The Electric Agora

A modern symposium for the digital age

“Turtles All the Way Down”: What

Ethnography Can Tell Us About
Fake News
1 DAY AGO • 10 COMMENTS

by Margaret Rowley

As a PhD student in a theoretically-oriented department of ethnomusicology (a real word!), I have been searching
within my coursework for a mechanism to explain the current political system. I suspect I’m not the only graduate
student doing this. I count myself extremely fortunate to not only be able to devote my time to learning, but also
to have access to literature within my own discipline (an ethnographic exploration of music), as well as historical
musicology, anthropology, and sociology. Recently, my coursework turned up a classic gem which I would like to
attempt to apply to a small facet of this year’s political development: “fake news.”

Clifford Geertz, the late titan of anthropology from Princeton, offers the following anecdote in his chapter in
Contemporary Field Research:

There is an Indian story – at least I heard it as an Indian story – about an Englishman who, having been told that
the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a
turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another
turtle. And that turtle? “Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down.”[1] (#_ftn1)

The vivid imagery of this snippet (turtle after turtle after turtle in a Dr. Seussian stack, weaving and wobbling but
somehow staying upright) has inspired generations of anthropologists to dig deeper, even while understanding
that they – we – will never reach the bottom.
In the fall, when the proliferation of so-called fake news began to be publicly recognized, I solicited opinions on
this frustrating phenomenon. “We are not surprised by this,” a brilliant colleague told me. “Academia has always
known that the truth is malleable.” I had to shrug and concede that he was correct; in ethnography, anyway, much
of what we do is try to re-think older scholarship, and this sometimes results in its partial truths being exposed in
their (sometimes deeply troubling) incompleteness. Another solicited opinion, from another friend, held that “fake
news” is not fake, because it holds a germ of truth.

After chewing on both opinions for a few days, I had to concede that they’re both correct. I’ll use the following
example, which was widespread on Facebook in the months before the election:

This image, intended to appeal to an emotional argument for the well-being of children, seeks to portray Clinton
as a monster of a lawyer who threw a twelve-year-old rape victim under the bus. It is designed for readers who
don’t know much about the legal system and aren’t prepared (through cultural knowledge) to read critically. At
least one assertion on the easily-shareable image is actually false: Clinton didn’t volunteer for the case, rather, she
was appointed to it by a judge and was unable to refuse. Other aspects are true, but manipulated: she did laugh
about the case on a recording made years later, but was arguably laughing sardonically at the ineffectiveness of a
lie-detector test, which her client passed. Snopes presents a thorough takedown, which I won’t replicate here.[2]
(#_ftn2)

The reason I gave this image a second look when it popped up on my own social media feed was not because I
knew any details of the case. Rather, it was because of the extremely dangerous assumption it makes: that a
lawyer can not only find her own client guilty, but has the singular power to “get” someone “freed.” What about
the judge? What about a jury of one’s own peers? I have an admitted lack of legal expertise, but even this graduate
student in ethnomusicology has watched enough Law and Order to know that a lawyer is bound to represent her
client regardless of “known” guilt (which of course, is not “known” unless the lawyer was physically present at the
event). It is the job of the attorney to represent their client, not to determine guilt.

Regardless, this image does contain a grain of truth. My point here is, addressed falsehoods notwithstanding, this
image represents the “top turtle,” as Geertz would say. This is the obvious information, floating at the top; easy to
see, easy to capture. We can pick it up and take it to someone else as proof of a point, we can share it with the
click of a button.

What is less obvious is the turtle underneath: knowledge of the American legal system. Under that turtle are other
quiet details of the case: the accused rapist apparently pled guilty and received a reduced sentence (allegedly
because the mother of the victim didn’t want her child to be put through anything else).[3] (#_ftn3) Still deeper in
the stack of turtles, somewhere, is the truth about what happened the night of the incident itself.

