First of all thank you all for joining,
we have people on this call from like my
childhood friends and some former
students and some Wake Forest people and some
alumni and we're super thrilled to do
this.  We opened this up to the world
because we think it's actually pretty
critical that this information gets out.
So a little bit about who we are I'm
Roz Tedford Director for Research and
Instruction at Z. Smith Reynolds Library.  I
have two degrees from Wake, an undergraduate
and a masters in English, and Hu you
want to introduce yourself and then I'll
sort of say how we got here.
Yes I'm Hu Womack, an Instruction and
Outreach Librarian is ZSR also a double
Deac and Roz's partner-in-crime
That's right, Hu and I started at ZSR on
the same day in 1994 and so we've been
there almost, July 1st it'll be 26 years,
which is a little bit a little bit crazy.
We didn't actually know each other in
undergrad but we've become close friends.
So the reason we're doing these sessions
is that Hu and I decided sort of four
years ago after the 2016 election and
all that went on in that election cycle
with claims of fake news and
misinformation and disinformation and
Russian interference but we really felt
like we needed sort of to teach about
these things in a more systematic way. 
Librarians have always been about
getting good information to people
right?  It's what we do we get people to the
information that they need and good
quality reliable right verifiable
information, but the sort of popular
culture and the popular zeitgeist
changed a little bit in the last five
years and so we really wanted to start
teaching about this intentionally and so
we decided then in 2016 not by by the
election in 2020 we wanted to have a
full-blown credit-bearing class on these
issues and we have managed to do that in
fact we taught that full-blown three
credit class as a first year seminar
this past spring for the first time and
will be teaching it again in the fall we
don't yet know whether we'll be teaching
this online
maybe a little bit of face-to-face
mostly online whatever that'll look like
in the fall but that's how we sort of
got here.  We developed along the way sort
of three standalone one-shot sessions
about missing disinformation and we will
be teaching those the summer will link
to you guys I mean those at the end but
then we recently have realized that we
really needed to do one about
coronavirus because it's been such sort
of a perfect storm of myths and
disinformation on that so that's how we
got here today.  This is the second time
we've done that we we did it for for a
smaller Wake Forest group a few weeks
ago and we've tweaked it a little bit
but we hope you'll enjoy it we will have
questions at the end and we will send
you a link out to these slides the they
are also linked to in the in the chat
box and we'll do Q&A Q&A at the end so
that's who we are and how we got to
where we are today so a few things to
keep in mind before we really get
started and just want to remind people
of this and then we'll get into sort of
the more meat of it but there is a
difference between this and
disinformation so misinformation when we
talk about that we tend to say things
that are misleading or are a mistake
right so that is things that might be
we're only part of the truth is shown in
order to advance a particular thing or
where people share something
accidentally as truth that is not so
these are things that are intended to
maybe be misleading but are not
necessarily shared with the full
knowledge that there are outright lies
or as disinformation is the actual
propagation of information that is known
from the person who is sharing it that
it is a lie and that it's not true so
those are when we talk about mis and
disinformation they aren't exactly the
same thing we tend to put them in one
word because writing both of them out is
super long and annoying so also keep in
mind and we'll go into a little bit
about how these things happen in this
particular environment of coronavirus
but they thrive in vacuums of
information and in vacuums of expertise
that's where it thrives mis and
disinformation thrives when people are
afraid and mis and disinformation
thrive when power is at stake and that
could be financial power
that could be political power that could
be social capital that's power in all of
its sort of iterations the other thing
to keep in mind and I've been thinking a
lot about this during this coronavirus
epidemic is that people and when I say
people I mean you and me and all of us
and the majority of people who aren't
sort of epidemiologists and in the
trenches sort of medical scientists and
experts we fundamentally don't
understand everything we should
understand about disease and virus and
science and it's not that necessarily
that high schools should be teaching
better right things because think about I
mean I'm 52 and I remember precious
little about science and my daughter
will come in and work on chemistry and
I'll be like yeah does not even ring a
bell
so it's not it is you know those of us
who aren't engaged in science on a daily
basis we forget how science works and
the slow pace of it and them the
methodology is a not sort of thing so
there's this fundamental
misunderstanding about science but also
there's this idea that we understand
science better than we actually do and
we'll talk about that a little bit and
then the last thing to sort of keep in
mind is that mis and disinformation
about disease is absolutely not true I
mean not new it is been going on forever
right TB was blamed on the witches in
the Salem witch trials and in some of
the witch trials in England the plague
was blamed on witches right cholera
epidemics at various times have had
really crazy Mis and disinformation AIDS
was was claimed to be a bioweapon and
there was a whole mess and
disinformation campaign around aids and
then obviously there's vaccines and the
vaccine and autism debate as well which
is based around a lot of mis and
