knowledge and expertise in contemporary democratic societies, a rejection of knowledge in favour of personal opinions and emotional beliefs. Truth decay subverts the very essence and promise of democratic systems which is to encourage and foster progress for all individuals.
Glüer, Kathrin & Åsa Wikforss. “What is knowledge resistance” (29-48) Knowledge Resistance in High- Choice Information Environments. Strömbäck, J., Wikforss, Å., Glüer, K., Lindholm, T., & Oscarsson, H. (eds.). New York & London: Routledge, 2022Strömbäck, Jesper, Åsa Wikforss, Kathrin Glüer, Torun Lindholm and Henrik Oscarsson. “Introduction. Toward understanding Knowledge Resistance in High-Choice Information Environments” (1-28) in Knowledge Resistance in High-Choice Information Environments. Strömbäck, J., Wikforss, Å., Glüer, K., Lindholm, T., & Oscarsson, H. (eds.). New York & London: Routledge, 2022.
3. Enact democracy!
Citizens should ask for transparent institutional processes so that disinformation cannot exploit anything.
Citizens should engage in public decision-making processes, such as public debates with policy-makers, elections, public surveys, peaceful protests.
Citizens should request public debates, hold their elected officials accountable for what they say and do.
If citizens witness institutional integrity and transparency, and they understand the processes, then they have reasons to trust.
The only type of trust that does not seem to be affected by disinformation is interpersonal trust. Its foundation is mainly emotional, therefore contestations of facts, scientific truth and explanations do not weaken it. As Kavanagh & Rich expound, “social relationships and networks play a large role in the formation of beliefs and attitudes” (2018), however, they severely limit the diversity of information that one comes in contact with and reinforce echo chambers in which information is never externally verified and confirmation of even the most outrageous belief is readily available. In search of personalised content, people have personalised knowledge and facts, and while people are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. Unfounded rumours and conspiracy theories circulate freely in close(d) communities, in which people share them with their peers, who accept them on the basis of interpersonal trust.
People trusting only like-minded individuals and grouping themselves according to their beliefs rather than remaining open to debate and exposed to new information leads to increased polarisation. In an experiment carried out by Schkade, Sunstein and Hastie (2007), they discovered that if people with similar views were grouped together and asked to deliberate on certain issues that were ideologically laden, even a 15-minute debate led the most moderate participants to adopt the most extreme views in the group: “deliberation increased consensus and decreased diversity”. Once the deliberation was over, the groups were more extreme in their convictions and fewer people remained in the middle.
Schkade, D., Sunstein, C. R., & Hastie, R. “What happened on deliberation day”. Calif. L. Rev., 95, 915, 2007.
It is important to understand the essence of the scientific method. As O’Connor and Weatherall (2019) point out, it is not that science does not make mistakes or scientists do not produce erroneous results at times. The essence is that scientists are always vigilant and scrutinise their work, through peer-review, replication, etc., openly admit when they uncover they were wrong, and constantly attempt to find ways to correct themselves and improve their research.
Ultimately, the reason to rely on scientific knowledge when we make decisions is not that scientists form a priesthood, uttering eternal truths from the mountaintop of rationality. Rather, it is that scientists are usually in the best position to systematically gather and evaluate whatever evidence is available. The views of scientists on issues of public interest—from questions concerning the environment, to the safety and efficacy of drugs and other pharmaceuticals, to the risks associated with new technology—have a special status not because of the authority of the people who hold them, but because the views themselves are informed by the best evidence we have (O’Connor and Weatherall, 2019, 44).
O’Connor, Caitlin and James Owen Weatherall. The Misinformation Age. How False Beliefs Spread. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2019
2. Speak truth to disinformation!
Citizens could be more open to interacting with others who have diverse opinions and points of view.
Citizens should interact with people they don’t agree with on every aspect.
Citizens can explain to people may be wrong why they are wrong, using empathy and kindness.
6. Participate in public forums!
Public forums are based on freedom of speech (Sunstein, 2017, 40-44).
Public forums expose people to new information and different points of view, help air and resolve public discontent and improve society as a whole.
Public forums should include institutions as well, so that the citizens could interact directly with them and make their complaints and requests known.
Public forums can help reduce polarization by fostering unexpected encounters and diverse points of view and experiences and help to develop civil discourse and empathy in interactions.
