"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says. ...
When I first got into political blogging in the early 2000s, I became interested in the question of "Why do we believe what we believe, and how do we know it's true?" As it happened, from watching my traffic stats I saw I was getting a lot of hits on my blog from people asking 'how can you determine a source's biases' or very similarly worded questions. I decided to capitalize on my search hits, and wrote a post titled How can you determine a source's biases? in which I examined the mental process I go through, and tried to list some of the things I look at. These factors included
· internal consistency (details of the narrative agree with each other)
· external consistency (details of the narrative agree with information previously verified)
· insider details (information available only to an authentic source)
· dialog and dissent (narrative welcomes questions and challenges; fosters better understanding among divergent opinions)
· awareness of objections (narrative recognizes legitimate counter-arguments and seeks to refute them)
· nuance (recognition that a proposition may hold true in general and still admit of exceptions)
· the human voice (an intangible quality that may include a distinctive personality, awareness of ambivalence, self-analysis and self-criticism)
You can read the whole thing here. It's not a comprehensive or systematic approach, but it's my attempt to analyze some of the things I think about.
