Attachments to Blog on Intractable Issues in the U.S. and the Role of Media/Social Media

Index:

Attachment #1: Extremist Groups (those that are in the open)

Attachment #2: Conspiracy Theories

Attachment #3: Media Choices, Changes and Customer Profile Over Time

Attachment #4: Chomsky’s Propaganda Model of Consent

Attachment #5: Cable News Choices; Other News Options

Attachment #6: Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

Attachment #7: World Wide Web History

Attachment #8: Major Social Media Platforms

Attachment #9: Social Media Consumer, Recent Research

Attachment #10: Addictive Technology: Internet/Cell/TV

References

Attachment #1: Extremist Groups (those that are in the open)

Preamble: The Internet has transformed the ways we think and act, and by consequence, our politics. The most impactful recent political movements on the far left and right started with massive online collectives of teenagers. Strangely, both movements began on the same website: an anime imageboard called 4chan.org. Sites like 4chan and 8chan are microcosms of the internet itself—simultaneously at the vanguard of contemporary culture, politics, comedy and language, and a new low for all of the above. 

They were the original meme machines, mostly frequented by socially awkward and disenfranchised young men in search of a place to be alone together. During the recession of the late 2000’s, the memes became political. 4chan was the online hub of a leftist hacker collective known as Anonymous and a prominent supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But within a few short years, the site’s ideology spun on its axis; it became the birthplace and breeding ground of the alt-right.

The makeup of these groups comprises a complex range of individuals, subcultures and online communities. Social media has allowed the far right (and left) to spread its ideology and inspire attacks. These individuals and groups cultivate grievances on issues as varied as gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and immigration (where they often substitute the word “replacements” with obvious intent). Statistical clues are emerging (end of January) from the profiles of the 161 already charged by the FBI (of an estimated 800 offenders) in the Jan. 6th Capitol mob insurrection: 87% are males; average age 40, with the largest age category being 30 to 39. Disturbingly, there is an over-representation of active or retired military or police.

Extremist groups on the right:

The emphasis has been on white supremacy, homophobia and anti Semitism. During the attacks on Washington one of the mob had a shirt with 6MWE emblazoned on the front. This stands for “6 million wasn’t enough” a reference to the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.

The New York Times reported January 24 that for years far-right extremists in the American far right and its European counterparts have traded ideology and inspiration on societies’ fringes and in the deepest realms of the internet. The events of Jan. 6 at the US Capitol have laid bare their violent potential. Officials are increasingly concerned about a web of diffuse international links and worry that the networks, already emboldened in the Trump era, have become more determined since Jan. 6. Extremists are animated by the same conspiracy theories and narratives of “white genocide” and “the great replacement” of European populations by immigrants. They roam the same online spaces and also meet in person at far-right music festivals, mixed martial arts events and far-right rallies. The Times article reported that “Mr. Trump would be even more galvanizing in opposition” and that he “personifies the reach of an increasingly global movement with his close links to activists across Europe and the United States.”

Often these groups make use of techniques such breaching defences and exploiting weaknesses in a computer systems or networks (hacking) as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change.

Alt-right: (abbreviated from alternative right) is a loosely connected far-right and white nationalist movement generally of angry young men. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the US during the 2010s, although it has since established a presence in various other countries. The term is ill-defined, having been used in different ways by various self-described “alt-rightists”, media commentators, and academics. Groups which have been identified as alt-right also espouse white supremacism, white separatism, right-wing populism, anti-immigration, racism, anti-communism, anti-Zionism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, xenophobia. anti-intellectualism, antifeminism, homophobia and Islamophobia.

The alt-right is a biologically racist (sometimes referred to as scientific racism, which is the belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority) movement promoting a form of far-right identity politics for European Americans. Part of its membership supports tight immigration restrictions policies to ensure a continued white majority in the US. Others call for the breakup of the country to form a white separatist ethno-state in North America. 

Some alt-rightists seek to make white nationalism socially respectable in the US while others, known as the “1488” (see Fourteen Words or 14/88) scene, adopt openly white supremacist and neo-Nazi stances with the intent to shock and provoke. Some alt-rightists are antisemitic, promoting a conspiracy theory that there is a Jewish plot to bring about white genocide, though other alt-rightists view most Jews as members of the white race. The alt-right is anti-feminist, advocates for a more patriarchal society, and intersects with the men’s rights movement and other sectors of what has been called the online manosphere. Alt-rightists generally support anti-interventionist and isolationist foreign policies alongside economic protectionism. Individuals aligned with many of the alt-right’s ideas but not its white nationalism have been termed “alt-lite”.

The alt-right has distinguished itself from earlier forms of white nationalism through its largely online presence and its heavy use of irony and humour, particularly through the promotion of internet memes like Pepe the Frog. (In October 2015, Trump retweeted a Pepe representation of himself, associated with a video called “You Can’t Stump the Trump”. It was carried by supporters of Trump in the Jan 6 storming of the US capitol.) 

Membership is overwhelmingly white and male, with academic and anti-fascist observers linking its growth to deteriorating living standards and prospects, anxieties about the place of white masculinity, and anger at increasingly visible leftist movements such as Black Lives Matter. Groups using the “alt-right” label have been characterized as hate groups, while alt-right material has contributed to the radicalization of white men responsible for various far-right murders and terrorist attacks in the US since 2014.Opposition to the alt-right has come from many areas of the political spectrum, including socialists, liberals, and conservatives. Critics charge that the term “alt-right” is merely a rebranding of white supremacism.

QAnon: is a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against Trump, who is fighting the cabal. US prosecutors have called it “a group commonly referred to as a cult”.

QAnon also commonly asserts that Trump is planning a day of reckoning known as the “Storm”, when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested.QAnon supporters have accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking government officials of being members of the cabal. They have also claimed that Trump feigned conspiracy with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the sex trafficking ring and preventing a coup d’état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros. The QAnon conspiracy theories have been amplified by Russian state-backed troll accounts on social media,as well as Russian state-backed traditional media. 

QAnon believers commonly tag their social media posts with the hashtag #WWG1WGA, signifying the motto “Where We Go One, We Go All”.  At an August 2019 Trump rally, a man warming up the crowd used the QAnon motto, later denying that it was a QAnon reference. Following Trump’s loss to Biden in the election, updates from Q declined dramatically and QAnon beliefs became a part of attempts to overturn the results and Trump’s loss, culminating in the storming of the US Capitol, leading to a further crackdown on QAnon-affiliated content on social media. 

Calls to exterminate Jews are common in far-right and white nationalist circles. For example, the conspiracy theorists of QAnon traffic in it regularly. Falsehoods emanating from QAnon-affiliated channels in the United States have claimed that the attack on the US capital had been staged by the left to justify a clampdown on supporters of President Trump. Looking to the cult of mass-delusion that is Q-Anon, one can clearly see parallels between the beliefs its followers cling to, and an anti-Semitic hoax that began in Russia during 1903.

A major path to QAnon has proved to be the wellness and alternative health and parenting movements. A Concordia University researcher has documented what he calls “Pastel QAnons”, which grew influential within “lifestyle influencers, mommy pages, fitness pages, diet pages and alternative healing” internet forums. Conspiracy pages were literally pastel-coloured, and shifted from alternative-medicine materials to opinions that express “very pro-Trump views or are explicitly racist and anti-Semitic.” Extensive links were documented between the natural-childbirth and natural-parenting movements and QAnon and other violent anti-government plots. They are drawn together because they share what one expert calls “that distrust of the medical environment combined with a real lack of scientific understanding.” (The March/April 2021 issue of The Walrus has an excellent analysis of QAnon.)

Proud Boys: are a far right group founded by Canadian, Gavin McInnes (who now says he has left the group; his account was suspended from You Tube for violating YouTube’s policies concerning hate speech, posting content that was “glorifying and inciting violence against another person or group of people). Canadian lawmakers have placed the group on Canada’s designated list of terrorist organizations (the first country to do so). They are openly and defiantly proud of their white supremacist ethos (a group of self-described “Western chauvinists”). The group often disrupts Black Lives Matter protests, often engaging in violence targeting BLM supporters.

Members also traffic in anti-Semitism. One of the group’s leaders, Kyle Chapman, recently promised to “confront the Zionist criminals who wish to destroy our civilization.” The West, he explained “was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race.” Chapman, like many of his peers, uses the term “white genocide” as a shorthand way of expressing the fear that the members of the white population of the United States, like themselves, will soon be overwhelmed by people of colour. 

Some of the mob that attacked Washington on January 6 also hoped to trigger what is known as the “Great Revolution,” based on a fictionalized account of a government takeover and race war, that, in its most extreme form, would exterminate Jews.

Ku Klux Clan (KKK or the Klan): is an American white supremacist hate group whose primary targets are African Americans. Lesser enemies of the Klan include Jews, immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims and, until recently, Catholics. The first Klan was established in the wake of the Civil War and was a defining organization of the Reconstruction era. The second Klan started small in Georgia in 1915. It rapidly declined in the later half of the 1920s.The third and current manifestation of the KKK emerged after 1950, in the form of localized and isolated groups that use the KKK name. 

The best way to get their measure is to read these quotes, selected directly from their website: “Our goal is to help restore America to a White Christian nation, founded on God’s word. This does not mean that we want to see anything bad happen to the darker races … we simply want to live separate from them … As GOD intended. (Lev.20:24-25)…It is the duty of all white Christian men and women to fight against the Communist who have stolen our Nation…We hate drugs, homosexuality, abortion, and race-mixing because these things go against God’s law and they are destroying all white nations. But rather than focus on hate, we try to focus on the love of our race. We Love for our Lord and Savior and our Country.” (Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan)…We need to come together as WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICANS and spread the word to others. Grab the blind Liberals by their heads and shake them until they wake up. From their JEW TUBE naps and tell them to look around because the ship is sinking. And through the Ku Klux Klan, we will wake America up to the evils which are in our Government.”