disinformation so not a lot of this
stuff that is happening is not new there
are some new things about it and we'll
talk about that in a little bit so how
does mis/disinformation spread well we
know how it spreads but it's important
to sort of look at each of these
individually first of all we all know
the well-meaning people the family the
friends who post content and will say
things like I don't know if this is true
but
you will learn that Roz and I really
don't like the phrase I don't know if
this is true but because it causes a lot
of bad things to happen so you've got
well-meaning people but you've also got
bad actors right you've you've got
corporations right that are working to
spread mis and disinformation the
internet research agency right that's in
the first chapter of the Muller report
that spells out the playbook for how bad
actors can spread mis and disinformation
when I say bad actors I don't mean
people who's acting skills are under par
I mean people who are trying to create
chaos and sow discord we also need to
talk a little bit about the media I
don't want this to sound like media
bashing because the media environment is
very different now than it was in say
the early 1980s the FCC's Fairness
Doctrine was completely disbanded in the
late 80s as a result of that you have
media which represents specific sides or
platforms you've also got a media
machine that needs to feed a 24-hour
news cycle and it needs to be fed
constantly and oftentimes the only way
to fill it up is with any information
available and often the information
available immediately around an event
it's not the most accurate or the most
telling information bots and trolls are
really important to talk about here
because we throw those words around a
lot but we find that a lot of people
don't really think about what
constitutes a bot or a troll now a bot
is AI or algorithm computer software
that is designed to spread
misinformation so bots can be these fake
accounts on Twitter that follow certain
other accounts on Twitter and
immediately gather any post and then
repost it by doing that and creating
this massive focus on a particular post
it lifts them up in the algorithms and
as a result makes them more apparent
gives them more traction gives them more
credence right inherently
things that are spread out there more
widely end up getting more credence so
that's technology trolls that's people
right that's people specifically
designing content to mislead people or
to simply sow discord so not all trolls
are necessarily going to be spreading
misinformation or disinformation some
trolls are simply out there trying to
sow any kind of discord possible and
that might be by picking fights between
various constituencies or finding ways
to get those constituencies to fight
with each other and then finally we
would do you all a disservice if we
didn't say a little bit about algorithms
algorithms are just the formulas that
tell technology how to behave what to do
so it's a recipe think of an algorithm
as a recipe right Google's algorithm
tells Google what to return in its
search results to you
right now these algorithms are often
black boxes which means we don't
understand exactly how they work or how
they make the decision to show you what
they show you which means the algorithms
are rife for spreading mis and
disinformation because they are agnostic
they are simply spreading that
information without concern for its
accuracy or validity and you'll see
throughout this we're gonna throw in the
occasional meme to hopefully give you a
little bit of a chuckle all right so
let's talk a little bit about why people
believe missing this information so we
actually have one of our future
workshops if these sorts of things
interest you we do a whole hour on these
two things but it's important to
understand that our brains are
hard-wired to take shortcuts right if we
had to individually make every decision
every single day we would never get out
of bed so our brain has certain
shortcuts that it takes in order to make
quick decisions make snap judgments make
just get through day get through a
process and those shortcuts lead us
often to irrational behavior to behavior
that is not
necessarily in our best interest right
and so those are called cognitive biases
and there's a lot of these out there we
just taught our first-year seminar we
had our students memorized I think 18 of
them 18 of each cognitive biases and
logical fallacies because once you
understand this you can start to
recognize them in yourself and maybe
start to compensate for them and resist
them so I'm not going to go through all
18 of those there are super interesting
ones the dunning-kruger effect is
particularly and that is where people
who are experts at things tend to
underplay their expertise and people who
don't know much about something tend to
think they know more about something
right and so that's exactly what's
happening now you have a lot of medical
doctors who are saying things like we
just don't know yet and scientists are
like we're going to need to do more
research and then you have other people
who are your Uncle Joe or your you know
Aunt Kitty who suddenly think that their
biology class from 30 years ago as good
as it may have been right prepared them
for knowing exactly what they need to do
in this so that's what that's a big one
the backfire effect is the one that
frustrates librarians and a lot because
it just essentially says the more
information you give to someone that
their opinion is wrong factually wrong
it actually makes them less likely to
change it right it backfires on you
essentially and librarians are all if I
just give you the data right I could
change your mind and the and brains of
humans and that includes librarians too
right that's every human right is saying
but more information that comes at me if
I have a belief that this is working for
me in some way so less likely I am to
change that believe on confirmation bias
