Sam Wineburg and Nadav Ziv, professor and student at Stanford University, maintain that it is crucial to teach students how to recognize misinformation, a point that the recent election made clear. The Republican Party repeatedly called Democratic candidates “radical socialists” and smeared any proposal to improve the lives of people as “socialism.”
They wrote in the Los Angeles Times:
The 2020 election has once again demonstrated how easy it is to spread misinformation online. And universities across the U.S. are failing in teaching students how to identify it. Many colleges offer students guides to evaluate the trustworthiness of websites. But too many of them base their advice on a report from 1998. That’s nine years before the first iPhone, and 18 years before Russian interference sparked an urgent discussion on how we interpret information online.
There’s something deeply wrong with using advice on the internet of 20 years ago to teach students how they should interact with the internet of today. That demands 21st century skills.
In a report released last month that we co-authored for the Stanford History Education Group, we saw what happens when educators provide students with outdated advice. Most of the 263 college students we tested floundered when trying to discern fact from fiction online.
Students viewed a post of a “news story” from the Seattle Tribune, a satirical site whose masthead proudly proclaimed that “any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental.” Two-thirds failed to identify the story as satirical.
On another task, students examined a site offering “nonpartisan” research that argued against raising the minimum wage. The site is actually run by a PR firm that also represents the restaurant industry. Nine in 10 students never made that connection.
Why are intelligent students falling for misinformation they could easily identify with a quick search? It’s not that they lacked strategies. It’s that the strategies deployed were forged during the internet’s Paleolithic era. To students’ detriment, many of these strategies remain prominent on colleges’ and universities’ guides for web credibility.
Students displayed an almost religious faith in the meaning of domains — particularly dot-orgs. “Reliable sources have .org at the end of the URL,” said one sophomore. Numerous college internet guides suggest that dot-orgs are credible because they are restricted to nonprofits. That’s just plain wrong. Anyone can purchase or acquire a dot-org, including for-profit companies such as Craigslist and hate groups such as Stormfront.
Students similarly turned to a site’s “About” page to determine credibility. One prominent university says an About page can “help determine a mission, point of view, or agenda.” A media outlet tells readers to be skeptical if the About page’s language is “melodramatic and seems overblown.” But dispassionate language is just as dangerous when it confers legitimacy on a shady site. Students should be told that, like Instagram profiles, About pages present curated portraits of how people and organizations want to be perceived.
One of the most common tools for teaching web credibility is called the CRAAP test (standing for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose), popularized by a librarian at Cal State Chico. Versions of it are used by universities across the United States, including at other schools in the Cal State and University of Californiasystems.
The CRAAP test assumes that websites are like print texts — the best way to evaluate them is to read them carefully. Except skilled web searchers do the opposite. When professional fact-checkers land on an unfamiliar site, their first move is to leave it by opening new tabs and checking other sources.
There’s good news too. Our study shows that students who followed the same method as professional fact-checkers upped their chances for success. They learned that the Seattle Tribune was fake news and discovered that the “nonpartisan” Employment Policies Institute was managed by a PR firm that also represents the restaurant industry and opposes raising the minimum wage.
Some institutions, including Rowan University and the University of Louisville, are creating materials based on what fact-checkers do. Their lesson plans equip students with strategies to be intelligent digital consumers. And even modest interventions — in one case just 150 minutes in two college classes — can lead to marked improvements.
We’re in the midst of an infodemic that imperils our students’ ability to make informed decisions. Changing course will require multiple tactics. First and foremost, we need to cut the CRAAP and stop teaching ineffective strategies. We need to create a menu of regularly updated courses that teach students how to recognize misinformation, empowering them to be engaged and thoughtful citizens.
Additionally, we need to work together across departments and specializations rather than mainly putting this challenge on the shoulders of college librarians. Overhauling a 20th century curriculum for a digital 21st century requires a group effort.
Doctors who develop a patient’s treatment plan without considering medical advances are negligent. And universities are derelict when they teach or provide source evaluation strategies without considering how today’s internet functions.
Because when anti-vaccine content goes mainstream, when Holocaust deniers peddle digital pseudo-histories, and when issues such as gerrymandering and police brutality are litigated online, no one can afford to shelter in place.
Sam Wineburg is a professor of education at Stanford University. His latest book is “Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone.)” Nadav Ziv is a junior majoring in international relations at Stanford.
Super article.
Thank you, Diane.
I encourage folks to distinguish between information, misinformation, and disinformation.
Couldn’t agree with Mr. Wineberg more. As a retired HS social studies teacher, I am absolutely appalled that apparently such a wide swath of Americans are not able to distinguish facts from opinion ( as evidenced on some social media comment boards). And- are so readily convinced that if what they read, see, and hear in the media doesn’t fit their worldview, it MUST be “fake news”. How did we ever get to this point?
What would a “professional fact checker” say about Stanford University’s Hoover Institution?
Would they say that it’s full of bulloney?
Or would they give it a pass because it is at Stanford University?
My money is on the latter.
There’s a lot of money on the latter. That’s the problem.
Ha ha ha .
Very good point.
Hoover’s Scott Atlas told Michiganders to rise up against Whitner’s Covid containment measures. Americans should rise up against Hoover.
One of the first thoughts that came to mind was that adults have to learn and recognize misinformation before we can teach our children to do so. So many in this nation and the world do not have the skills necessary to recognize what is fact or fiction, the truth or lies.
Until we adults, at least those who are capable of being adult, get our collective rational reasonable acts together then it is going to be very difficult but not impossible to teach our children which path of truth to follow instead the trail leading into the darkness of misinformation.
We have lived under the shadow of misinformation for so long that it is becoming more and more difficult filter out the truth from the misinformation. The leadership of this nations for so many years, not just the Trump years, have cast the misinformation shadow that it is so hard to recognized the sunshine of truth.
I agree on the “adults need to get it right” part – who else is raising our kids and teaching them? How else do we develop a truly internet-savvy generation? I thought first of my millennial sons who were relentlessly skeptical from early on, & can always point hubby & me to better sources. They didn’t get that way by accident. Hubby is [& was from childhood, per father-in-law stories] skeptical & discerning in everything he does, always challenging conclusions & asking for evidence. And I am just a fat&happy researcher, plundering the internet, refining & adding to knowledge. I was pondering Ponderosa’s ( 😉) entry below on the good lecturer. Yes, key: but must be married to challenging received info on one’s own. I’ve always credited college as the place where I learned this approach. But in fact I was raised by a mom who used a socratic (or perhaps therapist’s) parenting method. Always asking questions that helped you figure out what you were trying to say, & how you arrived at those conclusions, then suggesting alternative propositions.
Excellent article. Thank you.
We should also support parents and teachers by passing legislation that curtails the spread of misinformation. Oodles of money is being made in industries that have a harmful effects on children and society: the rapid spread of misinformation, impact of social media, violent video game and television content. . . . etc. Nothing is done about it. The solution is always – have the teachers fix it. And if they don’t they are failing.
