Pluralistic Ignorance and Fake News: The Election
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/technology/social-medias-globe-shaking-power.html
One thing we talked about in class with our discussion of networks, specifically in chapter 19, was pluralistic ignorance. The example we used was in thinking about the government – many people believe that the government is really liked and that the majority of people like the government, though privately, many individuals are opposed to the government. But in reality, most people do not support or like the government. This is essentially what pluralistic ignorance is – when individuals think their own beliefs are different from the majority, when it really is the majority and people are unaware of this.
I found an article that links pluralistic ignorance to the results of the election as well as to the spread of fake news as a driver of these results. It seemed to be a consensus that Donald Trump was unfit to be president. From his racial remarks to his indifferent feelings about rape and his disregard for minorities, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people thought that his running for president was a joke. Even within the Cornell community, you could hear people saying things like “There’s no way he could win.” And it’s true, his election came as a big surprise to a lot of people.
But what everyone underrated was the desire for change across the country. This article talks a lot about the power of social media in regard to the election. Going to Cornell and being a college student, most political Facebook and social media posts leading up to and around the election this past month were almost always about people’s dislike for Trump and their urging for their friends to vote (and vote not for Trump). So it seemed that we were safe, so-to-speak, because everyone around us seemed to share our opinions. But pluralistic ignorance gives a new perspective on this. Obviously because Trump won, there were many more people than expected who supported him. As with the idea of pluralistic ignorance, many Trump supporters were probably quiet on their support of the republican nominee. They thought their opinion and support for Trump was in the minority, and that most people preferred Hilary Clinton, when it was really in the majority.
Here is a quote in the article, from Clay Shirky, a professor who studies the effects of social networks: “White ethnonationalism was kept at bay because of pluralistic ignorance,” Mr. Shirky said. “Every person who was sitting in their basement yelling at the TV about immigrants or was willing to say white Christians were more American than other kinds of Americans — they didn’t know how many others shared their views.”
Like the quote explains and as I have touched upon, many Trump supporters didn’t believe that their beliefs were in the majority. Because Trump voiced so many seemingly unpopular and rude opinions, everyone figured the American public wouldn’t be in favor of him either. Those Trump supporters who agreed with Trumps racism and unpopular opinions kept quiet, but it turns out that many other people shared the same thoughts.