Lesson 04: Disinformation

How do we define and differentiate between the different manipulations of the news that characterize our current media and geopolitical landscape? And what does this era of “information disorder” mean for international reporting and how we work? What kind of knowledge can we use both as consumers and producers of the news to guard against these sorts of campaigns?

We will be joined by Shaydanay Urbani from First Draft News who will lead our discussion. Make sure to have done the assigned reading from Information Disorder.

Assignments

Reading assignment:

Written assignment:

  • Complete Part 2 of the Beat Memo, and bring in printed out to turn in at the start of class.
Agenda
  • REVIEW OF LESSON 3
  • STUDENT LED DISCUSSION OF HANSEN CHAPTER 3
  • DISCUSSION OF OTHER READINGS
  • IN CLASS EXERCISE
  • GUEST LECTURE
Review of Previous Lesson
  • Ask students what their main takeaways were from the previous lesson
  • Share observations from students’ academic source lists; what went right, what could have been improved
Student Led Discussion of Hansen Chapter 3

Turn over discussion to the two students who have signed up to lead the class through this chapter. They must summarize the main points and then frame the discussion.

Discussion of Other Readings

INFORMATION DISORDER: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making, pp. 4-49; 80-85

  • IN LIGHT OF LAST WEEK’S CONVERSATION ABOUT KNOWLEDGE BASED JOURNALISM, WHAT DOES THIS ERA OF “INFORMATION DISORDER” MEAN FOR INTERNATIONAL REPORTING?
  • Important for you to become proficient in this because:
    • You are consumers (in how it shapes your own world view – this has been operating on you your entire adult lives)
    • You are journalists (Want you to be conscious of this in the sources and material you use/reference)
    • You might become go to person on social media for your beat
  • ARE WE TALKING ABOUT “FAKE NEWS?”
    • Authors don’t use term fake news for two reasons:
      • 1st: It is woefully inadequate to describe the complex phenomena of information pollution; 
      • 2nd: The term has also begun to be appropriated by politicians around the world to describe news organisations whose coverage they find disagreeable. In this way, it’s becoming a mechanism by which the powerful can clamp down upon, restrict, undermine and circumvent the free press
  • WHAT ARE THE THREE TYPES OF INFORMATION DISORDER
    • Much of the discourse on ‘fake news’ conflates three notions: mis-information, disinformation and mal-information. But it’s important to distinguish messages that are true from those that are false, and messages that are created, produced or distributed by “agents” who intend to do harm from those that are not.
      • Dis-information. Information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization or country
      • Mis-information. Information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm
      • Mal-information. Information that is based on reality, used to inflict harm on a person, organization or country.
    • WHAT ARE THE AUTHORS CONCERNED ABOUT?
      • implications for democracy
      • even more, the long-term implications of dis-information campaigns designed specifically to sow mistrust and confusion and to sharpen existing socio-cultural divisions using nationalistic, ethnic, racial and religious tensions
      • WHAT ARE THE ELEMENTS OF INFORMATION DISORDER?
        • agent 
        • messages 
        • interpreters
      • WHAT ARE THE PHASES?
        • creation 
        • production 
        • distribution
      • WHAT IS THE RITUALISTIC FUNCTION OF COMMUNICATION? THE PERFORMATIVE ASPECT?
        • a performance in which nothing is learned, but a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed
        • explains why the most “successful” of problematic content is that which plays on people’s emotions, encouraging feelings of superiority, anger, or fear. That’s because these factors drive resharing among people who want to connect w their online communities and tribes
      • WHAT IS SOURCE CHECKING VERSUS FACT CHECKING?
        • in this age of disinformation where we are increasingly seeing information created by unofficial sources (from social media accounts we don’t know, or websites which have only recently appeared), we argue that we need to be doing source-checking as well as fact-checking. Newsrooms, and people relying on social media for information, need to be investigating the source, almost before they look at the content itself.
        • For example, routinely people should be researching the date and location embedded in domain registration information of a supposed ‘news site’ to seeing whether it was created two weeks ago in Macedonia.
      In Class Exercise

      LET’S WATCH THIS TOGETHER

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifv27PnHhvw

       

      HOW DO WE ASSESS ITS ACCURACY?

      Guest Lecture

      Shaydanay Urbani from First Draft News presents on Information Disorder and tools for journalists to navigate it.