Wednesday, 19th October 2023
Hey Everyone! Welcome back to the YSA Platform! Long time no see. It's been a busy past couple weeks with midterms and assignments. Speaking of which, a weird scientific journal for class got me thinking about how honestly gullible I am. I guess I'm just a bit too easily persuaded by academic jargon and graphs I don't understand. You would think that years on the internet from such a young malleable age would have taught me media literacy. Nonetheless it got me thinking, how does one spot an argument filled with pot holes? Here are my tips:
Step 1: Know that anyone can be a victims of a Twitter Thread
According to an article by the Huffpost, only 48% percent of teens could distinguish between real and fake news. This means 52% of us do not actually know what we mean we say "facts" in Tiktok comment sections and may not be using the phase satirically/dramatically at all. So good question to ask your self before you repost and spread information that genuinely claims to be factual/evidence based is, is it real and not taken out of context. Maybe we would be having fewer internet fights if we all took the time to humble ourselves and remember how easy it is to be fooled and to misread/misinterpret information.
Step 2: Cut through verbose bullcrap
Did you even bother to make sure that you knew the word verbose before continuing? Come on !
All jokes aside, make sure that you are checking that you understand all the words before continuing to launch into an argument with a Facebook post and an extract of a linked dense academic journal that you don't even understand in your arsenal. You might even save time! For example a bunch of users on Twitter mistook a scientific article explaining how ivermectin reduced covid in a lab experiment at it beginning stages as proof that it will work safely in human bodies to cure covid and has saved many lives already doing so. (It hasn't, ivermectin has saved the lives of people diagnosed with river blindness though). If they had just searched the word "In vitro" they would know that ivermectin is not a "proven" FDA-approved safe and reasonable cure for covid in humans.
Step 3: Know Common debate tactics
I know you might be thinking, seriously a conservative speaker? You are suggesting I watch this. The answer is yes because often internet debates, information and headlines are all about being quick and catchy, making it harder to spot potholes. Remember that statistics can be taken out of context, that data can be manipulated by the method that was used to obtain it. That ideas that go against the grain are not always the smartest and neither are ones that are the most popular. That the conversations that we are having in 250 characters and 2 minutes actually really deserve hours of research and without it can lack important nuance, perspective and understanding.
I know this might be less fun than just calling people stupid but hopefully my tips will encourage you to be better at decide what's real and what's not real. Feel free to check out the resources for media literacy at the bottom of the Huffpost that I tagged above.
So long, happy navigating
Zukiswa