@WordsmithFL @MLClark The assumption that people will act in their own best interest is a fallacy. There are many reasons they won't. On a singular level, a person may not be able to act in their own best interest for all sorts of reasons: anger, lack of knowledge, unable to find a path to belonging. #MediaLiteracy

@TheresaVermont @WordsmithFL @MLClark I've come to realize that some people are simply incurious. I had emailed my RW friend about the explosion in medical disinformation and said it had become an industry. He asked me what the difference was between misinformation and disinformation as he didn't know. We've discussed misinformation and disinformation for a couple of years. He has a search engine in his hand. Why has he never looked up the definitions?
#medialiteracy

@peterquirk @TheresaVermont @WordsmithFL

Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation: all incredibly important to watch out for, with "malinformation" maybe being the hardest to spot, because it's all about figuring out the proper proportional response to a given factoid in a broader news context.

But you're spot on, Peter: that education can only arise among people even interested in pursuing it. So, we need people to understand why it matters - another Herculean task!

Well, if @b4cks4w says it, it must be true! 🤔 You wouldn't perchance have a bridge to sell me, too, would you?

@MLClark many people say it's the greatest bridge, no one could build it but me

@TheresaVermont

False equivalency is a fallacy that legacy media perpetuates in a HUGE way, too, which has a number of consequences.

It doesn't just distort critical civic issues and create the sense of a level playing field between candidates where none should exist; it also normalizes the use of this rhetorical device in any discourse readers and viewers carry out elsewhere, too. So this is a great choice! Retraining for better media literacy requires tackling this fallacy head-on.

@MLClark I like your use of 'normalize' in this. I can see that. Media actions suggest that in the presentation of two sets of ideas, there's a reason that we should investigate both as equivalent choices, but in reality, it's comparing Mother Teresa to Adolph Hitler. One has to look at the value structures before even allowing the comparison. #MediaLiteracy

@TheresaVermont

And I like your use of "values" as a way or bridging all the data and technical jargon so easily weaponized by actors in these media realms!

There's so much reactivity baked into our approach to media, it's easy for folks to forget to develop a more proactive vision for what they want from their societies.

If we *could* bypass the clickbait, and foster the creation of forums for thinking about everyday ideals, that could dislodge a lot of mental blinders. #MediaLiteracy

@MLClark I've often started political choice conversations by discussing values, without mentioning politics. Do we owe care to the aged? Why? Do they have a right to a return on the SS investment? Would you want to know you had something in your old age? Then the politics. How can you vote to ensure your values are represented? I learned this conversation while selecting IT systems.

@MLClark

As for myself, I definitely used to believe that people could be rational in ways that they just are not. We may have degrees of rationality, but are primarily motivated by emotion.

I once read a study on how people make decisions, and nearly everyone makes a decision very quickly and based on emotion... and, people who considered themselves rational were actually the fastest to make a decision before they had information. (Least likely to question their decisions.)

@tyghebright @MLClark Emotions tell you which decisions matter to you. They are where we seek meaning.

Our heads may tell us how to accomplish something, but it is our emotions that tell us what we want to do.

@AskTheDevil @MLClark

Working in marketing and sales (writing business proposals), it's important to remember that we might write a 250 page proposal with all the facts... but most often, the decision's been made based on how someone feels, in the first two pages.

@tyghebright @MLClark I quit working in marketing because it turns out I cannot lie for a living, and that was largely what the job always was.

It really is about manipulating people's decisions by manipulating the emotional content and spin of ideas.

Of course that power can be used for good, but it typically isn't.

@tyghebright @MLClark (To be clear, I worked in the _bad_ kind of marketing. I'm the Devil. It's not like anyone would send me to inspect something full of happy kittens and people behaving well.

@tyghebright @MLClark I feel like someone who claims fiction is lies is either ignorant or some sort of zealot.

@AskTheDevil @MLClark

The first time I encountered it, I had no idea how to respond. It was a fellow student worker at the library. It was like some revelation to her, that all these books were "made up". Like, she'd previously thought they were real? It was weird. And she was the person who leaned most into fiction being "lies". But I've run into a lot of people who see it as misleading and silly, and who only read non-fiction and "inspirational" work.

@tyghebright @MLClark I've always been amazed that there are some people who can both be avid readers and not like stories.

@tyghebright @AskTheDevil @MLClark When I lived in Macon, GA, a pastor wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper saying that the kids' show Barney was evil because it forced children to conjure things from their imaginations that weren't real. And I met an English professor who had grown up in KY who as a child was only allowed to read the Bible and that was meant to be read literally. Fundamentalism has a lot to answer for.

@Notokay @tyghebright @MLClark Oh, I've met people. I used to give them ghost sickness just to put them out of my misery, but I'm more civilized now.

To be fair, most of me is _made_ of story. I am a creature of the noosphere, the logosphere. Things that hate and poison stories are kind of like a disease to beings like me.