News fragmentation across alternative media enabled Trump’s election success.
Evidence
One cannot understand the rise of post-truth (or Trump) without acknowledging the importance of the alternative media. Without Breitbart, Infowars, and all of the other alt-right media outlets, Trump likely would not have been able to get his word out to the people who were most disposed to believe his message. The important point here—as we saw in chapter 5—is that the news is now fragmented. People are not confined to learning the “truth” from just one or a few sources anymore. And in fact they are not limited to getting it only from “the media” either. A good deal of Trump’s support during the election came from alt-right bloggers. One of the most influential was Mike Cernovich. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 300
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Fake news outperformed reputable news in social media engagement in 2016 — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 18; Fake news exposure in 2016 probably could not swing election results — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 520; News consumed via social media correlates with more polarization than direct browsing (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- News consumed via social media correlates with more polarization than direct browsing
#expands(0.80) - Fake news outperformed reputable news in social media engagement in 2016
#corroborates(0.72) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 18 - Fake news exposure in 2016 probably could not swing election results
#complicates(0.72) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 520 - Political impact of fake news is independent of its creators’ actual motives
#expands(0.72) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 217