So what is “fake news” if it is not entirely “fake?” It is the top turtle, the turtle in plain sight, simple and effective and
requiring no labor. This turtle is dangerous because it seems so obvious, because it is. It’s not necessarily false, it’s
just the most visible information with all other information omitted.

The problem with describing the top turtle, though, is that the next supporting turtle will often change the
meaning of the top turtle itself. To carry the analogy ridiculously far, the isolated top turtle appears as if she is
swimming on the top of a body of water. We can infer her physical fitness, her work ethic, her character, from her
swimming habits. She swims day and night, and that isn’t water on her brow but sweat. How else could she be
suspended on the top of the water like this, if it isn’t through her own hard work? – But then we find that there is a
turtle underneath, supporting this hard-working top turtle, and this changes the meaning. It is actually this lower
turtle that is the worker, supporting not just herself, but her colleague. But wait! Here is another, deeper turtle.
And another. And another. Turtles all the way down.

During my master’s research in ethnomusicology, I started fieldwork in Chicago with only my top turtle: the
understanding that there seemed to be many fewer female DJs than male DJs working in the Chicago house
music scene. I suspected I would find one turtle underneath: maybe a club owner who didn’t like women, or some
equipment salesperson who didn’t want to sell turntables to non-male DJs. Maybe women just weren’t interested
in being DJs.

As I dutifully began my digging, I found, just underneath the surface, a wide, vertical spread of increasingly
disturbing turtles: basic gendered economics meant that most women weren’t able to access their own
equipment, and so often relied on male partners to buy turntables.[4] (#_ftn4) Women DJs were objectified, valued
for their appearance more than their music. The perception that women didn’t play as well or as “hard” seemed
pervasive. The trope of the DJ as a “god” of the dance floor lent itself to gendered assumptions of what that “god”
would look like (read: not like a “goddess”). Book after book used “he” and “him” to describe the DJ. A lyric of a
well-known song at the time referenced “Mister DJ.” Women “couldn’t carry” heavy crates of records. Women
didn’t want to be commuting home alone at four in the morning. In one horrifying story I was told, a female DJ
was raped in the booth by a club employee after the venue had closed for the night.

It should go without saying that I did not find the “bottom” of the stack of turtles. I’m unsatisfied, almost a decade
later, with how I dug, and if I could do it again I would dig harder, wider, deeper. I understand, though, that even in
my zeal, I would never reach the bottom, and while the lack of a bottom is certainly a frustration, it is also a
motivator. Because we can never get there, we must try harder.

Our job, as anthropologists, ethnographers, consumers of news, U.S. citizens, is to search for the deepest turtle we
can possibly find. While this certainly means hard work beyond passive consumption, there is also a baseline of
knowledge (a permanent deeper turtle) that sets off alarm bells when an analysis doesn’t seem correct. This could
be an understanding of the legal system or any other socio-political structure in the U.S. This type of knowledge
means that we don’t always have to reinvent the wheel digging for turtles, since we will automatically know that
these types of turtles are under the water, propping up the top.

Shortly after the “fake news” terminology hit the mainstream, the President effectively appropriated the term,
applying it to any network with a perceived bias.[5] (#_ftn5) CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post
became “fake news” largely because the turtles they dug up were not the turtles that the administration wanted
the public to see.[6] (#_ftn6) This, of course, is a markedly different definition than the original, and raises a great
number of troubling questions for citizens on all sides of the aisle who believe in a free press.

In both cases, “fake news” is often a misleading term (although not always![7] (#_ftn7)). The first type of media
discussed here might be better called “news so shallow as to be misleading,” or “extremely pared-down news with
vital details omitted.” This type discredits the reader, giving them inaccurate information under the surface-sheen
of truth. The second type might be “news that may have been illegally leaked but is nonetheless solid.”[8] (#_ftn8)
This type discredits the media by labeling something that may just be inconvenient as untrue.