The Base: an international neo-Nazi white-nationalist group. They were led by former army reservist from Manitoba, Patrick Matthews, who is currently facing weapons charges in Maryland and Delaware and could be facing a long jail sentence. Their ideology supports a race war against minorities and the establishing of white ethno-states. The group’s name is the English translation of al-Qaeda. “Just like al-Qaeda, The Base does not believe in any political solution to what they see as a threat to the white race,” said Mollie Saltskog, an intelligence analyst. “Violence is the only option.” Experts say the group uses encrypted chat rooms usually broken up into cells based on geographic location. They organize recruitment drives and make fairly sophisticated propaganda videos and posters. Rinaldo Nazzaro, the founder of The Base, now lives in self-imposed exile in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Base has been placed on Canada’s list of terrorist organizations.

Soldiers of Oden: is an ant-immigrant group founded in Finland in 2015. They are represented in a number of countries, including Canada and the US. The group was established as a response to thousands of migrants arriving in Finland amid the European migrant crisis. They call themselves a “patriotic organization that fights for a Finland” that wants to scare away “Islamist intruders” they say “cause insecurity and increase crime. Not all such adherents of the group are white supremacists or bigots, but many of them clearly are so they should be considered a hate group.

Oath Keepers: is a militant right group. It’s a large but loosely organized collection of militia who believe that the federal government has been co-opted by a shadowy conspiracy that is trying to strip American citizens of their rights. The extremist group focuses on recruiting current and former military, law enforcement, and first responder personnel, and the name is a reference to the oath sworn by the military to defend the US Constitution “from all enemies, foreign and domestic”. Three members from this group so far have been arrested regarding the Jan 6 attack on the Capital. 

Founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, an Ivy League lawyer and Army veteran. Rhodes was deeply affected by the 1993 government siege outside Waco, Texas, which ended in the deaths of more than 70 members of an armed Christian sect, which to him showed the danger of government power. But the Patriot movement became notorious for its connections to white nationalists – and it fell apart after Timothy McVeigh, who’d attended militia meetings, bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Rhodes was quoted weeks before the Capitol riots that his group was preparing for a civil war and was “armed, prepared to go in if the president calls us up.”

In Trump, the Patriot movement believed it had an ally in the White House for the first time. They hail from every state. About two-thirds have a background in the military or law enforcement. About 10 percent of these members were active-duty. The group tapped into a deep current of anxiety, one that could cause a surprisingly large contingent of people with real police and military experience to consider armed political violence. 

Rhodes wrote a creed listing 10 types of orders that members vow to resist. Gun-control laws are first among them. (Guns are the right’s most successful organizing platform; they are the on-ramps to activism. A maxim heard often: Gun rights are the rights that protect all the rest. “If speaking softly won’t work,” one activist says, lifting the butt of his rifle, “the stick will come.” “Americans are sleepwalking toward an abyss. Patriots need to wake up and resist.” “It’s not just about guns,” Rhodes said. But guns were at the heart of it. 

Trump was stoking the idea that conservatives are a minority threatened by a demographic tide that will let liberal cities dictate the terms for the rest of the country. Then come libertarian concerns. Here Rhodes was drawing from the “New World Order” theory, a worldview that is central to the Patriot movement – and that can be traced back to what the historian Richard Hofstadter, writing in the 1960s, called the paranoid style in American politics. It linked fears of globalism, a deep distrust of elites, and the idea that a ballooning federal government could become tyrannical.

Three Percenters: is an umbrella militia militant right group, based on the myth that it took just 3 percent of the population to fight and win the Revolutionary War. Mike Vanderboegh was the founder. He had a fixation on the rise of the hundreds of militia groups that, in the early 1990s, loosely coalesced under the banner of the Patriot movement – a contingent of people with real police and military experience to consider armed political violence. 

Blood & Honour(and their armed branch, Combat 18 (C18): Blood & Honour (named for the slogan of the Hitler youth movement), was described by the Canadian government as “an international neo-Nazi network whose ideology is derived from the National Socialist doctrine of Nazi Germany.” Combat 18 is the armed branch of Blood & Honour and has conducted murders and bombings. Blood & Honour America Division, seen as the white-power music scene devotees, consists of the skinhead groups Volksfront and Troops of Tomorrow, the Christian identity groups Christian Guard and the Daughters of Yahweh, and the neo-Nazi White Revolution, among others. Both groups have been placed on Canada’s list of terror organizations.

One faction, known as Blood & Honour America Division, was “reestablished” in North America by the skinhead group Volksfront in 2005 and includes skinhead, neo-Nazi and Christian Identity adherents in its ranks. The other group, which became known as Blood & Honour Council USA, was affiliated until recently with the skinhead group, the Vinlanders Social Club, but now is mainly represented by two skinheads who run a racist music label in Ohio and a racist video company in Texas. 

They have a Canadian branch with a website. The Atomwaffen Division, which is known in some circles as the National Socialist Order, has previously held training “hate camps,” where members receive weapons and hand-to-hand combat training. The group’s members have also carried out violent acts at rallies, including the August 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va

To get  sense of the mentality of these people, the words of the Blood and Honour founder Ian Stuart Donaldson say it all: ”Eventually there will be a race war and we have to be strong enough in numbers to win it. I’ll die to keep this country pure and if it means bloodshed at the end of the day, then let it be.”

Atomwaffen Division (Atomwaffen meaning “nuclear weapons” in German), also known as the National Socialist Order: is a Neo-Nazi terrorist network. Formed in 2015 and based in the Souther US, it has since expanded across the US and into the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, the Baltic states, and other European countries. The group is part of the alt-right, although the group rejects the label and is considered extreme even within that movement. The Atomwaffen Division, which is known in some circles as the National Socialist Order, has previously held training “hate camps,” where members receive weapons and hand-to-hand combat training. The group’s members have also carried out violent acts at public rallies, including the August 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va..It is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center  (SPLC), and a terrorist group by multiple governments. In Canada it was recently classified as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code.

4Chan: founded in 2003, 4chan has attracted a unique population of deeply cynical men, once all young, but now aged from their 40s down to their teens, who generally use this political discussion board to express their angst through dark humour. People who are unhappy with the circumstances of their life tend to retreat there. The unhappier they are, the longer they stay and the more they post. The site was originally conceived as a blank slate, where anyone could scrawl what they pleased. Gen Xers and Millennials started out wanting to talk about escapist fantasies such as anime and video games, but after two decades of economic crises and political deadlock, the discussion eventually evolved into cartoon-inflected talk of political mobilization.

Boogaloo Bois: the “boogaloo” began as a racist meme. It’s a patchwork of right-leaning anti-government libertarians, Second Amendment advocates, and gun enthusiasts all preparing for another American civil war. The boogaloo movement, founded in 2003, originally grew from the weapons discussion section (“/k/”) of the anarchic anonymous message board 4chan over the past several years. By 2019, its culture had disseminated across social media into a mix of online groups and chat servers where users shared libertarian political memes. In the past six months, this all began to manifest in real life, as users from the groups emerged at protests in what became their signature uniform: aloha shirts and combat gear. 

As nationwide unrest intensified at the start of the summer, many boogaloo adherents interpreted this as a cue to realize the group’s central fantasy—armed revolt against the U.S. government. Similar to other right-leaning extremist movements, they are the product of an unhappy generation of men who compare their lot in life with that of men in previous decades and see their prospects diminishing. And with a mix of ignorance and simplicity, they view their discontent through the most distorted lens imaginable: internet memes.

The birthplace of the boogaloo movement, 4chan’s /k/ section, is ostensibly devoted to the ownership and purchase of weapons. But in practice, it is a space where weapons discussions combine with 4chan’s politicized male anger. The name “boogaloo boys” is a reference to the critically maligned 1984 sequel Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo – around 2012, users on /k/ began referring to the possibility of “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo.” Half-serious posts about how certain weapons might be employed in “the boogaloo” evolved over time and grew more elaborate. Like many memes on 4chan, each new version was more cryptic than the last, a means to express insider knowledge and in-group status. By 2017, the movement that had developed there—the alt-right—had largely imploded, after the disastrous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The politics of the boogaloo boys are deeply contradictory and varied but can be roughly summed up by a few agreed-upon ideas. They are libertarian, in favour of gun rights, and opposed to government police forces. Many users say they are active-duty service members or military veterans. The boogaloo groups disagree when it comes to racism. Some members are white supremacists. Others compare the movement to the left’s campaign against police brutality. Many boogaloo memes are focused on police overreach. As with the alt-right, many boogaloo posts are about men in crisis, humiliated or debased. Intermingled with memes about revolution are nostalgic images. Both Reddit and Facebook have purged major boogaloo groups. Facebook has moved to limit the proliferation of “boogaloo” pages and groups by no longer recommending them, as well as demoting them in search results.

Fourteen Words, 14, or 14/88 or 1488: is a reference to the 14-word slogan “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”,followed by the less commonly used “Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth.” The 8s represent the eighth letter of the alphabet (H), and “HH” stands for “Heil Hitler”. The Fourteen Words are prominently used by neo-Nazis, white power skinheads and certain white nationalists and the alit-right. The slogans were originally coined by American white supremacist David Lane, a founding member of terrorist organization, The Order, and serve as a rallying cry for militant white nationalists across the globe. Their popular 14-word white supremacist slogan was visible on signs outside the Capitol on Jan.16.

Cowboys For Trump (C4T): are an organization, as their website says, founded upon “like-minded Americans who are concerned about the direction of our country. We believe that the liberal progressive agenda is drastically moving us away from the identifying principles that make us proud to be American.” They go on to say, “These are men who have strength and resolve”. Their vision reads, ”To support our sitting President Donald J. Trump and his Make America Great Again policies.  We believe that by securing our border, protecting our Second Amendment, and protecting the lives of the unborn are the most vital and key aspects in Americas Greatness. We also want to stand up and support rural America thru greater access to public lands, natural resources, and rural industries. We advocate against the attacks of environmental and radical endangered species acts. The backbone of America is found in the logging, ranching, mining, farming and oil and gas industries.” Their leader, Couy Griffin, was arrested as a result of his January assault on the US Capitol.

Armed Patriots Against Radical Terrorists (APART): is a self-proclaimed group of “patriots”. Known for a few stunts to garner publicity. Four of their members scaled the Statue of Liberty to hang a banner reading GTFO (an acronym for Get The Fuck Out). This was in response to immigration activists who placed a banner on the statue which read “Refugees Welcome”. Their leader said they wanted to make a bold statement to all the “bleeding hearts who want open borders.” On another occasion in 2015 this militia group conducted a pre-dawn raid against what they believed to be a “terrorist training camp” run by the Islamic activist group Muslims of America (MOA). It ended in a standoff after they were threatened with charges.

