We have evidence that internet users are less interested in tracking the provenance of a story than consumers of straight print media.
It comes as no surprise to any thoughtful consumer that most media make money by attracting eyeballs for the ads they have strung around their content. In print media this is the role of display advertising. In conventional television the clusters of ads that interrupt program content have the same function. Even so, in the large scale public migration to internet sites many consumers of “new” media seem not to have noticed the close proximity of genuine news to the qualitatively different “sponsored content” nearby. Sometimes these “stories” at the end of a section feature an interesting picture, the promise of a shocking revelation, and always another new set of pages that will pull us in to see even more ads. These “news” items are sometimes labeled “Promoted Stories” or content “From Our Partners.”
On one particular day the popular website The Daily Beast had sponsored articles at the end of real journalistic pieces from a range of self-interested groups. One “article” entitled “Do This Every Time You Turn on Your PC” was really selling “Scanguard,” which is supposed to speed up balky computers. Another “article,” “How to Fix Your Fatigue” was click bait from a food supplement “doctor.” And an ancestry research service was embedded in a third “news story” entitled “What did People Eat in the 1800s?”
Sometimes this clutter of “advertorial” content has no appeal. But we may find it irresistible to take a time-wasting detour baited by headlines like “You won’t believe how the actors in ‘Gilmore Girls’ have changed.” At the risk of giving away my Calvinist/Methodist roots, all this spontaneous grazing pulls us away from more purposeful tasks. As if we needed it, a writing course at the University of Pennsylvania is actually called “Wasting Time on the Internet.”
As things go, advertising masquerading as news probably doesn’t qualify as a crime against humanity. And there can be little question that news sites of all sorts need the revenue stream of advertising that allowed print media to prosper for well over a century. But a problem remains: paid web content is now melded so seamlessly into the mix of stories offered on many sites that we may fail to notice that we have passed from the hands of editors and journalists into a strategic marketing world dominated by advertisers and copywriters.
In greater numbers Americans don’t consider the self-serving nature of much online content.
This doesn’t pose a serious problem to a savvy reader. But we have more evidence that internet users are less interested in tracking the provenance of a story than consumers of straight print media. In greater numbers Americans don’t consider the self-serving nature of online content, even when solid expertise and neutrality should weigh heavily on what we “know,” especially if we are researching subjects as consequential as health information. This lack of critical insight makes Americans a bit less intelligent, turning us into better consumers than citizens..
Add in another factor that makes the problem of accepting low-credibility sources even more unsettling. Traditionally our memory for content outlasts our memory for where it came from. This so-called “sleeper effect” means there is a time in our cognitive life when we are more likely to remember a stray fact or assertion than the source that it came from. You know the effect if you have ever heard yourself say “I don’t remember where I saw it, but I do remember seeing . . .” It’s at this point that the paid flacking of click bait creates the greatest opportunity for cognitive mischief. It’s content outlasts what should be reasonable suspicions about its fictions and limitations.
Sometimes the best we can do as advocates is lend our physical presence to a cause.
Evangelicals often talk about their modes of worship as forms of “witnessing.” Their lives and the ways they live them are meant to be “testimony” for what they believe. But the term can also be used more broadly. We can see another form of witnessing at weddings. The point is to be in the same space with the new couple, endorsing their union by our presence. With less fanfare a notary exists to attest to the signing of a contract or legal document. And we may be asked to stand up and be counted at a municipal meeting, if a leader wants a sense of how many supporters for a proposed ordinance are in the room. And, of course, there is the unforgettable young man who placed himself in front of Chinese military tanks during the pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Sometimes the best we can do as advocates depends less on what we say and more on the fact that we have lent our bodies to a cause or way of thinking.
This idea rose recently as I was canvassing for a political candidate with a partner. The homes we visited were all connected, one front door just a few feet from the next. Our job on this warm afternoon was to go to a number of houses, knocking on doors and expressing our enthusiasm for the candidate we favored.
After perhaps ten homes with few doorbells answered my partner began to wonder whether the effort was doing any good. Why wouldn’t a phone call been just as effective? It would certainly be a lot easier.
My answer spoken with more conviction than I’d earned was that it was good for the people who were home but stayed behind closed doors and open windows to know that others cared enough to try to connect. They surely overhead our conversations. Our physical presence in their neighborhood was its own act of testifying; just being there ‘performed’ our conviction in a public way. And that’s the thing about witnessing; it has to be seen by some audience; it can’t be totally anonymous.
We witness for the cameras and for each other, sometimes using disruptions of the routines of a public space to make a point. Think of protests carried out by the Black Lives Matter movement, Occupy Wall Street, or the silent strike vigils that happen in front of troubled businesses. If we need to give our cause gravitas we can also draw comparisons to Gandhi, to mid-Century freedom rides through hostile Southern towns, or to the current encampments of native Americans near the Dakota Access Pipeline.
We flatter ourselves with what may be unearned leaps up into the thin air of high moral purpose. For sure, our silent presence is not likely to register with anything like the poignancy of the man in Tiananmen Square. But the fact remains: sometimes the simplest way to make our case is to lend our bodies to a cause, “witnessing” even in silence.
