The US Department of Homeland Security Urges 'Digital Literacy' (cnn.com) 56
In the war against misinformation and social media-inspired violence, ultimately the social media platforms are just one front. But what about the people consuming misinformation? In June America's National Security Council unveiled a "National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism," which argued that "pursuing the goal of preventing, disrupting, and deterring acts of domestic terrorism... can mean, broader still, cultivating the type of digital literacy that can empower the American public to resist those who would use online communications platforms and other venues to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize to violence."
This week America's Department of Homeland Security warned the country still faces "a diverse and challenging threat environment" including the possibility of violence "by individuals and small groups...including domestic violent extremists and those inspired or motivated by foreign terrorists and other malign foreign influences.....These actors continue to exploit online forums to influence and spread violent extremist narratives and promote violent activity." (Though they add that the agency "is not aware of an imminent and credible threat to a specific location...")
But besides offering links to mental health resources and info on law enforcement tip lines, the agency also suggests Americans "Maintain digital media literacy to recognize and build resilience to false and harmful narratives" — linking to an online publication about "Media Literacy and Critical Thinking Online."
Here's our look at the documents they're making available — and the language that they're using to convey the threat.
The two-page PDF file includes this checklist with "Key steps for digital media literacy," which boils down to:This week America's Department of Homeland Security warned the country still faces "a diverse and challenging threat environment" including the possibility of violence "by individuals and small groups...including domestic violent extremists and those inspired or motivated by foreign terrorists and other malign foreign influences.....These actors continue to exploit online forums to influence and spread violent extremist narratives and promote violent activity." (Though they add that the agency "is not aware of an imminent and credible threat to a specific location...")
But besides offering links to mental health resources and info on law enforcement tip lines, the agency also suggests Americans "Maintain digital media literacy to recognize and build resilience to false and harmful narratives" — linking to an online publication about "Media Literacy and Critical Thinking Online."
Here's our look at the documents they're making available — and the language that they're using to convey the threat.
- Consider the source, triple-check the source, and identify the author
- Inspect the URL, examine spelling and punctuation
- Seek alternative viewpoints
- Think before you share
It warns that misinformation (and intentional disinformation) "can undermine public confidence in our system of government and its institutions. However, communities and individuals can equip themselves with effective tools, knowledge, and resources that do not impede the free flow of reliable information — a cornerstone of a healthy and functioning society. Every individual plays an important role in recognizing and building resilience to false and harmful narratives."
To help, the document ends with a list of online resources from various government agencies, including a "Social Media Toolkit" from America's Centers for Disease Control and a Department of Education document titled "Teaching Skills that Matter: Digital Literacy". There's also a document for state and local officials called COVID-19 Disinformation Toolkit: "We're in This Together. Disinformation Stops With You."
But what's really fascinating is that among the links are something called "Resilience Series graphic novels" — presumably aimed at young learners. And they were created by the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA):
"CISA's Resilience Series...communicates the dangers and risks associated with dis- and misinformation through fictional stories that are inspired by real-world events... The Resilience Series highlights the importance of evaluating information sources to help individuals understand the risks from foreign influence operations on our society and democracy."
In the series' second graphic novel, the protagonist uses their "wits and journalism skills to uncover a disinformation campaign set to damage Fifth Generation (5G) critical communications infrastructure in the United States."
I've wondered if our schools would have to start teaching "digital media literacy". But if they do, apparently educational materials have already been made available.
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Re:Go after right-wingers (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, no. They want to educate people, specifically those prone to confirmation bias, about the ease at which disinformation and misinformation is spread. However, it seems many people now seek out information promoting confirmation bias.
The truth is congress needs to pass a law that prevents profiting from the spread of disinformation/misinformation before the DHS can do anything substantial.
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Anonymous Coward proving why these efforts will ultimately fail. Thank you.
(Yes. That was cynicism, you're welcome.)
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Both sides are illiterate as hell in tech and try to force people into being even more illiterate at it, but for different reasons.
There's no actual "pro everyone being good at computers" party in the US.
Re:Go after right-wingers (Score:4, Insightful)
"which argued that "pursuing the goal of preventing, disrupting, and deterring acts of domestic terrorism... can mean, broader still, cultivating the type of digital literacy that can empower the American public to resist those who would use online communications platforms and other venues to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize to violence."