United Constitutional Patriots (UCP): is a right-wing unofficial militia group based in New Mexico, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC. It operates primarily in the southern part of the state detaining alleged illegal immigrants. It came to national attention in the US in 2019.  The governor of New Mexico released a statement indicating the vigilantes have no legal right to detain people entering the US.Vigilantes have a long history in the US. Lynching was the most common form of vigilantism in the US during the 20th century – it was practiced through the early years of the civil rights movement, extending through the late 1960s.) The head of UCP is Larry Mitchell Hopkins (alias Johnny Horton, Jr.)

United Patriots of America: see themselves as a political party. On their website they define their purpose: ”By attacking our connection to God and our intrinsic understanding that we are all connected to God and that this life is temporary; yet our Soul is eternal, the #LunaticLeft  (communists) has succeeded in filling a vast majority of our elected Political offices with weak, frightened, and insecure leaders that do not have the Will to Act on Behalf of the Will of the American People.” That pretty much sums it up!

Virginia Armed Patriots: is an example of the kind of patriot group forming out there. Late in 2020 a couple of armed men were arrested in Philadelphia where the presidential election vote count was taking place. Pictures of their Hummer showed multiple QAnon decals on the vehicle. Social media accounts of both suspects include multiple references to QAnon. One of the men’s Twitter account included a dozen hand-drawn cartoons that used antisemitic tropes to portray aspects of the QAnon narrative and other conspiracy theories. He portrayed Trump as a shirtless, heavily armed action hero. A Facebook account linked to his email address used the phrase “Deep State” in the name. One of the men established a GoFundMe called “Virginia Armed Patriots” to “organize armed patriots for the people and businesses of Virginia to provide needed armed security in sectors or predicaments not covered by law-enforcement agencies … 24/7”. He appears to have shared the fundraiser in a “Virginians Against Excessive Quarantine” Facebook group.

Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW):is an anti-feminist, misogenist, mostly online community advocating for men to separate themselves from women and from a society which they believe has been destroyed by feminism. The community is a part of the manosphere,  a collection of anti-feminist websites and online communities that also includes the men’s right’s movement, incels (involuntary celibates), and pickup artists.

Religious Right Groups: While not terrorist there are a number of religious groups that tend to extremism. The Trump stolen election claim had become an article of faith within the Christian right. Jan. 6 found that 63% of White evangelicals did not trust the election results were accurate, and a similar number, 65%, did not believe Trump was to blame for the violence at the Capitol. They include the next four groups:

Family Research Council (FRC): is an American fundamentalist Protestant activist group, with an affiliated lobbying organization. Its stated mission is “to advance faith, family and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview”. FRC promotes what it considers to be family values by advocating and lobbying for policies in government. For example FRC “does not believe that ‘sexual orientation’ should be included as a protected category in non-discrimination laws or policies, as it is not comparable to inborn, immutable characteristics such as race or sex. Homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it as it is associated with negative physical and psychological health effects. Thus, it is also harmful to society at large.”

Jerico March: is a loose, pro-Trump “Judeo-Christian” coalition who pray, fast, and march for what they claim to be election integrity and transparency in response to Trump’s accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Arina Grossu – who had previously worked for the Family Research Council – and Rob Weaver, formed this new Christian right group, and called it the Jericho March. Following the election, people affiliated with the movement started fasting, praying, and marching daily around their state capitals, and sought divine intervention to overturn the election results. Reconstruction of the weeks leading up Jan. 6 shows how this new group worked to foment a bellicose Christian narrative in defence of Trump’s coup attempt and justify a holy war against an illegitimate state. 

They held a rally in Washington on Dec. 12 where they would help lay the groundwork for the insurrection on Jan 6. At that rally Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracist radio host and Trump booster, electrified the Jericho Marchers with his invocation of the Book of Revelation, thought to prophesy Christ’s return. “Christ’s crucifixion was not our defeat, it was our greatest victory,” he shouted. “The state has no jurisdiction over any of us. Our relationship with God is sacred and is eternal.” He vowed that Biden “will be removed, one way or another.” 

The Jericho March rally featured a lineup of some the right’s most incendiary figures, blending conspiracies and battle cries with appeals to Christianity. Eric Metaxas, a popular author, radio host and unrelenting promoter of the false claim that the election was fraudulent, was the emcee. Weaver compared the marchers he enlisted to the capital to the story of Joshua’s army in the Bible, which encircled the city of Jericho as priests blew trumpets, causing the walls to tumble down so the army could invade. Other Jericho March speakers linked to the Trump administration pressed themes of biblical war and Christian redemption. Present were Michael Flynn (Trump’s former national security adviser) and Roger Stone, who claimed to have been born again since his conviction for obstructing the Mueller investigation. Stone told the crowd in a recorded message: “It was Jesus Christ who gave our president, Donald Trump, the courage and the compassion to save my life when I was unfairly and illegally targeted in the Mueller witch hunt. … My faith is in Jesus Christ, and we will make America great again and we will stop the steal.”  (Source: The Center for Investigative Reporting.)

The Eighty Percent Coalition: based the name on Reagan’s rule that one should stand with someone if they share 80% of their beliefs instead of focusing on the 20% where they differ. It appears to be led by Cindy Chafian, who was previously associated with Women for America The group organized the Jan 6 rally at the Ellipse where Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol. Chafian said if Congress certifies the election in Biden’s favour, it will be difficult to accept. She only said that she would cross that bridge when they get to it.

The Silent Majority: founded by James Epley who ran for a congressional seat in South Carolina two years ago. Since then, he’s organized multiple rallies for the President in South Carolina. Epley is the president of The Silent Majority, an apparel line he says is based in American values. He drove his truck to DC to protest on the National Mall as Congress met to certify the election results. Despite no evidence being presented outlining election fraud, he said he still does not believe the election was legitimate.    

Extremist groups on the left; left-wing populism:

Note: there is both left-wing and the far-left. The definition of the far-left varies and there is not a general agreement on what it entails or consensus on the core characteristics that constitute the far-left, other than being to the left of “the left”. It is often defined as those who position themselves to the left of social democracy, which is seen as insufficiently left-wing. (Social democracy advocates economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy.)

Scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian socialism and democratic socialism as a political ideology, with the first representing the Soviet Bloc and the latter representing the democratic socialist parties in the Western Bloc countries that have been democratically elected (Britain, France and Sweden, among others). Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is an example of a modern left-wing populist politician

Also called social populism, is a political ideology that combines left-wing politics and populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric often consists of anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the Establishment and speaking for the “common people”. Important themes for left-wing populists usually include ant-capitalism, social justice, pacifism and anti-globalization.

Black Lives Matter: is a political ideology that combines left-wing politics and populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric often consists of anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the Establishment and speaking for the “common people”.  An estimated 15 million to 26 million people participated in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, making it one of the largest movements in the country’s history.The movement comprises many views and a broad array of demands but they centre on criminal justice reform.

Re the word woke: stay woke became a watch word in parts of the black community for those who were self-aware, questioning the dominant paradigm and striving for something better. Like many other terms from black culture that have been taken into the mainstream, woke is gaining broader uses. It’s now seeing use as an adjective to refer to places where woke people commune: woke Twitter has very recently taken off as the shorthand for describing social-media activists. 

Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club (PSJBGC): is a gun club in the Puget Sound Area, formerly affiliated with Redneck Revolt. The club calls itself an “anti-fascist, anti-racist, pro-worker community defence organization”. The Guardian has called it an “anti-fascist armed leftist group” that “provide[s] security against rightwing aggression”. During the George Floyd protests (as a result of him being killed during an arrest after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly eight minutes as three other officers looked on and prevented passers-by from intervening), the PSJBGCattended the Seattle Capital Hill Autonomous Zone protected area.

Antifa: a loosely affiliated far-left anti-fascism and anti-racist political movement in the US. It is highly decentralized and comprises an array of autonomous groups that aim to achieve their objectives through the use of both nonviolent and violent direct action rather than through policy reform. Much of antifa activism involves poster and flyer campaigns, mutual aid, delivering speeches, marching in protest, and community organizing.They also engage in protest tactics, seeking to combat fascists and racists such as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other far-right extremists, and differing from other leftist opposition movements by their willingness to directly confront far-right activists, and in some cases law enforcement. 

Individuals involved in the movement tend to hold anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, and anti-state views, subscribing to a range of left-wing ideologies such as anarchism, communism, Marxism, social democracy and socialism. 

The name antifa and the logo with two flags representing anarchism and communism are derived from the German Antifa movement. (It has existed in different eras and incarnations, dating back to Antifaschistische Aktion, from which the moniker antifa came. It was set up by the then Stalinist Communist Party of Germany during the late history of the Weimar Republic.)

Antifa activists actions have received support and criticism from various organizations and pundits, with some on the American Left criticizing antifa for its willingness to adopt violent direct actions and for being counterproductive or backfiring by emboldening the right and their allies. Part of the right characterizes it as a domestic terrorist organization or uses antifa as a catch-all termfor any left-leaning or liberal protest actions.Some scholars argue that antifa is a legitimate response to the rise of the far rightand that antifa’s violence such as “milk shaking” is not equivalent to right wing violence. Scholars tend to reject the equivalence between antifa and white supremacism. 

Several analyses, reports, and studies concluded that antifa is not a major domestic terrorism risk and ranked far-right extremism and white supremacy as the top domestic risk.

Redneck Revolt: is an American far-left political group^[ that organizes predominantly among white working-class people. The group supports gun rights and members often openly carry firearms. Its political positions are anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-fascist. Founded in Kansas in 2009, members were present at several protests against Trump and against the far-right in 2017. It is a national network of community defence projects. It is a pro-worker, anti-racist organization that focuses on working class liberation from the oppressive systems which dominate their lives.

