POV: Why I Left the Bird: NPR, Twitter, and Disinformation

“As a scholar who studies misinformation, I no longer feel comfortable using a privately owned platform that is harming democracy”

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POV: Why I Left the Bird: NPR, Twitter, and Disinformation

“As a scholar who studies misinformation, I no longer feel comfortable using a privately owned platform that is harming democracy”

April 19, 2023
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In solidarity with NPR, I have paused my use of Twitter. 

On April 12, NPR announced that it had suspended its Twitter accounts in response to being labeled “state-affiliated media” by the social media platform. Later, Twitter changed it to “government-funded media.”

National Public Radio is an American non-profit media organization that syndicates the public broadcasting of more than 1,000 member stations in the United States. NPR was established in 1967 by Congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting Act, and less than 1 percent of its revenue comes from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Most of its funding derives from corporate sponsorships, programming fees paid by member organizations, and listener donations.

As a scholar who studies misinformation, I no longer feel comfortable using a privately owned platform that is harming democracy. Intentionally labeling our public broadcaster in a misleading way, for example, tarnishes the independence and credibility of an important source of information necessary in serving the public interest. Moreover, that Twitter CEO Elon Musk mocks the significance of our public radio broadcaster’s service to the American public lies in stark contrast to the beliefs of our founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, was explicit that the government has a responsibility to its citizens to make the information provisions that are necessary for self-governance, both in terms of financial support as well as accessibility. The US Postal System is one means of meeting this responsibility; support for our public broadcasters is another.

Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter late in 2022, misinformation has proliferated on the platform for a multitude of reasons:

  • Musk disbanded the trust and safety council and has no content moderation team
  • He reinstated the accounts of known climate and vaccine deniers
  • Many scientific experts left the platform after being attacked by critics and bots
  • A change in algorithms has been amplifying the posts of people willing to pay for “verification” who have no expertise in the subject matter in which they are engaging 

Even before these changes, women and people of color were significantly more likely to be targets of abuse and harassment on Twitter, and it’s only gotten worse under Musk’s ownership. As more and more political leaders, scientific experts, and other elites take a step back from Twitter (or leave altogether), the platform will continue to devolve into a cesspool filled with vitriol, porn, promoted “content,” and harassment.

Although I am pausing my use of Twitter, I am not deleting my account…yet. It is unclear at this point what a superior alternative might be. Some people are migrating over to the Mastodon network which is part of the Fediverse ensemble of servers. Many of these users claim Mastodon to be “the positive side of social media,” or “a completely different atmosphere” than Twitter.

However, Mastodon is much smaller than Twitter in terms of daily active users. Furthermore, some users admit they have been “sneaking back” to Twitter because they find Mastodon to be too much of a progressive echo chamber, content moderation is too strict, or they want to be able to reach a wider audience. Many people are not interested in leaving Twitter because they do not see this as an ethical issue.

For me, now seems like a good time to reflect on my principles and what I value. As someone who seeks to cultivate and continue an academic and practical agenda around defining and protecting against “fake news” and misinformation, and works to build news literacy and defend a free press, continuing on Twitter is a non-starter. I hope students and faculty at BU will take this opportunity to reflect on whether they want their attention, activities, and labor to be surveilled and leveraged by Twitter as “content” to generate engagement and corporate profit in an environment that is frequently toxic and now, anti-democratic.

Will other leading organizations take a stance against the harmful, anti-democratic conduct of Twitter? The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has. On April 17, it announced that it, too, is pausing use of Twitter. Other leading news organizations, however, such as The New York Times, declined to pause their use of Twitter. Professional organizations such as the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the Society of Professional Journalists need to consider whether Twitter’s conduct undermines their members and their principles. I encourage BU’s College of Communication to make these same assessments.

I do hold out hope that Musk will follow through on his promise to find a qualified CEO as his replacement at Twitter. Re-establishing a trust and safety council to prevent abuse and harassment will be another absolute necessity. I’d also like to see Twitter re-enable reasonable academic access to its API (application programming interface) for research.

Time will tell if any of these necessary changes come to pass. Until then, you can find me on…Mastodon: @commscholar@federate.social.

Michelle Amazeen is an associate professor of mass communication, advertising, and public relations at Boston University’s College of Communication and director of the college’s Communication Research Center. She can be reached at mamazeen@bu.edu. 

“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact John O’Rourke at orourkej@bu.edu. BU Today reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Boston University.

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There are 7 comments on POV: Why I Left the Bird: NPR, Twitter, and Disinformation

  1. I completely agree with taking a break from Twitter. What particularly struck me was Musk’s handling when he bought the site, especially reinstating known climate deniers and people who make false claims about vaccines. I feel like this was extremely harmful for a few reasons. Many people get their information and news from Twitter and they are inclined to trust influential people. Many people don’t have substantial scientific background to understand the science behind vaccines and why they’re so helpful, so people who use their influence to make false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine sow fear in these people. Twitter has definitely taken a turn since it was purchased and it’s unfortunate that they allow an influx of misleading content when compared to previous years.

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  3. I love the bird,. Thank God free speech, a pillar of our democracy, has returned in the face of countering a progressive propaganda agenda. Go Elon! Even Robert Kennedy Jr is being censored on FB and demonized by the paid actors. What happened to America? Oh yeah, the powers who want it destroyed… Students, be vigilant in studying ours Constitution and stop paying attention to NPR.

