[belorn]

The experience from a few months ago during a conference showed me that education won't fix echo chambers.

It was a conference that was organized by a organization that holds one of the major initiative against false news, and where one of the main tracks was about addressing the issue of false news. Last year they had a massive booth at the middle of the conference hall about false news. This year they brought in a key note speaker which brought several political slides while making misleading conclusions that was later proven to be false, but the whole thing echoed with the audience. It seemed to not matter a bit that it also just happened to be false.

When facts get in the way of a political message, even the most educated seems to let the facts go if its align with their own views. I wish education would work, but I don't see it as a proven method to solve echo chambers or political news.

[peoplewindow]

The whole idea of "fake news" came out of US politics to begin with, so no surprise organisations set up specifically with that as a mantra are ideological in nature and uninterested in actual facts.

[mattferderer]

I believe with your quotes, you may be referring to the phrase "fake news" but fake news has been around as long as humans & probably even longer. I'm glad people are giving this a discussion though.

[jordigh]

No, "fake news" refers to a very specific phenomenon. It's not just any kind of misleading or incorrect reporting. Trump was the one to start saying "not fake news, YOU'RE fake news", but the phenomenon as initially encountered was about shoddy and small fraudulent websites, often trying to deceive their audience to believe that they were a different website, pushing the most anger-inducing news.

It's a far cry from the NYT or Fox News reporting incorrect things, whether deliberately or not, to someone called Foxx News or Non York Times reporting that Islam causes prostate cancer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fake_news_websites#Lis...

[tomc1985]

This phenomenon was previously called 'yellow journalism' and should be a core component of any halfway-decent, modern American History course.

Have we forgotten about the Spanish American war?

[jordigh]

I don't think yellow journalism has the same properties as fake news. For one, yellow journalism doesn't try to deceive its readers as being as the same source as another more reputable source. With print media, this was harder to do.

Fake news has a slightly different approach because it's much easier to reach an audience online and elude trademarks.

[IronWolve]

Interesting that "Before it was news" is on the list of fake news sites, its a page aggregator like Reddit and hacker news, fake articles can be posted, but doesn't make the entire site fake.

Community news/comments can be wrong, but that's a far far different than a site intentionally promoting fake propaganda, which is the true meaning of a fake news site.

And even then, propaganda can blur into a political view, then even farther into down right lies.

[xster]

I think there's also a risk of conflating 'education' with our 'education system' that teaches citizens to be good productive workers but doesn't teach citizens how to analyze and debate about the nature of our society.

I believe the parent might be referring to 'education' as in logic, political history, philosophy so that the student can retrace the historical steps and recreate a societal scaffold that may or may not look like society today in the same way civil engineers are taught trig, calculus, static mechanics etc so the engineer can retrace historical steps and engineer the structures that may or may not reinforce or criticize our engineering approaches today.

[InternetUser]

> education won't fix echo chambers.

No fewer than 6 of the coveted "swing states" switched from blue to red[0], and many counties across the country flipped as well. What persuaded hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of 2012 Obama voters to be 2016 Trump voters? Trump himself educated them, in his speeches. I'm one such person, spent the entire election season commenting and chatting with others on Reddit and YouTube with others, and there were countless Trump supporters who had been Obama supporters. Trump educated us more about the political system than any politician or journalist ever has. He taught people the phrase "lobbyists, donors, and special interests." That itself had a very powerful effect.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president

[tyfon]

I'm seriously wondering about the education system in the US if you had to learn about lobbyists, donors and special interests from Trump.

This is primary school stuff in my country at least, along with the explanation for why political ads on TV are banned here.

[fhood]

Your not the first person to worry about our mandatory education. It varies enormously depending on the resources of the surrounding area, and I am sure there are some schools that cover modern politics.

[dmode]

I have been in this country all of 10 years and I knew about lobbyists, donors, special interests even before coming over. US and lobbying system is famous across the world, even my 75 year old parents know about it and they live in some far flung developing country. I am surprised that Trump had to educate people about this basic stuff.