There have been so many conversations on the impact of fake news on the recent US elections. An already polarized public is pushed further apart by stories that affirm beliefs or attack the other side. Yes. Fake news is a serious problem that should be addressed. But by focusing solely on that issue, we are missing the larger, more harmful phenomenon of misleading, biased propaganda.

It’s not only fringe publications. Think for a moment about the recent “Hamilton”-Pence showdown. What actually happened there? How disrespectful was the cast towards Mike Pence? Was he truly being “Booed Like Crazy” as the Huffington Post suggests? The short video embedded in that piece makes it seem like it. But this video on ABC suggests otherwise. “There were some cheers and some boos,” says Pence himself.

In an era of post-truth politics, driven by the 24-hour news cycle, diminishing trust in institutions, rich visual media, and the ubiquity and velocity of social networked spaces, how do we identify information that is tinted — information that is incomplete, that may help affirm our existing beliefs or support someone’s agenda, or that may be manipulative — effectively driving a form of propaganda?

Biased information — misleading in nature, typically used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view — is a much more prevalent problem than fake news. It’s a problem that doesn’t exist only within Facebook but across social networks and other information-rich services (Google, YouTube, etc.).

I worry that focusing on fake news will not help us strengthen trust in institutions and create a more informed public.

The Curious Case of Hillary’s Health

Remember that whole media cycle around Hillary Clinton’s health? No? When a number of conspiracy theories, powered by some real events and amplified by mainstream media, culminated in the New York Times sending a notification that Clinton fainted? You know, that week when hundreds of articles were published on a topic many people promptly moved on from and forgot?

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The case around Clinton’s health is an interesting one to track. While there are articles going back to 2007 mentioning a coughing fit, this recent cycle began as this YouTube video (posted on August 4) and started to make its way through 4chan, Reddit, and the social web; it now has 5.5M+ views and 16k comments.