'Cults’ 'Cranks' and understanding fake news

‘Cranks’ recently became a shorthand to describe a particular group of social media campaigners who support the leader of the UK opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.

It differs from the ‘cult’ catch-all beloved of a section of commentators. An important difference being the consensus, even among Corbyn supporters, that ‘cranks’ are a particular sub-set whose views are informed by questionable conspiracy theory.

Still, as a label, ‘cult’ is also problematic. It writes off whole swathes of digitally engaged people, mostly motivated by a sense of injustice, and hope for a better future.

The notion of the unthinking, unquestioning cult-like dupe is not particularly helpful for us in trying to understand what is going on in our society. Take the phenomenon of  'fake news' and a paper by Alice Marwick which questions the effectiveness of traditional fact checking or media literacy campaigns in countering it.

There’s no reasoned or rational ‘magic bullet’ to fake news. A well argued or irrefutable fact is rarely sufficient to end a fake news narrative, it probably never was. Instead, Marwick argues, we need to understand how people ‘make meaning’ from media and stop pretending that shot-in-the-arm fact checking or media literacy projects will change things.

She argues:

“A socio-technical approach to understand how and why people share fake news reveals complex social motivations that will not be easily changed.” (p480)

Though US-centric, her paper has helped me understand what motivates, and gives agency to, those in and around digital activist spaces who are often described as Corbyn ‘cultists’.

Fandom: Trekkies, Brosettes and Dungeons and Dragons

There is often something herd-like about the way people get behind Corbyn on Twitter. At times I find it a bit uncomfortable with it (who am I to criticise?).
But in her paper Marwick suggests the possibility of using ‘fandom’ as a frame to understand what could be going on in these digital activist circles.

Fandom is a phenomenon cultural theorists have written about for decades, from: Klingon-speaking Star Trek groupies to the Brossettes, Beatlemania and football fanzine editors.

The relevance of fan culture here is summed up by the observation that: 

“Fans did not simply consume content: they produced their own in the form of fan art, fan films and fan fiction.”

It’s easy to label people a ‘cult’, all the better to dismiss them, but isn't it more likely that Corbyn activists are simply bringing a pretty standard cultural tradition, that of  'the fan' to their organised digital activism? Of course Trekkies and fanzine editors were rarely political. In contrast today’s digital activists have agency and, in the case of Corbyn, a political figurehead. I suspect it's really this latter combination that really irks people.

Voice and agency

History is replete with examples of elites horrified at the sound of the politically disenfranchised finding their voice.

Corey Robin’s book, The Reactionary Mind, notes that US elites were often at least as disgusted by the verbal speech acts of women or slaves, as they were of their emancipatory ideas.

In their ‘catch all’ denunciations of ‘cultists’ it feels like ‘sensible’ media commentators, politicians and influencers are, at least partly, objecting to the same thing.