We the Media

Chapter 9. Trolls, Spin, and the Boundaries of Trust

In the spring of 2001, almost no one was surprised to hear that several Hollywood studios had been setting up phony web sites to create buzz for new movies. The sites, supposedly run by fans, were just the latest version of some standard tricks in parts of the marketing world.

The exposure of the deception again brought to focus a reality of the modern age: for manipulators, con artists, gossips, and jokesters of all varieties, the Internet is the medium from heaven.

Technology has given us a world in which almost anyone can publish a credible-looking web page. Anyone with a computer or a cell phone can post in online forums. Anyone with a moderate amount of skill with Photoshop or other image-manipulation software can distort reality. Special effects make even videos untrustworthy.

We have a problem here.

Cut and Paste, Right and Wrong

The spread of misinformation isn’t always the result of malice. Consider the cut-and-paste problem.

Until recently, people would clip a news article from a paper or magazine. They’d give or mail it to someone else. Now we just copy it digitally and send it along. But when we cut and paste text, we can run into trouble. Sometimes the cutting removes relevant information. On occasion, words or sentences are changed to utterly distort the meaning. Both practices can prove harmful, but the latter is downright malicious.

In one of the most famous cut-and-paste cases, a column by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary ...