I wish I had a bit more time for this thread but I've just had an exchange and completion on the house so I'm inundated.
I think it is an excellent issue to be discussing though MaizieD. Your last post is exactly what I worry about, the targeted delivery of messages which no one else can see, the appeal to the emotions, the anti democratic nature of it all.
I've only recently cottoned on to us being in the area of something called 'big data' meaning as I understand it, the collection of data about us with which those who have access to it can draw up profiles and use these to predict behaviour and market things to us but also influence our thinking and behaviour. In the hands of those intent on influencing elections, this is dynamite.
This is a good article, though I apologise, none of this makes easy reading! motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win
And this one: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/26/the-guardian-view-on-big-data-the-danger-is-less-democracy
I am struggling to get to grips with what this means for us now but I feel it goes beyond whether news is real or fake (because that's a spectrum which has always existed tbh, what the Daily Telegraph chooses to headline and report will be different in content and flavour from The Guardian or the DM, especially the online DM) into the realms of deliberate misleading by careful choosing of content and audience. I've always been suspicious of the use of statistics but it seems that now, more than ever, they can be used to manipulate the masses.
There have always been subversive or alternative news outlets, now we all have access to them and are left, if we have the time and inclination, to try to figure out where 'truth' lies. Are we now living through an era like say, the Middle Ages and perhaps the Civil War period, where penny broadsheets were sold in the streets full of scandalous, seditious and untrue stories interspersed with snippets of real/true news?
It feels to me like a moment of 'if you can keep your head while all about you, are losing theirs and blaming it on you'....!!