Anonymous (the group): is a decentralized international activist/hacktivist collective/movement that is widely known for its various cyber attacks against several governments, government institutions/agencies and corporations, and the Church of Scientology. Anonymous originated in 2003 on the image board 4chan representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain. Anonymous members (known as Anons) can be distinguished in public by the wearing of Guy Fawkes masks in the style portrayed in the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta. Supporters have called the group “freedom fighters”and digital Robin Hoods while critics have described them as “a cyber lynch-mob”or “cyber terrorists”. Their media profile diminished over the last few years,but the group re-emerged in 2020 to support the George Floyd protests.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS): was a protest movement against economic inequality that began in New York City’s Wall Street financial district in 2011.It gave rise to the wider Occupy  movement in the US and other countries (taking inspiration in part from the 2009 Iranian Green and the 2010 Arab Spring Movements). The main issues raised by Occupy Wall Street were social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government – particularly from the financial services sector. The OWS slogan.”We are the 99%”, refers to income and wealth inequality in the US between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population.

Christian Action Network (CAN): on a more benign level is this Christian activist organization founded by Martin Mawyer in 1990. The organization states that its “primary goals are to protect America’s religious and moral heritage through educational efforts”. The organization has produced books, videos and full-length feature films opposing the promotion of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, denigration of Christian beliefs in popular media and culture and infiltration of Islam into Western society, and promoting Christianity as a foundational American value. In early 2020 CAN launched an “In God We STILL Trust” mobile billboard ad campaign, which saw box trucks emblazoned with the statement deployed in selected cities.

Attachment #2: Conspiracy Theories

Preamble: According to Dr. Joe Pierre, writing in May 20, 2020 Psychology Today, a crucial, but under-appreciated irony about conspiracy theories is that “those drawn to them often start from a place of mistrust in experts and institutions of authority, whether earned or not. This mistrust in turn leaves them vulnerable to misinformation and being manipulated by deliberate disinformation.” 

For those drawn to conspiracy theories, what is it that makes certain people chosen villains, but others the Messiahs? Psychology tells us that one answer, and perhaps the best answer, is “motivated reasoning”. This is the bias toward a decision that conforms to what a person already knows, and it occurs outside of awareness that anything sneaky is going on. We select our preferred political champions based on perceptions – whether accurate or not – of shared ideology and identity, routinely turning a blind eye to their blemishes, blights, and conflicts of interest in a way that our political opposites can’t fathom and find infuriating.

Stop The Steal: This conspiracy theory falsely claims that the 2020 US presidential election was “stolen” from Trump. It serves to justify attempts to overturn the election, including the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol. An interesting and recent study by the Ryerson University Social Media Lab found that after the US election, “Facebook’s algorithm drove 100 new people to join the first ‘Stop The Steal’ group every 10 seconds.” A particular variant of this conspiracy theory is the “Soros stole the election” theory that claims that George Soros stole the election from Trump.

Deep State: refers to an unidentified “powerful elite” who act in co-ordinated manipulation of a nation’s politics and government. Proponents of such theories have included Canadian author Peter Dale Scott, who has promoted the idea in the US since at least the 1990s, as well as Breitbart News, Infowars and Donald Trump. A 2017 poll by ABC News and The Washington Post indicated that 48% of Americans believe in the existence of a conspiratorial “deep state” in the US.

George Soros control of wealth and governments: Hungarian-American investor George Soros has been the subject of conspiracy theories since the 1990s. Soros has used his wealth to promote many political, social, educational and scientific causes, disbursing grants totalling an estimated $11 billion up to 2016. However, theories tend to assert that Soros is in control of a large portion of the world’s wealth and governments, and that he secretly funds a large range of persons and organizations for nefarious purposes, such as antifa, 

Such ideas have been promoted by quite an eclectic range of personalities: Viktor Orban (PM of Hungary), Bill O’Reilly (disgraced but since resurrected TV host on Fox News), Roy Moore (Chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama who was removed twice from that office for judicial misconduct; a far-right politics advocate), Alex Jones (far-right radio show host; described as “America’s leading conspiracy theorist”), Joseph diGenova (lawyer, known for promoting conspiracy theories about the Department of Justice and the FBI), Paul Gosar (one of the 139 representatives who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Congress the day after the storming of the Capitol) plus Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Soros conspiracy theories are sometimes linked to anti-Semetic conspiracy theories.

White genocide: this theory is a white nationalist notion that immigration, integration, low fertility rates and abortion are being promoted in predominantly white countries in order to turn white people into a minority or cause their extinction.A 2017 study in France by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP), for example, found that 48% of participants believed without evidence that political and media elites are conspiring to replace white people with immigrants.

Anti-Vaccine and COVID-19 theories: this is a blend of two dangerous theories. Research has demonstrated that belief in one conspiracy predicts belief in others, even if they happen to contradict each other. Misbeliefs and conspiracy theories about vaccines have played a potent role in the loss of herd immunity for measles and the resulting re-emergence of the communicable disease around the world, including the US, where it had been previously eradicated in 2000. 

The convergence of COVID-19 and anti-vaccination conspiracy theories seems both natural and predictable, but also particularly dangerous. As many as a quarter of the US population is already threatening to refuse to be vaccinated and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that believers of COVID-19 conspiracy theories are joining forces with believers of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories within a rapidly growing movement intent on mounting a full-scale misinformation war against vaccines. 

The conspiracy theory video, Plandemic, promoted previously debunked claims that SARS-CoV-2 was manmade and that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and/or Dr. Anthony Fauci deliberately orchestrated COVID-19 in order to profit from a future vaccine. It was watched by millions before being removed by social medial platforms like YouTube and Facebook as false and potentially dangerous misinformation. Unfortunately it continues to circulate online, with conspiratorially-minded people taking its removal from the mainstream as paradoxical proof that it must be true. Research published mid 2020 found that anti-vaccine Facebook pages outnumber pro-vaccine pages more than 2:1 with followers growing more rapidly and interacting to other groups with potential ideological overlap, such as groups focused on “wellness” or more generalized safety concerns.

A recent poll (February, 2021) from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that while 67% of Americans plan to get vaccinated or have already done so, 15% are certain they won’t and 17% say probably not. Many expressed doubts about the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness. Americans without a college degree are more likely than college-educated ones to say they will definitely or probably not get vaccinated, 40% versus 17%. And Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that, 44% versus 17%.

The Lost Cause (or The Lost Cause of the Confederacy): This is one of the longest-running disinformation campaigns in US history. This 150-year-old narrative claims the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery and that the Confederacy was simply a heroic movement for states’s rights. This ideology has furthered the belief that slavery was just and moral, because the enslaved were happy, even grateful, and it also brought economic prosperity. The notion was used to perpetuate racism and racist power structures during the Jim Crowe era in the American South. It emphasizes the supposed chivalric virtues of the plantation era. It thus views the war as a struggle primarily waged to save the Southern way of life and to protect “states rights”, especially the right to secede from the Union. It casts that attempt as faced with overwhelming “Northern aggression”. At the same time, it minimizes or completely denies the central role of slavery and white supremacy in the build-up to, and outbreak of, the war..

The Clinton Body Count: refers to a conspiracy theory that asserts that former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hilary have assassinated fifty or more of their associates.Such accusations have been around at least since the 1990s, when a pseudo-documentary film called The Clinton Chronicles (produced by Larry Nichols and promoted by the Southern Baptist pastor and televangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell) accused Bill Clinton of multiple crimes including murder. All of which have been disproved.

Trump and Ukraine: beginning in 2017, a sprawling conspiracy theory emerged from 4chan (see Attach #1, Extremist Groups), and was spread via right-wing message boards and websites, then via Breitbart and Fox News to Trump and his allies. The conspiracy theory holds both that Ukraine (rather than Russia) had interfered in the 2016 United States elections, and that then-Vice President Joe Biden had intervened to protect a company in which his son Hunter was involved. 

The scandal surrounding Trump’s phone call to the Ukrainian President Zelensky, in which he appeared to withhold US military assistance for defence against the Russian invasion of Ukraine unless Zelensky produced evidence of corruption by Biden, is credited with precipitating the impeachment of Trump.

Global warming conspiracy theory: typically alleges that the science behind global warming has been invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons.Many have promoted such theories, including Trump and US Senator James Inhofe (who has been the foremost Republican promoting arguments for climate change denial. He famously claimed in the Senate that global warming is a hoax.) 13 percent of US respondents subscribe to the theory that climate change is a hoax.

Antichrist: Apocalyptic prophecies, particularly Christian claims about the End Times, have inspired a range of conspiracy theories. Many of these cite the Antichrist, a leader who will supposedly create an oppressive world empire. Countless figures have been called Antichrist including Saladin, Pope John XXII, Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler and Obama. 

The New World Order theory: states that a group of international elites controls governments, industry, and media organizations, with the goal of establishing global hegemony. They are alleged to be implicated in most of the major wars of the last two centuries, to carry out secretly staged events, and to deliberately manipulate economies.

The Discordian hoax: has resulted in one of the world’s foremost conspiracy theories, which claims that the “Illuminati” are secretly promoting the posited New World Order. Theorists believe that a wide range of musicians, including Beyoncé and Whitney Houston, have been associated with the “group”.

Attachment #3: Media Choices, Changes and Customer Profile Over Time

Choices: The transition of news from print, television and radio to digital spaces has caused huge disruptions in the traditional news industry. It is also reflected in the ways individual Americans say they are getting their news.

Newspapers: All major metropolitan regions have newspapers, with some of them having multiple papers, though this has declined in modern times. Many smaller cities have had local newspapers, again, this having declined over time. The number of daily newspapers in the United States has declined over the past half-century. In particular, the number of evening newspapers has fallen by 50% since 1970, while morning editions and Sunday editions have grown. For comparison, in 1950, there were 1,772 daily papers (and 1,450, or about 70%, of them were evening papers) while in 2000, there were 1,480 daily papers (and 766 – or about half – of them were evening papers.

Broadcast TV (Network News): in which the television signal is transmitted over-the-air by radio waves and received by a TV antenna attached to the television; or satellite TV, in which the television signal is transmitted over-the-air by radio waves from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth, and received by a satellite dish antenna on the roof.

