Letter from the South: Among America's "Low-Information Voters" [View all]

The following article centers on the observations of Monica Sheppard a crafts store owner in conservative Rome Georgia has been inquiring how voters in her community think and decide political issues-- what she has learned should raise huge concerns and explains why Trump and the GOP have support of many more Americans than they should. Low information voters, getting their news primarily from social media and generally paranoid about any official news organization or Facebook/Google etc, believe what they think is true independent of facts!


"Letter from the South:
Among America’s “Low-Information Voters”"
Donald Trump has dominated in polling of people who pay little attention to political news. What do they have to say?
By Charles Bethea
August 22, 2024
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-south/among-americas-low-information-voters
OR https://archive.ph/usew8#selection-1045.0-1053.940 (no paywall)
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"Recently, Sheppard showed me one of many Facebook posts that have concerned her. A friend named Scott had shared a meme from a Facebook page called The Absolute Truth, which takes scattershot aim at science, liberals, the media, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and the TV show “The View,” among other things. Its ethos is neatly outlined in one of its posts: “You get used to it, I don’t even see the news anymore. All I see is false flag, psyop, bullshit.” The meme that he posted showed an image of a Chili’s storefront. “Another major American franchise bites the dust,” it read. Scott added in his post, “I saw on U tube that 10 other big chain restaurants are on the endangered list including Fudruckers, Krystal, Red lobster, and others you know!” Some commenters noted other “major American” restaurant chains on the brink of collapse, and others made mocking reference to Joe Biden’s economic policy (“Build back better you know”), which they seemed to hold responsible for the closings. Still other commenters pointed ominously to larger forces at play. “A BIG reset is coming,” one woman wrote.

After stumbling across this discussion on Scott’s Facebook page, Sheppard told me, “I did a quick Google search and found multiple articles about these viral memes about restaurants closing that are not true.” Beneath Scott’s post, Sheppard wrote, “This actually isn’t true.” Scott responded gracefully, by the standards of the medium, but without quite giving in. “I do hope you are right but business closing and layoffs are appearing more each day for some apparent reason?” he wrote. A woman named Deena added, “Show us how it isn’t true?” Sheppard replied, “All I had to do is search ‘Chili’s closing all stores’ and found many news stories about it not being true and about a rash of viral memes like this one . . . none of which are true.” She went on, “It is always wise to research a meme before taking it as fact!” Arguing ensued about how many stores Chili’s was closing—fewer than twenty, it turned out, out of more than fifteen hundred—and what this meant. Many suggested that the meme was pointing to deeper truths: the economy was bad, Biden was responsible for it, and anyone saying otherwise was not to be trusted. “We also know that the media lies,” Deena said.

A commenter named Heather questioned Sheppard’s methodology. “And you believe google?” she wrote. Sheppard decided to log off. “I found it scary that she would trust a meme that her friend posted on Facebook, but would not trust Google providing multiple sources from which to choose for more reliable information,” Sheppard told me. She noted that this was not her first encounter with poorly informed Georgians. A family member, she said, gets some of her news from televangelists."
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The article explores in depth this class of voter, who have existed for a long time, but are perhaps a more serious problem in our current political climate. Some of these low-information voters should be called misinformation voters because they just dismiss evidence that proves that their beliefs are groundless. They have been proselytized by conspiracy theories or right-wing propaganda or hearsay and they will then vote accordingly. They are dangerous because some of them (like Michael Faulk in the article) go on to convince other low information voters of their nonsense.