Can Media Literacy Save Lives?

I have been told numerous times that school does not adequately prepare students for life outside its walls. And it is no secret that educational institutions consistently fail to teach tomorrow’s adults about ‘real-life’ skills, such how to file their taxes, how to interpret a contract, fry an egg, or any other practical knowledge necessary to navigate the world around us.

From my experience, I do vaguely remember solving math problems about cats who ate 200 watermelons, trains going at 1000 mph, or the multiplication tables. All things which are either useless, or obsolete, to the majority of the population — because such cats do not exist, and we have calculators in any of the two or three gadgets we carry around on a daily basis.

But I digress… The point is that the world is evolving, and education systems are lagging behind in several ways, with ever increasing consequences.

The World Is Getting Too Small

With all types of extremist behaviours on the rise, the world is starting to feel a bit claustrophobic.

If you go to a church you might get shot, if you go to a mosque you may be gunned down, if you go to a synagogue you may die at the hands of a drive-by shooter, if you go on public transportation you may get blown off, if you get on a plane it may be highjacked, if you’re out feeding the pigeons at a park you may be ran over, and if you’re home you may get a letter-bomb on the mail.

It feels like we are living in a planet where everyone believes to have a good reason to go on murderous rampages.

Think I’m exaggerating? Let’s look at some recent examples:

April 23, 2018: Man kills 10 people in Toronto Canada. He belonged to a group, Incel (involuntary celibate), consisting of a bunch of sad men who feel it is unfair that they are still virgins. Consequently, they blame everyone but themselves for this. An attitude which, this time, turned to rage and resulted in a terrorist incident.

October 27, 2018: An individual opens fire on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. This terrorist killed eleven people and injured six others, as motivated by White-Nationalist/Anti-Immigration ideologies.

January 27, 2019: The, now allegedly defunct, Daesh claimed responsibility for a terror attack in Jolo, Sulo, Philippines. On that day, the group killed twenty Christian worshipers after planting two bombs inside a Roman Catholic cathedral.

March 15, 2019: In Christchurch, New Zealand, a man espousing White-Supremacist ideologies murdered fifty individuals and injured fifty others. The victims were Muslim worshipers, praying across two mosques when the man indiscriminately opened fire on them.

Unfortunately, many more examples can be found through a basic Google research, although the former are illustrative of the fact that terrorism has effectively been adopted by an eclectic range of actors. Consequently, the phenomenon can no longer be interpreted as an end in itself, but rather as a tool for extremists of every walk of life to materialise their rage and insanity.

Fake News Are Bad News

The exhausting over-usage of the term ‘Fake News’ has become so ubiquitous that one exhales with dread any time it makes an appearance.And I would say that we, as a society, were too quick to underestimate the phenomenon as merely a by-product of current times.

The overall reaction has been one of outrage and irritation at the fact that world leaders and media outlets alike are capable of blatantly lying to our faces. That reaction instead, should have been one of urgency and serious concern. People were too quick to be ‘shocked’ that someone would lie, instead of being properly worried about the consequences of said misinformation.

Today ‘Fake News’, like all things that do not go extinct, is evolving right before our eyes. And just as we are starting to figure out how to navigate such problem, new artforms are surfacing to efficiently disseminate falsehoods.

Introducing: ‘Fake News 2.0’

Contemporarily Fake News, as a concept, is starting to be tamed as people are acquiring new tools to counter its effects. For example, websites like Snopes provide impartial, and factually correct information on stories or events suspected to fake. These new fact-checking tools are at the forefront of combating the insidious effects of Fake News, and consequently, new ways of spreading misinformation are coming to the fore.

Here are two examples of new(ish) techniques.

Fake Narratives

These happen when an interlocutor collages pieces of factual information and manufactures a fake explanation for them.

For example, when Trump retweeted content from the far-right British extremist group Britain First, one of the videos was captioned ‘Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches’. The video indeed showed two boys fighting, one of them in crutches, but neither of them was a ‘Muslim migrant’. That being said, the video was real but the narrative generated by the caption was wrong (as rectified by the Dutch Embassy).

In other words, you can have content that is not adulterated (e.g. real photographs or videos), with a narrative that completely distorts the reality of facts. And since it is statistically improbable that everyone exposed to whatever information has done so in person, there is a high likelihood that said narratives can be absorbed as truthful. Today, we have a vast amount of YouTube videos, Tweets, or Facebook posts of events assembled in a way that furthers specific agendas. We also have media outlets dedicated to the spread of inflammatory falsehoods, which I will not be mentioning by name in order to refrain from giving them unnecessary publicity.

Photoshopping and Deep Fakes

The rationale behind this technique is as old as fraud itself: forge documents in order to get what you want. But with the evolution of technological tools, it is becoming increasingly difficult to discern truth from fiction. For example, BuzzFeed published a compilation of twenty-two viral pictures that turned out to be fake, some of which looked quite credible.

The same concept can be applied to video footage, and more recently, to make people say things they never did. That is the whole premise behind Deep Fakes, a program which allows users to mirror their messages, mannerisms, and movements onto someone else. For example, there is another BuzzFeed piece in which American actor Jordan Peele makes a virtual, three-dimensional, bust of Barak Obama speak and move in real time. In a way, this technique is something akin to digital puppeteering.

The point being that lies are indeed very real, and the technologies facilitating such practices are evolving at an unprecedented speed. This, in turn, leaves more people at risk of becoming victims of dishonest practices.