and algorithms feed into this a lot but
we seek out things that agree with what
we already want to be true right so if
we have a particular political
perspective we tend to go to media that
feeds that political perspective right
we follow pages on Facebook or Twitter
or Instagram or whatever maybe some of
you all are doing Tik Tok now I have
not figured it out but that sort of go
ahead and make us feel good about what
we already believe rather than accounts
that make us question or give us
additional things so all of these are
different illusory correlation as where
we see two things that happen and we
make them related
right so some two things happen close in
time and we suddenly want to make one be
the cause of the other and that goes
back to most people just simply not
understanding science availability
cascade is also a frustrating thing and
that is simply but more often you see
something the more likely you are to
believe it's true
and people who are those bad actors they
know that so if they keep repeating
things and they keep tweeting things and
they keep saying things even if those
things are a lie
eventually people's brains will accept
them as true right so those are all sort
of cognitive biases the other side of
this coin of why we believe mis and 
disformation is that people who are
presenting information understand
cognitive biases or intuitively
understand cognitive biases and they
present arguments right using logical
fallacies and those are things like the
appeal to fear we can make people
fearful we can make them much more
susceptible to believing our own way of
thinking even if that way of thinking is
not right
anecdotal evidence now we all have had
these right that is your end of one if
you think back to your scientific
studies right that is my Uncle Joe
smoked every day pack of cigarettes
every day until he was 90 and therefore
cigarettes aren't gonna kill me that is
my friend Susan like sheltered in place
during the last hurricane and nothing
bad happened to their house so I'm sure
I can live through this one right so
that is taking individual one-off
anecdotal evidence right and trying to
say that that is true of everything
slippery slope we see this all the time
and not as if we do X then Y Z ABC and D
are all going to happen right ad hominem
is attacking the person making the
argument and not the actual argument all
of these logical fallacies and again I'm
not going to go through any more of
these we go into that and to in our
longer thing but all of them are
intended to change the conversation from
the argument you are trying to make
which may very well be based on facts
and right and really good science and
all of that and it's meant to change the
conversation so now you were talking
about what might happen in the future
you're talking about what a horrible
person the person is who's trying to say
this or you're talking about your Uncle
Jim and the
the you know the 20 packs of cigarettes
he smoked a day so all of the logical
fallacies are meant to change the
conversation away from from actual facts
and in the end coronavirus case science
so again this is interest to you then we
have a whole session that you might be
interested in well what this means is
that people are messy and the human
psychology is messy and we can't just
blame people right we can't just sort of
say to people oh well you're just stupid
if you believe these things because all
of our brains are wired this way and the
only hope really if there is sort of a
hope is that we start to recognize them
in ourselves and you and I have had so
many conversations over the last few
years about the places where we fall
into these things like we are just as
susceptible as you all in this and you
know we've tried to be better about
things like confirmation bias right
and all of these things but recognizing
them right is the first step recognizing
you have a problem is the first step
right and sort of trying to trying
to make yourself better so anyway so
that's sort of why people believe
mis and disinformation in in a nutshell
so these were just some headlines we
went through Hu and I because we're
teaching about this so much now we have
Zotero library and Zotero is sort of a
source management program we're happy to
do a class on that if anyone's
interested but I'm and we just have been
bringing in every one of these articles
that we can and these are just are the
like the first six of these articles
about coronavirus myths of
disinformation right and then we have
more and we could have filled the screen
up a thousand thousand thousand times
but you can see that there is a lot of
information out there not just about the
coronavirus and this is not right this
this session today is not going to be
answering your questions about the
coronavirus because we are decidedly not
scientists right we both have humanities
social science degrees but we were
talking about all of this information
that's out there even about the myths
and disinformation and we in the in this
presentation when we send you the link
back to it or if you want to look in the
chat all of these articles that the
headlines are for
are in the notes field for this in case
you want to go and read so anyway but
this is just a sample of than mis and
disinformation that's out there so
let's talk about the types of mis and
disinformation around the virus now I'm
gonna jump out I'm gonna take a little
risk here and jump out of the slide deck
for a minute to show you the information
is beautiful website that's the first
link on this page because it's a really
great interface and you can see how they
break up coronavirus myths and
misconceptions and then they have a
great right interface to take a look at
these misconceptions and we want to show
you this for two reasons one because
this particular page is fabulous and
second because informationisbeautiful.net
is a wonderful resource to know
about and again it's linked to in the
slide deck but so for example if we take