Cable news: are channels devoted to current events around the clock and are referred to as cable news channels. The originator of this format from which the name derives is CNN (which following its 1980 launch, spun off other national and international networks using the brand such as CNN International. CNN originally stood for Cable News Network in reference to the then-new phenomenon of cable TV (a system of delivering TV programs via radio signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables). As satellite and other forms of television have evolved, the term “cable news” has become something of an anachronism, but is still in common use; many other television channels have since been established, such as BBC World, BBC News Channel, Sky News, Al Jazeera, Newsmax TV, ABC News 24, France 24, STAR News, Fox News, and MSNBC. 

Some news channels specialize even further, such as ESPNews (sports news; sister channel to ESPN); The Weather Channel (weather, although its status as a specialty news channel has become ambiguous due to its recent incorporation of non-news entertainment programming) and WeatherNation (weather); CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and Fox Business Network (financial news).

A consolidation has occurred In television, broadcast and basic cable networks: over a hundred in all, are now controlled by eight corporations: Fox Corporation, The Walt Disney Co (which includes the ABC, ESPN, FX and Disney brands), National Amusements (which owns ViacomCBS), Comcast (which owns NBCUniversal, and is the second largest broadcasting and cable TV company in the world ), AT&T (the world’s largest telecommunications company; it owns WarnerMedia), Discovery, Inc., E.W. Scripps Co, Altice USA (was Cablevision), or some combination thereof.

Source of news has transitioned from print, TV and audio to digital spaces 

Smart phone/computer/tablet: a large majority of Americans get news at least sometimes from digital devices, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted August 2020. More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (86%) say they get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet “often” or “sometimes,” including 60% who say they do so often. When asked which of these platforms they prefer to get news on, roughly half (52%) of Americans say they prefer a digital platform – whether it is a news website (26%), search (12%), social media (11%) or podcasts (3%).

Though digital devices are by far the most common way Americans access their news, where they get that news on their devices is divided among a number of different pathways. About two-thirds of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from news websites or apps (68%) or search engines, like Google (65%). About half (53%) say they get news from social media, and a much smaller portion say they get news at least sometimes from podcasts (22%). 

Among digital platforms, the most preferred one for news is news websites or apps: About a quarter of U.S. adults (26%) prefer to get their news this way, compared with 12% who prefer search, 11% who prefer to get their news on social media and 3% who say they prefer podcasts.

TV: 68% get news from TV at least sometimes and 40% do so often. Regarding where they prefer to get their news, about a third say they prefer television (35%)

Radio: Americans turn to radio and print publications for news far less frequently, with half saying they turn to radio at least sometimes (16% do so often) 

Print: a third (32%) sometimes (10% get news from print publications often).

Where they get their news from: About two-thirds of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from news websites or apps (68%) or search engines, like Google (65%). About half (53%) say they get news from social media, and a much smaller portion say they get news at least sometimes from podcasts (22%).

Preferred source for news among digital platforms is news websites or apps (26%) vs search (12%), social media (11%) or podcasts (3%)

Demographics: younger Americans vary widely from their elders in news consumption habits.

* younger age groups have almost fully turned to digital devices as a platform to access news. Ages 18 to 29: 71% get news from a digital device often; only 16% get their news often from TV

* ages 30 to 49: just a quarter say they get news on TV often; digital devices are the dominant choice for news for 67%

* ages 50: about half or more of adults 50 and older are still turning to TV for news often (54% of those 50 to 64 and 68% for 65 and older); 64% get news at least sometimes from both television and digital devices 

Online, most turn to news websites except for the youngest, who are more likely to use social media.

Among those 50 and older, differences between digital and non-digital news sources are less pronounced. Among adults 50 and older, 64% get news at least sometimes from both television and digital devices. 

Within digital platforms for news, most age groups turn to news websites at higher rates than other platforms, with one exception. Americans ages 18 to 29 stand out, in that the most common digital way they get news is social media, with 42% saying they get news this way often versus 28% saying the same of either news websites or search engines.

Those who rely on social media for news are less likely to get the facts right about the coronavirus and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims. Even as Americans who primarily turn to social media for political news are less aware and knowledgeable about a wide range of events and issues in the news, they are more likely than other Americans to have heard about a number of false or unproven claims.

For those that use social media, Facebook dominates as source for news: The Pew Research Center has found of those who rely on social media for their news, industry giant Facebook is now where about half (52%) of American adults get the news, while YouTube came in second at 28%, followed by Twitter at 17% and Instagram at 14%. LinkedIn, Reddit and Snapchat had smaller but still notable audiences at a respective 8%, 8% and 6%. 

Attachment #4: Chomsky’s Propaganda Model of Consent

Chomsky and Herman introduced the idea of a propaganda model of consent and the concept of filters of editorial bias. Some of the concepts are:

• the dominant mass-media outlets are large profit-based operations, and therefore they must cater to the financial interests of the owners
• since the majority of the revenue of major media outlets derives from advertising (not from sales or subscriptions), advertisers have acquired a “de facto licensing authority”
• editorial distortion is aggravated by the news media’s dependence upon private and governmental  news sources. If a given newspaper, television station, magazine, etc., incurs disfavour from the sources, it is subtly excluded from access to information. Consequently, it loses readers or viewers, and ultimately, advertisers. To minimize such financial danger, news media businesses editorially distort their reporting to favour government and corporate policies in order to stay in business
• flak (letters, complaints, lawsuits, or legislative actions) can be expensive to the media, either due to loss of advertising revenue, or due to the costs of legal defense or defense of the media outlet’s public image. The prospect of eliciting flak can be a deterrent to the reporting of certain kinds of facts or opinions. 

Attachment #5: Cable News Choices; Other Media Options

Cable television, on the left of political spectrum:

Fox News: is an American multinational conservative cable news television based in New York City. The channel was created by Australian-American media mogul Rupert Murdoch to appeal to a conservative audience, hiring former Republican media consultant and CNBC executive Roger Ailes as its founding CEO. It launched 1996, to 17 million cable subscribers and grew to become the dominant subscription news network in the US. As of 2018, approximately 87,000,000 U.S. households (90.8% of television subscribers) received Fox News.Fox News was the top-rated cable network in 2019, averaging 2.5 million viewers.

However the typically conservative Fox News has not gotten behind Trump’s lie that there has been voter fraud, and that Biden is therefore not legitimate. It is ironic that it was Fox that sealed Trump’s fate by being the first to project that Biden had won Arizona on election night. The call devastated Trump’s plan to discredit the election, because Fox couldn’t as easily be dismissed as a purveyor of “fake news.” Seeing this as a betrayal, Trump, his allies, and subsequently his followers, turned to other sources of information willing to spread the message they want to hear (see Newsmax and OANN).

Re Lou Dobbs: his Fox program typically averaged around 300,000 viewers a night, the largest audience on any business news channel. Dobbs has long been a provocateur. His strident anti-immigration views led to his 2009 departure from CNN, where for years he was a signature talent and a pioneer of TV business news with his program “Moneyline.” Dobbs, who was signed to Fox News by Ailes in 2011, has long been the company’s most outspoken supporter of Trump’s economic and immigration policies. In the weeks after the election, he expressed anger on his program that the Republican party did not do more to act on the former president’s claims that the election was rigged in favour of Biden. His program was a loss leader for Fox Business Network as major advertisers steered clear of it, likely out of fear of consumer boycotts.

Fox News has a stable of very aggressive newscasters, and pitbulls. One example: apparently Fox News anchor, Tucker Carlson’s abused Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat US representative for NewYork’s 14th congressional district, by describing her as a “vacuous little totalitarian moron” and then mocked her for what she felt during the deadly mob attack.

A Canadian aside: our previous PM, Stephen Harper, was a fan of Fox News. In fact Harper helped bring to Canada a Fox-type outlet, the Sun News Network, a fount for hard-right views. It didn’t survive, thankfully.

Newsmax TV: is an ultra-conservative outlet that’s been operating on the fringe since 1998. Newsmax likes to position itself as an alternative to a biased mainstream media. Its tagline is  “Independent. American.” But a quick scan through its headlines – “Fake news too eager to crown Biden,” ”Democrats have history of voter fraud” – shows that it is anything but objective. This speaks to a widespread problem of the Trump era: Giving something the appearance of news, and a platform, can lend credence to the weight of its words. Someone who is casually scrolling along on social media or flipping through the channels could come across Newsmax and, at least initially, treat it like any other news source, making them more vulnerable to disinformation. Both a cable TV channel and a digital outlet. Newsmax’s Instagram posts, according to CrowdTangle data, have sometimes been dominating the “most viral posts” in the politics category. 

The founder of Newsmax, Christopher Ruddy, is a long time Republican political figure. He’s been a member of multiple high-profile conservative think tanks, like the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. That gives Newsmax somewhat more cachet among Republican politicians. Newsmax has been able to score interviews with high profile Republicans from Alan Dershowitz to top economic adviser Larry Kudlow. That’s unusual considering what a small network it is. Ruddy is a friend and ally of Trump. Over the past decades, it’s gained notoriety as a landing pad for figures who, for whatever reason, can no longer air their views on Fox News. That includes the disgraced Bill O’Reilly.  

One America News Network (OANN): Newsmax’s closest competitor. Trump has praised both outlets while criticizing Fox and other networks. However, OANN has caught on in the Trump era in a more high profile way: Trump even awarded OANN with a seat in the White House press briefing room. For One America News, it was as if Mr. Biden weren’t president at all. 

The network, a favourite of Mr. Trump’s because of its sycophantic coverage, didn’t show its viewers Mr. Biden’s swearing in or his inaugural address. Viewers saw a lengthy documentary-style segment called “Trump: Legacy of a Patriot” instead of the inauguration. One of the network’s commentators, Pearson Sharp, provided the voice-over and offered only flattering words about the former president while he levelled false claims about voter fraud. Mr. Sharp repeated many of the discredited excuses that have formed the alternate version of events that Mr. Trump and his followers are using to explain his loss. One OAN anchor discussed the possibility that Mr. Trump could form his own political party and call it the Patriot Party, an idea that other Trump allies have started floating. And there was talk on the network of Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, challenging Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, when he is up for re-election in 2022.