Participation in public forums helps to rebuild trust in democratic institutions, processes and each other.
5. Rebuild the media ecosystem!
Citizens could support newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, that promote facts presented as facts and opinions presented as opinions.
Open debates on the same common, shared framework of knowledge allow people with diverse opinions to interact with one another and to be exposed to various points of view, without losing sight of the facts.
“A system in which individuals lack control over the particular content that they see has a great deal in common with a public street, where you might encounter not only friends but also a heterogeneous array of people engaged in a wide array of activities (including perhaps bank presidents, political protesters, and panhandlers)” (Sunstein 2017, 26-27).
Each citizen can help rebuild the media ecosystem by taking responsibility for what they communicate. It’s not only the responsibility of scientists and institutions, it’s also every individual’s.
If disinformation is spotted, then it shouldn’t be disseminated, but reported.
Democratic institutions need the citizens’ trust and support, to the same extent as they need the best knowledge available to inform their policies. However, if societies are polarized, and citizens are reluctant to trust anybody except for their close circle of family, friends, acquaintances, this affects the institutions’ abilities to perform their societally appointed roles. For example, if citizens do not trust that the medical system works for their welfare, then they are unwilling to fund it through their taxes, which will lead to a decline in the quality of the services it provides. If citizens do not believe that the government works in their interests, but rather that it is the slave of a global cabal whose goal is to destroy society as we know it, then they will not participate in elections, on the one hand, and/or not obey by those elections results once they take place (e.g., the 1/6 insurrection in the USA, contesting the results of the presidential elections).
If the citizens of democratic societies distrust their institutions, then democratic systems may disintegrate.
Nichols (2017) examines in more depth the effects of knowledge rejection which he terms the death of expertise and defines as “fundamentally a rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, which are the foundations of modern civilization.” Given the fact that, at present, information is so readily available to any person with a smartphone and an internet connection, there is an endemic confusion between information and knowledge. As Nichols points out, the two are not at all similar, knowledge is domain-specific, it is functional and operational, it presupposes not only access to information, but also the development of specialised skills. Therefore, not everyone has knowledge in all fields, irrespective of how much information they can access. However, this is difficult to accept because it undermines people’s sense of autonomy and self-reliance, and consequently engenders feelings of rejection and hostility to institutionalized knowledge.
Nichols, Tom. The death of expertise: The campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. Oxford University Press, 2017.
This rejection also favours those whose interests are to manipulate and dismiss scientific findings. A famous example given by O’Connor and Weatherall (2019) is called “the Tobacco Strategy”. It was first developed by tobacco manufacturers in the 1950s, when physicians first drew the alarm with respect to tobacco-induced ailments, including lung cancer. In essence, the strategy relies on fighting science with more science. The tobacco producers could not deny the fact that tobacco caused serious diseases. However, they could induce doubt, by funding research into other causes for those types of cancer frequently associated with tobacco consumption, and by concluding that research into tobacco effects on health were not as definitive as they seemed. Not that they were wrong, but they were not definitive. This strategy was widely successful, and it led to decades of delays in health regulations regarding smoking. It was then translated successfully in other areas, such as sugar consumption. In essence, the idea is that science is not dismissed, it is merely drowned out; thus the public becomes confused by the myriad of possible causes for various ailments, and confusion leads to inaction.
Epistemic trust is the foundation of democratic progress, but in order to reach its potential, it needs to be doubled by institutions willing to put into practice scientific discoveries, and to act in good faith with respect to the available knowledge. This leads to the second type of trust that is affected by disinformation and the contestation it entails.
Disinformation attacks and subverts epistemic trust and institutional trust, while, at the same time, enhancing interpersonal trust and reliance on members of the same small closed group. Disinformation is promoted in close(d) circles and communities, the so-called echo chambers created online, in social media reuniting people who share similar worldviews, beliefs, opinions, attitudes and who constantly reinforce one another’s standpoints by confirming them. Therefore, disinformation relies heavily on interpersonal trust, on accepting what people in one’s close circle are claiming because you know them or because you share similar points of view on other issues. As these groups become more tightly knit, they also distance and isolate themselves from other groups with whom they do not share opinions and thus social polarization increases, making it more and more difficult to engage in healthy and constructive dialogue and debate. We shall analyse these trends in turn.