a look at the virus there's been a lot
of talk about was it deliberately
created in a lab right this addresses
that right diagnosis the holding your
breath for 10 seconds right this
addresses that and gives you
evidence-based peer-reviewed research and
facts right to give you information to
answer those types of questions so this
is a great site and I'm going to jump
back to the slide deck excellent and
what we've done is from an article that
we found that we've linked to in the
notes field of this slide deck we've got
six categories of the types of missing
disinformation around the virus there
are a lot of stories around the origins
of the virus so we've hyperlinked to
those and they're also in the notes
field so if any of you are playing along
you can use those hyperlinks to to see I
want to get back into the full-blown
slide view there we go because that
looks a little better
how it spreads again science is
unfolding so there's going to be changes
all through this process of the type of
information we have in the amount of
information we have in the accuracy of
the information we have
right around how it spreads so there's a
lot of room in that information vacuum
for mis and disinformation to fill up
that void right information around
symptoms treatment how the authorities
are responding how people are behaving
and then we also put a link here to a
site out of Cornell that's doing a
really good job of gathering all of this
mis and disinformation around the
coronavirus for people to refer back to
so this really is where we could spend
the next six or eight hours talking
about all of these sources and all of
these stories and sort of debunking
right this mis and disinformation
around the virus what we did instead was
curate for you a bunch of really good
sources that you can go to to break this
down and to see good sources for getting
better information and I will tell you
Roz and I love Snopes so we will link
you to Snopes on more than one occasion
in this presentation and if anybody
wants to talk about Snopes at the end of
the presentation we'll be here to talk
to you yeah and if anyone's heard of a
particularly crazy conspiracy theory or
anything feel free to email that to us
or to throw that in the group chat
because we like we gather like the
craziest ones we can find you know I
mean Bill Gates said you know there's a
whole he's always going to be blamed for
something but there's some really kind
of out there and you and I have seen a
lot and there are some really right
extreme things coming out in particular
about about coronavirus and there
there's reasons behind that but anyway
but if you've heard of particularly
crazy ones we'd love to hear about it we
might include it the next time we do
that's right
alright so let's talk about where this
comes from so I would love to tell you
that the mis and disinformation around
coronavirus are coming from unique
places that we've never seen before but
the fact of the matter is is not it's
coming from the same places that mis
and disinformation comes all the time so
first of all you have conspiracy
theorists and groups
and right conspiracy theories are not
new just like right mis and
disinformation around disease right yeah
I mean there have been conspiracy
theories we had our students in our
first-year seminar do some historical
examples of mis and disinformation and
there have been remember Paul is dead
those of us who remember the Beatles
like there are conspiracy theories that
were around long before the Internet
moon landing Kennedy assassination right
there have always been conspiracy
theorists and that's because conspiracy
theories play into a lot of our
cognitive biases right they really dig
into wanting to be in an in-group and
wanting to have more information and
thinking you know more about something
right they really play on on human
psychology
so given given the right conspiracy
theory I sort of think that any person
could become a conspiracy theorist right
because it you know plays into and do a
lot of things but there are a couple of
conspiracy theorist groups in particular
that have latched on to coronavirus and
one is Qanon which is this thing
that has sprung up sort of sense Trump's
campaign that is this amalgam of a bunch
of different conspiracy theories that
have sort of meshed together it's a
little bit of New World Order it's a
little bit of others I think our student
from this past semester Savant is on
this call and he was the lucky one who
chose the Qanon as his class
presentation and Hu and I keep sending
him crazy-crazy links because like they
keep coming up in these conversations
they were involved in Pizzagate they
were involved in the Seth Ridge conspiracy
lots of conspiracies out there they're
sort of hard to pin down on exactly what
they believe but fundamentally they
believe that there is this person named
Q who somehow is privy to this giant
worldwide cabal of wealthy people and
and these wealthy people include the
the Clinton's and Epstein's crowds sometimes
and and certainly Bill Gates and and all
of that so then Qanon has met with the
antivaxxers and and I'm preparing and
I'm we're gonna add another one of these
to the list and before we send out the
list of upcoming things we'll add one
because I
I want to do one about sort of the
history of mis and disinformation around
vaccines on how we've sort of come to
this point with the anti-vaxxers because
they've they have become a huge voice in
these myths and disinformation
conspiracy theories around coronavirus
because of course the way we may
ultimately get back to normal is through
a vaccine and so that is like the
perfect fodder for them then to pop in
if any of y'all have seen the plandemic
video Hu and i would love to have
virtually you know just drink with you
guys and talk through all of the
problems of the plademic video
luckily it's been taken down by a lot of
the social media groups but um it's a
little Qanon on and a lot of antivax people in there that did that video but also