Yes, schools should be responsive to what is happening in the larger context of our society. We need to play a role. For a real impact… issues need to be addressed head on where they are happening. It can’t be a capitalist free for all, then put the onus of solving huge impacts these industries, on schools.
A huge part of the problem of misinformation is the fact that this country has been bombarded with far right wing baloney with more than 30 years of hate wing radio. Talk radio is about 98% right wing Limbaugh style flame throwing. It’s all across this country, in every state. NJ has the hideous 101.5 FM station with a strong signal and a very right wing slant. In NYC, we have 2 powerful stations, WABC 770 and WOR, which vomit up the right wing/libertarian filth hour after hour 365 days a year.
It’s amazing how these lecturers are so popular and effective, isn’t it? After all, our education professors tell us that “lecture is the worst form of pedagogy” and that no one wants to listen to a lecture for more than 5 minutes. How can it be that workers on construction sites can happily listen to Rush and Co. for 6 hours or more at a stretch? How are they able to repeat everything he teaches as if they know it by heart?
In fact, Rush proves that lecture is extremely effective. Rush is an evil but extremely effective teacher. Meanwhile, thanks to our ed schools’ bankrupt ideas, many school teachers are good-hearted but ineffective. Thinking they’re using “best practices”, they doom our students to confusing and fruitless group work that results in nothing but a miasma. Listen teachers: Rush is our competition. And we are losing. We need to use Rush’s effective techniques in the service of goodness and truth –use our voices to tell students what the world is, keeping it simple, and repeating it over and over!
Yup. You are spot on, Ponderosa. Every cult leader, the very real Jordan Peterson, and the fictional character Q are other examples. Steve Bannon recently set out on this quest to become The Messenger with a new Youtube Channel that, hilariously, was promptly cancelled.
Joe Jersey,
I agree. Right wingers can spew any lie and have it amplified. Alex Jones and Infowars can make people believe that the children murdered at an elementary school in Sandy Hook did not exist. They can make people believe that Obama was born in Kenya, or that Trayvon Martin deserved to die because it prevented a rape. It shocks me when people like Caitlin Johnstone see it as their sacred duty to defend Alex Jones and Mike Cernovich’s right to spew blatant lies and force every social media platform to carry those lies, because being able to spew blatant lies to demonize your enemy and forcing social media platforms to amplify those lies non-stop is their version of “freedom of the press”.
Adding-
Clergy stoking fears about the 2020 presidential election’s credibility
Picking out misinformation is not simply a skill but is highly dependent upon possessing knowledge. (Hat tip to Ponderosa)
If one has no idea how the world works, it is very unlikely that one will be able to pick out BS, even if it is in direct conflict with reality.
Thanks, SDP. You beat me to it. Wineburg is all the rage in education circles these days, but I’m a skeptic.
Background knowledge is the only foolproof misinformation detector. Unless you know some basics about health and the body, you’re gonna be prey to misinformation about the body. Unless you know the basics about our federal government, you’re gonna be prey to thinking it’s a nefarious Deep State that sprays poison on citizens from airplanes (many of my neighbors believe this). None of my conspiracy -mongering neighbors will ever turn into the amateur fact-checkers as Wineburg dreams. They can only absorb information in simplified, easy-to-absorb form –e.g.from hate radio and videos on Facebook. Heck, even I will never do the fact-checking moves he prescribes –they’re too cumbersome, and I have faster methods –relying on my background knowledge of authoritative sources. He wants readers to steer toward authoritative sources. Well, Q and Trump’s Twitter are authoritative to many people. And I tremble at the thought of telling my students that CNN and the Washington Post are authoritative, since these are merely shills for satanic pedophiles in my students’ parents’ minds. But even if we could get people to start reading the Post, most people would struggle to understand the articles because they’re weak readers. And why are they weak readers? Because they have very limited background knowledge about the public sphere. Building knowledge base is the sine qua non for both reading comprehension and savvy citizenship.
Wineburg’s approach fits perfectly with the anti-knowledge, pro-skills bias of today’s education world, but it’s doomed to fail. Just as his dream of turning our K-12 history students into “historical thinkers” rather than knowers of history. As a history teacher, I know a fair amount of history and profit from that knowledge. However I am not a historian nor do I “think like a historian”; I am a citizen who knows history, and that’s what I want my students to be. It is ludicrous to imagine that my students, none of whom will likely ever be professional historians, need to start acting like historians and that my curriculum should be about “historical thinking skills” rather than about history itself. Citizens need to absorb what history contains!
One of my favorite quotes from Diane’s Left Back:
James H. Baker, a dissenting member of the Committee of Ten, had argued that ‘mere form, mere power, without content, means nothing. Power is power through knowledge. The very world in which we are to use our power is the world in which we must first understand in order to use it. The present is understood, not by the power to read history, but by what history contains. (p. 62 ) (Emphasis added)
Cogently stated, Poet and Ponderosa.
Agree a hundred times. Teach knowledge. You can’t know if something is bullshit unless you know a lot about things.
I wonder if the absolute abandonment of the teaching of geography in K-8 has anything to do with this larger problem. It blows my mind how little young people know about geography. Where countries are, where states are, where provinces are, where capitals are — all this stuff is important for a sense of how people live and how layers of governments work. And young people don’t seem to be taught any of it anymore.
YES. There’s a particularly cogent re-statement of your regular theme here, Ponderosa. Flerp says “You can’t know if something is bullshit unless you know a lot about things” – but even before that comes the suspicion, based on background knowledge, which beeps out some suggested patterns from deep memory as you read new input. The very act of scanning input for possible storage reflects the level of complexity in those memory registers, which become that way through constant feeding and watering. Knowledgeable people have highly-developed bullshit radar.
On the skills vs knowledge issue you raise: the author is talking about internet-research guides for college use, not, I think, how to teach K12 history. Of course I couldn’t help wondering if the students they tested were in fact trained using the CRAAP guidelines ( 😀 ) he deplores—or any at all, for that matter. I note every guide he cites is from university library websites—presumably optional reading…
YES, it is such a complicated reality that the more a person knows, the less she or he is likely to be sucked into lies: a nation must teach truth, full, inclusive history, and see all sides of complicated social issues before it can expect the populace to effectively “separate” fact from fiction
As a student of, and teacher of, science, I can assure you that there is no ‘Truth’. The ‘Truth’ changes as we gain more experience. Humans are no different from other animals (or plants) and we all learn from our experience (even at the biochemical level). This is called ‘inductive reasoning’ in our species.
Thus, rather than teaching ‘the Truth’, educators need to foster that sensitivity to the milieu that encourages a personal synthesis within the student. The very word ‘education’ means a ‘drawing out’ process, not a stuffing in.
We (educators) don’t know the ‘Truth’ any more than our students. We have a bit more experience and can help them avoid a few bumps along the way, but sometimes it’s interesting to listen instead of preach. And, remember, this is coming from a science and math guy (math as a tool, science as an inductive process).
Regarding teaching of the truth, I agree that we need to teach how to differentiate truth from fiction. Our students will have to differentiate truth from fiction over the next 60 plus years and we don’t even know the battlefields over which truth and fiction will compete.
