TCP: Where Arguments Come From

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An emergent alliance between interest groups such as corporations or activists, and intellectuals who produce narratives and arguments, is shaping the information ecosystem. Many intellectuals respond to incentives from the interest groups to argue for predetermined positions in exchange for money, prestige, and an audience. Arguments with no backers are not disseminated as widely and often go unheard. This piece uses several brief case studies to illustrate how this affects reporting and public discourse. An open society requires an awareness of why and how our information is produced and shared, as well as the wider social norms necessary to keep interest groups from overly polluting the information environment. As the paralysis of the American political system in recent decades has shown, these critical capacities are essential to ensure that partisanship and selective reporting do not drown out accurate analysis.

To make sense of the information and arguments we read, we have to understand where that information comes from. The ecosystem in which arguments are written and information gets distributed is complex, and it doesn’t only reflect the information’s truth or its justification or its importance, but also factors such as whether the information supports an ongoing narrative or whether the argument is useful for some faction’s goals.

A key recurring pattern is a symbiosis between, on the one hand, an interest group with an agenda—such as a corporation, activist group, or political party—and, on the other hand, intellectuals who produce arguments. The interest group will use its resources to boost and disseminate arguments useful to its goals. Intellectuals who produce these arguments will receive fame, jobs, interviews, book deals, and the pleasure of having their ideas matter. Every argument presented in major media outlets is necessarily shaped by this process, at least in part. In addition, most political arguments shared through in-person interactions or social media consist of people repeating arguments that were first spread widely by this process.

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