How Counter-Narratives Emerge

[Dill]

(07-13-2017, 11:30 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: What double standard? Is there another spokesperson for the head of our executive branch pushing a different false narrative I am neglecting?

(07-13-2017, 09:01 AM)hollodero Wrote: No it would not. How provocative does one need to be to get a sharp response :) Or any. Please bash away.

If I am correct in my assessment of the "counter-narrative" strategy, which systematically presents false equivalencies, then we should not be surprised if the targets of that strategy see a double standard in that thesis. After all, one goal of the strategy is to convince people that nothing new or different or qualitatively worse is occurring under the Trump presidency. To say otherwise is just more "liberal hypocrisy."

Though I don't have it completely formulated yet, I am posing my counter narrative thesis as a social scientist would--i.e., as a hypothesis to be tested against actual cases. The point of doing it that way is to avoid simply trading anecdotes, and instead putting news reports and commentary in an analytic framework which allows for quantitative and qualitative comparison.

Certainly every White House puts out a counter narrative to bad press--but not always and every day. And I don't recall Bush or Obama press secretaries relying systematically on "what abouts." Partisans have long done that on social media, but rarely have official spokespersons, and to the degree we have seen in the last week at every press briefing. That the tactic is accepted by a segment of the audience signals the rejection of several journalistic conventions and logical standards, or unawareness of them. The insistence that MSM organizations put out "fake news" daily, is also an element of this counter-narrative strategy, which, for the aforementioned segment, levels the playing field. NYT journalists are not any more trustworthy than a Trump tweet.
 
If I am correct that this is largely a right wing, Trump/Fox phenomenon (though it does not include all right wing news sources at the moment), then we might see a few anecdotes tossed up to "prove" both sides do it. If these hold up to comparison then the hypothesis is disproved. If not, then for the moment the thesis appears sound.  So I am hoping someone out there will set out to prove it wrong, rather than just saying it is. Doing only the latter, at this point, supports my thesis.