What misinformation is better than

A good piece in Slate underlining the mismatch between the (bipartisan) attention that misinformation has garnered in the US electoral campaign and the evidence that voting decisions depend overwhelmingly on social identity. Fake news does not land on a blank slate, mysteriously swaying otherwise innocent targets; a much more likely scenario is that it permits the articulation of already entrenched partisan views, and in this sense its truth value is not the key consideration. In a way, though, agreeing that misinformation is decisive is a last-gasp attempt on the part of the American public to hold on to a fact-checking, objective view of politics; accepting a notion of politics as extreme value pluralism is much more disturbing, at least for non-practitioners.