there are government's our governments
blaming China China's blaming our
government right Russia is in Bolsonaro
and Brazil like there are a lot of
governments out there and they are they
right they are spreading mis and
disinformation
through tweets through blog postings
through speeches through whatever um and
that's a lot of that is because
governments are as a whole governments
in the world were unprepared for this
right and not only that's right an
understatement no I mean it would have
been hard to been prepared for this
right I mean this is like something
we've not ever seen before right and so
governments want the same power and
there's an interest in staying in power
and so that happens across all
governments it's not I don't want to
blame anyone government there's a lot of
finger-pointing
about who's to blame for things you have
political groups and not again this is
both sides right you have people who
want to support certain candidate at
certain positions and you have other
others who want to want to tear them
down and so when people have a political
right agenda then the truth often falls
by the wayside and that is not unique to
one political party or one political
side then you have the well-meaning
people I mean you know a good friend of
mine got a text from her mother-in-law
who had been a science teacher early on
in this with the whole if you gargle
with really hot water right
and you know and and drink really warm
water four or five times a day that's
going to kill the virus right because
people right we're scared and they so
there are well-meaning people out there
who think they're sharing the truth and
aren't stopping to think about it and
that is true in all it not all in a fair
number of instances of mis especially
of misinformation right these are people
who really want information to get out
people making money and one of the
things I think our students found the
most surprising in our class this past
semester was the fact that a lot of the
mis and disinformation that comes out
now and that came out in 2016 was being
put out by people who were being paid
for it they had no political agenda
there's I mean Macedonia as a country
that has enormous sort of troll farms
and the people don't have an agenda they
they need money and right and and they
can make money by putting up these
websites and selling ad space on this
website and driving a lot of people to
their to their website and and that is a
way to make money and it's not a
political thing and then you have right
the trolls who are out there sowing
discord sometimes they're paid sometimes
are not paid and then of course you have
the bots right there are programs that
are written to spread this and one of
the articles we linked to earlier when
we had all of those headlines is that at
one point Twitter was thinking that 60%
of the information about coronavirus
that was spreading on Twitter was
actually being spread by BOTS and not
humans and I would say probably another
twenty percent of it was trolled which
makes it just really hard to know what's
going on these are the people who spread
mists of disinformation almost every all
the time right it's not unique to
coronavirus anti-vaxxers maybe the
exception because because of the
discussion of the vaccine on here but
these are these are all the sources of
it
is this me what is me look I did two in
a row sorry about that so here's the
thing so I just found this on this funny
meme Facebook page that I was doing
right so why has it been so bad right
why why is it so bad this time or does
it seem so bad and so number one this is
a brand new thing so there is not sort
of built up expertise that immediately
could point to peer-reviewed
evidence-based research articles saying
no this is not going to happen right so
it is a new disease spreading in new
ways right so that so that number one
that is absolutely true whenever
something brand new happens right any
sort of breaking news right that is rife
for problems with mis and disinformation
second of all it is global right every
single country in the world will
ultimately be facing this and so when
your global right it's not something
that is just happening in one country or
one state or one city or one region then
you have you have global missing this
information you have people from all
over the world giving in to those
cognitive biases and using those logical
fallacies to spread the other thing I
will mention that is particularly bad in
this is that the global scope has us all
inside on social media all the time
so what else are we doing right we are
all scrolling social media searching
looking for information and so that's
made it particularly bad this was
something that sent us all indoors
sent us all hunkering down and so then
you have more people in any given day
looking at social media looking at
looking at the news and an able and
willing to spread information um
it's hitting both people's health and
people's money so both again in any
given time if you want to talk about how
media companies make money driving
clicks to their content right so if I am
NBC News or I am Fox News or I am
whatever they make money off their websites
because they can drive people to those
websites and advertisers pay money to
have their ads on those websites that
people are visiting right so clicks
means revenue so they have to do things
that mean that drive clicks which is
where you get clickbait and you get all
of that and when you look at the stories
that traditionally overtime drive the
most clicks it is things about people's
health right it and/or it is things
about people's money right and this sort
of hits that sweet spot between the two
of those and if you had just added in
you know sort of sex and death then we
would have had this sort of like the
perfect like four points right in there
about what drives people to click on
things right it's people are afraid for
their health and people are afraid for
