and British intelligence agencies, Lewandowsky explains in “Two Ontologies,” also pointing to global warming denial and the decades-long denial of tobacco health risks as similar examples of the deliberate, carefully curated creation of ignorance in others. The term 'curated lies' describes the Iraq WMD narrative, carefully supported by U.S. These were also the focus of a paper he presented to the Stuengmann forum on deliberate ignorance in Frankfurt, Germany, last March, which will appear in a forthcoming volume from MIT Press. 'constructivism') Lewandowsky focused on “the distinction between curated lies and shock and chaos,” both of which are stylistically formal, targeting institutions and systems. informal) and target audience the other on ontology (using the terms 'realism' vs. Their typology employs two axes - one based on style (formal vs. It lays out a typology of four distinct types of misinformation, but warns that “combinations of these types of misinformation synergize to have even more complex and recalcitrant impacts.” To really appreciate what the paper found, we need to place it in wider context, as Lewandowsky did in a recent keynote conference presentation entitled “ 'Post-Truth': What, Why, and How Do We Respond? ' He began by addressing the differences between the Bush and the Trump style of lying, drawing on a 2017 paper, ' Combatting Misinformation ' for short, by Aaron McCright and Riley Dunlap. Making sense of the misinformation landscape It’s as if the press was running interference for Trump and shielding him from public scrutiny, rather than exposing him, as it is supposed to do when politicians violate the public trust. Given how complicated and damaging Robert Mueller’s investigation was, this distraction helped prevent casual news consumers from developing a sense of urgency commensurate with what was being revealed. That last bit speaks directly to journalists’ culpability: Not only are they distracted by Trump’s shiny-object trick-along with Trump’s millions of followers - they lose focus on what’s threatening Trump, thus amplifying Trump’s distraction with their own. Our study provided quantitative evidence not only for the distraction but, even more strikingly, that the media respond to the distraction by reducing their coverage of the threatening theme that triggered the distraction in the first place.” “Up till now, this was supported only anecdotally, for example by noting that Trump tweeted extensively about a Broadway play, haranguing the performers, at the same time that he settled the lawsuit against Trump University.

“We were interested in establishing whether there is any evidence in support of the view voiced by numerous observers that President Trump systematically uses Twitter to distract us from issues that he finds threatening,” Lewandowsky told Salon. (More on that below.)Ĭontribute $1.99 to support Paul Rosenberg's work He has a new paper in progress - with co-authors Michael Jetter and Ullrich Ecker - covering the first two years of Trump’s time in office, dealing directly with his strategy of distraction and diversion, a key weapon in his arsenal of disinformation, and one of four main types of tweets identified by cognitive linguist George Lakoff just before Trump took office. One such scientist is Stephan Lewandowsky, whose work I’ve written about before ( here and here ). There’s still a great deal more to be learned, but they know enough to provide a vaccine against the needless spread of Trump’s venomous disinformation.

The answers are there, if they’d start asking experts, because there are social scientists who understand a great deal about what’s going on - not just with Trump himself, but with the larger environment in which he thrives. As Trump ramps up his racist attacks with the 2020 election cycle starting in earnest - while obfuscating his own far-flung misconduct - it’s long past time for journalists to do something serious to curtail the power of his lies and deceptions. No one can imagine what Trump’s equivalent of Iraq Body Count might be. Trump lies too (bigly!), but in a fundamentally different way that journalists can't seem to get a handle on - well into his third year in office - leaving themselves (and too many of us) floating around in an ever-fluctuating state of befuddlement. “Bush Lied/People Died.” It was simple and to the point: There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no reason to invade.

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