Having a process or mindset for differentiating fact from fiction is more reliable than any truths we might teach from our present day perspective.
This process of differentiating fact from fiction was a battle that has old roots, going back to the early experimental natural philosophers, such as Galileo, Harvey and such.
To be direct, Daedalus, this is not helpful. If you don’t know more than your students, then stop teaching.
To be direct, FLERP,
I taught High School physics for 25 years, but before I did I got a BS in Astronomy and MS credit in Physics, worked in a Biochemistry dept., taught Med. Students at both the undergraduate level (Pre-Med) and as part of a Biochemistry course at the Med School. I then became certified by taking Education credits at the Graduate level at the same University where I worked. I think I know a bit more about High School Science, or the philosophy of science and science education than the average bear.
In fact, I would say that one of the major failures of many math teachers is that they know so little about higher levels of math. Given a ‘word problem’ in math, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, but many teachers only know the one the textbook presents. Therefore, when a student launches an unconventional, yet logical, approach to a problem they are told they are ‘wrong’ and that they have to do it ‘this way’.
I’m not sure about your level of education, FLERP, but I do advise at least an undergraduate degree in the subject area you are teaching, along with the extra courses in psychology and historical educational practices to deliver an effective message. I don’t think most ‘Education majors’ are equipped to teach at the High School level without further study. Also, if you are going to criticize someone in a different area of specialization, make sure you have a background that allows you to provide an informed opinion based upon the history and philosophy of their ‘discipline’ .
The ‘Truth’ in Science has changed dramatically over the past 4,000 years, often over very short periods of time.
Truth is a very strange thing. The closer you try to get, the more Nature conspires against you, preventing you from discovering it.
That’s Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, for the uninitiated.
Knowledge of the scientific method is an important part of knowledge in general.
And so are basic scientific principles like Newton’s laws, which will remain approximately “true” to a very good approximation, even though they have a restricted region of applicability (large size relative to atoms and slow speeds relative to light) which is good enough in most circumstances likely to be encountered in everyday life.
This is an excellent article as more and more misinformation appears on-line. There is a new website for conservatives to share their outlandish “alternative facts” called Parler. Heaven only knows what will be shared there.
The state of Florida keeps trying to make it harder for democracy to prevail. They have made it much harder to change the state constitution. I consider myself a decent reader, but most of the ballot proposals this November were incomprehensible. I read them carefully and wrote down my choices on a notepad. Then, I compared my choices to what was on the League of Women Voters website. I would have voted for at least three items that I did not agree with had I not done this. The League”s explanations were very clear and comprehensible. This is beyond reading comprehension. These ballot initiatives were written in convoluted legalese and were deliberately misleading. We shouldn’t need a law degree to read a ballot.
Retired teacher, I couldn’t agree more regarding ballot amendments in Florida and that is why I joined the LWV upon my retirement. As a school librarian, I was always searching for effective models for teaching research skills and ways to analyze information. And, yes, it needs to be taught across the curriculum, not just left up to the librarians. Ironically, the number of school librarians dwindle as schools redirect funds for the purchase of laptops.
I have a great deal of respect for Sam Wineburg. The earlier post here about Why Teach History was meaningful. That said, there were some tech industry-developed, Orwellian language and ideas in the LA Times article that raised some red flags. 21st century skills? Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Arne Duncan. Responsibility for misinformation swaying electorates around the world must be placed squarely and solely on the shoulders of Facebook, Google, and other companies that publish falsehoods.
Mark Zuckerberg would love to blame the consumer for the CRAAPiness of his products. Let’s not let him. As for teaching 21st century skills, I refuse. I will teach using great literature, not Google. The lessons of a low-tech curriculum are deeper and more important than the lessons of how to use shoddy products. I will not teach my students to trust websites; I will teach them stories that help them gain empathy and sense of civic responsibility.
Well said.
And yes, we need to pass legislation to stop the influence of Facebook et al.
Good points all.
Platforms like Google and Fakebook only give you what they think you want to look at so if the misinformation happens to be coming from your own tribe, these platforms will just return stuff that reinforces the misinformation.
Picking out BS does not depend on technology. People were doing it for ages before the computer and internet arrived on the scene.
But it happens at such a rapid speed and is much more efficient and far reaching…..and catches people from outside the tribe too to pull them in. People may not believe Sue from their tribe…. but if it’s coming from an official looking Dr. posted on Facebook…. can be more powerful. Maybe? just a thought.
I never realized how much stuff Google cuts out when you do a search until I made a website for an artist friend that had his own name and “art” in the domain name.
I sent the information to Google and it literally took months for it to appear even on the 4th or fifth page of the search returns.
That was because Google ranks sites based on the number of links to your site and/or links to your site by sites that already have a high rank.
So, even though my friends site should have been ranked number 1 by a search engine concerned with relevance, it was considered a backwater by Google’s “popularity contest” search engine.
I eventually got my friends site boosted to the first page by l1) listing him with a link to his site on a site called the Painters Keys. Which had a large number of artists on it and which was therefore ranked highly by Google’s search algorithm and 2) submitting his site to an organization which used people to evaluate sites (instead of bots), information which was then used as a database by Google. Because only a very small number of volunteers were evaluating sites, if literally took about 3 months for his site to appear in the database that was used by Google.
The upshot is that the Google search algorithm is a catch 22. If your site is new , no one links to you so no one can !earn about you, so Google continues to ignore you, which means no one learns about you…
Google is really a very crappy search engine and not just because they save all your searches. It’s crappy because it misses a huge swath of highly relevant stuff, some of it much more relevant to your search than the most “popular” crap that Google returns.
It’s not just social media that are the problem. Here in north Florida there were many conservative political ads on network TV that told outrageous lies about Biden and Doug Jones.
In District 1 on Long Island, the incumbent member of Congress Lee Zeldin ran against Nancy Goroff, chair of the chemistry department at Stonybrook University. She ran as a scientist. His TV ads mercilessly attacked her as a radical leftist and socialist, accused her of wanting to defund the police, and lied incessantly. She was on the defensive. He won overwhelmingly.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/us-elections-bring-wins-and-losses-research-community
The right wing and big corporations try to blame the consumers when they get cheated by misleading business practices and/or misinformation. That is why Wall St. and big corporations despise Elizabeth Warren. She believes we should hold businesses to account when the cheat consumers. DeVos is the poster child for cheating the vulnerable. She became wealthy from a pyramid scheme, and she defends for-profit colleges that prey on the poor and working class.
Yes. If this article appeared in 1920 instead of 2020, stating that schools were responsible for teaching 20th century skills because lies were being printed in newspapers, everyone would be upset that lies were being printed. No one would blame readers for being unable to distinguish fact from propaganda. The problem is deregulation, not curriculum.
The problem is, the U.S. is the most heavily propagandized country there is and it’s our most “trusted” “news” agencies that are doing it, so relying on them for “fact-checking” is only deepening the propaganda. Somehow we’ve come to accept the idea that invading and bombing sovereign nations, killing, displacing and wounding millions of civilians in the name of “protecting U.S. interests” is normal and desirable. If you really believe that, I really want to send my army to your house to occupy it to “protect my interests”. If you’re thinking “what the hell interest do you have in my house?”, you’re on the right track!