Radio: Rush Limbaugh (the same man that Trump awarded the nation’s highest civilian honour to, the Presidential Medal of Freedom), broadcasts a weekday radio show (The Rush Limbaugh Show) a few miles from the Palm Beach retreat where Mr. Trump is spending the first days of his post-presidency. It is the highest-rated talk show in the US.The show airs on almost 600 radio stations nationwide. Limbaugh told his millions of listeners that the inauguration of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris did not make them the rightful winners of the election. As the New York Times reported on Jan 20, Limbaugh said “They have not legitimately won yet,” noting that he would be on “thin ice” for making such a claim. He then gave his listeners a false and inflated vote total for Mr. Trump and predicted the Democratic victories would be “fleeting.” He went on to say “I think they know, with 74 million, maybe 80 million people who didn’t vote for Joe Biden, there is no way they can honestly say to themselves that they represent the power base in the country.”

Websites: There are currently about 15 to 20 conservative websites which attract at least one million unique visitors per month. Some are venerable right-wing reliables like National Review (a conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs), The Washington Times (a conservative daily that is known for rejecting climate change, the effects of second hand smoke; it has racist and Islamophobia leanings). 

Breitbart News: is an American far-right syndicated news, opinion and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, who conceived it as “the Huffington Post of the right”. Its journalists are widely considered to be ideologically driven, and some of its content has been called misogynist, xenophobic, and racist by liberals and many traditional conservatives alike.The site has published a number of conspiracy theories and intentionally misleading stories. Breitbart News aligned with the alt-right under the management of former executive chairman Steve Bannon, who declared the website “the platform for the alt-right” in 2016.

Breitbart News became a virtual rallying spot for supporters of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The company’s management solicited ideas for stories from, and worked to advance and market ideas of, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups and individuals.After the election, more than 2,000 organizations removed Breitbart News from ad buys following Internet activism campaigns denouncing the site’s controversial positions.

There is a Canadian connection here in the form of Rebel News (described as being part of the alt-right movement) which was founded in 2015 by former Sun News Network (which closed in 2015) personalities Ezra Levant and Brian Lilley. It was considered a “global platform” for the anti-Muslim ideology known as counter-jihad. It broadcasts its content only on the internet and is sometimes cast as Canada’s version of Breitbart News.

Others, like Infowars (a far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones), The Gateway Pundit (a far-right fake news website known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories), Big League Politics (described by the New York Times as “an obscure right-wing news site which has promoted conspiracy theories and written favourably about white nationalist candidates”) and, like Breitbart, mine the far fringes of the right. 

As an aside, regarding Infowars, this conspiracy theory hub, like other right-wing media outlets, has been thrown into turmoil in the aftermath of the election, facing firings, budget cuts, and accusations from a former host (conspiracy theorist David Knight) that the site has gone too soft on the president. As Jones tries to find a footing in the post-Trump world, he’s facing competition from better-produced rivals like One America News and Newsmax, which have promoted conspiracy theories of their own.

Editor MIchael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review stated that “Far-right” Web sites like World Net Daily (a news and opinion website and online news aggregator which has been described as “fringe” and far-right as well as politically conservative and known for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories) and Newsmax.com floated all kinds of specious stories about Obama that quickly careened around the blogosphere and onto talk radio: Hardball, The O’Reilly Factor, The Alex Jones Show.

Cable television, on the right:

CNN: Cable News Network (CNN) was created in 1980 by Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel.Upon its launch in 1980, CNN was the first television channel to provide 24-hour coverage, and was the first all-news television channel in the United States. CNN International was launched in 1985. 

In 2018 CNN has 90.1 million television households as subscribers (97.7% of households with cable) in the United States. In 2019, CNN ranked third in viewership among cable news networks, behind Fox News and MSNBC, averaging 972,000 viewers. Globally, CNN programming has aired through CNN International, seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories; since May 2019 however, the US domestic version has absorbed international news coverage in order to streamline programming expenses. The American version, sometimes referred to as CNN (US), is also available in Canada. 

The Gulf War in 1990–1991 was a watershed event for CNN that catapulted the channel past the “Big Three” American networks in viewership for the first time in its history, largely due to an unprecedented, historical scoop: CNN was the only news outlet with the ability to communicate from inside Iraq during the initial hours of the Coalition bombing campaign, with live reports from a hotel in Baghdad. 

MSNBC: is an American news-based television cable channel based in New York City. It is owned by the NBCUniversal News Group division of NBCUniversal (a subsidiary of Comcast). It provides NBC News coverage as well as its own reporting and political commentary on current events. MSNBC and its website were founded in 1996 under a partnership between Microsoft and General Electric’s NBC unit, hence the network’s naming.Although they had the same name, msnbc.com and MSNBC maintained separate corporate structures and news operations. Microsoft divested itself of its stakes in the MSNBC channel in 2005 and in msnbc.com in 2012. The general news site was rebranded as NBCNews.com and a new msnbc.com was created as the online home of the cable channel. 

In 2018, approximately 87 million households in the United States (90.7 percent of pay television subscribers) were receiving MSNBC. In 2019, MSNBC ranked second among basic cable networks averaging 1.8 million viewers, behind rival Fox News, averaging 2.5 million viewers.  

Attachment #6: Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi

Summary of key points:

• the subject is essentially the phasing out of independent journalism and the replacing it with   deeply polarized programming both “sides”. Which “side” is better is immaterial: neither approach is journalism
• we used to be served a constant diet of unity and conformity; news for news sake. The news department used to lose money and was a public service
• today, it’s all about division and hate – and dollars. News is tailored to attract and keep specific audiences. It’s deeply polarized. Off-topic news, other angles and other voices don’t make the cut – they risk alienating the precious audience. The modern news consumer tune into news that confirms his prejudices about whatever/whoever the villain of the day happens to be (foreigners, minorities, Democrats, etc.)
• the news is bait: creating content that reinforces pre-existing conditions
• it’s all about reinforcing fear. Fear of the Other, fear for rights, fear for a way of life. Be afraid – be very afraid is the daily message. Keep telling people they are worse off and at risk, because it keeps them coming back for more
• the technology underpinning the modern news business is sophisticated; first it creates content that reinforces your pre-existing opinions, and, after analysis of your consumer habits, sends it to you. Then it matches you to advertisers who have a product they’re trying to sell to your demographic. (Facebook, Google et al make their money by telling advertisers where their likely customers are on the web.) The news, basically, is bait to lure you into a place where you can be sold something
  • confidence in newspapers is low: according to a Gallup poll taken just after the 2016 election, showed that just 20% of Americans expressed ”a great deal” or ”quite a lot” of confidence in them. This may be connected to the fact that the media business has experienced record profits since Trump tabbed them the “enemy of the people”; “he has animated our once dying industry (even print)”. (The then CBS CEO said “that “Trump may mot be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS….the money’s rolling in”.) 
  • the media didn’t think Trump was going to win; they cheerfully reported on all his antics, got soaring ratings and click numbers, but Trump was winning votes; they were culpable in causing the Trump phenomenon. A divide was emerging between the public and elite institutions – and the press was now considered one of the latter. 
  • Taibbi felt that the 2016 campaign’s was a demonstration of the “siloing” phenomenon, in which media content – not just news, but all content…is tailored for the consumption of highly individualized demographics. Besides lower confidence in the media, post 2016, people did believe the media less, but watched it more. The news has become a reality show, not just in campaign years, but always  
• Taibbi classifies manufactured hate (feeding the publics’ hate reflexes; selling them on it) into ten aspects all Americans should recognize instantly: 1. There are only two ideas (left or right); 2. The two ideas are in permanent conflict; without conflict, there’s no product; 3. Hate people, not institutions; 4. Everything is someone else’s fault; goes with the fact that media like easy stories pre-packaged in crude binary format; 5. Nothing is everyone’s fault; stories with equal culpability are harder to sell; 6. Root, don’t think; by the 2000s TV stations learned to cover politics the same as sports; losing concept of compromise; 7. No switching teams; there was a stress on journalistic inoffensiveness. The phrase “objectivity” was a great protector for reporters. If you announced yourself as an ally of one party or another, you lost your credibility as a reporter. “Balance” was a way for journalists to stay out of unspoken politics alliances; 8. The other side is literally Hitler; after 9/11 Fox treated the Democrats as evil; a Trump vote was a vote for any one who had a grudge which was a wide spectrum (4chan to church ladies); it included the “fuck everyone” voter; 9. In the fight against Hitler, everything is permitted; meanness and vulgarity build political solidarity, but also audience solidarity; 10. Feel superior; anger is good; the media is in the “business of stroking audiences. We want them coming back. anger is part of the rhetorical promise, but so are feelings of righteousness and superiority”. “We can excuse almost anything in America except losing. And we love a freak show. Trump was the best of both worlds: an Agnew-syle attacker on the one hand, and a lurid and disgusting monster-freak for audiences to look down on the other.” 
• Trump doesn’t happen in a country where things are going well; people give into their baser instincts when they lose faith in the future
• The big change has been the introduction of social media, which distills news, rumours and lies to single paragraphs that mislead, reinforce the worst fears and promote division
• doesn’t matter what news network you watch; it all the same – them vs us. MSNBC and CNN are are the mirror image of Fox, and neither side can be trusted
• American media have sweeping coverage omissions that reflect the real biases of news companies. For example they don’t cover: people in third word counties, child labour, human rights atrocities (particularly by US client nations), white-collar crime, military contracting corruption, corporate tax evasion; they don’t do process stories such as how the World Bank operates, how central banks work, how a bill gets passed through Congress, how and where military forces are deployed (special forces are deployed in 149 nations!)
• Trump made the argument that “the elites” are journalists, not their bosses or their advertisers
• Taibbi uses the pro wrestling analogy for Trump: When you “throw an attention magnet like Trump into a political journalism business that feeds financially off conflict.. what you get os the ultimate WWE event.”
• News watching is addictive – it will make you lonelier, more anxious, more distrustful of others, and more depressed; the product feeds off “short-term, dopamine-driven feed-back loops”; the notion that you are reading/listening to the truth, and not consuming a product, is commercial media’s deception – and all that translates into the fact that companies make more ad revenue the more you are glued to the medium
• The task for one network is to always report negatively about the other audience, but never about your own; they’re bad equals you’re good
• The two most taboo lines in all media in America are “I don’t know’ and “I don’t care”
• Content on the TV today is designed not just to be lurid and sensational, but immediately disquieting from a psychological standpoint.This is the genius of the “crawl” or “chyron” in modern cable news, that giant banner sweeping across the screen that tells you what the anchor-head plans on saying. The tone is one of both “worry” and “stay”; blurred five minute handoffs to the next anchor occur
• the author doesn’t explore much in the way of cause, emphasizing more the symptoms

Attachment #7: World Wide Web History

Key early developments that led to the WWW reality (described by Walter Isaacson in his book, The Innovators): transistor: 1947; microchips: 1959; graphical display: 1967; pre Internet :1974 (“A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection” to facilitate the sharing of computer resources); Apple 1: 1975; Control Program for Microcomputers (CP/M), one of the first 8-bit operating systems for personal computers): 1982.

