The presentation that I found to be most interesting from our second Each One Teach One project, was the presentation on Awareness Words. While the other presentations including my own showcased some aspect of communication issues and disinformation, the terms and concepts presented in the Awareness Words presentation had a greater focus on the purposeful and often immoral side to the spreading of disinformation.
The presentation first talked about propaganda which refers to the spreading of ideas ,information, or rumors that can hurt or help people, organizations, or causes. We have seen numerous examples of propaganda used throughout history from multiple cultures. Governments will often use fear mongering propaganda in order to unite and control their citizens under the disguise of being patriotic. One of the most despicable examples of propaganda comes from the anti-jew propaganda used by Hitler and the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Another concept from the presentation that fit this theme of the spread of misinformation is the concept of False Flags. False Flags are operations that are committed with the malicious intent of putting the blame on another party. This to me is an extremely detrimental and potentially dangerous practice because of how hard it can be for citizens to distinguish what is the truth. Our government has the funds and the manpower to pull these False Flag missions off, and if they do we may never know they had any involvement.
Our ability to discern real and credible information from false information is critical to being well informed and responsible citizens, but due to these concepts laid out during this presentation, it is becoming harder and harder for us to do so. What we should take away from this, just like with other of our discussions, is that we should try to stay open to various sources of information, as if we limit ourselves we may be more likely to fall victim to the negative effects of disinformation.
No comments:
Post a Comment