Who Controls the Narrative?

A growing problem in today’s hyper-connected societies is the question of who controls the narrative, who decides the framework for discussion on key topics, past and present. Narratives can be that series of ideas you’ve heard or read about, which you then discuss with others, helping to create and control a specific communication flow.

Unfortunately, the narrative is not under anybody’s control anymore. Despite access to an infinite variety of sources literally at our fingertips, we cling to our-long held views or with what resonates with us, with what we find convincing, that confirms our beliefs, or that for whatever reason we are willing to embrace. Perhaps it’s the narrative we think will make us look well-informed over a coffee or drink with friends. But that continual process of refusing to verify the narrative, we are simply contributing to the problem, which is growing exponentially.

It doesn’t matter how much serious and competent research is behind the narrative. One day you read that doctors at such and such a hospital say vaccines are causing such and such problems, so you click on the story. You relate it to another you had heard or read earlier about the vaccines, which falsely claimed that several steps had been skipped in the testing phase, and automatically, that triggers our ancient fear of change and that invariably makes us mistrust new ideas.

In an instant, you are not only that person believed some wild claim that could be checked in an instant, you are now a dirty bomb spreading lies among your friends and acquaintances. In a short time, a rumor has reached huge numbers of people, and it becomes one more argument for a bunch of anti-vaxxers who think only they know what’s going on and that the whole thing is a conspiracy between the deep state and big pharma.

After a certain point, you don’t care anymore. You have invested so much effort in understanding the hoax, in assimilating it and in telling others about it, that you refuse to listen to reason: they are part of the conspiracy. At this level, some narratives morph into weapons of mass destruction: the power of these informal channels to spread the most baseless rumors is astonishing.

Why do some of us continue help to spread lies? Why do supposedly intelligent people refuse to question their beliefs, and thus contribute to the spread of hoaxes? Why are they willing to use any methods, even down to citing experts: “a doctor told me,” as if all doctors, whatever their specialty, were top level experts in virology or immunology, in the desperate hope of proving something they’ve just heard?

The reality is that controlling the narrative is about exploiting human weaknesses. We only need talk to a couple of friends, or those WhatsApp groups we are in, to see how certain narratives find holes and nooks and crannies through which to circulate and reach more people than they really deserved.

In practice, these apparently uncontrolled narratives end up having more impact than they might seem, encouraging or inciting people to do stupid, and often dangerous things. The least we owe to ourselves when we read or hear something that surprises us or somehow clicks is to verify it before we start infecting the world with it. But I’m afraid that for many people, that’s too much to ask. Playing with rumors and exploiting our fear of change is much more fun.

I sometimes wonder if we deserve the science we have managed to develop.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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