Key elements in the development and utility of the World Wide Web (WWW) include: 

* the mouse had already been invented (and patented in 1970) which allowed clicking on these hyperlinks to be able to navigate quickly and efficiently the available information

* language was developed that allowed display with different fonts and sizes, pictures, colours, etc. that could be networked with different computers or computer software. This was Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). The first version was published in 1993. Using “hyperlinks” one could connect to another bit of information somewhere else

* unique addresses were proposed (in 1990) to identify to each resource. Sites could be named using URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) allowing easy navigation (every site on the worldwide web has a unique URL)

* then browsers became available which is simply a way of allowing one to view web pages on our computers (a gateway), and by 1994 there were million browser copies in use

* in 1994 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was formed at MIT, which administers development of WWW standards

* the first search engines commenced in the mid 90s. They are software systems designed to carry out web searches in a systematic way resulting in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques then became important. Google soon establishing a dominant position. Then massive growth. Wikipedia 2001

* with the coming of the World Wide Web (WWW), we see another powerful protocol (for data transfer) – http, or hypertext transfer protocol. HTTP allows us to click on the name of a site and visit it. Simple, but very powerful. 

The really important milestone, however, occurred in 1993 when the directors of the CERN research laboratory in Switzerland declared that the World Wide Web (WWW) technology would be freely available by anyone, with no fees paid to CERN. While invented in 1972, email remains the most important application of the Internet and the most widely used facility. It has 4.56 billion active users worldwide, or 59% of the global population (April 2020). Then came the game changer iPhone in 2006 (and iPad in 2010).

Fast forward to today when we have a world where everything is connected: our houses, cars, street lights, parking meters, etc. – and every one of those connections is passing data back and forth. With data traded for ad revenue, it’s becoming a type of new currency. (One could ask too, whether or not these online services are really “free”.) The future will produce even greater demand as new technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence and machine learning become more widely used. No wonder the companies that provide data storage (that wonderful “cloud’ we talk about) are booming, as they are housing these central nervous systems and protecting the data from disasters or damage.

Attachment #8: Major Social Media Platforms

Preamble: This is a dynamic new industry, so what’s in favour one year can falter the next.The sites listed here are generally first world focussed; China and Russia in particular restrict many of them.Each ismeasured in Monthly Active Users (MAUs) and Monthly Unique Viewers (MUVs).

Facebook: 2.23 billion MAUs; that’s almost a third of the world’s population! More than 65 million businesses use Facebook Pages and more than 6 million advertisers promote their business. Described as an “adverting juggernaut and a killing field for the truth” by Dr. Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard Business School prof. CEO is Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook took the internet by storm when it went global in 2006 and it is the biggest social network now. When it comes to social media, Facebook is the king. That’s why, despite numerous privacy concerns, it’s not showing any signs of slowing down. There is nothing that can match Facebook right now. 

Some people might argue Twitter is better but it’s not really an alternative, and it’s certainly not aimed at people who want to be in touch with friends and families. There are big privacy scandals such as Cambridge Analytica. Facebook’s experiments with the News Feed has also not gone down too well with users. (The fact that you can see your friend’s status updates, pictures, videos and connect with brands all in a single news feed is at the heart of the Facebook experience. The News Feed aims to show you the stories that matter the most to you, determined by Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm.) The company’s Internet.org initiative has also made sure to irk net neutrality enthusiasts. Facebook is a privacy nightmare and knows more about you than you think.

Messenger: 1.3 billion MSAUs. This used to be a messaging feature within Facebook, and since 2011, Facebook has made Messenger into a standalone app by itself and greatly expanded on its features.

WeChat: has 1.06 billion MAUs. It grew from a messaging app, just like WhatsApp and Messenger, into an all-in-one platform. Besides messaging and calling, users can now use WeChat to shop online and make payment offline, transfer money, make reservations, book taxis, and more. It is most popular in China and some parts of Asia. If you are doing business in those areas (where social media platforms like Facebook are banned), WeChat is a good alternative.

Twitter: 335 million MAUs. This American microblogging and social networking site is almost growing as fast as Facebook and is one of the biggest Facebook competitors. Co-founder and CEO is Jack Dorsey; started in 2006 and by 2012 had more than 100 million users posting 340 million tweets and an average of 1.6 billion search queries a day. It is a site for news, entertainment, sports, politics, and more. What makes Twitter different from most other social media sites is that it has a strong emphasis on real-time information – things that are happening right now. While it’s the home for smaller posts/tweets, it is a useful medium and it has made sure some problems around the world come forward to everyone. Registered users post and interact with messages known as “tweets” but unregistered users can only read them. Twitter is arguably the most fun and easy to use social network among all. A unique characteristic of Twitter is that it only allows 280 characters (used to be 140) in a tweet unlike most social media sites that have a much higher limit.

Google: an American multinational technology company (owned by Alphabet Inc) that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Five technology companies in the US information technology industry, alongside Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Research estimates from 2019’s online advertising spend puts it at $125.2 billion in the US, some $54.8 billion higher than the spend on television ($70.4 billion).

YouTube: Owned by Google which in turn is owned by Alphabet Inc), at 1.9 billion MAUs, it’s the second biggest social media site and has the second largest search engine after Google. It’s a great media, especially video, sharing platform. It’s the home for some good videos and original content. Along with YouTube, there are a number of like Vimeo, Tik Tok (see below), Facebook Watch,Twitch (for gaming geeks), DailyMotion, IGTV by Instagram, byte (successor to Vine), Periscope (owned by Twitter), LBRY, VEVO and more. YouTube is not really a Facebook alternative.

WhatsApp: 1.5 billion MAUs. This is a messaging app used by people in over 180 countries. Initially, WhatsApp was only used by people to communicate with their family and friends. Gradually, people started communicating with businesses via WhatsApp.

Instagram: 1 billion MAUs. A media sharing app now owned by Facebook. it’s an all round social network, as it lets you upload photos, short videos and even exchange texts with others.

Tumblr: has 642 billion MUVs. It is a microblogging and social networking site for sharing text, photos, links, videos, audios, and more. People share a wide range of things on Tumblr from cat photos to art to fashion.

Fitbit: an American consumer electronics and fitness company. Its products are activity trackers, smartwatches, wireless-enabled wearable technology devices that measure data such as the number of steps walked, heart rate, quality of sleep, steps climbed, and other personal metrics involved in fitness. Google bought them in 2019. In 2019, Google announced its intention to buy Fitbit for $2.1 billion

Tik Tok; has become the go-to platform for sharing lip-syncing videos. It’s a Facebook substitute that can let you share and explore fun-loving bite-sized videos. This video-sharing site also creates a fully personalized video feed so that you can quickly access the sort of videos that appeal to your fancy. It is very popular in Asia; this is spreading to the west. Another one called Clubhouse was popular in China, where freewheeling discussions took place about democracy, Taiwan, etc. Too unfettered, as it seems as service in China was cut off in February through their internet filters, i.e. the Great Firewall of China! 

Parler: claims some 12 million users. It is an American alt-tech social networking and microblogging service (allows users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences sometimes called micro posts which may be the major reason for their popularity). Launched in August 2018, Parler markets itself as a free-speech-focused and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. However, journalists have criticized this as being a cover for its far-right userbase. It has become home to some of the more toxic elements of US politics, including the organizers of the Stop the Steal conspiracy theory and the violent insurrection at the Capitol.

Journalists and users have also criticized the service for content policies that are more restrictive than the company portrays and sometimes more restrictive than those of its competitors.Some left-wing users have been banned from Parler for challenging the prevailing viewpoints on the site, criticizing Parler, or creating accounts that are humorous. 

It has a significant user base of Trump supporters, conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and right wing extremists. Posts on the service often contain far-right content, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories such as QAnon. Journalists have described Parler as an alternative to Twitter and users include those banned from mainstream social networks or opposing their moderation policies.

Parler has not publicly disclosed the identities of its owners besides founder John Matze.Rebekah Mercer, an investor known for her contributions to conservative individuals and organizations, is a co-founder of the company, and conservative political commentator Dan Bongino (a thoroughly obnoxious Trump-supporting, face mask denier character) has said he is an owner.As of January 2021, according to Parler, the service had about 15 million total users,having had only 2.3 million active users the previous month. 

After reports that Parler was used to coordinate the Jan 6 storming of the US Capitol, several companies denied it their services.Apple and Google removed Parler’s mobile app from their app stores. Parler went offline on January 10, 2021, when Amazon Web Services canceled its hosting services. Parler LLC has filed an antitrust complaint plus stating that Amazon hasn’t suspended Twitter, where it said one of the top-trending tweets had been “Hang Mike Pence.”

Gab: is an American alt-tech social networking service known for its far-right userbase. Widely described as a haven for extremists including neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, the alt-right, and QAnon conspiracy theorists, it has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. A microblogging platform, Gab has been described as similar to Twitter, and “Twitter for racists”. Gab was founded in 2016 by CEO Andrew Torba^, who describes himself as a lifelong “conservative Republican Christian”. A 2018 research study concluded that Gab is filled with extremist users. Gab was among the platforms used to plan the storming of the Capitol on January 6. Posts about which streets to take in order to run from police, which tools to use to pry open doors, and carrying guns into the halls of Congress, were exchanged on the platform in advance of the storming. Facebook and Twitter have threatened to cut them off. 

Reddit: 330 million MAUs. It is a public forum where people post and comment on things they are interested in. Generally, Reddit users share questions, stories, images or anything that may be interesting. Then, people connect with each other through comments. The community Reddit has built over the years makes it a good social platform. It has occasionally been the topic of controversy due to the presence of communities on the site (known as “subreddits”) devoted to explicit or controversial material. In 2012, the site’s then-CEO, stated, “We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it.” However, numerous subreddits have since been banned on the basis of ideology.

