Bullshit Media: The Wild Propagation of Lies in the News & Online

Does it feel like you can’t keep up with all the misinformation out there—much less refute it? Are you stuck in an echo chamber?

Bullshit can exist in any era. But, Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West contend that two components of contemporary society—the internet and the mainstream media—are particularly potent vehicles for spreading bullshit.

Keep reading to understand the phenomenon of bullshit media.

Bullshit Media

Bergstrom and West argue that, because the internet and the media are incentivized to earn revenue through clicks and views, they often propagate bullshit to meet this end since bullshit often sounds far more interesting than the unalloyed truth.

First, Bergstrom and West point out that bullshit media is a reality because the internet created an entirely new marketplace of ideas that inundated us with information. But, unlike previous information sources that earned money via subscriptions—such as paper magazines and newspapers—website owners mostly earn money via advertising revenue. Consequently, online stories seek to generate clicks to earn this revenue.

Further, the authors note that, according to one 2017 study, the internet headlines that generate the most clicks are emotive, rather than factual. In practice, this means that facts are not enough to compete in the online marketplace because online authors care more about clicks (and therefore money) than truth. For this reason, the internet is a fertile ground for bullshit since bullshit allows you to write emotionally charged headlines with no regard for the truth.

Additionally, Bergstrom and West contend that similar incentives have influenced the media since the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine, they explain, required news outlets to include competing viewpoints when discussing contentious ideas. Bergstrom and West write that, since its repeal, mainstream media sources have become increasingly partisan, promoting bullshit to more easily push a partisan agenda. Moreover, the authors observe that social media algorithms have amplified this partisanship, as they only expose users to sources that reinforce their existing views. Bergstrom and West contend that because these algorithms aim to generate views, they likewise promote bullshit at the expense of truth.

How Echo Chambers Perpetuate Bullshit Online and in the News

While Bergstrom and West explain why monetary incentives give rise to bullshit on the internet and in the news, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen goes a step further to explain why the consumers of these sources struggle to extricate themselves from this bullshit. According to Nguyen, the internet and the news are fertile grounds for echo chambers that make it difficult for consumers to recognize bullshit in the first place.

According to Nguyen, echo chambers don’t just exclude alternative viewpoints, but actively discredit them to undermine consumers’ trust in opposing views. For example, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella point out that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh often proclaimed to his listeners that the mainstream media was unreliable and dishonest, thus isolating his listeners by destroying their trust in alternative sources. Other experts argue that this isolation is amplified on the internet, where the overwhelming amount of information and the triumph of emotion over fact have encouraged digital media companies to divide readers into polarized “tribes.”

As such, echo chambers that promote bullshit also make it difficult for members to recognize bullshit, because members won’t trust anyone who calls bullshit. For instance, members of the anti-vaccination community—who believe the scientifically unsupported claim that vaccination causes higher rates of autism—often refuse to even consider evidence from mainstream scientific sources because they believe these sources are funded by the vaccine industry to peddle misinformation. And because there’s no longer a legal requirement for news outlets to provide balancing viewpoints, misinformation often goes completely unchallenged.

Nguyen admits that there’s no foolproof course of action for rescuing consumers from echo chambers that perpetuate bullshit. However, he notes that the crucial first step is restoring the trust that echo chambers erode. If this trust is restored, those sucked into echo chambers may begin to acknowledge the outsiders who call bullshit.

Brandolini’s Principle

The perverse incentives that infect the internet and the media aren’t the only reason bullshit is so widespread. Bergstrom and West maintain that another reason is codified in Brandolini’s principle: It takes exponentially more energy to refute bullshit than to produce it. Thus, bullshit online and in the news accumulates faster than we can eradicate it.

In addition to its intuitive plausibility, Bergstrom and West note that Brandolini’s principle is supported by several studies examining the spread of rumors on social media platforms. For example, one study found that even after being “fact-checked” by agencies like Snopes, false rumors continued to spread more rapidly on Facebook than true rumors.

(Shortform note: Researchers note that, in light of growing concern about misinformation online, the number of fact-checking websites has exploded in recent years—in 2018, there were only 11 fact-checking websites, compared with 424 in 2022. But, in some sense, this proliferation of fact-checking websites provides further support for Brandolini’s principle, as experts have found that fact-checking websites often fail to undermine misinformation.)

Bullshit Media: The Wild Propagation of Lies in the News & Online