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  4. Though I have mixed feelings about Musk’s takeover of Twitter, I firmly believe that the platform has become a much more open under his leadership than before.

    Pre-Musk Twitter exhibited all sorts of unaccountable censorship and misdirection, including on what you call “climate and vaccine deniers”, a politically charged term that suggests that we humans have some unassailable truths on this matter.

    As a scientist, I don’t believe in unassailable truths … everything should be open to inquiry and rational discussion, especially society’s golden calves.

    Whether Musk maintains this openness on Twitter, given the significant external pressures (and his own complete unaccountability) remains to be seen.

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  5. Can we all agree that the majority of the folks we hear on NPR are leftist, and as a result bring an unconscious leftist agenda to their work? Not as extreme as Fox News peddling right wing agendas, but it’s hard to call the folks we hear on NPR 100% impartial/non-partisan. PBS Newshour seems closer to impartiality relative to NPR, but only just barely (mostly fact reporting, with occasional leftist undertone, whereas NPR seems to have a more leftist undertone in their news reporting). This is all to say that while a news outlet may not be spewing misinformation, it’s hard to say news outlets don’t manufacture people’s consent, and one can ask how is that impacting our democracy which seems would benefit from having folks look at things from all sides with a factual lens.

    Also, why do we put Twitter, a social media platform, on this pedestal to be this source to get unadulterated facts? As kids, many of us saw what happened to a fact in a game of telephone (Twitter is just a massive digital media version of that childhood social game). So Twitter becomes MySpace, boohoo. Was our so called democracy not able to stand on its own two feet before Twitter was ever a thing?

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  6. Bravo to Michelle Amazeen! Twitter is essentially the literary equivalent to being in a tavern during a Saturday college football game-intelligent articulation of thoughts is very hard to find there, especially as the consumption of alcohol increases. By middle of the 4th quarter, the outlandish opinions do become increasingly entertaining, I’ll give it that.

    Everyone has a right to their opinion of course and should feel comfortable to express it freely no matter how ignorant the opinion may be. That’s Twitter, except even worse because at least in the tavern the individual(s) to whom one is speaking can confront the ignorance live and direct in person. With Twitter, there is too much hit-and-run posting. Why in the world any legitimate scientist would post on Twitter in a vain attempt to enlighten is beyond me. The same goes for Facebook.

    Disclaimer: I myself do not have a Twitter account, but on most sports websites videos from Twitter are frequently displayed and although I don’t have an account, I can read the comments. Honestly, it’s hard to find a comment that is articulated with any degree of intelligence. It happens sometimes though. I have seen Twitter comments on climate change in a different context from sports-same phenomenon I’m sorry to say.

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  7. I’m sorry, I find Elon Musk, his money, and the way he’s wielded his power over the Twitter app equally abhorrent as the next person, however, I’m really failing to see why exactly this NPR debacle was the straw that broke the camel’s back. NPR is, undeniably, state-affiliated media, and government-funded as well. I listen to NPR on a regular basis, and while my knowledge of this fact in no way detracts from my enjoyment, it does affect the way I interpret the information NPR tells me, as it should. In my case, this is not scanning for subliminal progressive messaging (all of which I would already be on board with) but mainly causes me to take most things NPR says about foreign affairs with a grain of salt, however, I digress.
    You’re railing against Musk for allegedly making Twitter a more friendly environment for right-wing misinformation, but by clinging to the infantile fantasy of “objectivity” you’re in fact aiding the Right. In my opinion, insisting upon being “unbiased” is not only dishonest but ineffectual for media outlets that have an obvious liberal bias. The only reason anyone cares that NPR is government funded and has a left-wing bias is that they actively try to obscure and deny those facts. The thing is, nothing happens in a vacuum, with any event of sufficient magnitude all attempts to try and put it in context will inevitably expose someone’s ideological orientation. Because everyone has an ideology, and that’s okay! You should just be forthcoming about it instead of making people feel as if they’ve been lied to by masquerading behind the facade of “objectivity” when in actuality being “objective” is utterly impossible and your biases will always seep through.
    Here’s why I think not letting the myth of objectivity die benefits the right, as long as we continue pretending to be somehow above our own subjectivity we cede ground toward the right over shaping the narrative because they’re much more dishonest. When we have to somehow find the “middle ground” or “see both sides of the story” between literal genocidal neofascists and those who think people deserve human rights, by being “unbiased” you’re already framing the issue in much more conservative terms that are necessary. Left-wing journalists pretending to be the unbiased vanguard of democracy are in fact the ones allowing Conservatives to legitimate their dangerous rhetoric. This is to say nothing about how all media outlets have the inherent bias of being profit-seeking enterprises owned by millionaires and billionaires, besides the fact that it further goes to show what a sham objectivity is and the inescapability of biases.
    I’m not so dull as to think that Musk labeling NPR as “government-funded” is anything but an attempt by a right-wing billionaire to slander a well-respected source of progressivism. I’m just venting frustration over the fact that I think the way this article frames the whole issue is the wrong hill to die on. If NPR, and left-leaning media in general, just unabashedly embraced their progressive bias this never would have been news. The one thing the right gets right is just being openly, overtly, conservative with no shame and reservations well the left continues playing this silly game that only hurts themselves.

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