One of the public institutions most affected by disinformation is mass media. Journalists cannot function amidst total scepticism; civil societies wane when citizens cannot count on one another; the rule of law depends upon the beliefs that people will follow law without its being enforced and that enforcement when it comes will be impartial. The very idea of impartiality assumes that there are truths that can be understood regardless of perspective.
Researchers notice that one of the most important pillars of participatory democracy is a strong and independent mass media ecosystem. It is the institution meant to safeguard democracy by bringing to light and holding accountable any deviations from the rule of law, from the principles and tenets of democratic societies. However, at present, the mass media is under assault as well. Several factors have led to the current fragmented media ecosystem, with highly ideologized broadcasts, and polarized audiences, in which the very foundation of a free press has been subverted, as it is no longer viewed as an objective informer, as a promoter of facts not opinions, but as just another biased voice in an already very crowded public space.
But there are inherent limitations that come with relying too extensively on individuals and their knowledge and understanding of the world. Individuals do not possess as vast and as detailed model of the physical and social world as they come to believe. Levy (2007, 184) explains that these models are actually located outside of individual cognition, in a social network; they are in fact external representations, which require fewer individual resources. This means, that when an individual has a problem, they do not have to find the solution on their own. They know where to go, who to contact, to provide them with the best approach. But this requires trust, and trust outside one’s own internal knowledge, or close(d) group knowledge.
Levy, Neil. “Radically socialized knowledge and conspiracy theories”. Episteme, 2007, 4.2: 181-192
These scientific endeavours can be thwarted not from within, as the scientists, as previously stated, have inner control mechanisms to identify mistakes and correct them, but from without, when science is manipulated to serve particular interests, or it is simply dismissed because it does not serve the policy-makers’ interests. The increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data, affects not only recent research, in whose case the data may be still inconclusive or in need of further verification (e.g., a new possible cure for cancer), but also clearly established and confirmed scientific conclusions (e.g., such as the vaccines are beneficial, climate change is real). There is an ever-growing difference between what the scientifically proves facts and data and public opinions and attitudes towards them, because the former are mispresented or twisted to serve particular interests. In fact, people seem to be rejecting facts and data in favour of personal experiences, personal stories, and opinions. And this rejection fuels a vicious circle, in which people refuse to learn more about scientific findings and thus know less, and rely even more heavily on their personal interpretations, and accept opinions as facts, because opinions they can comprehend more easily than sometimes very complex scientific facts.
Thompson (2018, 8) defines counterknowledge as “misinformation packaged to look like fact–packaged so effectively, indeed, that the twenty-first century is facing a pandemic of credulous thinking.” Despite counterknowledge claiming to be actual knowledge, it is not, since it fails empirical validation as it “misrepresents reality (deliberately or otherwise) by presenting non-facts as facts” (Thompson, 2008, 9). That is the true and the false become indistinguishable and interchangeable.
Thompson, Damian. Counterknowledge. How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008
This already challenging, fragmented and emotionally charged media ecosystem, is further complicated by the emergence of social media. More and more people, all over the globe, report that they get their news from social media platforms. Snyder (2018) explains that “the internet is an attention economy, which means that profit-seeking platforms are designed to divide the attention of their users into the smallest possible units that can be exploited by advertising messages,” and the news on these platforms is not tailored to encourage reflection, but to fit and decreasing attention span and the hunger for reinforcement, thus forming a “neural path between prejudice and outrage” which does not encourage action, but rather a continuous spiral of discontent and distrust.
Social media, as an increasing insulated environment in which people interact only in small, tailored groups, lead to accentuated epistemic and institutional distrust since facts and opinions are not differentiated and the content is actually segregated to be in tune with the groups’ pre-existing beliefs which are thus reinforced (Kavanagh & Rich, 2018). Consequently, ruptures and polarization increase in societies, as people insulate themselves in communities with no contact with opposing or diverging views, where debate does not exist, only a spiral of confirmation and “tribal” belief reinforcement (Kavanagh & Rich, 2018; McIntyre, 2018). The factual common ground so necessary for informed democratic debates in the public sphere with respect to how and what societies should do is fractured, due to lack of adherence to common facts and consensual truth, and to lack of constructive debates.
Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. Tim Duggan Books, 2018.
Kavanagh, Jennifer & Rich, Michael D. Truth Decay. RAND report. Santa Monica, California: the RAND Corporation, 2018
4. Defend knowledge producing institutions!
Scientists and experts may be wrong at times, but they are closely monitored and evaluated, and their mistakes are uncovered and corrected.