I believe that this whole phenomenon is so uncomfortable because it has exposed to the general public the fact
that the “truth,” whatever it is, is extremely difficult to know; the truth weaves and shimmers and changes
completely, and there are individuals who are able to take advantage of this malleability. I have been surprised
that, in ethnomusicology, ethics are typically addressed from the good-faith perspective that the researcher
always wants to do what is right, and this thin protection, the goodness of the ethnographer, is all that stands
between anthropology and disastrous appropriation, or worse.

So how can Geertz help us, as citizens? I like to use his turtle anecdote as an inspiration, even if it is arguably
simplistic; difficult times sometimes call for simplicity. None of us can be satisfied with the top turtle alone, no
matter how much we like the look of it. There are always “turtles all the way down.” We must either find someone
we trust to dig for us, or link arms, pick up shovels, and start digging ourselves.

Notes

[1] (#_ftnref1) Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in Contemporary Field
Research: Perspectives and Formulations, ed. Robert M Emerson, 2nd ed. (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press,
2001), 73.

[2] (#_ftnref2) http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-laughed-about-it/

(http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-laughed-about-it/)

[3] (#_ftnref3) https://www.scribd.com/doc/229667084/State-of-Arkansas-V-Thomas-Alfred-Taylor#fullscreen

(https://www.scribd.com/doc/229667084/State-of-Arkansas-V-Thomas-Alfred-Taylor#fullscreen)

[4] (#_ftnref4) See Mavis Bayton, Frock Rock: Women Performing Popular Music, (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998), as well as https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/22/gender-based-pink-taxes-women
(https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/22/gender-based-pink-taxes-women)

[5] (#_ftnref5) http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316723-trump-blasts-fake-news-and-failing-new-york-

times (http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316723-trump-blasts-fake-news-and-failing-new-york-times)

[6] (#_ftnref6) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/16/media-escalate-trump-russia-reporting-as-rips-fake-

news-conspiracies.html (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/16/media-escalate-trump-russia-reporting-as-rips-fake-news-
conspiracies.html)

[7] (#_ftnref7) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/fake-news-hillary-clinton-cameron-harris.html

(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/fake-news-hillary-clinton-cameron-harris.html)

[8] (#_ftnref8) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html?

hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region&region=top-
news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html?
hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0)

10 Comments »
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Welcome Margaret,

Your background description and first essay suggest that your contributions will add much to this little online
community discourse which I already value quite a bit.

The essay deals with a topic I have trying to get my head around since I agree that “truth” can be malleable. I don’t
think this implies however that anything goes when it comes to the personal application of reason in the attempt
to align a world view that has some coherence with locally relevant facts or evidence. I’m the not sure turtles all
the down metaphor resonates best for me. It suggests that digging in a particular direction (down) will uncover
more ‘truth’.

I think the problem with that is that we naturally tend to dig in the direction of our pre-existing bias . Then our
discoveries can feel like we have uncovered deeper truths when we may just be more deeply entrenching a prior
direction of belief from a partial selection of the evidence. I think this is really hard to avoid.
I think something like the Quinean web metaphor is closer to the real situation if I understand it properly. One
where our current beliefs rest on relationships coming from all sorts of directions in various degrees of influence.
Maybe if we remind ourself with this metaphor we can be somewhat more neutrally positioned so that the search
which continually informs our evolving views can evaluate and receive novel information in a way that widens our
pre-existing framework.

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Liked by 1 person (#)

Thank you for your kind words and excellent thoughts- the idea that digging down may be digging in one
direction is compelling as well as accurate. On reflection, I think I argued this way with the assumption that
anyone interested in avoiding “fake news” would be invested in accepting information even if it doesn’t support a
bias (IE, would be working toward an understanding of something close to an unbiased truth). Of course, in
assuming this, I’ve fallen into the same pit that I’m critiquing in ethnography regarding the presumed “goodness”
of the ethnographer.

I’d be interested in re-thinking this from the perspective of a web- oddly enough, Geertz has a “web of culture”
metaphor as well!

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Correction: Geertz has a “web of significance” metaphor; Gary Tomlinson coined the “web of culture.” It seems
that webs are excellent metaphors all around!