I am guessing that they aren't talking about when the NYT and other national security state stenographers try to gin up new regime change wars in other countries, and all the violence and death that results from that.
"It warns that misinformation (and intentional disinformation) "can undermine public confidence in our system of government and its institutions."
I am pretty sure that our government and its institutions have already done a pretty good job of undermining their own credibility by consistently lying to the public and covering up their wrongdoing. Ask Julian Assange about what happens when you talk about what the government is covering up.
Re:Go after right-wingers (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately we don't have a population that has learned how to test information for its veracity. Our school system is actually discouraging that. We still have teachers who reprimand and outright punish students who point out when they are wrong, because they think it's more important that the student learns to accept what they're being told and correcting "their elders" is wrong.
In a teaching climate like that, how do you expect anyone to ever develop the skill to verify and falsify information?
So finally the people catch on and realize they are being bullshitted. Well, duh. I mean, even the biggest dimwit has to realize by now that the system is rigged against them. But now comes the catch: They don't know what to do now. They have been taught to believe what they're told. Now they find out that what they were told is bullshit. Since looking for answers themselves is not possible for them, the only thing they can do is believing someone else.
And there is hardly a shortage of someone wanting to tell them what is "The Truth (tm)" with the internet available.
Their fact seeking can pretty much be summed up as "I don't want to beleive A anymore, so I go and believe B. For pretty much the same reason I first believed A: None at all. I just believe it".
If you want to change that, the first thing you need to change is how we teach our kids to tell right from wrong. We have to stop teaching them "You have to believe me and don't even dare to look for errors in my narrative!" or it won't end well.
Re:Go after right-wingers (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely, but it would not behoove those in charge to have the worker bees start thinking too much. I believe that is a major function of going to privatized "charter" schools, where a very diluted and sorely lacking curriculum is the only option, with lots of standardized testing and no teaching of critical thinking skills. Critical thinking skills would not only mess up narrative management efforts, but would also make people start to question things like corp[orate advertisements, government announcements and the drivel that the Corporate Owned News pumps out on a daily basis.
We have one of the most stratified and unequal societies in human history, and it takes a lot of narrative management to keep the worker bees humming along at their low paying jobs.
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That cat is out of the bag. The "worker drones" already noticed that the emperor has no clothes. You can no longer pretend that this system benefits the majority of people. It doesn't. And the veneration people once had for their leaders has long changed to utter and total contempt. I dare say that one of the key reasons a lot of politicians and corporate leaders are still alive is that they're not worth a second of jail time in the mind of a lot of people.
But if you only have people whose sole way of findi
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Ask Julian Assange
First you have to tell me why I should take the word of one of Putin's propaganda employees.
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Are you saying that you need to be ignorant to be a right-winger?
Big vested interest but still good advice! (Score:2)
Let's all do our bit to make nimping acceptable a
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Will it help (Score:2)
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How does one purify oxidized sodium nitrite at home, i.e. 95% NaNO2 that has oxidized to 5% NaNO3? The salt does not want to exist, and I have a reaction that requires reasonably pure HONO. Once the NO3- content cannot be ignored, adding a strong mineral acid to the NaNO2 under controlled, cold conditions (-20 degrees) yields something that degrades rapidly due to the formation of HNO3.
I am not sure what you are trying to do. Nitrous acid is very unstable under any conditions. The usual procedure is to generate it in situ and react it immediately. I don't think it can be stored at any reasonable temperature. I cannot think of any easy way of separating the nitric and nitrous ions that does not involve complicated chromatography. This kind of chemistry is not really suitable for doing outside a properly equipped lab.
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Re:Will it help (Score:4, Interesting)
Many people don't like critical thinking. I have met such people. They have already decided what is and isn't true, and they outright hate anything that gives them good reason to question those decisions. I encountered this a lot when I was in philosophy class studying formal logic. Some were religious people who started getting really resistant when they realized that the logical fallacies we were learning about were, in fact, used very prominently in their religious teachings to reinforce belief. Even though the teacher never once brought up the topic of religion and never once used religious-related examples to demonstrate the logical fallacies (everything was very deliberately kept mundane and safely neutral), the more these students made the connections the angrier and more defensive they got, until they just dropped the class.