Progress without science is impossible.
Citizens should question scientists openly, request evidence, allow them to answer and to explain, and listen to what the scientists are saying.
Citizens should listen to the evidence, accept that they may not know everything, and be willing to learn.
Citizens should make sure that policy-makers act on the basis of the best available scientific data, and not on personal interests.
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Transcript
2.2
Political and social factors: polarization and decline in trust in expertise and authority
Ruxandra Buluc | ANIMV - Aitana Radu | Univeristy of Malta
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10064038
2021-1-RO01-KA220-HED-000031158
DOMINOES Course © 2023 by URJC, MVNIA, UoM & NSC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the National Agency and Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Political and social factors: polarization and decline in trust in expertise and authority
The present section aims to uncover the main societal reasons for which democratic systems seem to be more and more contested at present. To this end we explore the link between three types of trust: epistemic, institutional and interpersonal, disinformation and the evolution or involution of democratic societies. It is important to examine the causes for shifts in trust relations in democratic societies and the role that disinformation plays in subverting this trust with a view to cancelling democratic processes and demobilizing democratic actions. We also propose a list of measures that could be taken to prevent further corrosion of the democratic societies because of disinformation and to restore trust in epistemic and institutional authorities.
Ruxandra BULUC | ANIMV
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Unit objeCtives
Aitana RADU | UoM
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Democracy and trust
Societal systems in democracies such as the government, the economy, healthcare, education, the military, etc. rely on specialists’ expertise and citizens’ trust for their well-functioning.
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Features of democracy
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Fosters the development of close(d) communities of like-minded individuals, where opinions are always reinforced and never challenged (echo chambers
Makes constructive debate and dialogue impossible because of a lack of common understanding & elimination of core democratic values such as pluralism and inclusivity
Plays on the citizens’ emotions, enticing to anger and stirring anxiety
Reduces/limits citizens’ ability to access and recognise trustworthy information
Subverts knowledge and trust
Creates social polarization as there is no common understanding of facts and opinions and emotions prevail
Blurs the lines between facts and opinions
How does disinformation affect democratic systems?
Threatens freedom of thought, the right to privacy and the right to democratic participation
Distorts core democratic processes, such as elections
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
1.3 Institutions work to align policies with societal evolutions
1.2 Societal progress is ensured
Legitimizes democratic institutions
Presupposes a power/knowledge imbalance between the trusted and the trustee
2.1 Mitigated by alignment of interests
1.1 Elected officials act in the citizens’ best interests
Implies a mental leap and acceptance on the part of citizens
4.1 Trust needed to enable effective democratic governance
“paradox of democracy” (Moore, 2019)
3.1 Reliance on experts to handle complex issues
4.2 Safeguards needed to control what policy-makers do when in power
3.2 Reliance on policy-makers to implement the best knowledge into public policies
4.3 Control mechanisms
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Imagine the following situation
Who do you rely on for your understanding of the subject?
The news reports. You watch the news on as many channels as possible and read online from various sources. Your government spokespersons who explain what is going on and what measures they propose to adopt. Your uncle who worked in the private sector until 15 years ago as a building contractor who explains that, based on his experience, climate change is not real, and it is all an attempt to get individuals and companies to pay more taxes to the state. Experts in climate change and sustainable development who, based on an analysis of field data, explain that such measures are necessary otherwise we could be facing potentially devastating environmental consequences (e.g. droughts, storms). explain that one side in the conflict should be supported because otherwise the opposing side could not stop there and extend the conflict even further on your continent. Your best friend who says that the referendum is obviously used as a decoy to hide the terrible state of the economy and to keep people from complaining about it.
A referendum is organised in your country on the topic of tighter climate goals. Should the referendum pass, this would lead to the adoption of a comprehensive set of legal measures with significant impact at both micro (citizens), and macro (public and private sector) levels. When forming your own opinion, in preparation for voting in the referendum, who do you rely on for your understanding of the subject?
Digital cOMpetences INformatiOn EcoSystem
Types of trust
Epistemic trust
Institutional trust
Interpersonal trust
1.1 Trust in the legitimacy, competence, expertise of authorities in various fields, from science to culture
2.1 Trust in democratic institutions that are responsible for promoting the individuals’ best interests
3.1 Trust each individual places in those around them, in the people they personally know and interact with, in their close community
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Which do you believe?
