NDM Story #20 - The #spiritcooking effect: How junk news goes viral and influences election

The #spiritcooking effect: How junk news goes viral and influences election

Summary:

This article discusses the topic of "spirit cooking" which is a process introduced by Marina Abramovic who describes it as  involving Abramovic using pig’s blood as a way of connecting with the spiritual world, to cook up thoughts rather than food. A video of the practice shows her writing various statements with the blood, such as 'with a sharp knife cut deeply into your middle finger eat the pain'.” - first stated in The Guardian.

“And people, if they just repeat attacks enough, and outright lies over and over again, as long as it’s on Facebook and people can see it, as long as it’s on social media, people start believing it…. And it creates this dust cloud of nonsense.” – Barack Obama, 7 November 2016.
All in all, "spirit cooking" represents how easy it can be to manipulate the masses to promote a certain agenda in a short time period.

•Looking at these figures combined with the turnout data (only 55% of people voted) and data which shows that what we witnessed wasn’t a surge in support for Republicans but rather a decline in support for Democrats

•The initial Wikileaks tweet was fuelled by support from a range of right wing commentators. The most popular being Mark Dice whose first tweet on the subject has now had over 13,000 retweets and 24,000 likes.

My opinion:

I think it's interesting that this website quoted The Guardian, indirectly admitting that this was at least one of their sources for news which demonstrates and reinforces the requirement for professional, traditional news outlets to rain in the journalism market. The article claims that there is a filter bubble which shields us from being able to hear or see alternative voices and viewpoints which to some extent, I agree with. It is definitely true that there is a lack of "both sides" being presented for certain topics which can be quite frustrating for people who may be sick of hearing matters from an opposing viewpoint.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook yet again has claimed that it is not a news site and does not have the power to influence the masses, despite the fact that this is what it claims to do for advertisers. I find this to be an interesting point as it displays the deception and the extent to which he is taking advantage of his market power with taking responsibility for his actions and admitting to the damage he has indirectly caused for journalists.