Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

by P.W. Singer

“lateral thinking.” In a study of information consumption patterns, Stanford University researchers gauged three groups—college undergraduates, history PhDs, and professional fact-checkers—on how they evaluated the accuracy of online information. Surprisingly, both the undergraduates and the PhDs scored low. While certainly intelligent, they approached the information “vertically.” They stayed within a single worldview, parsing the content of only one source. As a result, they were “easily manipulated.” By contrast, the fact-checkers didn’t just recognize online manipulation more often, they also detected it far more rapidly. The reason was that they approached the task “laterally,” leaping across multiple other websites as they made a determination of accuracy. As the Stanford team wrote, the fact-checkers “understood the Web as a maze filled with trap doors and blind alleys, where things are not always what they seem.” So they constantly linked to other locales and sources, “seeking context and perspective.” In