The Credentialization of Opinion: A Case Study in Disinformation

The Prime Minister's Office, the media, the academy and pollsters cooperate to delegitimize dissent as "disinformation." (1,200 words, 6 min.)

Supriya Dwivedi, @supriyadwivedi on X, formerly of something called “the McGill Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy,” now of the Prime Minister's Office, also hosts a podcast on TV Ontario (she seems to have several hats), here: https://www.tvo.org/podcasts/screen-time. Dwevedi’s TVO podcast illustrates how prestigious institutions, usually state-funded, work to delegitimize critical and dissenting views, in this case with the aid of a pollster claiming to show on the basis of an empirical study that populists are misled by misinformation.

Ms. Dwivedi’s multifaceted resumé also illustrates something of the nature of power in our bureaucratic society: academic institutes, the mainstream media, and pollsters provide credentialization to political operators. A large demi-monde of experts and pseudo-experts provide legitimacy, at least in their own minds, to the ever-growing ambitions of the bureaucratic state, a legitimacy often rooted in newly confected fields of knowledge, “disinformation” chief among them.

The TVO podcast interviews Frank Graves of EKOS Politics about a “Disinformation Index” his polling organization has put together. EKOS finds that people who score high on the "Disinformation Index" are poorly informed, tend to be convoy and conservative supporters, and are misled (can you see this coming?) by Russian propaganda. A pollster’s figures will appear to be neutral, unbiased facts, and the casual reader or podcast listener may take them seriously. But go one level deeper, and this poll bakes its desired conclusions into its premises.

Graves’ "Disinformation Index" presents a set of alleged falsehoods, acceptance of any of which is taken as evidence of ignorance. The problem is that many of the supposed falsehoods are actually true. So when EKOS measures disinformation, its results will be exactly backwards.

Below are the questions used to score a person on "disinformation." Any answer, on any question, other than a hard “no” gets “disinformation” points (source here).

This poll is two years old, dating to February 2022 (in other words, to the Freedom Convoy), but TVO and the PMO’s adviser still consider it valid, or at any rate useful. An evaluation of its list of “disinformation” should of course take account of what might reasonably have been known or thought two years ago.

Running down the seven bullet points:

1. The lab-leak theory of COVID origins was always credible. Even two years ago, it was known that COVID came from Wuhan, China. Many places have markets, but not so many have institutes of virology. We were told that the lab-leak theory was a conspiracy theory, but as I wrote some time ago, an accident in a lab is not a conspiracy: right there rhetoric outran logic. The lab-leak theory is now widely accepted as true, but will still get you 3 disinfo points.

2. That COVID deaths were exaggerated is easy to argue, given the obvious fact that most people who died with COVID were elderly and also had other medical problems, and the equally obvious fact that there were incentives to attribute deaths to COVID.

3. The #TwitterFiles and associated reporting show government agencies doing their best to manipulate social media in a pro-vax direction. The #TwitterFiles emerged since this poll, but official manipulation of social media has long been obvious, as the notorious Hunter Biden laptop of 2020 story made clear. As with point 2, the authorities were selling a story.

4. I am not a doctor, and have no opinion on Ivermectin. But saying that will get a disinformation point, though not answering this question at all will (uniquely) avoid getting any such points.

5. I have no opinion on infertility, except to say that new technologies often have unintended consequences (Google Thalidomide), and that expressing doubt will get you another “disinformation” point or two.

6. It was insisted that COVID vaccines could not alter DNA. There are now studies indicating that mRNA might alter DNA. These reports were fact-checked by the Associated Press as false. Except that the AP’s own fact check quotes a study’s author to the effect that more studies are needed about mRNA behaviour in real life, outside a petri dish (second last para: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-covid-vaccine-sweden-study-986569377766). “We don’t know” is not the same as “it can’t happen.” This study came out six months after Graves’ poll, but again, expressing doubt will get you a disinformation point.

7. Logically, if vaccines were as completely effective as the authorities predicted (or hoped), it would not make a difference to a vaccinated person if someone else carried the COVID virus. But logical thought will get yet more disinformation points.

In other words, doubting official talking points gets you a high "Disinformation" score. Thinking for yourself makes you a rube lacking critical thinking skills, and probably a conspiracist too, in the view of EKOS Polling, as amplified by TV Ontario, The McGill Centre on Technology, Media and Democracy, and the Prime Minister's new communications advisor.

EKOS will be able to point to empirical research and sophisticated statistical methodologies (big words and fancy equations are at hand), and the polls and the methods will all be valid, except that the answers deemed false are in fact true, or at any rate arguable. From a foundation of inverted premises comes the desired result, purporting to show that those Graves, Dwivedi, and their employers dislike are fools in need of reeducation.

This is the world of Supriya Dwivedi, who promises to fight disinformation and conspiracy theories, while actually pushing quite a bit of both, and all in the name of "democracy." It is also the world of regime media, and of state ideological institutions such as the McGill Centre on Whatever and "Democracy." Theirs is a version of "democracy" where obedience is demanded and doubt considered anti-democratic.

The intended direction is obvious: the internet needs to be censored, and control will be imposed, “because democracy!”

The dodge is obvious to anyone who looks under the hood and asks what this “disinformation index” actually measures. I simply Googled “EKOS disinformation index”, to see the questions EKOS uses. Their lab-leak “misinformation”, now widely thought true, jumped out at me, which moved me to go down the remained of the list, giving myself a score of about 15, which means that I am very “disinformed.” But most TVO listeners will not do that, and will accept the pleasant conclusion that people they already despise are fools.

The censors of the managerial elite are obviously pleased with the results, which explains why they are still recycling a two-year-old poll. Along the way, the old Russia-elected-Trump assertion is thrown out, along with the newer Russia-backed-the-Freedom-Convoy line. If one accepts the EKOS finding as an objective result, the effect is to re-validate those cherished falsehoods.

The left has a large armoury of pseudo-academic Institutes, Centres and Foundations for the study of Large Abstractions and Dangers to Democracy, often credentialized by the name of a well-known university, the whole creating a specious illusion of serious research and deep thought. Most are state-funded in one way or another, and duly reach conclusions useful to the bureaucratic state. Those conclusions vary little, and are duly recycled by ideologically aligned mainstream media outlets, this propaganda coming to its natural resting place in the Prime Minister’s Office.

But when you scratch the surface, the premises fall out, and disinformation emerges as little more than skeptical thought.