How did both the British and American (if we can call it that way at the time) report the Boston massacre? And how about the Tea Party? To this day both of these events can have controversial views depending on who you ask, how bigger was the sensationalism surrounding them in an era where people had less access to information than we have nowadays?

What are the biggest parallels you see in misinformation between back and modern times? What would you say is different?

Hi there! In researching for your book, did you come across many examples of newspaper editors intentionally manipulating the facts in order to better serve a political end? Or was the spread of misinformation (to the extent that you found examples) largely accidental--editors not realizing that what they were publishing was inaccurate?

Hey Dr. Taylor,

I just wanted to give you a shout out. I read your recent article in the The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. It was really interesting how few sources there are in understanding what the actual media environment of the colonial period was like.

I read Pauline Maier's Ratification recently and she was pretty explicit that b/c of printer's interests and association more with coastal merchants, that they largely just refused to print letters and essays opposed to ratification of the Constitution. In the recent paper and one about farmers in the western part of the state during winter, you give some evidence of how excluded from our document history a lot of the people on the western edge of the 13 colonies/states were. How much does this distortion in the historical record lead to misinformation about who the founders were and what the founding generation actual thought on any given topic, and how unified that thought is?

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Citation for anyone who wants it: Circulation, Subscription, and Circumscription: The Pennsylvania Journal and Newspaper Readership in Revolutionary Philadelphia
The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 146, Number
2, April 2022, pp. 134-160 (Article)

and

Now is the Winter of Our Dull Content: Seasonality and the Atlantic Communications Frontier in Eighteenth-Century New England. The New England Quarterly 2022; 95 (1): 8–38

is applying “misinformation” as a lens to these conversations not something of an anachronism since we are talking about a time before “objective” journalism became a norm or an expectation?

How were modern British libel laws informed by libels circulating in early US politics if at all? Also just how slanderous were party affiliated papers in the US? Did they ever just make things up out of whole cloth about the candidates they didn’t like, and if so were there any legal repercussions for this?

Our present-day "fake news" paradigm has brought with it an army of "fact checkers" who try to debunk claims made by other media sources and politicians, claiming to desire nothing but objective truth. Were there self-proclaimed fact checkers in the colonial period who, for example, called out slanders on Aaron Burr in the name of human decency and public interest? Or were arguments over fake news always self-admittedly partisan?

Have you seen anything in your research to suggest that there are better ways to get those on the fringes to click on and/or more astutely consider credible citations from reputable sources rather than nefarious sources or propaganda? Or is confirmation bias just too difficult to neutralize on the issues people are most passionate about?

I know rumors circulated amongst revolutionary era planter/patriots that the British and British loyalist were trying to incite insurrections amongst the people they enslaved. And I know many of them interpreted Dunmore’s Proclamation as an attempt incite insurrection. Beyond Dunmore’s Proclamation, do you think the British loyalist really were communicating with enslaved, or even maroon, populations in order to militarize their animosity towards their enslavers? Or was this more likely misinformation spread to convince white folks that the British and loyalist were a dangerous threat? A mix of both?

Thanks

Hi Jordan, thanks so much for the AMA, congratulations on the book, and I'd recommend those reading this also consult your terrific answer from yesterday on news at the time the First Amendment was adopted.

Let me start with a question about one of the most notable figures of that era, James Callender. What should we know about him and his contributions to how people viewed newspapers?

Would you consider misinformation or "fake news" to be the same as propaganda (ie. a country/organization pushing a narrative of events for their own gain).

If that is so, I'd like to ask a followup question, has there been cases in which a propagandist narrative becomes a "fact" believed by the leaders of that nation/organization.

My question is because during the Cold War many nations seemed to develop ideological beliefs based on the propaganda they created, I wanted to see if there were recorded cases in which eminently "fake news" radicalized or affected the beliefs and actions of national leaders.

Thanks so much for doing this AMA! I'm really curious about the nascent role of textbooks in early America, especially as they relate to your work. Were textbooks treated as a means of distributing misinformation or were they seen as more akin to fictional work - that is, less fact-based and more narrative retelling of history? Thanks!

Do you consider things like the Gulf of Tonkin or the WMDs in the middle east to be "fake news"? Do you consider fake news spread by the government to be less concerning than fake news spread by someone outside of power?

What can be said, if anything, about the state of academic research on combating disinformation?

The legacy dynamic of what you describe is familiar to us now but what came before it? Was there something cutting edge about the process of fake news in during the American revolution or was it familiar already by this time?

With all the media out there right now, it all too often feels like the loudest voices are the ones being heard and spread instead of the best voices. There was no TV or internet during the American Revolution. Did this phenomenon exist in some other form during that time and if so, how?

Hey you’re at Bloomington? Thats awesome

Has patriot insistence on not using British sources ever lead to a failure in battle or a setback in war aims? Assuming that they were relying on less than reliable evidence did that ever effect the United State’s war aims?

Also- I know its not in your expertise but do you know of anyone whos written or deals with this subject during the Civil War?

Thanks!

Not a question, just a comment. I wanted to say that's a super niche and really cool thing to focus on. Props to you!

In your research, what sort of effect does institutional support have? Does false information which supports the ruling class(es) spread further and faster than anti-systemic counterparts? Does Fake News need a constituency?

Hi there, thanks for having us.

Edit: I see you already answered a similar question. If you feel like repeating yourself, then by all means, ignore the question!