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Hi Margaret and welcome. You wrote:

“I believe that this whole phenomenon is so uncomfortable because it has exposed to the general public the fact
that the “truth,” whatever it is, is extremely difficult to know; the truth weaves and shimmers and changes
completely, and there are individuals who are able to take advantage of this malleability. I have been surprised
that, in ethnomusicology, ethics are typically addressed from the good-faith perspective that the researcher
always wants to do what is right, and this thin protection, the goodness of the ethnographer, is all that stands
between anthropology and disastrous appropriation, or worse.”

Not only good faith but critical awareness. Think of Margaret Mead and how she uncritically accepted the stories
she was told by the young Samoan women about their sexual practices.

The thing is, we always have preconceived ideas, including broadly political ideas, which slant the way we see
things and often determine the topics and questions we address.

There are parallels but there are also significant differences between academic research and journalism. Ideally the
ideological aspect will be minimized in an academic context. In some technical and scientific areas ideology plays
an insignificant role. In the humanities and social sciences it’s more difficult to avoid.

It would be nice if ideology could also be avoided in news reporting, and to *some* extent it can. But the
distinction between news and opinion – always problematic – has been blurred to the point of erasure in recent
times.

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I think this piece from keenan Malick on ‘Fake News’ is pretty much on point.

https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/not-post-truth-as-too-many-truths/
(https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/not-post-truth-as-too-many-truths/)

He speaks to how relativism and identity politics, when taken to far can result in a climate that:

” is not so much a post-truth world as a world of too many disengaged ‘truths’. A world that is simultaneously both
too relative and too absolute.”

It is a climate without a common trusted institutional source of news. I agree that most receive their information
passively, superficially, and If any digging is done it is done in separate informational geographies.

What makes me sad is that I think there is actually a fair amount of common ground and common interest
amongst many who can find no way to see those commonalities.

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Hi, Margaret, and welcome.

Very well written piece, this, and raising all the right questions.

Good research should be life-transformative. And this always results from research over-loading to the point of
exploding expectations. Research along a narrow bandwidth of approved quotable sources always leads into an
echo-chamber of unchallenged assumptions.

I was listening to NPR last night, and they were interviewing a Kansas cattleman about the first month of Trump’s
presidency. He remarked that he was happy with all the jobs that Trump was creating and thought that any
divisiveness here was purely an invention of the media. This tells us that the only source of news about Trump he
trusts comes from – Donald Trump (since only Donald Trump not only professes to be creating jobs, but does so
despite the evident fact that neither Trump nor the Republicans have as yet instituted policies that might – or
might not – help create jobs).

When we get to this point, we really should begin asking whether the US experiment of a democratic republic has
failed, since this requires an informed electorate. But when people of differing ideologies prefer getting their
information from ideological sources – regardless of verification or verifiability – What are we going to be talking
about?

The far right in the past was given to spinning all kinds of myths, but they could be traced back to factual bases;
American Marxists were not Satanic criminals seducing children, but Stalin’s Russia really was a miserable, oft
murderous, dictatorship.

But the far right of today prefers a total fantasia. Facts don’t matter anymore, and without them there is no basis of
argument.

That has been true of segments of the far left as well, since the 1960s’ so now we have fringes off in never-never-
land, as well as a center that has decided they won’t believe anything that doesn’t gel with their already held
beliefs. Except now, the far right fringe is in power, and the center is committed to believing in them (until the
economy tanks, which is always the crisis that changes minds in America; which is inevitable given the Gang of
Fools currently inhabiting the White House).

Sorry for blowing off a little steam here; on the other hand, I wanted to emphasize some of the problems your
essay notes. What to do about it? I don’t know.

Keep pursuing your research. You may not find what to do about it either, but perhaps you’ll discover better ways
of living with it.