Furthermore, we think it’s perfectly normal that the billions and trillions we spend on all that is perfectly normal along with the attendant “fact” that we “can’t afford” universal single-payer healthcare, stimulus payments, debt forgiveness and housing protections for our own people.
We think it’s normal and healthy to draw imaginary lines on the ground and defend them with walls and armed men and tanks.
We think it’s normal for police to attack peaceful protesters demanding that police stop attacking Black people. On the other hand, we think it’s normal when “decent, g-d fearing” heavily armed white people hold a “Million MAGA march” in DC and the police support them.
We think it’s normal for private interests to control basic human necessities like water and charge exorbitant rates, and that people who can’t afford those rates should just, I dunno, do without, I guess.
We think all of this and much more atrocity is just they way things are. There is No Alternative. We think competition and scarcity and capitalism are all normal, when, in fact, for the majority of human history we’ve been a cooperative, socialist species (by necessity).
If people really woke up to how our thinking has been twisted by the mass media, we would all be in the streets rioting.
For anyone truly interested in the depths of Western propaganda and how to wake up from it, I can’t recommend Caitlin Johnstone highly enough: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/
“for the majority of human history we’ve been a cooperative, socialist species (by necessity)”
Completely agree with this statement, Dienne77
The biggest mistake is that people rely on someone else to do their fact checking for them.
That means they place total trust in the fact checker, which is a very big mistake.
People need to check the fact checkers just like they check everyone else.
Any site with “fact checker” in the name is highly suspect in my opinion because it means they have appointed themselves official arbiter of truth.
Almost all the propaganda you talk about is nearly all REPUBLICAN propaganda — right wing propaganda.
And the reason it is being pushed is because the so-called liberal media has been redefining the definition of “journalism”. The right wing definition of journalism has taken over almost ALL journalistic sources — journalism has been improperly re-defined as “BALANCE”.
If one person says that it is raining cats and dogs, and the other person says that it is a beautiful sunny day, a journalist’s job is not to report what both sides said. A journalist’s job is to look outside and report what is true.
But journalists forgot that and instead reported what both sides said, which is a huge problem when one side is blatantly lying.
Caitlin Johnstone is as bad as Fox News — using extreme examples to “prove” something. If you want the entirety and complexity of Susan Rice to be reduced to “Susan Rice is a war criminal”, then Caitlin Johnstone is your woman.
Caitlin Johnstone has lots of fan boys in the alt right movement. Here she is lecturing to us stupid Americans about electing Biden:
“I get that American lefties have had to come up with all kinds of arguments for their decision to help elect a right-wing authoritarian warmonger with whom they have nothing ideologically in common..”
Biden is reduced to a right-wing authoritarian warmonger. But guess who is NOT reduced to those kinds of ugly characterizations: Her pal Mike Cernovich. Where are Caitlin Johnstone’s angry rants about the truly ugly things that right wing racist Mike Cernovich says?
Typical Mike Cernovich:
““Today we have a moment of silence for Trayvon Martin’s rape victims. Kidding! He got got before he was able to rape anyone.”
—Twitter, February 2016”
If you want an example of how the far left believes that Mike Cernovich is someone to work with, while Biden and Susan Rice are simply evil right wing warmongerers who must only be condemned, then Caitlin Johnstone is your go-to person.
Anyone who thinks the answer to pervasive right wing propaganda and the democrats having SOME neo-cons and some progressives is to embrace Mike Cernovich and those who think like him is not a friend to progressives.
When you hear AOC saying something like that, believe it. When you hear Mike Cernovich apologists who reduce all democrats to warmongerers saying it, it’s simply more propaganda to help the next Trump neofascist win.
AOC and her way of speaking is the way to a progressive future. Caitlin Johnstone is a way to legitimize the far right.
Just once I’d like to see Caitlin Johnstone and the people who post here about how she is a brilliant truth teller criticize Alex Jones and Infowars with even 1/10th of the hatred they direct toward “war criminals” like Susan Rice. Instead, Caitlin Johnstone defends Infowars. After all, why shouldn’t Alex Jones be allowed to say that the children killed by a gunman in Sandy Hook never lived, without an ounce of evidence? “free speech!” says Caitlin Johnstone. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to foment hate with lies? “Free speech”.
Alex Jones and infowars aren’t perfect, Caitlin Johnstone would acknowledge, but they aren’t evil like Susan Ric, so she feels the need to defend Alex Jones and Infowars from those evil people’s attempts to “silence” them (which of course means they are free to purvey their lies but Caitlin Johnstone is angry that they can’t purvey them on more platforms because boo hoo, the people like Alex Jones should be able to push their lies on facebook and everywhere they want and not just on a dozen other sites that specialize in far right lies.
Absolutely agree with this, Dienne.
I also highly recommend Lee Camp–for more truth with a side of humor. George Carlin’s daughter has called him the comedian most like her father, & that he would be her father’s favorite. Like the late newsman Ed Schultz (who was booted off MSNBC for truth-telling–I think it was when he was with the teachers in Madison, WI, & asked where Obama was w/his “walking shoes” {remember B.O. had promised, campaigning, that he’d be right along w/any Americans, wearing “his walking shoes.?”}), who had to go to RT (just like Chris Hedges), because the American msm just can’t face/tell the truth, & wouldn’t hire Ed. Lee was on RT for the same reason. Now that RT has been taken off the air, Lee can be found on the internet.
retiredbutmissthekids,
I hope you don’t agree with this: “We think it’s normal for police to attack peaceful protesters demanding that police stop attacking Black people. On the other hand, we think it’s normal when “decent, g-d fearing” heavily armed white people hold a “Million MAGA march” in DC and the police support them.”
I don’t think any of that is normal. Do you? But how many Trump voters thought it was normal?
When these right-wing nutcases use the terms “Socialist” or “Socialism,” it’s the responsibility of journalists to ask them to define the term and then to press them on the correctness of the definition. It needs to be made clear that as right-wingers like Trump use the term, it is a completely meaningless pejorative, like “bad guy” or “bad guyism.”
So, conversation:
TRUMP SUPPORTER: We must stand firm against the Socialist policies of Biden and Harris.
REPORTER: What do you mean by Socialist?
TS: You know what this means. It means the end of our country, that’s what it means.
R: No. Please answer the question. When you say that Biden and Harris have “Socialist” policies, what exactly do you mean? What makes their policies Socialist?
TS: They want to tax everybody to fund a bunch of give-ways.
R: Biden has said that he won’t raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year, but let’s put that aside. So, your definition of Socialism is that it’s a political system in which the government taxes people to pay for services to people?
TS: Yeah, big taxes to support give-ways.
R: So, let me just be clear about your definition. The government taxes people to pay for fire departments, police departments, defense via the military, Social Security, Medicare, and roads. According to your definition, then, these things are Socialist.
TS: That’s not what I meant.
