Seeking the truth and NOT what’s comfortable

People Sometimes Seek The Truth, But Most Prefer Like-minded Views

It may be hard to believe everything that is said on a blog like this where you have no idea who the authors are. However, you can always trust an educated and respected expert journalist on disseminating wisdom on how to navigate the current mediasphere.

Let us introduce you to Christiane Amanpour, a world-respected (2.9million followers on Twitter!) journalist who has spoken to world leaders, reported on devastating wars and has earned the trust of her viewers and at a TedxGlobal event, she expressed her views on fake news

Watch her TedTalk Now: 

If you’re a bit time poor, here is a quick summary of some of her insights and tips on “How to seek truth in the era of fake news” (ROM) – research, objectivity, morality

Research

‘Research the facts’ may seem redundant and oversaid but nevertheless crucial. If you understand the research, and the facts behind the truth you will have a better context. “so if 99.9 percent of the science on climate is empirical, scientific evidence, but it’s competing almost equally with a handful of deniers, that is not the truth; that is the epitome of fake news.” People are entitled to their opinions, but if you have a massive group of professionals supporting their research, consider it to be truthful.

Objectivity

The battle between bias and objectively is clear in any news source. Being able to tell a story from every angle and not a personal perspective is without a doubt hard. However,  the issue is that objectivity is not the same as fair and balanced. This is where Amanpour brings in a personal story when she was accused of not being an objective reporter when presenting on the Balkan Wars as she reported more on the minority party of the incident. Here she realises that ‘objectivity means giving all sides an equal hearing and talking to all sides, but not treating all sides equally, not creating a forced moral equivalence or a factual equivalence.” Objectivity constantly hangs in the balance. This can be a challenging yet impactful way to seek truth.

Morality

We all have different morals and here Amanpour asks for developers and technology giants to build morality and quote “Filter out the Crap! You guys are good at technology, let’s figure out an algorithm that works. Can we not?” Despite having good intentions, I disagree with pushing all the responsibility to commercial giants to tackle the issue as I have repeatedly said that the answer relies on informed citizenship, being aware of what we read and what we share and contribute as digital citizens.

Not only Amanpour has shed light on the fake news epidemic, in fact many other experts have also spoken on the topic. Check it out here.

-Cecilia

Trumpaganda

What’s a blog on fake news without addressing Trump?

Trump did not invent Fake news nor was he the first administration to have a contentious relationship with the press yet it is no secret that Trump’s use of propaganda has significantly popularised the term, evident during his 2016 presidential election and to some extent, it helped him win.

Fast forward 2 years and fake news have flooded the internet and social media has become weaponised to an extent that it is more effective than airstrikes in destroying the target, in this case legitimate news. Therefore, it comes to no surprise that aside from shaping Trump’s fortunes, fake news has since been used by activists, propagandists and thought police to curate a tide of opinion. By the time the truth is dug up, who knows what damage has already been done.

Of course, Trump has continuously spoken out against ‘fake news’ and journalism, calling it the ‘enemy of the American people‘. You see, Trump likes to tell us what he thinks about Fake News.

Exhibit A: 

Exhibit B,C,D,E…..

Yes, he has a lot to say.  However, what’s ironic is that for all the president’s complaints, he also craves validation from the media. In fact, Trump has given exclusive interviews to The New York Times and, in addition to loving Fox News, reportedly watches CNN and MSNBC every morning.

He is also often the center of fake news posts.

You may have come across this edited photo that appears to show Donald Trump floating in a raft, extending a red Make America Great Again hat to a flood victim. It went viral last year but has resurfaced online as a result of Hurricane Florence

As New York Times reporter Kevin Roose pointed out on Twitter, the pic is a fake ― it was taken in Central Texas in 2015, long before Trump was elected president, and he definitely wasn’t in that raft.

Take a look at the real photo 

It has been shared 275,000 times on Facebook.

Trumps direct and indirect involvement with fake news will continue to exist.

According to a 2018 survey done by ABC, about 7 in 10 Australians are now worried about the spread of false information and of ‘fake news’ being used as a weapon to mislead and influence public opinion. Political engagement is also on the decline.

What can be done? 

