When someone tries to persuade you of something that is not actually true, and the persuader knows it is not true, then the persuader is engaged in manipulation – versus argument or discussion.
If you do not trust mass media, then you are unpatriotic. Interesting assertion unsupported by evidence. But its in the Washington Post, so you can trust it.
In light of the survey finding most voters are badly misinformed on well known and popular public policy issues the same is likely true about social media posts. It is likely that more than half of political or policy oriented social media posts are incorrect. But depending on who makes the posts, and how many followers they have, their incorrect posts can be influential – and plant non factual and illogical constructions in the minds of their targets.
Democrats won the popular vote in the U.S. Senate, therefore the 2018 election is unfair, says the meme. Sounds convincing – until you see this claim taken apart by the Washington Post. In fact, Democrats won 22 of the 35 seats or 65% of the seats while receiving just 55% of the total votes. Read the whole thing. This is an example of propaganda messaging that uses the “What you see is all there is” method. Also see thelogical fallacy of implying a vote of 1/3d of the Senate seats is a vote of 100% of Senate seats, fooling the target of the propaganda messaging.
This blog analyzed a popular social media propaganda post that was widely distributed in 2016. The poster encouraged viewers to share if you wanted the U.S. to be just like Denmark. Nearly all the claims about Denmark, however, were false. Yet the poster was widely shared. Another popular meme is that Denmark is a socialist country and we should be just like Denmark. Except Denmark is not a socialist country – and that is according to the Prime Minister of Denmark.