The site has been in the news in January when chatter on its site, and other social media sites, fuelled small investors to take on Wall Street using online trading apps such as Robinhood to bid up shares of the retailer GameStop. It was also in the middle of a recent controversy regarding Blackberry stock through its Reddit’s Bay Street Bets. Does a typical retail investor going on a chat board and giving their opinion cross a “market manipulation “line? It’s still a gray area. 

Quora: is another discussion forum like Reddit. Use it if you have a question and you want to ask others. It’s a good place for all the questions and some interesting answers. The question can be on any topic and you can even post personal doubts as anonymous. You can re-ask questions that are already posted and upvote answers that you believe are great.

Amazon: thought originally as  a book-seller, it has emerged into something more like a massive logistics business than retailer. It’s an enormous behemoth of cloud computing, delivery systems, global sourcing and more. Besides decimating the bookstore business, it has been making it hard for many small businesses. It also has some nasty surveillance data accusations hovering over it (data from its Ring doorbell cameras shared with police, etc.). My business side says convenience and price is what people want, so bedamn the casualties. But what about the environment costs of convenience, i.e. countless things ordered with no-cost shipping. How those will be measured will be in the nexus of future consumer habits.

Other: Some of the current options for Facebook include: Pinterest (is a place where people go to discover new things and be inspired, quite unlike most social media sites where engagement is the primary focus), Nextdoor, Snapchat (focuses on sharing photos and short videos, known as snaps, between friends), Vero, Mastodon, Ello, Digg, Steemit, Raftr, Diaspora, Line, Medium, Signal/Telegram/iMessage (encrypted messaging services). There is also MeWe, which is a rising Facebook alternative that calls itself the ‘next-gen social network’. The platform’s interface and features closely resemble Facebook and it is clearly designed to replicate Facebook. What makes MeWe different is that it doesn’t offer ads. Plus, MeWe claims that it doesn’t share or sell your personal information to advertisers or marketers. However, the platform’s loose content moderation policies make it a breeding ground for misinformation.

There are many other options, depending on ones interest. For example, for photographers and artists there is 500px, Flickr, DeviantArt. As an alternative to Facebook for designers there is Behance, Adobe Portfolio, Dribbble. For alternatives to Facebook for professionals/career oriented needs there is Linkedin which gives you the ability to interact with other professionals, recruit employees and find jobs. It’s also great if you want to be up to date on the latest business and industry news; can use also CareerBuilder. Alternatives for music include: Spotify (a Swedish audio streaming and media services provider), SoundCloud, and Apple Music.

Podcasts: It’s also important to point out that while social-media platforms have been cracking down on the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, they have left open the world of podcasts. There are a great variety of podcasts that spread hate, misinformation or conspiracy theories. Accounts that have been banned on social media still live on as podcasts available on the tech giants’ platforms. One Podcaster, RedPill78, called the Capital siege a “staged event” in a Jan. 11 episode of Red Pill News. The day before the riot, a more popular podcast, X22 Report, spoke confidently about a Trump second term, explaining that they would need to “remove” many members of Congress to further his plans and said: ”We the people, we are the storm, and we are coming to DC.” Both are available on Apple and Google podcast platforms.

Note: there are 130 groups active in Canada and 660 white supremist online channels. There are other examples than I listed under Extremist Groups, e.g. Russian Imperial Movement. There are also affiliates of ISIS, al-Qaida and Hizbul Mujahedin (all banned in Canada).

Google-owned YouTube axed Bannons War Room, a channel run by Trump loyalist Steve Bannon, on Jan. 8 after he spread false-election claims and called for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci. But podcast versions of Bannon’s show live on at Apple and Google.  Another conspiracy podcast called Praying Medic is available on Apple and Google. A long-time QAnon follower Melody Torres, has a podcast called Soul-Warrior Uncensored which is available on Spotify, Apple and Google.

Apparently it’s harder to analyze misinformation from video and audio than from text. Podcasts can also run for a long time. Also there are no reliable stats on their audience.

Usenet newsgroup: is a repository usually within the Usenet, short for “users network” system  (a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers). Used for messages posted from many users in different locations using Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on the World Wide Web. (An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived.) 

Newsreader software is used to read the content of newsgroups. Before the adoption of the WWW, Usenet newsgroups were among the most popular Internet services, and have retained their noncommercial nature in contrast to the increasingly ad-laden web. In recent years, this form of open discussion on the Internet has lost considerable ground to individually-operated browser-accessible forums and big media social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. 

Attachment #9: Social Media Consumer, Recent Research

Recent studies by the PEW Research Centre, Journalism and Media show that news consumers who rely upon social media are less knowledgable and less engaged than those who use other news sources. Social media news consumers:

– pay less attention to news than those who rely on most other sources (US adults who follow news about the election “very closely”: those who use social media 8%; cable TV 37%; print 33%)

– this lack of attention to news in those who rely most on social media for political news goes hand in hand with lower levels of knowledge about major current events and politics

– those who rely most on social media are younger and have lower levels of education

– on a political knowledge rating of high, middle or low, only 17% of social media users scored high vs 45% for those who use news websites, 42% radio, 41% print media

– social media users are more likely to have heard about conspiracy theories and other false claims

– when asked “how often do you use social networking sites to get news”, Americans answered 39%; Canadians 42%

– 36% of Americans regularly log into Facebook to get their news (they are the king of social media)

– local news is suffering; between 2010 and 2017, 225 weekly and 27 daily newspapers were closed/merged. There are only 75 remaining daily newspapers in Canada, with paid circulation just over 11 million copies weekly

Attachment #10: Addictive Technology: Internet/Cell/TV

Author Tom Friedman in his book Thank You For Being Late picks the year 2007 as critical to the super-charged era of technology, as it was when the iPhone was released, along with significant advances in silicon chips, etc. (with the iPad in 2010). 

Adam Alter in his book Irresistible quotes a study that suggests that 40% of the population suffers from some form of Internet-based addiction. Beyond the Internet, 46% of people say they couldn’t bear to live without their smartphones. Time on these phones has climbed from eighteen minutes per day in 2008 to two hours and forty-eight minutes in 2015!

Other key points:

• sleep quality has declined dramatically in the past half century, particularly over the past two decades, and one of the major culprits is the bluish light from electronic devices (as blue signals mornings, we are telling our bodies that day is just beginning when we go to bed)
• people are spending more time on their digital devices than sleeping (from The Sleep Revolution by Arianna Huffington)
• 60% of adults keep their phones next to them when they sleep and more than 50% check their emails at night; they claim they don’t sleep well because of they’re always connected to technology.
• 95% of adults use an electronic device that emits light in the hour before bed, and more than half check their emails overnight
• the real damage of behavioural addiction however happens when we’re wide awake
• the highest risk period for addiction is early adulthood
• 70% of office emails are read within 6 seconds of arriving. This is hugely disruptive, as it takes up to 25 minutes to become immersed in an interrupted act
• empathy is declining in young adults: one in three teenage girls say that people their age are mostly unkind to one another on social network sites… Many teens refuse to communicate on the phone or face-to-face, and they conduct their fights by text
• tech critics fear that the new Virtual Reality (VR) will become “legal heroin”; “when it matures it will allow us to spend time with anyone in any location doing whatever we like for as long as we like”
• bing-watching is increasing; research by Netflix found that 61% of people reported some degree (define as watching between two and six episodes of a TV show in one sitting); a “season” is now consumed in under a week, at an average of 2 to 2 1?2 hours/day
• kids are abandoning books as they age 
• relying too heavily on tech leads to digital amnesia; 91% surveyed in a study struggle to remember certain basic data – they described their phones as “extensions of their brains”. Most said they would just “search online for answers to questions before trying to generate the answer by memory”
• texting is resulting in children being poor communicators (there are no non-verbal cues, etc.)
• one study found that gamers aged between 10 and 15 who played more than 3 hours/day where less satisfied with their lives, less likely to feel empathy, and less likely to know how to deal with their emotions appropriately
• recent surveys have shown that kids spend an average of 5 to 7 hours in front of their screens each day

References

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping us Hooked by Adam Alter. This book is on how social media and the accompanying gadgets is becoming a behavioural addiction and the resulting impacts on meaningful relationships, raising children, sleep, work/play boundaries, etc. 

Hate Inc: Why Todays’s Media Makes us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi. He argues that news is a consumer product. Consumers choose the ones that have the features they want and stick with that brand, no matter how far from the truth it wanders. It is purely a consumer preference and does not pretend to be fair, neutral or comprehensive. The book damns journalism for not checking facts or sources, adding to the credibility crisis and hate in the field.

It Came From Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office by Dale Beran. A book describing how 4chan and 8chan fuel white nationalism, inspire violence, and infect politics. Describes how the most impactful recent political movements on the far right (and left) started with massive online collectives of teenagers, in particular from the same website: an anime imageboard called 4chan.org.

Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, by Thomas Friedman. Author argues that man is actually a fairly adaptable creature. The problem is that our capacity to adapt is being outpaced by a “supernova,” built from three ever faster things: technology, the market, and climate change. Everything will keep getting faster. There are already at least 10 billion things connected to the Internet — but that is still less than 1 percent of the possible total as ever more cars, gadgets and bodies join “the Internet of things.” He produces a common-sense list of 18 things that the American government should do, from setting up a single-payer health system to passing free-trade deals and building infrastructure.

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson. A story of the people who created the computer and the internet. It’s a guide to how innovation really happens. Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page.

The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success by Lon Safko. This is social media resource that teaches strategies for using social media to reach their desired audiences with power messages and efficiency. Good info on iPad, apps, Foursquare, and other geotargeted networks, including Google’s search engine algorithms.

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire – A 500-Year History by Kurt Anderson.The book looks at the past half-millennium of American history by deconstructing the myths and fantasies that have evolved since the country’s foundation. Many of the targets are relatively easy ones, not least Trump himself. As he dissects everything from the Salem witch hunts to Scientology, he manages to present a frighteningly convincing and sometimes uproarious picture of a country in steep, perhaps terminal decline.