Alternative facts, misdirection, and outright propaganda seem to dominate the news media landscape today in a way that is quite different from the past.

NewWorldofUntruth.pptx from Rosalind Warner

Thank you to the Society for Learning in Retirement in Kelowna for honouring me with a lifetime membership! I feel very privileged to be able to continue serving this very wonderful group of humans!

Some Tools for Media Literacy

2018 Edelman Trust Barometer. (2017).

Art of the lie—Post-truth politics. (2016). The Economist. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2016/09/10/art-of-the-lie?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/2016098n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/NA/n

Benkler, Y., Faris, R., Roberts, H., & Zuckerman, E. (2017). Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda—Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review. http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php

ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue. (2022, November 30). OpenAI. https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

Coaston, J. (2018). #QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory, explained—Vox. Vox. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/1/17253444/qanon-trump-conspiracy-theory-reddit

Coles, T. J. (2018). Fake News and Weaponized Bots: How Algorithms Inflate Profiles, Spread Disinfo and Disrupt Democracy. Counterpunch. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/08/fake-news-and-weaponized-bots-how-algorithms-inflate-profiles-spread-disinfo-and-disrupt-democracy/

Devega, C. (2018). Donald Trump’s “chaos magic”: Author Gary Lachman on the far right’s links to occult philosophy | Salon.com. Salon. https://www.salon.com/2018/07/16/donald-trumps-chaos-magic-author-gary-lachman-on-the-far-rights-links-to-occult-philosophy/

Edwards, S., & Livingston, S. (2018). Fake news is about to get a lot worse. That will make it easier to violate human rights—And get away with it. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/04/03/fake-news-is-about-to-get-a-lot-worse-that-will-make-it-easier-to-violate-human-rights-and-get-away-with-it/?noredirect=on

Gonzalez, R. J. (2018). The Mind-Benders: How to Harvest Facebook Data, Brainwash Voters, and Swing Elections. Counterpunch. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/23/the-mind-benders-how-to-harvest-facebook-data-brainwash-voters-and-swing-elections/

Gross, J. (2023, January 10). How Finland Is Teaching a Generation to Spot Misinformation. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/world/europe/finland-misinformation-classes.html

Gutting, G. (2011). The Social Side of Reasoning—The New York Times. The New York Times Opinionator – The Stone. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/argument-truth-and-the-social-side-of-reasoning/

How to Spot a Bogus News Site. (n.d.). Pocket. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://getpocket.com/collections/how-to-spot-a-bogus-news-site

Illing, S. (2018). Hashtag wars: How Facebook, Twitter, and social media changed how we fight wars—Vox. Vox. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/world/2018/10/8/17884154/social-media-cyberwar-isis-taylor-swift-peter-singer

Jenkins, H. (2009). How "Dumbledore’s Army" Is Transforming Our World: An Interview with the HP Alliance’s Andrew Slack (Part One)—Henry Jenkins. Henry Jenkins.Org. http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2009/07/how_dumbledores_army_is_transf.html

Morgan, J. (2017). Sockpuppets, Secessionists, and Breitbart – Data for Democracy – Medium. Data for Democracy. https://medium.com/data-for-democracy/sockpuppets-secessionists-and-breitbart-7171b1134cd5

Mosleh, M., Pennycook, G., Arechar, A. A., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Cognitive reflection correlates with behavior on Twitter. Nature Communications, 12(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20043-0

Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature, 592(7855), Article 7855. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2

Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2022). Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation. Nature Communications, 13(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30073-5

Shao, C., Ciampaglia, G. L., Varol, O., Yang, K., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2017). The spread of low-credibility content by social bots. http://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07592

Weisburd, A., Watts, C., & Berger, J. (2016). Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy. War on the Rocks. https://warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolling-for-trump-how-russia-is-trying-to-destroy-our-democracy/

Yglesias, M. (2017). The Bullshitter-in-Chief—Vox. Vox. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15631710/trump-bullshit