Det, vi ikke ønsker at høre, bliver med andre ord udsat for enhver tænkelig
kritik og skepsis, hvilket står i skærende kontrast til den måde, hvorpå vi
behandler informationer, der stemmer overens med det, vi allerede tror eller
håber på; her leder vi i stedet efter historier og erfaringer, som bekræfter
vores mening.
En meget væsentlig pointe når man analyserer holdningsdannelse og politisk argumentation er at man er forudindtaget og læser ud fra sin verdensopfattelse og selekterer udfra sin grundholdning. Man prøver mere at samle argumenter til det man mener i forvejen end man prøver at udsætte sin nuværende holdning for et 'reality-check'.
I can hardly answer that question because I have unsubscribed from most of these media, precisely because of this background. However, it is remarkable how the Germans have arrived at reasonable conclusions in spite of the newspaper editorials, and how they have supported the position of the Government even against the press and media landscape.
Andreas von Bülow, former German Minister for Research and Technology and former German Secretary of Defence, currently a lawyer in Bonn, on disinformation strategies and the role of intelligence services.
Ret skræmmende at en forsvarsminister så utvetydigt kan tale om efterretningstjenesters effektfulde spredning af disinformation i de store medier. Et faktum som søvngængere automatisk kalder konspiration.
"If you relentlessly squeeze workers and suppliers, if you undermine every community's local businesses, if you capture all of this surplus under the guise of efficiency and channel those gains to a small number of people, you end up with a system that is very vulnerable," said Ms. Mitchell, an antitrust reformer and monopoly critic. "That is what we've been doing, systematically and as a matter of public policy."