The Social And The Media

I do not subscribe to the view that we are increasingly disconnected from our fellow human beings. What I do believe is that such connections are happening through mediated forms, as facilitated by new technologies. And just as certain societal norms had to be readjusted with the appearance of the telephone, for example, the same is bound to happen with all other technological tools in the present and future.

In other words, it is not the tool itself that is problematic, but rather how people use it.

The truth of the matter is that we are constantly adapting to new ways of interacting with one another, and it is incredibly concerning that the dishonest practices mentioned above are diffused through most of these mediums. Although we are not inherently disconnected from one another, our connections are increasingly dependent on new technologies, which serve as both individual and communal places. For example, I can use Facebook to call someone specific and have a one-on-one conversation, or I can interact at a communal level with several individuals in any of the other spaces inside the platform.

So, the problem is not that we interact less, but rather that we are increasingly interacting in places where the immaterial is all there is. If someone shows me their Unicorn on Facebook, there is no way I can make a physical inspection of the animal to see if it is just a horse with an ice cream cone on its head, or if it even exists at all for that matter.

Therefore, the ways in which we interact are redefining the social space we inhabit, leaving us vulnerable to new malicious practices.

Confirmation Bias

This concept has become increasingly popular in the last few years, and it basically refers to the mental gymnastics individuals make to mould the facts around them to confirm their established beliefs.

Take the previous example of the Facebook Unicorn. If I already believe in Unicorns, even if I have never seen one, that picture is proof of my previous belief. Therefore, I no longer have to think about it nor look for further flaws in the document. This is now proof that Unicorns exist.

On the other hand, if I do not believe in Unicorns, I will go above and beyond to find flaws in the picture, in order to discredit it. Even if I find no particular flaw with that picture, I will explore all other possible materials that will put to rest the hypothesis of Unicorns existing.

When applied to Unicorns, this seems fair and even humorous to a certain extent. But problems will most certainly become more serious when we apply the concept to politics, and even other people.

Confirmation Bias and Personal Politics

With the advent of the personification of politics we are more individually invested than ever in how political events unfurl. This means that political candidates and campaigns are increasingly less perceived as vehicles for the development of policies, economic management, and international relations.

Ever more frequently politicians are speaking to me, the individual, rather than we, the people.

This approach does wonders to make individual citizens feel valued, and to humanise an otherwise boring, highly bureaucratic, and elitist role. Politics, as a daily job, is far from being the glamorous set of practices seen in political campaigns. But it is through those very same campaigns that the electorate accesses a candidate’s fitness to fulfil the role.

A confusion about what politics is, or should be, together with a shift to highly personalised perceptions of it, constitute a very precarious recipe for social disaster.

By not associating candidates or parties with policies or ideas, but with their personal selves, voters are encouraged to pick sides based on pride and spectacle rather than rationality. If someone attacks your candidate, they are effectively attacking you, and therefore to defend that politician as a person is to defend yourself.

Add the aforementioned confirmation bias to the mix, and dangerous grounds start to appear in the horizon. Not only are people breaking their backs to sustain their world-views, they are also doing so to defend their identities and honour.

In a very summarised manner, the process looks like this:

-Personalistic and Spectacular Politics tie candidates with voters at an intimate level.

-A pre-existing confirmation bias becomes enhanced by voter’s need to defend their world-views and themselves (since politicians are now an extension of who they are).

-Drastic times, require drastic measures; and with an almost survivalist passion, people resource to extreme actions.

Fertile Ground

By now, it should be fairly obvious that contemporary society encourages individuals to consume false narratives and news almost instinctively. This is because they offer the necessary tools to sustain world-views and defend individual identities.

Today, there are various challenges when it comes to combating extremisms. First, the strong attachment and emotional response individuals have to politics. And second, the lack of formal education on how to circumvent Fake News, Narratives, or other dishonest practices.

Considering that I am not a trained psychologist, and therefore am not equipped to delve into the psycho-emotional wirings of human existence, I have no impactful suggestions on how to address the first problem.

Although I do believe substantial progress can be made with regards to the second one, by means of formal education.

We Need Media Literacy In Schools

Considering that we are reaping the consequences of being incapable of understanding, and deciphering, the ubiquitous stream of information bombarding us daily, we need to better equip future generations.

When I was growing up in the 90s there were two dominant mediums: TV and Print. Whether you were an adult or a child, you had access to the same tools to consume information. And most importantly, that information had an ‘owner’, someone who was accountable for it and its repercussions. If a news outlet spread harmful information, it could be sanctioned. Meaning that those producing content had to do their due diligence or face repercussions.

Although, the discussion on accountability and regulation is a whole other topic in itself. And I believe that, for as long as big companies can afford to dodge any meaningful conversation, we should be focusing on prevention. Children (and adults) should be taught how to filter information, how to engage with it, and how to act accordingly.

In a world ridden with digital tools and spaces, but still suffering the consequences in a very material way, critically engaging with said tools should come as a second-nature to all. Whereas before, we would see the news at eight o’clock, or if we found a newspaper lying about, today we get it everywhere at all times.

There is an urgency in equipping upcoming adults with the necessary tools to use available technologies, but also to critically engage with them. We need to be preparing the next generation to live in this ‘smaller’ world, because the present one is clearly not managing to do so.