fake news

 works on the basis of motivated reasoning, the notion that in our eagerness to prove that we are correct, we lower the bar for supporting evidence.

Motivated reasoning contributes as well. People who do not like Obama (or Trump, or any other politico) are motivated to find information that justified and confirms their existing beliefs. In our eagerness to prove that we are correct, we lower the bar for supporting evidence. Facts that make little sense or collapse under scrutiny are often accepted as true when they tell us what we want to hear.

 works on the classic 'argument from ignorance' whereby either of two beliefs is argued to be equally valid on the grounds simple because the more reasonable of two beliefs (i.e. that Obama is not a Muslim) necessarily also falls short of absolute certainty.

Partisanship or ideology filter and shape political information as we receive it. They are not objective forces, and they promote two common logical fallacies in thinking. First, the classic Argument from Ignorance can be applied readily to these rumors... you cannot prove Obama is a Muslim, but I cannot prove he is not. Therefore, no one can answer this definitively so either belief is equally valid. That I can provide supporting evidence that he is a Christian is irrelevant, since I cannot prove conclusively that in secret or in his mind he is not a devotee of Islam.

is a political strategy which, in the 2016 election, favored Trump in part simply because Trump supporters were more likely to share fake news indiscriminately.

https://www.wired.com/video/2017/02/here-s-how-fake-news-works-and-how-the-internet-can-stop-it/

Edward BurialThinkers

Edward Burial