Content mills are taking over online media content. Generative AI it taking over content generation – even writing published papers. And much of this is fake content, potentially leading to powerful propaganda tools. If you use the Internet, you have been fed fake content – and likely did not realize it was fake.
Most journalism in the U.S. today is “yellow journalism” that focuses on scandal, celebrity, “crisis”, the oppressed and fear and the prophets of doom – via scary headlines, and sample bias to cover stories that fit the yellow journalism narratives. Today, the most over used word in media is “crisis” – as you’ll see in this post, today, everything is a “crisis”.
Academics have long maintained they have a “freedom of speech” to pursue whatever they want to pursue in terms of research; this freedom extends to political opinions. In my state, all public sector workers have protection on their off-the-job speech. Private sector workers have no such protections and may be fired or receive negative performance reviews for their off-work speech. Which means when it comes to speech, some have more freedom than others, and that means, for example, that viewpoints of academics and public sector workers could be more influential because others may not be able to counter their comments.
“Guest may not leave a negative review in online (digital) forums if the guest has violated this rental agreement. Guest agrees to pay Homeowner a $10,000 penalty should guest violate this rental agreement and then post a negative review on any online (digital) forum.”
“Fan-baiting” is said to be a movie marketing technique where studios intentionally create controversy about the plot, characters or casting for the purpose of creating outrage and social media discussions, thereby increasing publicity for the film.