their financial situation expertise and
this is huge right now expertise is
really diffused because there weren't
there was not already a research lab
researching this particular coronavirus
in the world
so expertise is being built up with
peer-reviewed evidence-based science but
that is a long process and people want
answers yesterday and so you have this
diffuse expertise of people are saying
well based upon what we've seen in these
other similar things but it is not
necessarily going to be true there's a
lot of evidence coming out right now
that this is maybe more a blood right a
blood disease than a respiratory disease
and that sort of changes a lot of the
conversations but it's taken us four
months to figure that out and we will
really not know the full extent of what
it is probably for another six months to
a year
right there is across the world in this
country in particular but also across
the world a growing distrust of science
and part of that goes back to the fact
that with the advent of the internet you
had people who could claim to be experts
right the right gatekeepers were gone
for expertise and we have our students
read this great essay called the death
of expertise which is actually the
introduction to a book that was by the
same name that talks about how anyone
can claim that they are an expert in
today's world and all they have to do is
put it up on the internet and the
how to get people right to their thing
and that makes right that then can make
people distrust science and then you've
had many governments many political
parties across the world really actively
drive the distrust of science and in our
country we've seen that a lot in climate
change denialism which is another we
could do another whole one of these on
that there's there have been a sort of
push to sort of defund science and to
get people to distrust scientists right
so that also does not make for a great
when the scientists are coming out and
saying this is what you need to do if
what you need to do does not make you
happy it is not what you want to do
right then you have this whole body of
people out there willing to bolster your
distrust of science right because it's
telling you something you don't want to
hear extreme polarization not only in
our country but everywhere we
automatically assume if someone is
telling us something we don't want to
hear that they are from the opposite
side of the political spectrum and that
is true on both sides of the political
spectrum right and so that extreme
polarization makes us look at any
information that our cognitive biases
want us to reject and claim that it is
from the other side right which has led
to all the sort of things about hoaxes
right this is a liberal hoax as a
conservative folks or it's a great vast
right-wing conspiracy like whatever
that's out there
people are willing to to push it off on
the other side as a reason to not
believe it because it inconveniences
them and I don't mean inconvenience and
and we can't get our hair cut but but
people's lives are being upended right
there their financial stability is being
upended their health their safety is
being upended right and so we are in the
worst possible place as a country and
many other countries in the world with
this extreme polarization of ever having
come together around something like this
people are afraid fear is the number one
thing that makes us susceptible to mis
disinformation and people are very
afraid and to top it all off the
Russians wrote as a playbook in 2016 and
we could also do and I have another
whole presentation about what happened
in 2016 and what
continued to happen but the Muller
Report and the two were actually now
they're up to three reports from the
Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee
reports all point to the same thing of
what the Russians did and there is now a
playbook for exactly how you can spread
mis and disinformation and get people
to believe it and get people to
propagate it so this really is the
perfect storm not you are here is not
really a joke right you're sort of in
the middle of all of those negative things so what can
we expect going forward well I wish I
had a happier better news one thing is
we will have more science right Roz just
said right in the next year right really
good science is going to come out that
will that will help us because no matter
what it tells us and when it comes to
your health and money you always want
more information right more information
is always better but we'll find that
there's less coverage especially because
science isn't as exciting as the story
changing every three and a half minutes
right the human brain loves that what's
going on today what about this morning
and it changes and it changes well
science is slow and steady and slow and
steady is not what appeals to the human
brain so you need to be prepared for
that conspiracy theories are going to
continue and in fact conspiracy think
conspiracy theories are never going away
about anything because conspiracy
theories as we've just talked about by
their very nature appeal to all of our
cognitive biases right the conspiracy
theories happen because the human brain
likes them right that there's there's
different conspiracy theories that
appeal to different people but as a
whole that concept taps into something
that is extremely human right so that's
not going to go away and as Roz
mentioned that's one of the reasons that
she's preparing a anti-vax of this
presentation because down the road the
vaccine question
may become very dominant again around
this issue and as such we need to really
be working on that um revisionist
history oh my goodness so I was just
thinking right now
there's already revisionist history
going on in the last three or four
months and some of its good and some of
its bad some of it is revisionist
history because we have better
information and we know more other
revisionist history is simply trying to
make us all feel better and look better