Fact-checking. Of course, by fact-checking,  I don’t mean researching every single thing you read on the internet. It can simply mean being mindful of the mediasphere and the key catalysts of fake news (Trump being one of them). It means encouraging public figures to think more carefully about the quality of information they are disseminating.

Look out for more tweets from Trump I’m sure there will be plenty.

P.S Trumpaganda (the title of this blogpost) is actually the name of a university course offered at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign examining President Donald Trump’s impact on democracy and the free press.

-Cecilia

Fake News Laws: The Big Test for Social Media

The war on fake news online and the slow progress of Facebook and Google have led some countries to turn to the legal system for a solution.

Notably, various groups in Singapore are awaiting government report on potential Fake News Laws. The recommended new legislation would provide the government with “powers to swiftly disrupt the spread and influence of online falsehoods” and to prevent people from gaining monetary value for misleading clickbait articles.  It calls for criminal penalties for those who meet a threshold of “serious harm such as election interference, public disorder, and the erosion of trust in public institutions.”

But fighting misinformation with the law is tricky as concerns have been raised over free speech and censorship if these laws were to take place. However, the counter-argument is that these measures will be to ensure freedom of speech can be meaningfully exercised that is not drowned out by fake content.

In fact, not only have discussions emerged in Singapore but earlier this year Malaysia successfully passed fake news laws. This encompassed penalizing not only those behind fake news but also anyone who maliciously spreads this material. This faced huge international criticism due to the controversial debate of freedom of speech and those guilty faced up to six years in prison and fines of up to $130,000. Currently, the new Government is working to repeal the law.

Nevertheless, if fake news legislation becomes a universal reality, it should still be accompanied with increased fact-checking and investigative journalism and building the digital literacy and critical thinking skills of the population.

How do you rate Fake News Laws as a solution? Do you think having legislation on fake news is an effective solution? Or do you think the sacrifice of freedom of speech is too great of a consequence?

Head to our Facebook poll on our FlakeOnFake page to vote!

Cecilia

 

 

Wait…there’s a vaccine for fake news?

“Scientists develop fake news ‘vaccine’ to combat climate change myths” 

How is this possible? Well, it seems that in the debate of climate change scientists have seemingly found a cure against the spread of climate change myths.

The article reads “We wanted to see if we could find a ‘vaccine’ by pre-emptively exposing people to a small amount of the type of misinformation they might experience. A warning that helps preserve the facts.”

A study was done where individuals were subjected to 2 facts- a well-known climate change fact and a fake myth. It was found that when presented consecutively, ‘fake news’ dominated people’s minds.

However, when presented with an “inoculation” — where people were introduced to distortion tactics used by certain groups — as well as a small dose of misinformation and the fact, opinions stayed closer to the truth despite exposure to fake news.

“Conflicting messages can leave them feeling back at square one.”

This is an optimistic approach as it lacks significant factors of consideration- i.e. how do these ‘scientists’ control how news is consumed? How do they know readers will be able to be exposed to small doses of information and facts?

Nevertheless, this is still a good step in the battle against fake news. What do you think?

-Cecilia

When was the last time you logged onto Facebook and got out in less than 5 min?

A thought occurred to me the other day, being a 90s baby, I’ve never known life without the internet and split-second information acquisition. What are the latest fashion trends? How long will Trump be in office for? Where can I get a bagel? Along with our ability to acquire pieces of mostly inconsequential data, we have the ability to access almost any piece of entertainment, a feat that was inconceivable before. Now, what’s the side effect?

Distraction 

Ask yourself this: when was the last time you logged onto Facebook and got out in less than five minutes?

If you’re anything like me, the answer is not recently. All those Memes waiting to be tagged and videos to be watched, it seems we can’t help ourselves but get distracted.

People in my generation are so bombarded with so much information and news on the internet that we cannot fully appreciate what we consume. What are we actually contributing? Is this why fake news has grown so exponentially?

Tristan Harris the founder of the non-profit organisation ‘Time Well Spent‘ has some good food for thought.