The influential public figures who claim that the extreme weather phenomenon was deliberately orchestrated by the globalists in order to undermine the country’s economic progress and destabilise it. The scientists who repeatedly explain that producing an extreme weather phenomenon of this magnitude is not technologically possible. A native of that country who works with you at your company and who explains that this is all a conspiracy meant to throw his country into poverty and topple the current government. The spokespersons from the EU and NATO who express their regret for the crisis and explain what support measures will be taken and what assistance will be provided. TV presenters who argue on public TV that this crisis was human-made to scare European audiences who might consider voting to leave the EU and NATO.
Imagine the following situation
There is an extreme weather phenomenon, which destroys all the wheat crops as well as the towns located in the Northern part of a country on your continent. The country is ruled by an autocrat who is not at all well-liked by the EU and NATO, but which people in European countries find charismatic and whose message of creating a strong nation that relies on its own economy and protects its national interests is very popular among discontent European audiences. This country is also the main exporter of wheat for the European market, however, due to this extreme weather phenomenon, the majority of their crops are destroyed for this year, and their economy will suffer greatly as a result. There are several ways in which this crisis is presented to the public. Which do you believe?
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Subverting trust: contesting facts, distrusting authority, social polarization
Promotes interpersonal trust within closed groups thus enhancing social polarization
Subverts epistemic trust
Attacks institutional trust
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Dismantling epistemic trust
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The scientific method
Mistakes can appear, but they are corrected through continuous monitorisation and replication Scientists openly admit mistakes Scientists undergo peer-review processes and present their results publicly for scrutiny.
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Manipulation of science
Best scientific data available discarded or distorted by special interest parties to serve their goals
The scientific data is drowned out by other competing data: The Tobacco Strategy
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Dismantling institutional trust
Disinformation targets public institutions
Disinformation promotes narratives about powerful actors, working in secret for their own nefarious interests
Citizens begin to distrust public institutions and their role in promoting public welfare
Citizens lose trust in democratic processes
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Disinformation affects mass media
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Interpersonal trust as a vector for spreading disinformation
Interpersonal relationships
Interpersonal trust is based on emotions
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What Happened on Deliberation Day?
Contributing factors to increased polarisation:
INFORMATIONAL INFLUENCES
CORROBORATION EFFECTS
People with similar views grouped together for 15-minute debates
"Deliberation increased consensus and decreased diversity"
Groups included both moderate and radical views
SOCIAL COMPARISON
(Schkade, Sunstein and Hastie, 2007)
SHARED IDENTITY
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MECHANISMS
Rebuilding trust
Speak truth to disinformation!
Believe in truth!
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MECHANISMS
Rebuilding trust
Enact democracy!
Defend knowledge producing institutions!
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MECHANISMS
Rebuilding trust
Participate in public forums!
Rebuild the media ecosystem!
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Bibliography
and useful resources
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Audiovisual and multimedia production:
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DOMINOES Course © 2023 by URJC, MVNIA, UoM & NSC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the National Agency and Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
1. Believe in truth, fighting tyranny and upholding democratic systems starts with each citizen. “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights” (Snyder, 2017, 65). Each citizen can speak, assert and spread the truth. Each citizen can uphold the criteria of judgement for democratic institutions and experts.
Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny. Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017.
Strömbäck et al (2022, 1) refer to a similar trend when analysing knowledge resistance, which they define as “the tendency to resist available evidence, and more specifically empirical evidence”. Glüer & Wikforss (2022, 30) term this rejection as a form of irrationality, which seeks to negate the link between the empirical evidence and a claim or conclusion, not on the basis of other, contradictory or refuting empirical evidence, but on motivated reasoning and preexisting beliefs. Thus polarization emerges (Glüer & Wikforss, 2022, 30) and common knowledge and truth become controversial and open to debates. What all these concepts capture is the decline of reliance on knowledge and expertise in contemporary democratic societies, a rejection of knowledge in favour of personal opinions and emotional beliefs. Truth decay subverts the very essence and promise of democratic systems which is to encourage and foster progress for all individuals.