about what's been going on right so one
positive revisionist history is that
initially there were a lot of reports
that said oh you don't need to wear a
mask in the early days and if you go
back into February and the first week of
March don't need to wear a mask don't
need to worry about a mask over the
course of about seven days that message
completely flipped right and now as we
look back most of us probably don't even
remember the time that there was
messaging going out saying hey you don't
really need a mask right that sort of
we're past that that's positive
revisionist history right that's when we
learn more we know more we do better but
there'll be lots of revisionist history
where the human brain wants to cover up
things that we aren't quite so proud of
and sort of glosses over them the tech
companies they may help us and they may
not they may improve and they may not
we've already seen in the last week two
major tech companies take two different
perspectives on fact-checking of
information that are radically different
so it's going to be interesting to see
if technology helps us or hinders us
more than likely it's going to do both
right all right so before we get
what you can do and we were used to try
and end on a little bit of a hopeful
note because there are some things you
can do there's some other things that we
wanted to make sure people keep in mind
and this first point I cannot emphasize
enough and this a lot of people don't
understand it so I'm gonna say it
probably twelve different ways but any
interacting you do on a social media
platform with content increases the
likelihood that someone that comes after
you is going to see that content and it
does not matter if you're interacting
with it by putting a frowny face on it
or saying this is the most ridiculous
thing I've ever seen or retweeting it
and saying this is a bold-faced lie or
posting a comment on or something with
your very well curated right data from
the Center for Disease Control or World
Health Organization or whatever any
interaction a comment alike a tweet an
emoji anything makes a piece of content
more likely to be seen by others that
come after you that is the way
algorithms work right any interaction is
a vote so we told our students and I
tell people whenever I can consider your
attention on the Internet right and that
that goes for whether you're commenting
on a New York Times article on the New
York Times web page and we can have a
whole other kind of discussion as Hu
and I often do about why the New York
Times needs to have comments because we
went for century over century
without having to comment on every New
York Times article but um or whether
you're on Instagram Facebook Tik Tok
right YouTube anything is going to
increase that so think of your attention
on the Internet as a currency and spend
your currency wisely so interact with
things that make that you think other
people should see and honestly I can't
say this enough you can actually ignore
things you I know that is hard to
understand but you can actually scroll
on past without commenting liking
thumbs down and friendly face crumbly
face screaming whatever that this
information is wrong because of the way
to beat the algorithm
is to ignore it is to ignore mis and
disinformation so that it falls to the
bottom of the algorithm and then you
don't have to and then you don't have to
worry about that so the next thing to
keep in mind is that changing people's
minds is hard it is really hard and it
is even hard if you have a really close
relationship with someone and it is
going to be impossible if that person is
a stranger in a comment section on
Facebook or Twitter so if your goal is
to change people's minds sink your
energy into and we have actually our
last of the presentations we have going
later in the summer is about sort of
things you can do to be better but a
peer-reviewed evidence based research
shows that it's really hard so don't try
and change people's minds in the comment
section on a news article on Twitter or
on Facebook it's not gonna happen
especially if those person is a
stranger and you can save yourself a lot
of stress by just not trying to do that
um keep also and I don't know how many
of you all use Twitter so we you know on
our students tend you know the the wake
students tend to be mostly Instagram
users and now Tik Tok users they don't
tend to use Twitter or Facebook very
much but the thing to understand about
Twitter is that 20% of Americans have
Twitter 10% or half of those tweet
regularly half of those tweet ever about
politics and half of those tweet
regularly about politics
however those whatever 2 percent of
Americans who tweet about politics on
Twitter are represented in the media as
being the voice of America and it is not
the voice of America and I call Twitter
a rage machine because I feel like
that's all it is like Twitter thrives on
people's anger because when you're angry
you're more likely to share things and
comment on things right and repost and I
find I go on Twitter and in two minutes
like my blood pressure is up but just
keep that in mind about Twitter Facebook
is a bit more representative but it's a
representative of an older demographic
and not a younger
demographic if you see something that
says the truth behind it's almost never
the actual truth
keep that in mind there's a lot of
things going on out there plandemic
being one of those right so anything
that's claiming to have the truth
probably isn't and the last thing to
remember and this goes back to our
cognitive biases is that just because
someone is saying something that you
really really really really really don't
want to hear that does not automatically
make it a lie and this is something for
all of us to remember that because
something is hard to hear and hard to
write to make a change in your own life
about doesn't necessarily make it a lie
and we have to sit with our discomfort
about things and say you know what maybe
I shouldn't go and do X Y or Z that I
