(2019-05-08) Caulfield The Curation Search Radicalization Spiral

Mike Caulfield: The Curation/Search Radicalization Spiral. People tend to think of grooming in the context of sexual predators or spies — the slow process of finding disaffected people and using their disaffection to warp their mind bit by bit. But we’ve long known that this is how online radicalization works as well, from ISIS to neo-Nazis.

Sexual predators do not begin grooming by asking for sex. Instead, in each case, there is a slow process of getting the target acclimated, bit by bit, to ideas thought repulsive

The reddit group was likely feeding her son a constant stream of outrages

Now, this is where we’d think being inquisitive would help. Get out and Google it, right? And for someone skilled at finding the right information on the web that strategy might work. But the curation and the language used produces loaded searches that just pulls one deeper into the narrative that the curation scaffolded.

As I’ve talked about previously, “black on white crime” is a data void. It is not a term used by social scientists or reputable news organizations, which is why the white nationalist site Council of Conservative Citizens came up in those results. (framing)

The thing to remember about this algorithmic-human grooming hybrid is that the gradualness of it — the step-by-step nature of it — is a feature for the groomers, not a bug

Curations

Students need a basic understanding of how curations can warp reality.

what you want is context.

Students need to be aware of how search terms shape results

the key here is that the students know how to “zoom out” to a broader more neutral term

Teaching students to scan search engine result pages with an eye toward what sort of information is behind each of those links can help students, who often zero too much in on issues of result relevance when clicking and not enough on result genre and quality.

Before engaging with a new site, students should find out what the site they are reading is. What’s its agenda?

Sites like Reddit must consider what cultures they are supporting, and how their platform’s affordances may be exacerbating ill effects

Full digital literacy should address issues of how economics, platform incentives, tribalism, and supremacist/sexist/colonial structures shape online discourse and production.