I don't think you can force an education on people who don't want it. They LIKE their biases, and the mental shenanigans they pull to confirm those biases. The misinformation evokes a sense of superiority, or security, or petty joy in them, and they do NOT want to give that up. So when you give them the education they need to see through the bullshit for themselves, they resist and just add anti-intellectualism to their list of cognitive dysfunctions.
That's what I have observed anyway. I would be happy to be proven wrong about this. Maybe the number of people who are like this is much smaller than it seems, and educational campaigns would help. That just doesn't seem likely.
Re:Will it help (Score:4, Interesting)
And not only do they drop the class, they then log on to their conservative cocksucker outlet of choice and complain about the "anti-religious bias" of the professor.
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Only unironically.
So - can we read Wikileaks legally now? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't pretend to support digital literacy while you are simultaneously making reading 100% accurate historical documentation that deals with the activities of various entities who have been manipulating the populace for decades verboten.
If anything has been revealed in recent times, it's that organisations like the department of homeland security live in a bubble, where Whistleblowers, Journalists, Lawyers and Activists are 'hostile intelligence operatives' because they act in the interest of the Public - and that is NOT in the interests of the influential.
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Republicans will be in an uproar (Score:2)
Imagine a government agency saying people need to be more educated when it comes to people not believing bullshit. Now imagine Republicans getting their panties in an uproat by claiming they're being targeted.
Think I'm lying? Check the news cycle this week. Guaranteed there will be Republicans whining how this is about shutting them down and "censoring" them. If they can go after Big Bird with a straight face, they'll go after this.
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You first.
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I'm sure we'll hear news of that laptop any day now...
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Trump was elected for the same reason Biden was elected: The alternative was even worse.
Isn't it sad that elections are not about which candidate you want but rather about which candidate you hope to avoid?
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Here are two links. I'm having trouble telling the Proud Boys from Al Queda.
https://www.motherjones.com/wp... [motherjones.com]
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/s... [wilsoncenter.org]
They mean critical thinking (Score:2)
Conservative thought is the disease here (Score:2)
and there is no cure other than the individual pulling their head out of their ass. No Federal mandate helps here.
If you have 9 out of 10 scientists saying something is true (let's just say "climate change"). The rational mind will look at the evidence, see there is a consensus, and find it more likely than not that something is so. With Conservatives you have a group of people who cling to old information because it affirms their antiquated views. So in the same scenario, rather than seeing the consens
The time & effort it takes... (Score:3)
I think they should start with their own employees (Score:3)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
A US Judge saying when you "pinch zoom" a video on a tablet, he doesn't know if it creates details not present in the original video and so making it a pain for the prosecutor.
Get your own house cleaned first, before you try to teach others,
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That is not really something you can dismiss out of hand. So not a good example for making fun of someone elses ignorance.
Granted "creating details not in the original" is not happening, BUT every video codex is a lossy compression and rendering them is a lossy presentation. There IS the possibility that small details of the original video are present, but are being masked as "too small to matter" during a playback at a certain zoom factor, but are visible during playback at a higher zoom factor (i.e. aft
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So if what you suggest is true, zooming in will not create details which were not present but will show details which were present in the original, but not visible without zooming in.
So even more reason to allow (or even mandate) zooming in, so that everyone is able to see more details on what was happening.
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It's not about literacy it's about BELIEF (Score:2)
People who have already made up their minds about something, even sans actual factual information, aren't going to be swayed by any attempts to 'educate' them, they'll immediately dismiss it all as attempts to mislead them, even if they've already been mislead.
The people they're talking about in TFA have already bought into what they've been told by loud-speaking so-called 'strongmen' who for the most part are just telling them what they want to
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They tried that with terrorist militia groups in the 1960s: Acolytes did stop believing the A was the anti-Christ and person B was their saviour. They started believing that B was the anti-Christ and A was their saviour. The acolytes needed to be in an echo chamber that 'knew' the truth, the name of the 'demon' was irrelevant. (IE. I'm OK, they're not OK.) Americans use the word "patriot" and Christians "second coming", to similar effect.
Blame and shame is built-in to US culture, it's why misinforma
newspeak (Score:1)
"misinformation" and "disinformation" is newspeak for "things the party does not agree with".