really really really really really want
to do just because I don't want to do it
right so anyway so I just want to throw
that out there and then the last slide
we have a list of what you can do now to
be better consumers and I'll jump in and
we'll tag team on this one because we
always do this one together but pay for
your news from reputable sources
especially local news so this one is
really important to me because I pay a
ridiculous amount of money to subscribe
to multiple newspapers online one of
which is the Winston-Salem Journal
because no one is going to cover the
school board of Winston-Salem except the
local paper right so I know a lot of
people are like oh I don't I don't read
local or I don't you know get the paper
I get I only get national news it is
really important that we support
reputable sources and I don't care
whether they're liberal or conservative
reputable sources means they follow the
standard patterns of reputable
journalism that were established over a
hundred years ago of fact-checking of
triangulating sources right good
reputable news sources can be either
liberal or conservative that doesn't
have to anything to do with whether or
not they're doing good journalism all
right well I mean I just want to put
another plug in
for local I think we haven't liked this
coronavirus has brought in too high
relief how important local information
is and I know I've been watching our
local news at six o'clock way more often
in the last four months to find out what
is going on here in Winston not all of
y'all are in Winston you're all over the
all over the country maybe all over the
world but I suspect you have been tuning
in to your local news more to find out
how what's what things are reopening
what is your mayor saying and if we let
our local news sources die we will not
have that information going forward so
they rely now on subscription otherwise
they're going to be beholden to
advertisers and that's never a good
thing right so I'm just gonna and that
could be your local NPR station I'm
awesome as I subscribe to our local
newspaper but I also am a sustainer for
our local NPR station some of you all
may have multiple local news outlets
lucky you so so pick the one that you
think is doing the best work but
also seek out good reliable news rather
than letting good reliable or not
whether than letting whatever news
happens flow across your streams of
information so go and pull good news to
you right use the push technologies that
are built in right to go and tell really
good news apps or whatever push me the
news that that I need rather than just
letting whatever sources or stories pass
by you because as we mentioned earlier
those algorithms are going to mean that
the stories that have the most
interaction are the ones that are going
to flow through your Twitter feed your
Facebook feed Instagram whatever and
those aren't necessarily the most
important stories right just because
they spark the most outrage does not
necessarily mean they're the most
reliable or most important or most
accurate
so check fact-checking sites snopes
politifact
who BBC fact check I will go out on a
limb today and say contrary to what many
of us have heard in the media recently
there is such a thing as a fact and it
is possible to fact check without
political bias
and they're really good sources for
doing that and it doesn't take long it
can take as little as ten seconds to
fact-check a story you're reading online
and to triangulate and to check against
another source it's it's really it's not
a bridge too far and it's something that
I find myself doing more and more and
more and oftentimes I'm doing it even
more with stuff that I agree with
because I fear that I'm falling into a a
my only agreeing with this because it
follows my worldview or because it is it
is based on good research and I'll go
out and fact check yeah and we can
probably skip through some of the
rest of these so that we can get on to
questions
the one thing I do want to emphasize and
then we'll move on to questions so if
you have questions you can start putting
them in the chat is that patience is a
virtue in breaking news situations and
the first story is almost never the true
story and so the more you can show
restraint and not tweeting out or
sharing the very first things that come
about anything we're seeing like there's
now a site tracking all of them this
information around the recent protests
and riots which probably in another a
few months we could do another one of
these on those but just be patient and
read right whatever comes out
immediately in the aftermath of
something is never going to be what is
ultimately the true story about what
happens and the more we can show
restraint and be patient the better
alright so let's go to the last slide
and then we'll start taking and taking
some questions so we do have upcoming
workshops and this this is a QR code if
you don't know that you can point your
little phone camera up out and that will
bring up on a website but will also send
out on the link we have one on the
mechanics of fake news how it and we go
much more into bots and trolls and and
the Muller report and what what that said
about that then we have a whole one on
the psychology of fake news why we
believe it and then our last one is how
we can be about how we can be be better
about it the the site we can send that
out it is a BuzzFeed site so there is
someone on Twitter I just added it to
our
Zotero library but if the title of the
article is we're keeping a running list
of hoaxes and misleading posts about the
nationwide police brutality protests so
I can I can definitely throw that in and
at this point would it be good for me to
go ahead and stop the recording so then
we can then we'll do with the chat then
once I'll go ahead and stop the
recording now just so everybody knows we
know some people have to leave but you
and I are good for staying for a little
bit longer so so keep the keep the
questions coming