Glüer, Kathrin & Åsa Wikforss. “What is knowledge resistance” (29-48) Knowledge Resistance in High- Choice Information Environments. Strömbäck, J., Wikforss, Å., Glüer, K., Lindholm, T., & Oscarsson, H. (eds.). New York & London: Routledge, 2022Strömbäck, Jesper, Åsa Wikforss, Kathrin Glüer, Torun Lindholm and Henrik Oscarsson. “Introduction. Toward understanding Knowledge Resistance in High-Choice Information Environments” (1-28) in Knowledge Resistance in High-Choice Information Environments. Strömbäck, J., Wikforss, Å., Glüer, K., Lindholm, T., & Oscarsson, H. (eds.). New York & London: Routledge, 2022.
3. Enact democracy! Citizens should ask for transparent institutional processes so that disinformation cannot exploit anything. Citizens should engage in public decision-making processes, such as public debates with policy-makers, elections, public surveys, peaceful protests. Citizens should request public debates, hold their elected officials accountable for what they say and do. If citizens witness institutional integrity and transparency, and they understand the processes, then they have reasons to trust.
The only type of trust that does not seem to be affected by disinformation is interpersonal trust. Its foundation is mainly emotional, therefore contestations of facts, scientific truth and explanations do not weaken it. As Kavanagh & Rich expound, “social relationships and networks play a large role in the formation of beliefs and attitudes” (2018), however, they severely limit the diversity of information that one comes in contact with and reinforce echo chambers in which information is never externally verified and confirmation of even the most outrageous belief is readily available. In search of personalised content, people have personalised knowledge and facts, and while people are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. Unfounded rumours and conspiracy theories circulate freely in close(d) communities, in which people share them with their peers, who accept them on the basis of interpersonal trust.
People trusting only like-minded individuals and grouping themselves according to their beliefs rather than remaining open to debate and exposed to new information leads to increased polarisation. In an experiment carried out by Schkade, Sunstein and Hastie (2007), they discovered that if people with similar views were grouped together and asked to deliberate on certain issues that were ideologically laden, even a 15-minute debate led the most moderate participants to adopt the most extreme views in the group: “deliberation increased consensus and decreased diversity”. Once the deliberation was over, the groups were more extreme in their convictions and fewer people remained in the middle.
Schkade, D., Sunstein, C. R., & Hastie, R. “What happened on deliberation day”. Calif. L. Rev., 95, 915, 2007.
It is important to understand the essence of the scientific method. As O’Connor and Weatherall (2019) point out, it is not that science does not make mistakes or scientists do not produce erroneous results at times. The essence is that scientists are always vigilant and scrutinise their work, through peer-review, replication, etc., openly admit when they uncover they were wrong, and constantly attempt to find ways to correct themselves and improve their research. Ultimately, the reason to rely on scientific knowledge when we make decisions is not that scientists form a priesthood, uttering eternal truths from the mountaintop of rationality. Rather, it is that scientists are usually in the best position to systematically gather and evaluate whatever evidence is available. The views of scientists on issues of public interest—from questions concerning the environment, to the safety and efficacy of drugs and other pharmaceuticals, to the risks associated with new technology—have a special status not because of the authority of the people who hold them, but because the views themselves are informed by the best evidence we have (O’Connor and Weatherall, 2019, 44).
O’Connor, Caitlin and James Owen Weatherall. The Misinformation Age. How False Beliefs Spread. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2019
2. Speak truth to disinformation! Citizens could be more open to interacting with others who have diverse opinions and points of view. Citizens should interact with people they don’t agree with on every aspect. Citizens can explain to people may be wrong why they are wrong, using empathy and kindness.
6. Participate in public forums! Public forums are based on freedom of speech (Sunstein, 2017, 40-44). Public forums expose people to new information and different points of view, help air and resolve public discontent and improve society as a whole. Public forums should include institutions as well, so that the citizens could interact directly with them and make their complaints and requests known. Public forums can help reduce polarization by fostering unexpected encounters and diverse points of view and experiences and help to develop civil discourse and empathy in interactions. Participation in public forums helps to rebuild trust in democratic institutions, processes and each other.
