Right Wingers and the Absence of Original Thought: Can we understand right-wingers by reading their Facebook group pages?
Probably not. “Monitoring” these groups may give you a heads up about what talking points are being launched into the zeitgeist, but it may not tell you much about what real people who have fallen into these malignant backwaters of the internet are thinking, what motivates them or what might reach them short of a full-blown intervention.
The ideas are not originating with the consumers of this stuff so it does not come out of their life experience or considered thought. It may or may not be reinforced in their real lives (for example by family, church, etc.) so that may be why they are going to the internet for reinforcement. The content of these astro-turf propaganda sites is generated either by internet trolls looking to generate ad revenue or by paid, professional PR consultants who know exactly what they are doing, designing it to trigger the limbic brain, bypassing critical judgment. Then it is amplified by bots which are increasingly sophisticated and able to impersonate real people, which makes it look like the “community” is bigger and more actively engaged than it is.
The impact on the human audience of this garbage is rather obvious, but I’m not sure they can be understood by looking only at the source of their disinformation, disconnected from their actual lives. I say this as a long-time listener to right wing talk radio. In all my years of doing this I have never heard anyone call in with an original idea. It is always just a reframing of some personal story to fit the narrative of the day or a re-formulation of the talking points that have already been put out by the professional talking heads — like a kid spitting back answers on a test or paper, rephrasing what they have been taught to get praise from the teacher (scholarly “credentials,” metaphors and titles are ubiquitous on these shows). Responding to them, even to debunk the most ridiculous nonsense is not helpful. First of all you may be responding to a bot, which will then be activated to respond back, and secondly, if it’s a person, you will just reinforce their frame by trying to refute it. My only idea is to do what Bernie does, which is to put out better ideas.