I can imagen you have seen a lot of parallels between past and present in how misinformation is born, spread and combatted. When it comes to combatting misinformation, what is to be considered as continuity and what is to be considered as change? The follow-up question would be: what can we learn from the old way of combatting misinformation?

Bonus question: how useful are historical analogies between eighteenth century misinformation on one side and present time misinformation on the other side, to give us a deeper understanding about the concept of misinformation?

I don't know if you'd have an answer to this question, but at least in your opinion... How do you think deepfakes and AI will change our treatment of news in the future, when the difference between an actual video and a doctored video becomes indistinguishable? More specifically, how do you think the Government will address this problem?

How was the British abolitionist movement (such as Mansfiend's 1772 judgement) portrayed in the colonies, and to what extent did it influence slave owners such as Washington to want to sever relations with Britain?

What percentage of people did not support either side in the war and just wanted to live their lives?

How long did it take people in very rural areas to get news about the war? Were there examples of people who for years did not even know what was going on?

Interesting content / keep up the good work

Beyond promoting personal/partisan politics directly, to what extent did newspaper publishers obscure potentially fractious information to aid their cause? I’m thinking of specifically divides over slavery; radical utopian liberals like Paine saw the Revolution as a leap towards building an egalitarian society, but it was in their interest to attract Southerners to their cause who feared that remaining an English colony would lead to the erosion of their “property rights”. Were Colonial Era papers sophisticated and deliberate enough in their approach to attempt to build narratives in which different people could read into what they wished?

First, thanks for sharing your expertise here. I am very excited to read your book! I have probably more questions than you’d like to answer, but I will ask a few anyway.

1. In my experience with news sources of the colonial era, the word choices tend towards sensationalistic when compared to today’s journalism. To what degree would you say the misinformation spread then could be attributed to sensationalized language versus wholesale fabrication? (You mention both in your comment on the Boston “Massacre” above, just wondering if one type was noticeably more common.)
2. In one of your comments you address the fact that editors and readers could be aware that their news might be false or out of date. Was there any common approach to rectifying this? A printed disclaimer or a typical statement that prefaced sharing possibly dubious news?
3. Is there a study/source in a similar vein to yours about the spread of news during the initial spread of the printing press? Thanks again for your time, really looking forward to reading your full book.

Are there any stories in your book about misinformation being published about private citizens and how it affected their lives?

I'm 25, I remember growing up in school and we were all taught about dis information and checking our sources online. Do you think this has played an effect on younger people vs anyone over 35

How effective were these strategies in other times compared to the last 2 american elections?

When and where can i get the audio book?

Hello Dr Jordan, and thank you greatly for joining us today! It might be an odd question, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on how Fake News compared, or was different to, misperception that grew based on rumors or gossip at the time. Fake news seems to be that much more deliberate, but they must be very similar and often feed on each other right? Especially for a period like the Revolutionary war that had such two opposing sides.

Can you elaborate on the role of women's writing during the revolution? Thanks in advance.

Are you aware of newspaper accounts warning Patriots that they were in danger of losing their slaves?

How does the speed of information (how fast it travels) affect revolution, war and politics back then compared to modern times? And do you think the American revolution would have ended differently had there been internet?

What, if any, was the role of literate former slaves and independent freedmen’s communities in the political conversation leading up to the revolution?

Is it accurate to say that the average colonial was misled or manipulated into supporting the cause of rebellion?

I have read that it can be considered that the American Revolution was not a true revolution because there was no social revolution to go with the political one and that the landed class retained their control over the colonies, though now with greater powers, and economic inequality increased after the revolution.

This information suggests a different picture than the typical 'bottom up' view of the revolution. Instead it appears that the upper class that already controlled the land and economy as well as the colonial legislatures could have, at least in part, rebelled not as an act of ideology but as a means to increase their own wealth and power. Many ordinary colonials lost a lot because of the war.

Did you find anything that suggests that ordinary colonials were misled or manipulated into supporting the rebellion?

I wish we had a better vocabulary to talk about misinformation, propoganda, fake news, etc. We don't have much agreement in society on what these terms mean, or when one should be applied. Plus, we keep inventing new terms when an old term might work just as well. The obvious example being, 'fake news'.

I'm looking for terms that we can use universally regardless of what time period we're talking about. So I'm interested in your take on the lifespan of consistent terminology. In your work investigating this history did you gain any insight into the kinds of consistent terms we should be using for phenomena that have occurred in the past, occur now, and will likely occur in the future? Or is it just a muddled mess of people redefining old terms, making up new ones, and misusing terminology to facilitate their current rhetorical position?

What’s the best resource to get someone to understand the internet is being profiteered to gravitation around time seeking attention for the benefit of the content creators to either 1)fuel their ego of having online acceptance 2) fill their wallets with ad revenue. All that time they spend on Facebook and trying to research things they can’t comprehend are obviously bullshit but they act like everything they see is real until proven otherwise when critical thinking is the opposite.

Sorry if this is not really within the scope but I want to ask is the Qing dynasty aware of the American revolution? If so what was their response?

What made you decide to use the term “fake news” — which most scholars despise because it’s an oxymoron that erodes trust in legitimate news sources — instead of something more appropriate like “viral deception,” “deceptive content,” or “disinformation”? Were you pressured by an editor/publisher to use “fake news”?