Here’s his motive and what he says: “With Time Well Spent, we want technology that cares about helping us spend our time, and our lives, well – not seducing us into the most screen time, always-on interruptions or distractions”

This naturally aligns with fake news, we want to be able to trust the media, trust what we read and not be seduced to click-bait sensationalised articles for monetary gains. Which hurts civilization more: no one believing anything, or everyone believing lies? If we fail to take immediate action to protect our news and information ecosystem we may soon reach the reality of no one believing anything. Therefore, I cannot stress how important it is in being active in demanding the truth and reading critically online. So what’s stopping you?

If you are interested more in his work and the organisation, check out this interview

P.S In the future world according to Google, people walking down the street with a smartphone will be reminded to turn right or buy milk when their internet fridge is empty. So before we lose the ability to think for ourselves let’s help out the media and help them be a true representation of the world we are living in.

 

 

Cecilia

Google, I thought you were my friend

Test Your Detective Skills

You may think that you’re a pro at identifying fake headlines because of how bizarre and exaggerated they can get, why not test your skills?

Take the quiz to find out:

Snippet:

We would love to know how well you did.

Post a comment down below and share your results! 🙂

-Cecilia

Who’s Trustworthy?

Why do we have so many untrained reporters and sensationalist stories floating around? What is the trigger that has inevitably started this never-ending cycle?

The answer is a familiar one: the internet.

The internet has undoubtedly changed the way we consume news whether it be on social media or on a site. In fact, confidence in the media is at an ‘all-time low‘. However, the internet isn’t going away any time soon, so we as netizens, citizens, readers and users must develop an appetite for facts.

With the onset of the ‘click’ economy, you can never be so sure with any news outlet or source, whether it be a credible national organisation or a blog site because hiding behind the reputation of a media company could be a lazy, untrained journalist.

Exhibit A: 

The story of the Thai Cave rescue captured the world’s attention in mid-July this year, dominating all social media platforms as a hot topic. Above is a clip that was highly shared, attracting millions of views on Twitter with the hashtag #13ชีวิตต้องรอด showing cave divers exploring a narrow tunnel.

Seven news was quick to catch on and also tweeted the video. 

However, lo and behold the footage actually came from a 2012 video from Wisconsin.

According to Storyful, the video has been online for a while and shows “clear water conditions whereas the water that flooded the cave was muddy, providing zero visibility for cave divers”.

So here we have it, even seven news, a highly rated and one of Australia’s largest news networks didn’t check up on facts.

So what can we take out of this?

Some might say boycott media organisations but that’s not the way to go because as Professor Fernandez from Curtin’s School of Media once said, there is a pending danger that if people stop trusting the news, they will stop trusting institutions and will stop participating in significant public debates. Debates are still very much needed in our society because that’s how we initiate progress and change. 

Instead, we must start demanding facts and read critically and the mediasphere will change accordingly.

Cecilia

 

 

Read before you Share

Here’s a random thought, how about we all read a full article before we share it to our friends? – simple enough yeah? In reality, statistics show that:

59 Percent Of You Will Share an Article without even Reading It

Why you ask? First, the human attention span is getting shorter everyday- why else are we so attracted to GIFs and MEMES?

Second, we are lazy (to put it bluntly). It requires time and effort to read an article.

Third, some headlines are just too intriguingly funny, weird, touching or interesting not to share right away. In fact, we love the attention from friends and social media when we share an article and the ‘fake’ reputation that we read.  It’s no wonder that the strength and popularity of a piece sometimes comes down to the strength of its headline.

But do we really want to become a generation of lazy, manipulated, misinformed users? 

In the war against fake news, we’ve already tried multiple solutions.

1. we’ve used algorithms by digitally identifying false information and validating information- but, how reliable is this? Can machines differentiate humoristic or sarcasm or even bias?
2. Our friend Facebook has actively installed tools to prevent misleading/spam posts. They have provided us options to hide content with our own classifications of what is false. – but, have any of you used these tools yet?
3. Even Governments have been active, countries such as Malaysia have turned to legislation and laws to combat fake news. However , censorship and freedom of speech concerns render the laws ineffective and counterproductive as debates of whether fake news should be considered ‘illegal’ continue

The real solution lies in you

We can’t escape from bias but we can’t escape from facts either. Think twice before you share the next thing you read. 

Cecilia