Showing posts with label Media literacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media literacy. Show all posts

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Staying sane through the primaries



Editor's note:

A tenth item would be to check your source. Be media literate. Be skeptical of what you fear and read until you have verified the information from credible sources who provide accurate, true information. Beware of what the Trump whitehouse calls "alternative facts." There is no such thing. There may be alternative interpretations and opinions, but there is no such thing as alternative facts. Be aware of false equivalency. Are there two sides to the question, "How much is 2 + 2? "What atoms comprise a molecule of water, H2O?

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

How media spreads false information.



Editor's note:

False information is toxic in the societal consciousness. False information distorts community norms and atittudes contributing to societal dysfunction. The computer meme is "garbage in, garbage out."

Just as we are aware of the idea of "caveat emptor", let the buyer beware, in our economic interactions, we should be aware of media distortions and strive to be "media literate" so we can develop immunity to toxic misinformation.

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Media literacy - When can you believe your eyes?



Editor's note:
One of the positive things that President Trump has done for the American people and people around the world is make them aware of the prevalence of fake news. Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert, and an expert on "persuasion techniques" teaches that 80% of news is fake.

One of the definitions of mental illness is to be out of touch with reality. There is "fundamental reality" which is our experience based on the laws of nature wherein we manipulate phenomena and there are consequences apart from our human interpretation, opinions, and meaning making. And then there is "constructed reality" which based on social consensus, norms, selective perception, confirmation bias and projection.

Most images and videos fall into the area of "constructed reality" and what is depicted is not "real" in any tangible, concrete sense. Images, as in the case of the map is not the territory, are always fake and not the real thing. The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.

Being able to tell the difference between "fundamental reality" and "constructed reality" is a higher level cognitive function that most people have not attained, but, with effort, can learn.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

Media literacy - Can you believe your lyin eyes?



Editor's note: An area why this idea of misperception is especially egregious is in witness testimony in criminal trials where innocent people are falsely identified and purported to have done things they did not do. Witness testimonies are often inaccurate and unreliable. We tend to see what we think we should see rather than what is really there.

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Can we overcome the psychosis in our society and come to "really see?"

Tim Folger writes in the forward to The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018 about the corruption of speech in our national conversations facilitated by cable news and social media. Mr. Folger points out that this corruption was foretold by George Orwell in his novel 1984 when he coined the term "Newspeak." This idea of the creation of propaganizing memes is at the heart of what is being called in the Trumpian age, "fake news."

"Early in 2017, for some strange reason, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four suddenly jumped to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list. Orwell laced his dystopian novel with Newspeak, the language of Oceania, one of the story’s perpetually warring states.

Here’s a short sampler of its Big Brother–approved vocabulary: minipax—the Ministry of Peace (Oceania’s war department, not to be confused with our Department of Defense); prolefeed—mindless mass entertainment; malquoted—what today’s authoritarians would call fake news. And then there’s blackwhite, a synecdoche for all the perversions of Newspeak: to believe that black is white. Our own leaders have given us “enhanced interrogation,” “collateral damage,” “clean coal,” and so many more."

Kean, Sam. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018 (The Best American Series ®) . HMH Books. Kindle Edition.

These propaganizing memes cannot be stopped because the means of dissemination are obiquitous. The best hope for restoring sanity to the members of our society is making them aware of the forces of communication which are being deployed to influence them so they can choose their own thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors and not just react in mindless ways.

In psychiatry, "psychosis" is a term of servere cognitive disorganization which places the person suffering from it out of touch with reality. It seems that we are witnesses to this daily in our news stories from politicians who express inaccurate ideas which do not correspond with any reality other than the one they are intending to create in their target audiences with their own dissembling.

Marianne Williamson, a Presidential candidate, tells us we have to "really see", "not just look, but really see." This ability to "really see" requires a maturity, a nonreactivity, an ability to apprehend a spiritual vision of self, community, and society which far exceeds what we have been led to hope for from politics.




Media literacy - Can you spot a "dog whistle?"