5. Rebuild the media ecosystem! Citizens could support newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, that promote facts presented as facts and opinions presented as opinions. Open debates on the same common, shared framework of knowledge allow people with diverse opinions to interact with one another and to be exposed to various points of view, without losing sight of the facts. “A system in which individuals lack control over the particular content that they see has a great deal in common with a public street, where you might encounter not only friends but also a heterogeneous array of people engaged in a wide array of activities (including perhaps bank presidents, political protesters, and panhandlers)” (Sunstein 2017, 26-27). Each citizen can help rebuild the media ecosystem by taking responsibility for what they communicate. It’s not only the responsibility of scientists and institutions, it’s also every individual’s. If disinformation is spotted, then it shouldn’t be disseminated, but reported.
Democratic institutions need the citizens’ trust and support, to the same extent as they need the best knowledge available to inform their policies. However, if societies are polarized, and citizens are reluctant to trust anybody except for their close circle of family, friends, acquaintances, this affects the institutions’ abilities to perform their societally appointed roles. For example, if citizens do not trust that the medical system works for their welfare, then they are unwilling to fund it through their taxes, which will lead to a decline in the quality of the services it provides. If citizens do not believe that the government works in their interests, but rather that it is the slave of a global cabal whose goal is to destroy society as we know it, then they will not participate in elections, on the one hand, and/or not obey by those elections results once they take place (e.g., the 1/6 insurrection in the USA, contesting the results of the presidential elections). If the citizens of democratic societies distrust their institutions, then democratic systems may disintegrate.
Nichols (2017) examines in more depth the effects of knowledge rejection which he terms the death of expertise and defines as “fundamentally a rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, which are the foundations of modern civilization.” Given the fact that, at present, information is so readily available to any person with a smartphone and an internet connection, there is an endemic confusion between information and knowledge. As Nichols points out, the two are not at all similar, knowledge is domain-specific, it is functional and operational, it presupposes not only access to information, but also the development of specialised skills. Therefore, not everyone has knowledge in all fields, irrespective of how much information they can access. However, this is difficult to accept because it undermines people’s sense of autonomy and self-reliance, and consequently engenders feelings of rejection and hostility to institutionalized knowledge.
Nichols, Tom. The death of expertise: The campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. Oxford University Press, 2017.
This rejection also favours those whose interests are to manipulate and dismiss scientific findings. A famous example given by O’Connor and Weatherall (2019) is called “the Tobacco Strategy”. It was first developed by tobacco manufacturers in the 1950s, when physicians first drew the alarm with respect to tobacco-induced ailments, including lung cancer. In essence, the strategy relies on fighting science with more science. The tobacco producers could not deny the fact that tobacco caused serious diseases. However, they could induce doubt, by funding research into other causes for those types of cancer frequently associated with tobacco consumption, and by concluding that research into tobacco effects on health were not as definitive as they seemed. Not that they were wrong, but they were not definitive. This strategy was widely successful, and it led to decades of delays in health regulations regarding smoking. It was then translated successfully in other areas, such as sugar consumption. In essence, the idea is that science is not dismissed, it is merely drowned out; thus the public becomes confused by the myriad of possible causes for various ailments, and confusion leads to inaction. Epistemic trust is the foundation of democratic progress, but in order to reach its potential, it needs to be doubled by institutions willing to put into practice scientific discoveries, and to act in good faith with respect to the available knowledge. This leads to the second type of trust that is affected by disinformation and the contestation it entails.
Disinformation attacks and subverts epistemic trust and institutional trust, while, at the same time, enhancing interpersonal trust and reliance on members of the same small closed group. Disinformation is promoted in close(d) circles and communities, the so-called echo chambers created online, in social media reuniting people who share similar worldviews, beliefs, opinions, attitudes and who constantly reinforce one another’s standpoints by confirming them. Therefore, disinformation relies heavily on interpersonal trust, on accepting what people in one’s close circle are claiming because you know them or because you share similar points of view on other issues. As these groups become more tightly knit, they also distance and isolate themselves from other groups with whom they do not share opinions and thus social polarization increases, making it more and more difficult to engage in healthy and constructive dialogue and debate. We shall analyse these trends in turn.
One of the public institutions most affected by disinformation is mass media. Journalists cannot function amidst total scepticism; civil societies wane when citizens cannot count on one another; the rule of law depends upon the beliefs that people will follow law without its being enforced and that enforcement when it comes will be impartial. The very idea of impartiality assumes that there are truths that can be understood regardless of perspective. Researchers notice that one of the most important pillars of participatory democracy is a strong and independent mass media ecosystem. It is the institution meant to safeguard democracy by bringing to light and holding accountable any deviations from the rule of law, from the principles and tenets of democratic societies. However, at present, the mass media is under assault as well. Several factors have led to the current fragmented media ecosystem, with highly ideologized broadcasts, and polarized audiences, in which the very foundation of a free press has been subverted, as it is no longer viewed as an objective informer, as a promoter of facts not opinions, but as just another biased voice in an already very crowded public space.
