The Disinformation Industrial Complex 0
Joe Pierre, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, is less than optimistic about the role mistrust and misinformation play in dis coarse discourse. Here’s a bit of what he says; follow the link for the rest (emphasis added).
Now, why is there so much misinformation out there? Misinformation and disinformation—the deliberate spread of falsehoods—is a for-profit industry where the pay-offs are financial and political.
Those sitting atop of the disinformation food chain are masters of exploiting the normal cognitive machinery that we use to process information, taking full advantage of our propensity for confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and motivated reasoning that all act in the service of preserving a stable sense of self where ideology and identity are fused.