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So, what is the relationship between facts and opinions? Opinions can be informed by facts, or by the purposeful denial of them if a group consensus compels one so. The political thinker, Hannah Arendt, explained how this manipulation can occur, through the interplay of facts, opinion, and power. Some politicians and opinion makers have seized upon this opportunity as an exercise of power. Social media has also removed a primary filter of journalists as the establishment of truth teller. The network effect of social media has broadened the sources of information and thus the construction of our narratives. We weave these stories into a comprehensive meaning for ourselves. But reality is more than this information it includes the availability of information from a variety of sources. The role of a journalist is to provide daily information: to provide accurate testimony of the political realm. The Bourgeois of Calais and the more contemporary re-imaging of Trotsky are both examples of how manufactured consent used denial of evidence and outright physical manipulation of evidence, respectively, to tell a story that those in power insisted on telling. The use of facts and storytelling as a tool of political mobilisation has been a long-established means to persuade the public of a group consensus. While these biases help us navigate everyday life, they can cause us to overlook relevant facts, even when they are clearly presented. Part of the approach of fact-checking is the awareness of the cognitive biases innate to each of us.
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If we just see some elements of a story, we construct the best story we can out of those partial elements. We rather rely on the information that is directly available to us, without being fully aware of what we do not know. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won the Nobel prize in economic sciences, introduced the concept of “WYSIATI” (What you see is all there is), meaning that we tend not to look for what we do not see. The spread of misinformation is inherently human.
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