Pluralistic: A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza (28 Oct 2023)


Today's links


The On The Media Breaking News Consumer's Handbook Israel-Gaza Edition.

A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza (permalink)

Media explainers are a cheap way to become an instant expert on everything from billionaire submarine excursions to hellaciously complex geopolitical conflicts, but On The Media's "Breaking News Consumers' Handbooks" are explainers that help you understand other explainers:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-and-gaza-edition-on-the-media

The latest handbook is an Israel-Gaza edition. It doesn't aim to parse fine distinctions over the definition of "occupation" or identify the source of shell fragments. Rather, it offers seven bullet points' worth of advice on weighing all the other news you hear about the war:

https://media.wnyc.org/media/resources/2023/Oct/27/BNCH_ISRAEL_GAZA_EDITION_1.pdf

I. "Headlines are obscured by the fog of war"

Headline writers have a hard job under the best of circumstances – trying to snag your interest in a few words. Headlines can't encompass all the nuance of a story, and they are often written by editors, not the writers who produced the story. Between the imperatives for speed and brevity and the broken telephone between editors and writers, it's easy for headlines to go wrong, even when no one is attempting to mislead you. Even reliable outlets will screw up headlines sometimes – and that likelihood goes way up in times like these. You gotta read the story, not just the headline.

II. Know red flags for bullshit

The factually untrue information that spreads furthest tends to originate with a handful of superspreader accounts. Whether these people are Just Wrong or malicious disinfo peddlers, they share a few characteristics that should trip your BS meter and prompt extra scrutiny:

  • High-frequency posting

  • Emotionally charged framing

  • Posts that purport to be summaries or excerpts from news outlets, but do not include links to the original

  • The phrase "breaking news" (no one has that many scoops)

III. Don't trust screenshots

Screenshots of news stories, tweets, and other social media should come with links to the original. It's just too damned easy to fake a screenshot.

IV. "Know your platform"

It used to be that Twitter got a lot of first-person accounts from people in the thick of crises, while Facebook and Reddit contained commentary and reposts. Today, Twitter is just another aggregator. This time around, there's lots of first-person, real-time reporting coming off Telegram (it runs well on old phones and doesn't chew up batteries). Instagram is widely used in both Israel and the West Bank.

V. "Crisis actors" aren't a thing

People who attribute war images to "crisis actors" are either deluded or lying. There's plenty of ways to distort war news, but paying people to pretend to be grieving family members is essentially unheard of. Any explanation that involves crisis actors is a solid reason to permanently block that source.

VI. There's plenty of ways to verify stuff that smells fishy

TinEye, Yandex and Google Image Search are all good tools for checking "breaking" images and seeing if they're old copypasta ganked from earlier conflicts (or, you know, video-games). The fact that an image doesn't show up in one of these searches doesn't guarantee its authenticity, of course.

VII. Think before you post

Israel-Gaza is the most polluted media pool yet. Don't make it worse.

There's plenty more detail on this (especially on the use of verification tools) in Brooke Gladstone's radio segment:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-gaza-edition

The media environment sucks, and warrants skepticism and caution. But we also need to be skeptical of skepticism itself! As danah boyd started saying all the way back in 2018, weaponized media literacy leads to conspiratorialism:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2018/03/09/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you.html

Remember, the biggest peddlers of "fake news" are also the most prolific users of the term. For a lot of these information warriors, the point isn't to get you to believe them – they'll settle for you believing nothing. "Flood the zone with bullshit" is Steve Bannon's go-to tactic, and it's one that his acolytes have picked up and multiplied.

It's important to be a critical thinker, but there's plenty of people who've figured out how to weaponize a critical viewpoint and turn it into nihilism. Remember, the guy who wrote How To Lie With Statistics was a tobacco industry shill who made his living obfuscating the link between smoking and cancer. It's absolutely possible to lie with statistics, but it's also possible to use statistics to know the truth, as Tim Harford explains in his 2021 must-read book The Data Detective:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

There's a world of difference between being misled and being brainwashed. A lot of today's worry about "disinformation" and "misinformation" has the whiff of a moral panic:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10/are-we-having-a-moral-panic-over-misinformation.html

It's possible to have a nuanced view of this subject – to take steps to enure you're not being tricked without equating crude tricks like sticking a fake BBC chyron on a 10-year-old image with unstoppable mind-control:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Hey look at this (permalink)


A Wayback Machine banner.

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago My notes from Decentralized Economic Systems and Monetary Evolution https://craphound.com/fom2003-decentralizedeconomicsystems.txt

#20yrsago Fox threatens to sue Fox over Simpsons https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/oct/29/tvnews.internationalnews

#20yrsago Extended iCal rant from a timezone warrior https://memex.craphound.com/2003/10/30/extended-ical-rant-from-a-timezone-warrior/

#15yrsago Headlong: laser-fine YA novel about kids’ friendships and escaping destiny from Kathe Koja https://memex.craphound.com/2008/10/30/headlong-laser-fine-ya-novel-about-kids-friendships-and-escaping-destiny-from-kathe-koja/

#15yrsago Bat-Manga: the lost Japanese Batman comics of 1966 https://memex.craphound.com/2008/10/29/bat-manga-the-lost-japanese-batman-comics-of-1966/

#10yrsago Giving no-strings-attached money to the world’s poorest produces remarkably good results https://www.economist.com/international/2013/12/12/pennies-from-heaven

#10yrsago Spanish PM summons US ambassador to explain NSA mass-surveillance of Spaniards https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/spain-summons-us-ambassador-nsa-calls,/a>

#10yrsago Statistics Done Wrong: a guide to spotting and avoiding stats errors https://www.statisticsdonewrong.com

#10yrsago David Cameron threatens injunction against the Guardian to stop further Snowden leak publications https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/david-cameron-nsa-threat-newspapers-guardian-snowden

#5yrsago Consumer Reports finds that D-Link’s home camera sends unencrypted video without unique passwords https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/privacy/d-link-camera-poses-data-security-risk-consumer-reports-finds-a8814384448/

#5yrsago Is this the full list of US cities that have bought or considered Predpol’s predictive policing services? https://memex.craphound.com/2018/10/30/is-this-the-full-list-of-us-cities-that-have-bought-or-considered-predpols-predictive-policing-services/

#5yrsago Trump FCC official publicly lying about censorship on municipal broadband https://www.vice.com/en/article/bj49j8/fcc-falsely-claims-community-broadband-an-ominous-threat-to-the-first-amendment

#5yrsago Bram Stoker’s reference materials for Dracula discovered at the London Library https://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/dracula

#1yrago Adobe steals your color https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

  • Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

  • The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024

  • Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

  • Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

  • Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: Microincentives and Enshittification https://craphound.com/news/2023/10/23/microincentives-and-enshittification/
Upcoming appearances:

Recent appearances:

Latest books:

Upcoming books:

  • The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

  • The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024

  • Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

  • Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

2 Comments