@
ninalanyon Well asked.
We all know the genuine newspapers have their own political slant: the
Daily Mirror would not cover the same matter in the same way, as the
Daily Express, for example; and probably not to the same depth either. They do not lie, they highlight what they think important to their message or supporting their ideas, and down-play the rest. We know this and can allow for it,
if we are broad-minded enough to think, to find other sources, to ask what is
not said as well as what is.
Unfortunately so-called "social-media" have encouraged one, and spawned another, effects:
- A tendency to attract and exploit those either lazy or (often) too frightened, to stop and think, but instead prefer to exclude ruthlessly anything that questions their fond beliefs, and anyone who dares question or disagree with them.
- A sizeable array of what look like very scholarly, analytical on-line "journals" until you start to examine them more closely and realise they are fiercely biased in one way. Notably some of these are very opaque in revealing their identities and places of origin, making it difficult to assess who is behind them, and their motives.
There is nothing new in the former, a human trait. One can think of examples in many cultures and systems throughout recorded history. The latter simply makes it far easier for the manipulators; while conversely, being so Internet-bound makes it easier both for individuals to reinforce their fond beliefs, and for tyrannies to suppress questions and criticism.
.
There is a further problem I see but can only pose as a hypothesis.
That is a general, very poor background knowledge; not of the specific matters but of how they are presented.
How many understand that
correlation and
cause, and
hazard and
risk; are
not pairs of synonyms?
This can have awful consequences, and feeds those manipulators who may well understand those, but want their propaganda forwarded and any evidence or facts against, suppressed; for their own unstated reasons.
How many have even the simplest appreciation of percentages, terms like "exponential", simple statistics, data variation, etc. Ignorance there leads to blindly accepting blindly written headlines like "36% increase in...", with the study-base and population-total omitted. Taking that example:
--- Is the 36% increase in cases or incidents, from 100 to 136, or 10 000 to 13 600?
--- Is the population for either change, 100 000 or 10 000 000? Over what time, too?
--- Is the rise - or indeed
decrease - truly "exponential" or just rapid, as many seem to think? If truly exponential, by what exponent: 2 (usually), 3, 10? And by what time increment: a week, a month, a year, 10 years?
.
"Ignorance is bliss", "a little learning is a dangerous thing". These are ancient saws but perhaps need re-writing:
- Ignorance is unhappiness.
- Little understanding is a dangerous thing.
Anyone can waffle about "exponential" changes or "algorithms" or decapitated "percentages", and think they sound clever; but fancy words mean nothing without understanding them.
Anyone can parrot blogs launched with bad intent from unknown publishers, but it takes moral and intellectual courage to question the "echo-chamber" effect of the worst of [anti-]social media.