R: Perhaps I can help you. A different definition of “Socialism” that people sometimes use is worker ownership of the means of production.
TS: I haven’;t heard that one.
R: So, under that definition, an employee stock ownership plan, in which employees of a company are partially compensated by being given stock that makes them part owners of the company would be Socialist.
TS: Biden and Harris want to turn the United States into a Socialist country, like Venezuela.
R: Hadn’t seen that in their platform.
TS: Well, they aren’t exactly going to tell you that, are they? Make America Great Again!
R: Good idea. Perhaps we could start by having people get some education about what terms like “Socialism” mean.
Love this!
This article is so important. Thanks for posting it, Diane!
I remember the good old days when teaching student to recognize misinformation was called education.
Bravo, GregB!
Ditto with Bob.
How dangerous has the internet become?
The answer is that the internet has become VERY dangerous, and all schools K through graduate school must provide required classes at every level about this threat and update the curriculum on an annual basis adding what’s the latest new threat is.
For instance, have you heard of Incel?
Until yesterday, I had no idea this subgroup existed, and it has been around since the 1990s.
But, it didn’t start out dangerous.
“Our incel problem”
“How a support group for the dateless became one of the internet’s most dangerous subcultures.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/16/18287446/incel-definition-reddit
Identifying dangers on the Internet makes for great clickbait. But few write news stories about people on the net sharing on the Net their stories about breast cancer recovery or their recipes for Greek dishes or tips about making guitars or texts in ancient Icelandic or commentaries or updates on the archaeological dig at Çatalhöyük or lessons in Anglo-Saxon or Maori dance or information for people wanting to attend the upcoming zoning commission meeting in Zebulon, Arkansas. Or whatever. Since the days of the Ptolemies, people have dreamed of a universal library of information where anything and everything can be found. Well, now we have it. And it’s a beautiful thing. For every evil on the Net, there are millions of unsung wonders.
One technique to raise the skills of kids and young adults in spotting misinformation websites is to have them intentionally create the content for one. Have them figure out how to get others to believe something that is not true, such as the Earth is flat, or that the Moon is made of cheese.
This is active learning.
Then have them share with other students what they have devised and discuss additional ways to mislead people who land on their site.
Active learning or active lying?
“Active learning or active learning?” In either case, the purpose is to make the students think and make decisions. In short, to exercise their minds.
Students can better recognize a red flag in a media source if they have played with red flags.
This has to be one of the weirdest comments I’ve ever read on this blog. I’ll leave it at that.
Weirder than “Billy’s” claims that Biden and Harris are communist socialists and are planning concentration camps for their enemies?
Did not see that. Please note that I wrote “one of” to give me some wiggle room! There are occasional doozies and this is definitely one of them.
Do you teach at the New York Military Academy?
“Do you teach at the New York Military Academy?”
No, I taught middle school math in Denver Public Schools. However it was in the after school program where I taught older kids to tutor younger kids that I saw the growth effects on tutors of having to use their knowledge and abilities, or exercise their knowledge, to help others.
I agree that a minimal level of prior knowledge is essential for spotting deviations from that prior knowledge. That, however, is just one of many tools that can be taught.
The idea of having kids manipulating the things we want them to be able to spot was an outgrowth of several after school programs I ran. My initial post was just applying this concept to the underlying important issue of this discussion, ‘How to train students to recognize misleading and deceptive web sites.’
I think people may be misreading what Edward says here, although I think the last sentence might have been put differently so it didn’t come across as encouraging deception.
If one can get into the mind of the propagandist and figure out their methods, one can later spot those methods when one sees them.
Have the election post mortems shown that in general terms “young adults” ignored right wing propaganda and voted for Biden?
The addition of a few directives applied to the demographic groups who voted for Trump would add value.
I seem to remember Postman and Weingartner making this argument many years ago (Teaching as a Subversive Activity). In fact, I think that little book (which I bought for $2.26) probably pushed me over the edge and into my High School Teaching career.
CBK made an important observation in a different discussion we were having on a post from days ago.
She referred to what is OMITTED. And it does seem so much of what isn’t blatant lying is offering up some “true” fact in order to misinform. What you see is people who claim some far extreme example represents the entirety of whatever it is they want to demonize. And they omit any context or additional information that would put that example in perspective.
I immediately thought of the example of Campbell Brown demonizing teachers unions by repeating over and over some example of a sexual predator “protected” by the union. Those purveyors of propaganda don’t want to hear any context (i.e. about due process or the positive things about unions) — they try to shut it down. Because their goal is not to have a discussion about how to improve some aspects of teachers unions that should and could be improved. Their goal is to make people hate teachers unions.
I also see that from people who are supposedly on the left, like Caitlin Johnstone. She writes screeds that omit many important facts and context, whose purpose is not in making democrats a better and more responsive political party, but in getting people to hate the democrats.
Someone posted above that “Somehow we’ve come to accept the idea that invading and bombing sovereign nations, killing, displacing and wounding millions of civilians in the name of “protecting U.S. interests” is normal and desirable.” I disagree vehemently. We have NOT said that is normal and desirable. It is an ongoing discussion that has to be made using facts. Intervention when Assad is harming Syrian civilians? Intervention when Hitler is cleansing Europe of certain ethnic groups? Intervention when the Serbs and Croats and Muslims are at war? And what happens when the US turns isolationist? What do we do about the refugees desperately escaping those places? Do we welcome an unlimited number of them with open arms? Do we provide for them? Do we limit them?
These issues are complex, and anytime I see them simplified into an attack that “Joe Biden is a warmonger” or “unions protect predators”, I see purveyors of propaganda who want to omit information to simplify an issue to demonize one of the sides.
Don’t forget our role in encouraging the genocide in Palestine. Where are the ‘open arms’?
?? We encouraged genocide in Palestine?
We certainly support the Israeli Governments actions of seizure of Palestinian land, We refuse to put on any sanctions and, in fact, in many States call criticism of the Israeli Zionist government ‘antisemitism’. This is a hoot, if you consider ‘Semite’ to have some racial (genetic) meaning because the ‘Semites’ are the Palestinians, not the Eastern European Zionists (with very little ‘Semitic’ blood from the Levant) in charge of Israel at present.
However, if you don’t consider ‘Semite’ to be a genetic trait, then both Hebrew and Arabic are ‘Semitic’ languages.
By offering no opposition to this travesty of human decency, we also support the stuffing of Palestinians into Gaza after they are displaced from their ancestral land, the destruction of their water sources, the bombing of their former international airport, the blockade of their seacoast, and so on. All of this is against the ‘Geneva Convention’ law, but we don’t just turn a blind eye. We, instead, use our UN ‘veto power’ to block any international intervention.
While discussion on this blog is wide ranging, I prefer that we stick with education and on domestic politics, especially as it affects public education. This is not the place to debate Israeli politics, or the politics of other nations. There are blogs devoted to that subject. This is not one of them.
I tend to agree, Diane. I’m trying to bite my tongue. My comment was a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to a post that seemed, at the time, to sponsor the illusion of American exceptionalism. We are not ‘exceptional’, and having more power, we do more awful things. As educators, we must point out the good, bad, and ugly.
