We are really turning our attention to the question of ‘A Better Media’ in A/UK - and not just an analysis of its failure, but plans to build on what we’re doing here, with an awareness of the actual media landscape before. Conversations are beginning - watch this space.

So we have an appetite for discussions about digital media that opposes “cyber-miserabilism” in relation to the internet, and instead regards it as an “extraordinary gift.” The investigative site BellingCat was profiled in the Guardian a few weeks ago. Its results, and the origins of its founder are fascinating:

In December, Bellingcat outed the kill-team behind the novichok poisoning last summer of Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s number one critic. The investigation helped galvanise street protests on 23 January across Russia, following Navalny’s courageous return to Moscow and inevitable arrest.

Higgins’s own story is an improbable one, shaped by good timing and grit. A media studies dropout and avid gamer, he found he had time on his hands as the Arab spring kicked off, and after the birth of his baby daughter.

Higgins began posting on the Guardian’s Middle East blog, as “Brown Moses”. He realised it was possible to establish from your sofa what was going on in a faraway war zone, in Libya or Syria.

The material was out there: YouTube videos, Facebook posts, tweets, Instagram – a galaxy of images and text tossed out via social media. By sifting, discoveries could be made. Higgins became an expert on weapons. He found collaborators. Bellingcat developed a credo: look for public evidence, cite sources, collaborate. An open model, in contrast to tabloid chicanery.

This transparent method has had remarkable success. Bellingcat has uncovered war crimes in Syria and unmasked neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville. In 2018 it winkled out the real identities of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, the two GRU assassins who went to Salisbury to snuff out Sergei Skripal. (The pair claimed they were merely sightseers who had come to see the Cathedral spire.)

Bellingcat’s rise reveals something new about our digitally mediated times: spying is no longer the preserve of nation states – anyone with an internet connection can do it. The balance between open and secret intelligence is shifting. The most useful stuff is often public. Bellingcat, you suspect, knows more than the suits of MI6; certainly, it’s nimbler. “An intelligence agency for the people,” as Higgins’s subtitle puts it.

The book – written with the novelist and journalist Tom Rachman – is also a manifesto for optimism in a dark age. It argues that “cyber-miserabilism” – the doomy belief that big tech and bad actors have permanently screwed our democracy – is wrong. Instead, Higgins hails the internet as an “extraordinary gift”. In his view, facts still matter, accountability is possible, and people still care about the difference between truth and lies.

In a recent BBC interview Barack Obama complained that conspiracy theories turbocharged by social media had fuelled America’s bitter political divisions. The era was suffering from a bad case of what Obama called “truth decay”. After Trump and Brexit, BellingCat offers a route out of our current epistemological crisis. Higgins’s answer: a bracing restatement of empirical values and good method.

The book blasts what Higgins calls the “Counterfactual Community” – the leaderless network of conspiracy mongers and state bloggers who swap disinformation. Favourite topics are the White Helmets – the group of volunteer rescuers in Syria – and the “dangers” of the Covid-19 vaccine. “Their practice is to begin with a conclusion, skip verification, and to shout down contradictory facts,” Higgins observes.

This evidence-denying community has some strange ideological allies. There is the far left: tough on imperialism, so long as the west and the US is the aggressor. Aligned with it is the “alt-right”, Higgins says. Both groups are pro-Assad and pro-Putin. Their views are expressed on alternative media outlets and via government propaganda channels such as RT, the Kremlin’s TV wing – and Bellingcat’s most vocal critic.

It’s a redemptive, encouraging story - that armies of enthusiastic internet trawlers can become a massive investigative force, driving existing news organisations together in a new spirit of collaboration. Call it “swarm journalism”?

We also note this Psyche piece on how to achieve “epistemic wellbeing” - meaning, how can you exist in a calm, inquiring and thoughtful relationship to the war of news media and truth claims that surround you? (“Epistemic” meaning how truth is established for you, and in the public realm). Extract below:

In a recent interview in The Atlantic magazine, Barack Obama warned of potentially dire consequences if we couldn’t get the epistemological crisis under control. The marketplace of ideas will cease to function, and so too will a well-functioning democracy.

Part of the problem in addressing the epistemic crisis, I propose, will involve trying to balance various aspects of people’s epistemic wellbeing in the right way. It’s not clear what the best way of doing this is.

Many social media outlets have taken measures to try to stem the tide of misinformation on their platforms, be it through fact-checking or banning users. These actions can help with the epistemic wellbeing of a platform’s users by trying to ensure that said users have access to truths.

At the same time, they could be interpreted by some to be affecting their ability to engage in dialogue. As a result, users who are fact-checked or banned will look elsewhere to have their epistemic needs met.

This isn’t to say that fact-checking is a bad idea, nor that it’s never appropriate to ban users from social media. It is to show that balancing people’s need for truths, trust and dialogue is not an easy task.

You have no doubt come across some advice about how to deal with the epistemic crisis already – we’re told to double-check the information we receive online, to look for indications that our sources are trustworthy, to block that certain uncle from our social media – and this can be similarly good advice when it comes to our epistemic wellbeing.

It’s perhaps worthwhile to develop a habit of periodically auditing one’s epistemic habits. You might reflect on the ways in which you acquire information, and whether you’re listening to certain sources because they’re likely to lead you to the truth, or because they’re telling you what you want to hear.

While there’s no panacea for all the problems the epistemic crisis has brought, conscientious self-reflection on the ways in which we seek knowledge is at least a good first step to increasing epistemic wellbeing.

More here.

Swarm journalism: how BellingCat uses the amateur skills of an army of netizens to "unfake" the news