Repeated absurd propaganda can still drive voters to elect its authors.

Evidence

Allcott and Gentzkow do confirm that most fake news was indeed pro-Trump in its orientation and more likely to reach people via social media. However, they do not think that these facts necessarily mean that fake news had the ability to meaningfully interfere with the election. On the contrary, based on their estimates, exposure to fake news couldn’t have amounted to much during the 2016 presidential election. For example, they reason that a single exposure to the most persuasive political campaign ads on TV have been shown to influence vote shares by only about 0.02 per cent. Assuming that exposure to a single fake news article is as persuasive as a TV ad, that’s not enough to swing an election in key states, not even close. Other studies have corroborated these findings by analysing people’s browser data during the final weeks of the 2016 election, estimating that just under half of American adults visited about one untrustworthy website. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 520 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Lowenthal and Gutermann’s volume was rather like the handbook for demystifying fascist agitators which had been planned. But it was based purely on analysing texts, not on any research on the actual audience reaction. They had not even attended any agitators’ meetings, as Adorno had suggested. … Instead of successfully making a virtue of necessity, the editors’ refusal to sketch out a systematic maximal programmeproviding a background against which the volumes which had actually been published might appear as fragmentsactually made it more difficult to appreciate the works properly. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 434 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Standardized propaganda appeals survive mockery because their phoniness signals raw power; Modern propaganda works despite disbelief because it justifies itself in action — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 417; Totalitarian propaganda constructs a consistent fictional world that shelters uprooted masses from reality (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Fake news exposure in 2016 probably could not swing election results #complicates (0.85) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 520
• Text-only propaganda analysis cannot establish how audiences actually respond. #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 434
• Propaganda campaigns backfire by insulting audiences assumed ignorant #complicates (0.74)