In my advanced Physics class, I often ended the year showing the ‘Ascent of Man’ episode on modern physics which ended with Leo Szilard pulling up a handful of muck from a pool at Auschwitz and saying, “This contains the ashes of my relatives, and this is what comes from ‘certainty'”. I hope they got the message.
Daedalus,
How would you compare that to how the US acted when the Kurds were being slaughtered? What should the US have done when Kurds were being slaughtered in Turkey, in Syria, and in Iraq? Presumably that is yet another example of the US supporting genocide against the Kurds. Forgot if you were advocating the US start bombing Turkey or not. Were you?
Right on, Daedalus. You are on to something fundamental, albeit unpopular and third rail-ish. The history of the Holocaust has perversely given the most reactionary forces in Israel carte blanche to commit atrocities of its own making with US government blessings. Strange how those of us who cite facts and are actually supportive of a liberal democratic Israeli state are often considered anti-Semitic. At the same time, those who make George Soros the Jewish bogeyman of anything convenient to their viewpoints, as they “support” Israel’s right wing with the belief that these people will go straight to hell when their “rapture” takes place, are not.
GregB,
“The history of the Holocaust has perversely given the most reactionary forces in Israel carte blanche to commit atrocities of its own making with US government blessings.” What?? Since when do countries need to cite the Holocaust to have the US government’s ignoring their bad deeds? Saudi Arabia and Syria and other countries in the middle east and all over the world cite don’t need to cite the Holocaust to be given carte blanche to “commit atrocities”? The US “commits atrocities” and the same people condone those, too. So not sure what your point is.
Why not just say that many governments get to do bad things with the blessings of the US government, and Israel is one of many countries that do bad things — including the US! Despite all of us recognizing that the US does bad things, most of us don’t think that citizens of the US should be victims of terrorist attacks nor that we should all move back to our countries of origin and return all land and property to the Native Americans and the descendants of the Africans brought here against their will. Even the mention of reparations to the descendants of slaves is rejected in the US.
There is lots of criticism of Israel in the Jewish community, just like there is lots of criticism of the US among American citizens. I happen to like the J Street perspective, which does not condone “atrocities”. This election showed that an extraordinarily high number of white Americans voted for Republicans. But the white ethnic group with large majorities who vote for Democrats are Jews. And yet it is the Republican party that panders far more to Israel. It isn’t because of the Holocaust and it isn’t because of some nefarious Jewish influence. It is because supporting Israel, like supporting Syria and Saudia Arabia and Russia aligns with the far right’s agenda.
Israelis have elected right wing governments that do bad things, just like the US has elected right wing governments that do bad things. But the potential for change in both countries is there in a way that is different than trying to bring about change in Saudi Arabia or Syria or Russia or even Turkey. All of whom have committed some terrible atrocities, too. What seems anti-Semitic is when people blame the US not condemning the bad actions of Israel as being because of some nefarious “Jewish influence”. No one ever uses the innuendo “Christian influence” or “Muslim influence” in the same way when other countries do bad things “with the US’ blessing”.
US policy toward Israel has many flaws and deserves criticism, just the way the US itself deserves criticism. And there is much criticism to make about US policy toward many countries. But no one tries to blame it on “Christian influence” or “Hindu influence”.
Well, for one thing, I read. Admittedly not enough to qualify for a PhD dissertation, but enough to form my opinions based on evidence. I’ve also read the paper daily for at least 45 years. I’ve also worked on Capitol Hill and seen up close and personal how lobbying and opinion-shaping works. The books that have had the greatest effect? Paul Novick’s The Holocaust in American Life. Mearsheimer and Walt’s The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Joe Sacco’s comic journalism including Footnotes in Gaza (have you ever heard of Rafah and Khan Younis?) and Palestine. Oddly, Stu Eizenstat’s magnificent memoir/biography President Carter unknowingly makes the case and explains how Israel influences policy at the highest levels of US government, even though that was not at all his intention.
In reading newspapers, I’ve learned about the sanctioned massacres at Sabra and Shatila, the multiple incursions in to Lebanon that killed tens of thousands of innocent people and destroyed their ability to support themselves, the consistent creation of illegal settlements to undermine and destroy the two-state solution, the disproportionate slaughter of civilians in Gaza and West Bank, the legal discrimination of Arabs and Palestinians in the Knesset itself, and how American student Rachel Corrie was crushed by a bulldozer while trying to protect Palestinian right with nary a whisper of response by the US. I’ve seen a number of films made by Israeli filmmakers that highlight many of the consequences of the actions above.
I witnessed how Joe Lieberman gave greater representation in the US Senate to Israel than he did to his state and I have witnessed how Chuck Schumer has picked up that mantle. I have witnessed how Israel’s conservative governments are better represented in the US legislative and executive branches than American citizens in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. I’ve witnessed how Israel is exempt from any international observation of its nuclear weapons program. I’ve also witnessed how Israeli arms trade has supported apartheid in South Africa, authoritarians in Venezuela, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Far East.
This is not an anti-Semitic rant, as many will be quick to charge. Based on most polling, about 40 percent of Israeli citizens generally would agree with what I wrote above.
Greg,
I asked that we try to stay focused on education and domestic policies and avoid debating the politics of other nations. That’s a rabbit hole I prefer to avoid.
Will do (or don’t?), Diane.
Daedalus said: “My comment was a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to a post that seemed, at the time, to sponsor the illusion of American exceptionalism.”
I have no idea how you got that from my comment about how what is OMITTED – the information that adds important context to propaganda like “teachers unions protect sexual predators” – is very important.
For the record, I don’t believe in any illusion of “American exceptionalism”.
Greg-
Thanks for providing the history that we don’t get from media.
Is the parsing out of religion from pro-Israel policy in D.C., a function of the 40% statistic?
What does the parsing out of religion from the pro-conservative policy
in state capitols and D.C. derive from, given its demographic majority’s support?
Do clergy of various religions influence U.S. public policy equally?
Which religion(s) is evident in public policy decisions? What is the level of involvement?
Does it serve a public purpose to examine the process whereby taxpayer money is used to get resources for a religious sect so that its goals are achieved?
The answer to the 3rd question must be no.
NYC parent-
Agree- “omission” can distort a picture. Relative to “demonization”, self-appointed billionaire reformers have received a fair amount of that at this blog?
Americans have a good handle on context clarity when members of the WH administration tell a national reporter that they are working to achieve the public policy that a religion favors and there is ample evidence of their success. Under the circumstances, a significant blackout on discussion of religion is an omission that merits concern?
Right wing radio in the past few years built a case that not talking about race would advance the elimination of injustice. The seeming media agreement with that omission, IMO, helped fuel the advance of organizations like Proud Boys and the plots against Whitner.
As further example, media’s omission of information about billionaire Bill Gates’ takeover of public education for purposes of privatization led to the current state of at-risk democracy in the public sphere of education with the wins that could be anticipated from the SCOTUS decisions in the Espinosa and Biel cases.