But there are inherent limitations that come with relying too extensively on individuals and their knowledge and understanding of the world. Individuals do not possess as vast and as detailed model of the physical and social world as they come to believe. Levy (2007, 184) explains that these models are actually located outside of individual cognition, in a social network; they are in fact external representations, which require fewer individual resources. This means, that when an individual has a problem, they do not have to find the solution on their own. They know where to go, who to contact, to provide them with the best approach. But this requires trust, and trust outside one’s own internal knowledge, or close(d) group knowledge.
Levy, Neil. “Radically socialized knowledge and conspiracy theories”. Episteme, 2007, 4.2: 181-192
These scientific endeavours can be thwarted not from within, as the scientists, as previously stated, have inner control mechanisms to identify mistakes and correct them, but from without, when science is manipulated to serve particular interests, or it is simply dismissed because it does not serve the policy-makers’ interests. The increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data, affects not only recent research, in whose case the data may be still inconclusive or in need of further verification (e.g., a new possible cure for cancer), but also clearly established and confirmed scientific conclusions (e.g., such as the vaccines are beneficial, climate change is real). There is an ever-growing difference between what the scientifically proves facts and data and public opinions and attitudes towards them, because the former are mispresented or twisted to serve particular interests. In fact, people seem to be rejecting facts and data in favour of personal experiences, personal stories, and opinions. And this rejection fuels a vicious circle, in which people refuse to learn more about scientific findings and thus know less, and rely even more heavily on their personal interpretations, and accept opinions as facts, because opinions they can comprehend more easily than sometimes very complex scientific facts.
Thompson (2018, 8) defines counterknowledge as “misinformation packaged to look like fact–packaged so effectively, indeed, that the twenty-first century is facing a pandemic of credulous thinking.” Despite counterknowledge claiming to be actual knowledge, it is not, since it fails empirical validation as it “misrepresents reality (deliberately or otherwise) by presenting non-facts as facts” (Thompson, 2008, 9). That is the true and the false become indistinguishable and interchangeable.
Thompson, Damian. Counterknowledge. How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008
This already challenging, fragmented and emotionally charged media ecosystem, is further complicated by the emergence of social media. More and more people, all over the globe, report that they get their news from social media platforms. Snyder (2018) explains that “the internet is an attention economy, which means that profit-seeking platforms are designed to divide the attention of their users into the smallest possible units that can be exploited by advertising messages,” and the news on these platforms is not tailored to encourage reflection, but to fit and decreasing attention span and the hunger for reinforcement, thus forming a “neural path between prejudice and outrage” which does not encourage action, but rather a continuous spiral of discontent and distrust. Social media, as an increasing insulated environment in which people interact only in small, tailored groups, lead to accentuated epistemic and institutional distrust since facts and opinions are not differentiated and the content is actually segregated to be in tune with the groups’ pre-existing beliefs which are thus reinforced (Kavanagh & Rich, 2018). Consequently, ruptures and polarization increase in societies, as people insulate themselves in communities with no contact with opposing or diverging views, where debate does not exist, only a spiral of confirmation and “tribal” belief reinforcement (Kavanagh & Rich, 2018; McIntyre, 2018). The factual common ground so necessary for informed democratic debates in the public sphere with respect to how and what societies should do is fractured, due to lack of adherence to common facts and consensual truth, and to lack of constructive debates.
Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. Tim Duggan Books, 2018. Kavanagh, Jennifer & Rich, Michael D. Truth Decay. RAND report. Santa Monica, California: the RAND Corporation, 2018
4. Defend knowledge producing institutions! Scientists and experts may be wrong at times, but they are closely monitored and evaluated, and their mistakes are uncovered and corrected. Progress without science is impossible. Citizens should question scientists openly, request evidence, allow them to answer and to explain, and listen to what the scientists are saying. Citizens should listen to the evidence, accept that they may not know everything, and be willing to learn. Citizens should make sure that policy-makers act on the basis of the best available scientific data, and not on personal interests.