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ejwinner, thanks for your thoughts- of course you are exactly right. Like I mentioned above, I wrote this assuming
that the seeker (within the “web” or the “stack of turtles”) is looking in good faith, and this means both that the
good faith is present, and that the seeker is looking at all. If I’m understanding you correctly, I’m in total agreement
that many people aren’t even looking for facts beyond what they want to hear.

My own solution is sort of a half-hearted, limping way of dealing, in which I have to continually remind myself that
I can’t expect to change anyone’s views if my own cannot be changed- not that this is easy (I like to think that I
have well-based reasons for believing the things that I believe), but I can’t pretend infallibility, nor should I deny
the possibility that I’m wrong. This view seems noble to me (polishes fingernails on sweater), but I suspect it’s
tragically ineffective in practice.

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Hi Margaret, like SethLeon I’m kind of a “web-guy”, but you delivered an interesting alternative vision of how this
works.

I’m wondering if I can accept/concede the notion from your colleague that “Academia has always known that the
truth is malleable.” I’d be more inclined to say *beliefs* are malleable, which would be distinguished from “facts” or
“truths”. Without that sort of distinction, it seems to remove the class of intentional fictions (lies).

As you state you assume a “seeker… is looking in good faith, and this means both that the good faith is present,
and that the seeker is looking at all”, but in discussing much of “fake news” it is not necessarily the lack of sincerity
of the seeker, but information giver who is adept at hitting blindspots and other vulnerabilities to… using your
analogy… construct rubber turtles (and perhaps series of them). Thus the more the seeker digs down, they are led
off into a totally fabricated chain of turtles, from which it is hard to get back from other than to convince them to
restart the voyage, and help find a legitimate chain.

Trump, who is currently blasting the media for “fake news”, was a beneficiary of it both in the example you gave
(which ran off into the whole pizzagate conspiracy theory and an honest “seeker” showing up with a gun at
Cosmic Ping Pong) as well as having practically founded (certainly ran) the “birther” conspiracy theory against
Obama which grew his fame… until it became a stone around his neck and tried to play that off as his trying to
help the black community (one of the most bizarrely deformed turtles I can imagine).

In his recent press conference, Trump blasted fake news while delivering so much of is own. One of the most
amusing was his claim that he had won the biggest electoral victory since Reagan, only to be called on it by a
reporter. And as he kept trying to change the parameters to make the statement “true”, he discovered it was
wrong “all the way down”, and then passed the buck (the most presidential president ever) to someone else who
“gave him the information”, and later mumbling he’d seen it “around.”

The disassembly of his false narrative, arguably came from the point I made up top that “truth” is not malleable. In
this case there really are voting results which exist and can be used to check one’s beliefs, or others’ claims. Of
course if evidence is compromised, then one’s beliefs about facts will be errant… but that does not make truth
malleable. It means that evidence is manipulatable, and beliefs malleable. The truth remains the same, even if it
become inaccessible, or as you say “the “truth,” whatever it is, is extremely difficult to know.”

Knowing that you know is one of those demands by some epistemologists that runs off into infinity making
knowledge impossible. I sort of settle for consistency in evidence (again the web). Some are easy to draw
conclusions (like Trump’s electoral victory). Others not so. And some allow for multiple, valid interpretations of
fact. But I’d want to remain confident one can get somewhere “real”, even if the answer is “It depends” or “I don’t
know.”

A lot of fake news being created hinges on people believing or accepting that truth is malleable (alt-facts?) and so
it is just as reasonable to believe that expansive conspiracies lie behind the most clearcut evidence, as it is the
clearcut evidence. So I’d like to dial back promoting how difficult knowledge is. Much of it is pretty
straightforward. And outside of that, Occam’s razor can often be useful.

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First of all, welcome aboard, Margaret! For our contributors — and readers — Margaret and I go way back to when
she was a wee undergraduate at Missouri State, and remarkably (because it happens so infrequently) and happily,
we have stayed connected over all of these years.

