Social Identity and Misinformation

In “Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive our Appetite for Misinformation,” political communication scholar Dannagal Goldthwaite Young seeks to understand why “so many of us are so wrong about so much.” This study follows her 2020 “Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States” (Oxford University Press), which explored the histories and aesthetics of two distinct but important genres within the American media landscape: liberal political satire and conservative opinion talk shows. In “Wrong,” Young focuses comparatively less on the production of media content and more on how politicians and media organizations try to tap into our psychological need to belong.

The book contains nine chapters. Part I (chapters 1-5) tackles the individual-level psychology of beliefs and group identity: how do we form (mis)beliefs (chapter 1); how do we know what we know (chapter 2); how did America become as polarized as it has (chapter 3); the importance of social identity (chapter 4); and the extent to which our worldview, and that of our team, depends on intuitive knowledge versus knowledge gained from observation and analytical thinking (chapter 5). Part II (chapters 6-9) addresses the supply side of belief formation: how political news reinforces (but does not make) social identities (chapter 6); how (hyper)partisan news encourages us to privilege what feels true over what is true (chapter 7); whether and how social media achieve this effect as well (chapter 8); and, finally, what journalists, tech companies, and the public can do to reduce demand for misinformation.

To understand misinformation, it is helpful first to define it. Young does so as follows: “Scholars define misinformation as information that is inconsistent with ‘clear evidence and expert opinion’, or information that contradicts ‘expert consensus contemporaneous with the time period [under] study.’” This is an interesting choice, and one that avoids a lot of the definitional debris that lays scattered on the misinformation research highway. Researchers have generally preferred using one of four types of definitions:

• Veracity-focused: Content can be classified as misinformation if it has been fact-checked and rated false, or if it goes against established scientific or expert consensus.
• Source-focused: If a story or claim comes from a source that is known to be unreliable (e.g., www.fakenewsonline.com), it’s more likely to be misinformation.
• Intention-focused: Misinformation is content produced with a clear intention to manipulate or mislead, for example, in the case of organized disinformation campaigns.
• Epistemology-focused: Content can be classified as misinformation if it is epistemologically dubious, for example, by making use of a documented manipulation technique or logical fallacy.

In “Wrong,” Young opts for a veracity-focused definition, without invoking the need to verify the factual accuracy of the information at hand. Instead, she relies primarily on experts and expert consensus as a means of avoiding the ever-present problem of (accidentally or not) defining misinformation as “information I disagree with.” In many cases, this makes a great deal of sense: For instance, it is nonsensical to dismiss decades of empirical data on climate change as the product of partisan pseudoscience, as some political commentators are wont to do. However, this definition also runs into problems when expert consensus cannot be established, or when clear evidence of the truth or falsehood of a claim is unavailable. More pressingly, are truth value and expert agreement both necessary and sufficient as components of our definition of misinformation? Perhaps not: It is both theoretically possible and practically feasible to invite false inference by conveying exclusively true information. For instance, a well-known example of an entirely true headline that a reasonable person might nonetheless classify as misinformation reads as follows: “a ‘healthy’ doctor died two weeks after getting a COVID-19 vaccine; CDC is investigating why.” The problem here is not that false information is presented but, rather, that false conclusions (e.g., the doctor died because of the vaccine) are invited by implying causation when there is only evidence of co-occurrence. Nonetheless, a recent study found that this headline (and others like it) substantially contributed to COVID-19 vaccine skepticism on social media, being 46 times more consequential in doing so than outright falsehoods.

Young does not grapple with these kinds of definitional questions, preferring instead to rely on previous research and an established definition, as well as a predominantly supply-side view on the problem (which I discuss below). This, in my opinion, is a wise decision: Defining constructs is often a tedious matter, and there is no need to have a universally agreed upon definition before being able to make informed claims about a topic, or suggest avenues for intervention.