Today, CNN had a program on the expansion of misinformation about the election well beyond Fox News, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
In addition to these channels, CNN’s Brian Stelter of “Reliable Sources” identified the proliferating alternatives to Fox News, and discussed misinformation creating a “false universe of belief” that Trump is the true winner of the election, aided by Rudy Giuliani, Alex and others.
Stelter talked about the proliferation of channels competing with Fox news and why this evident supply is responding to some clear and profitable demand. I looked into the news-channels he referred to (by showing their logos).
–4chan.An anonymous website, English-language imageboard. More than 27 million unique visitors per month, launched in October 2003,
–Daily Caller. 24 hour news founded by FOX news co-founded by Tucker Carlson of Fox news. Tucker recently resigned, but monthly subscription are $9.95. The homepage had 20 million unique readers each month.
–Drudge Report. This website for news had 1,291,000 unique visitors in September, 2020 according to data supplied by comScore. That was down from 2,340,000 in the same month a year ago. The drop in visitors came after the Drudge Report featured anti-Trump content and direct criticism from Trump.
–Infowars. Since 1999, website for Alex Jones’ far-right conspiracy theories. About 10 million visits per month. Some content has been banned from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.
–Mark Levin Show. Talk radio, broadcasting daily on nearly 400 stations with regular features on Hannity at Fox News. Lawyer Mark Levin is on the Board of Directors for The Ronald Reagan Legal Center’s Landmark Legal Foundation. Levin was Chief of Staff to Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese also Associate Director of Presidential Personnel, Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of Interior, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.
–NewsMaxTV. 24/7 pay-to-watch news channel offers streaming video with 1 million You Tube subscribers, an app downloaded 2 million times, and a recent spike by 400,000 viewers.
–ONNN (One America News Network). A 24/7 cable channel that Trump likes. Live internet streaming. Family owned main office in San Diego, California, with news bureaus in Washington, D.C. and New York City.
–Project Veritas. Known for producing deceptive media messages using digital and video technology and hidden cameras for “undercover journalism” targeting liberal news media. Collaborates with the Washington Post.
–Reddit. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members. In additional to national viewers, the website hosts content for specific states and cities. Notorious for pumping out pro-Trump, with feeds re-circulated by Trump and Donald Trump Jr
–Rush Limbaugh. Radio talk show that hosts Donald Trump. Trump gave Limbaugh the US Medal of Freedom award.
–Sinclair. In 2018 Sinclair owned or operated 59 Fox affiliates, 41 ABC affiliates, 30 CBS affiliates, 25 NBC affiliates, nine Univision affiliates and others, in addition to having its own network, Comet,.
There are certainly many others who engage in “robo media,” algorithmic spoofing, text messaging, and phone calls.
If you want to see the scope of disinformation, the MediaWell website has many 2020 references and scholarly citations. This website also refers to these definitions.
–bullshit. “Covers communicating with no regard to the truth or falsehood of the statements made.”
–disinformation. A rhetorical strategy that produces and disseminates false or misleading information in a deliberate effort to confuse, influence, harm, mobilize, or demobilize a target audience, and
–misinformation. False or misleading information, spread unintentionally, that tends to confuse, influence, harm, mobilize, or demobilize an audience.
–“ideological echo chamber.” A conversational arena in which people discuss politics and current events, but are only exposed to opinions that mirror their own.
–a “filter bubble.” Offers users ideologically limited content, either by choices that they have deliberately made—such as removing Fox News or MSNBC from a personalized news feed—or through more subtle automated processes that present users with content that algorithms predict they will prefer based on their past browsing.
According to Media Well, disinformation environments, including the Internet, allow people to ignore or exploit changes in journalistic standards, send messages to multiple sources with little or no transparency and perhaps most important–exploit our emotions and our digital illiteracy.
https://mediawell.ssrc.org/literature-reviews/producers-of-disinformation/versions/1-2/
When I teach my students about Maslow’s Heirarchy of needs I teach them that for self actualization, the highest need, and the most difficult to achieve, one needs to be able to problem solve and learn to distinguish fact from fiction, among other things. Many people never achieve self actualization. It’s no wonder we’re in the state we’re in.
Great article that teaches some of what students need to know in order to recognize cultism and disinformation, posting by a reader of this blog who goes by the handle “Jon”:
View at Medium.com
Here are some other ways in which propagandists and cult leaders work, from an article I wrote a few years ago about this.
Make a Promise that gets at something people really want, such as community, wealth, happiness, sex, or freedom from anxiety or worry.
The Promise can be Transformation into a Higher State of Being or a Return to a Mythical Golden Age.
Create an Impending Calamity that can be avoided through membership in the group and possession of The Secret Knowledge.
Make use of Normalizing Disciples and their Testimonies.
Present a Revelation of The Secret Knowledge or Hidden or Esoteric Teachings communicated by A Messenger to The Great Leader, who becomes the embodiment of of The Secret Knowledge on earth.
Create Stages of Development toward Acquisition of The Secret Knowledge, aka, The Path, and Testimonials from Normalizing Disciples further along The Path toward Mastery of The Secret Knowledge .
Create community-binding Rituals involving Sacred Objects or Talismans, and Symbols or Icons, including both Bonding Rituals (to the leader and to other members of the group) and Private Rituals (to carry the activities of the cult into the disciple’s private life).
Create an Other/an Enemy that wishes to destroy the group, and include among these anyone from outside the group (e.g., friends or family members) who might attempt to get the disciples from drinking the Kool-Aid. Isolate disciples from the society at large.
Engage group members in Proselytizing and Recruitment.
The article was called “A Dummies’ Guide to Becoming a Cult Leader.”
One doesn’t have to be smart to be a cult leader. One simply has to have a low cunning. Case in point: Trump. The next Trump will be MORE skilled at implementing the program described above. BTW, one way to build community and immunity within the cult is to warn Disciples on The Path that exposure to the ideas of those outside the cult can prevent acquisition of The Secret Knowledge and bring about The Calamity.
I have been arguing for years for this to be a part of our high school’s curriculum.
Here are two helpful websites below. Also, AP Capstone focuses deeply on the credibility of sources.
https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/
https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
As someone who liked to include research in their classes, this is exactly why I supported the Common Core. They addressed this issue – teaching students to read laterally. People might not of liked the standards for other reasons, but they were the first standards to address this. Remember – the standards put librarians first and center with helping to develop curriculum in schools – because it was all about checking resources and identifying misinformation. If librarians are asked to help – crusaders of free (honest) information – then there must be some good in it.
I find it disheartening that everything gets so political. Instead of demanding a revision, we say the whole thing is toxic.
Thanks for this post. I agree – it always seemed to me that most of the problem was Common Core TESTING.
Imagine if those standards had been promoted as a curriculum guide without students being tested annually as a way to supposedly measure whether their thinking properly aligned with the standards?
Private schools didn’t call it Common Core, but many of the best of them taught in a way that was more aligned with Common Core than the previous “No Child Left Behind” nonsense.
But the testing warped it.