With regard to the subject at hand, if we take the metaphor of the turtles as one concerning confirmation — i.e. as
epistemic in the philosophical sense — then it would seem to indicate some sort of foundationalism: if one just
can get to the bottom turtle, one will have the ultimate explanation or grounds for everything built on top of it.
 The idea that the turtles might go on forever becomes a problem, then, as it indicates an infinite regress of
confirmation, which means that ultimately, *nothing* has been confirmed. Hence one of the commenters
reference to the “Quinean web,” which, of course, indicates W.V.O. Quine’s metaphor in which confirmation is
taken to be more web-like than inverted-pyramid like. Beliefs are mutually supporting, which removes any need
for a foundation. Of course, one still winds up with a foundation of sorts, in the form of observation statements.
*all* there is to confirmation is mutual consistency and ultimately, the internal consistency of the whole, then one
cannot distinguish knowledge from complete fictions.

But I think it’s a mistake to take the turtle metaphor this way. The point isn’t, really, about how confirmation works.
It’s about more homely — and ultimately more relevant, in the practical sense — things: about the incompleteness
of information; about the misleading nature of what’s evident on the surface; on the apparent — not literal —
endlessness of what lies underneath, waiting to be discovered, and which may change everything, which conveys
a constant sense of impermanence, regardless of what one has already found out; that sort of thing.

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Thanks, all- I hope it’s not overly saccharine to try to convey how much I appreciate this commentary- I’m so
impressed by this community. Many, many thanks, Dan Kaufman, for your kind invitation to write something.

dbholmes: I may have to rely on my subjective experience here, rather than on any critical theory, so please
forgive. I assumed a great deal in this little essay, and may have been better served by spelling it out better, but
one assumption was that the “seeker” would be a relatively disinterested individual with nothing material to lose or
gain from seeking the “truth.” I think, in the case you mention here, this excludes the President:

“One of the most amusing was his claim that he had won the biggest electoral victory since Reagan, only to be
called on it by a reporter. And as he kept trying to change the parameters to make the statement “true”, he
discovered it was wrong “all the way down”, and then passed the buck (the most presidential president ever) to
someone else who “gave him the information”, and later mumbling he’d seen it “around.””

My sense is that, in this case and possibly others, the President is not interested in “digging” without a bias. In
addition, the “turtle” he sees at the top directly serves his interests, so not only is he invested in maintaining the
visibility of that “turtle” at the exclusion of others, but he’s also invested in stopping others from digging. When, in
this instance, the stack of knowledge was inadvertently exposed, the only thing left for him to do was to claim a
lack of responsibility for the information he was “given.” In other words, just because the stack is there doesn’t
mean everyone wants to dig.

I think you are exactly right in saying that, in this case, the stack of turtles (or the web!) was relatively short and to
the point. Perhaps in this case, the truth is a thing we can know (which might make the President’s claims that
much more disturbing), and is not malleable. There really isn’t much that could unseat this truth. In other cases,
the truth may be less clear and more subject to opinion- I’ll use the example of my fieldwork from above. Why are
there so many fewer of X than Z in Chicago? Maybe for one of the reasons I listed, or maybe for several of them, or
even all of them together. Or maybe for a reason I never found. If there is a truthful answer to that question,
perhaps it’s plural, or maybe it doesn’t even exist.
While vastly imperfect, the turtle analogy serves me (subjectively!) because of its hidden aspects. A web might
work better (for me, subjectively) if part of it was obscured, or underground, or inaccessible, or requiring a warrant
or a Freedom of Information Act. There are times when only the top turtle is visible by accident, and other times
when it is visible by design, but there’s almost always something hidden under the surface propping it up, and
which, when revealed, alters the meaning of the visible turtle. Turtles aside, I love the “web of culture” metaphor,
and would be very interested in any thoughts about how a web might function when parts of it are
unintentionally, intentionally, legally, or practically obscured.

(https://theelectricagora.com/2017/02/17/turtles-all-the-way-down-what-ethnography-can-tell-us-about-fake-news/?
like_comment=4817&_wpnonce=7b9e13a8dd)
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