Overall, Young puts group identity squarely at the center of her thesis, which she summarizes in chapter 9: “We look to comprehend our world in ways that advantage our team, we seek to control our world in ways that benefit our team, and we think and behave in ways that better connect us to our team. When false beliefs satisfy these needs, we will embrace them—even demand them” (p. 225). Repeatedly throughout the book, Young turns to how individual media consumers relate to what she calls the “three C’s”: comprehending the world, seeking to control it, and creating a community within it. As discussed in detail in chapter 4, this conceptualization is grounded in social identity theory, which proposes that individuals categorize themselves and others into ingroups and outgroups. This process has a profound influence on how people view themselves and others (both as group members and as individuals).

Based on this framework, Young proposes a model of identity distillation in which individual-level social identities, such as political or ideological affiliations (as well as individuals’ theories about the state of the world, their values, and their beliefs), are shaped and reinforced by what we see (e.g., content appearing in the media), as well as by political elites, norms in news content production, and our modes of communication (including partisan and social media). In so doing, Young seeks a symbiosis between individual psychology (demand) and media production (supply). However, she (in my view rightfully) avoids a false equivalence of responsibility of the two by putting the onus on partisan elites and social media platforms, rather than individual consumers, as prime movers of polarization and the spread of misinformation. She describes her model this way: “The behaviors of political elites, news organizations, partisan media, and social media platforms are symbiotic and synergistic. They operate in anticipation of the norms and incentives of the others to maximize attention, engagement, profit, and power.”

The most effective and impactful misinformation, in Young’s view, occurs when these elites are successful in tapping into the psychological factors that inform and shape the demand for misinformation. In light of this, she discusses the by now well-trodden literature on the role of analytical thinking ability, open-mindedness, source credibility, and partisan identity in shaping individuals’ judgments of (mis)information. But here, too, Young focuses mostly on the role of identity, which she sees as being at the heart of belief formation. In her view, “What does my team think?,” the title of chapter 4, is the all-important question that supersedes in importance other individual differences related to thinking styles and the like.

One point of note here is that “Wrong” is, first and foremost, about the United States. This makes sense considering the country’s importance on the world stage and Young’s own lived experience, but it also complicates the generalization of Young’s arguments: Though the book is rooted in theories from communication science and social psychology, we also know that findings from studies conducted in the United States may generalize poorly to other countries. Though Young does not ignore this problem, it is perhaps worth emphasizing that other countries with similar conditions with respect to partisan media landscapes (e.g., Australia) do not exhibit the same problems of affective polarization and democratic backsliding, or at least not to the same degree.

The final chapter of “Wrong” is dedicated to potential solutions to “identity-driven wrongness.” Young adeptly avoids trite, quick-fix proposals to address complex problems, and focuses instead on “the aspects of identity distillation that [she thinks] are disruptable: in journalism, in social media, and among individuals.” To journalists, she recommends engaging in democracy-centered reporting, which she defines as “a kind of journalism that puts voters and democratic institutions (rather than partisan elites or political operatives) at the center of political stories”; avoiding rewarding partisan performances of identity (e.g., the senator who held up a snowball on the Senate floor in an apparent protest against climate science); and expanding funding for local and public media. For social media companies (and by extension their regulators), she suggests transparency requirements for algorithmic content rankings (which has been taken up by regulators in the European Union), increasing the availability of data for researchers, and using this data to develop research-based policy recommendations. Finally, for regular people, Young advocates for the cultivation of intellectual humility, opening up conversations with people who are not like us, and an increased demand for democracy-centered political information. Nonnegotiable prior conditions include an acknowledgement of America’s pluralism and a dedication to freedom of expression.

As a researcher who has long tried to grapple with the same questions around what to do about these pernicious problems, I appreciate Young’s careful avoidance of framing misinformation as arising from a failure of individual cognition. Instead of recommending that we, as news consumers, be more vigilant about the content we see and share online, she asks us to demand more of the curators of our political and media environments. After all, decisions made by elites—both in tech and in politics, informed in part by us as academics offering policy recommendations—shape how we think, feel, and act in important ways. As individuals living in a polarizing world, we can and should act to bring those around us closer together, assuming of course good intentions on the part of all involved. But we must also demand from those who produce and curate our political discourse that they act responsibly.