I’m always skeptical of the voices that say that some new way of teaching kids is ideal versus being horrible. They all have flaws, and what I see is that even the so-called “best” way of teaching will still not work for every kid, and some new method that some parents hate does work well for some kids. Similar to my experience with teachers themselves!
I hated Everyday Math because it was different than the way I was taught math. But after a while, I saw how my kid was learning to think about numbers and understand in a way far better than I did with my rote learning of how to multiply and add. There were still plenty of flaws in Everyday Math and it wasn’t perfect and was not good for some kids. But there were interesting ideas that likely made other students better mathematicians.
If all testing had been abolished, but Common Core ideas had been incorporated into curriculum, I suspect some students would have gained a lot out of it. Others would have been better served with a different approach.
Fact checking is for Pansies
Check your ammo
Not your info
Always Rambo
Never mindful
Yesterday, CNN had a program on the expansion of misinformation about the election well beyond Fox News. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
In addition to those channels, CNN’s Brian Stelter of “Reliable Sources” identified the proliferating alternatives to Fox News, and discussed misinformation creating a “false universe of belief” that Trump is the true winner of the election, aided by Rudy Giuliani, Alex Jones and others. Stelter talked about the proliferation of news competing with Fox news and why this evident “supply” is responding to some clear and profitable “demand.” I looked into the news-channels he referred to by showing their logos, some I had never seen.
–4chan. An anonymous website, English-language imageboard. More than 27 million unique visitors per month, launched in October 2003, new versions up to 8chan.
–Daily Caller. 24 hour news co-founded by FOX news Tucker Carlson. Tucker recently resigned, but monthly subscription are $9.95. The homepage had 20 million unique readers each month.
–Drudge Report. This website for news had 1,291,000 unique visitors in September, 2020 according to data supplied by comScore. That was down from 2,340,000 in the same month a year ago. The drop came after the Drudge Report featured anti-Trump content and received direct criticism from Trump.
–Infowars. Since 1999, website for Alex Jones’ far-right conspiracy theories. About 10 million visits per month. Some content has been banned from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.
–Mark Levin Show. Talk radio, broadcasting daily on nearly 400 stations with regular features on Hannity at Fox News. Lawyer Mark Levin is on the Board of Directors for The Ronald Reagan Legal Center’s Landmark Legal Foundation. Levin was Chief of Staff to Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese also Associate Director of Presidential Personnel, Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of Interior, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.
–NewsMaxTV. A 24/7 pay-to-watch news channel offers streaming video with 1 million You Tube subscribers, an app downloaded 2 million times, and a recent spike by 400,000 viewers.
–ONNN (One America News Network). A 24/7 cable channel that Trump likes. Live internet streaming. Family owned, main office in San Diego, California, with news bureaus in Washington, D.C. and New York City.
–Project Veritas. Known for producing deceptive media messages using digital and video technology and hidden cameras for “undercover journalism” targeting liberal news media. Collaborates with the Washington Post.
–Reddit. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members. In additional to national viewers, the website hosts content for specific states and cities. Notorious for pumping out pro-Trump feeds with these re-circulated by Trump and Donald Trump Jr
–Rush Limbaugh. Radio talk show that hosts Donald Trump. Trump gave Limbaugh the US Medal of Freedom award.
–Sinclair. In 2018 Sinclair owned or operated 59 Fox affiliates, 41 ABC affiliates, 30 CBS affiliates, 25 NBC affiliates, nine Univision affiliates and others, in addition to having its own network, Comet,.
There are certainly others who engage in “robo media,” creating spam and spoofs by algorithmic text messaging and phone calls.
If you want to see the scope of disinformation, the MediaWell website has many 2020 references and scholarly citations. The website also refers to these definitions.
–bullshit. “Covers communicating with no regard to the truth or falsehood of the statements made.”
–disinformation. A rhetorical strategy that produces and disseminates false or misleading information in a deliberate effort to confuse, influence, harm, mobilize, or demobilize a target audience, and
–misinformation. False or misleading information, spread unintentionally, that tends to confuse, influence, harm, mobilize, or demobilize an audience.
–“ideological echo chamber.” A conversational arena in which people discuss politics and current events, but are only exposed to opinions that mirror their own.
–a “filter bubble.” Offers users ideologically limited content, either by choices that they have deliberately made—such as removing Fox News or MSNBC from a personalized news feed—or through more subtle automated processes that present users with content that algorithms predict they will prefer based on their past browsing.
According to Media Well, disinformation environments, including the Internet, allow people to ignore or exploit changes in journalistic standards, send messages to multiple sources with little or no transparency, and perhaps most important–exploit our emotions and our digital illiteracy.
https://mediawell.ssrc.org/literature-reviews/producers-of-disinformation/versions/1-2/
Waiting until college to teach about evaluating web sites and information is way too late!
You should hear the misinformation that middle school students are exposed to and believe that they have seen on YouTube.
Some of our high school seniors are voters!
Some will never get to college.
Middle school students and high school students are exposed to conspiracy theories and misinformation regularly without any understanding or background in evaluating sources and also in evaluating specific news or opinion pieces.
Readers’ Guide to Periodic Literature. That was my go-to source for getting information in high school and college. I can recall opening up each volume by year and looking up references to read on whatever subject I was researching.
But now I wonder whether that was good or bad. Did the choice of what to include in those volumes act as censorship? Was my generation dependent on the editors of that publication?
Now my kid uses google scholar. Does google scholar also curate sources? Who decides what gets in there?
Reading some of these comments I can’t help but think, Lord, how outgunned we dim teachers are! While Rush and cynical YouTube content creators are giving kids fascist information straight up, we dither about attempting to implant “media literacy skills” and appreciation of inductive reasoning. Teachers have given up on the project of actually INFORMING kids, fearing it’s “stuffing heads with facts” and believing, falsely, that we have “a better way” (“education is ‘drawing out'” –OK, right). Rush has no qualms –he gladly fills heads with misinformation, with powerful results. We are tripped up by our high-minded, half-baked bromides about education, meanwhile the Right ruthlessly and brilliantly exploits the education vacuum our feckless schools leave behind. We impress ourselves with pseudo-sophisticated claims that “there is no Truth”, while neglecting to teach important truths like the concrete particulars of Hitler’s rise, the value of bureaucracy, the carbon cycle, soil erosion, what it’s like to live in a country without rule of law, etc. We labor daily to create what never has been and what never will be: a public school graduate with weak background knowledge who nevertheless is a razor-sharp consumer of information. Please prove me wrong. Show me one of these mythical creatures. For decades we teachers have been crowing about how we’re implanting 21st Century Skills without one iota of proof that we’ve been successful –and, even worse, no curiosity about whether we’ve been successful or not. How bad does it have to get in America before our teachers will start some introspection? I hear none. Since Dewey, teachers have gradually abdicated teaching about the world in lieu of snake oil skills; Rush and Co. have filled the void. They are America’s real teachers. We’re the fake teachers. (GregB is gonna love this one.)
Schools’ job is to teach Reality.
There is no truth to the claim that there is no truth.
You obviously don’t know the way of the world, Ponderosa
Reality is what you make it.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do” — attributed to Karl “Minestein” Rove