Carol Hart: Becoming an informed news consumer

To The Daily Sun,

I am responding to a letter in the Nov. 7, edition from Jennifer Watson. Jennifer, you have good points about editorializing vs. reporting facts. You are correct, words matter. The example you gave with the headline “Trump fabricates” vs “Trump alleges,” those two words make the difference as to how the sentence is understood.

I’ll add a few other related thoughts.

The field of modern propaganda has been influencing us without our conscious knowledge since the 1920s. The nephew of Sigmund Freud— the father of modern psychology and illuminator of our unconscious minds— learned all he could from his famous uncle, and then put it to use in methodical ways. Edward Bernays was so successful with campaigns, such as selling cigarettes to women, he eventually became an advisor to several U.S. presidents.

Since then, the field of marketing has been refined and codified to include at least 11 techniques. Since the advent of the internet and social media, the field has expanded to include doctored photographs and videos, “news” stories containing partial truths or fully fabricated “information,” and more. We are all manipulated whether we know it or not, without even having to be on social media, but those formats have completely escalated this phenomena from information gleaned about us on social media, websites we visit, etc. These days, it is extremely difficult to discern what is true and what is not. As we all know from current events, the same situation can be perceived and understood from diametrically opposing viewpoints, according to which narrative we believe.  

I’ve recently learned about some important resources that can help us sort out what is true and what is not; where our favorite news sources fall on the right-center-left political spectrum and the wisdom in gleaning information from several sources across the spectrum, and a couple other innovative research initiatives which can help inoculate us from being sheep. 

The Media Manipulation Casebook is a searchable, online database from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. It “advances knowledge of misinformation and disinformation and their threats to democracy, public health, and security.” mediamanipulation.org

The Global Disinformation Index is a neutral, transparent, independent initiative whose mission is to “disrupt, defund and down-rank disinformation sites.” disinformationindex.org 

Cambridge University's Social Decision-Making Lab sdmlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk is another initiative which looks at social and cognitive psychological processes that contribute to human social judgment, communication, and decision-making. They have developed creative video games to help psychologically inoculate us against disinformation and misinformation.

The more we can be aware of how deeply and frequently we are being unconsciously influenced— duped into believing WE are the ones developing our beliefs and viewpoints— the less we will be under the spell of those who would seek to control us. Unconscious influence is outside of our awareness; the more we “wake up” and become conscious of what we are being “fed,” the more we can discern what is true or not. In other words, think for ourselves.

Carol Hart

Meredith