What is misinformation?
I’d like to distinguish between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation being information that is problematic in some way—not true, heavily biased, perhaps. Whereas disinformation is the same thing but communicated with intent to deceive.
Misinformation and disinformation have been with us for a very long time—since people started communicating.
My main focus is really on misinformation. That’s a “wicked problem,” a term used in some fields like computer science for problems that are seemingly intractable because they’re so complex.
You say that through the recent change in presidential administrations, the Centers for Disease Control has illuminated distinctly different approaches to information sharing?
The CDC has a global reputation for high quality, accurate analysis, research and information. That reputation was severely challenged and tarnished under the previous administration because political appointees insisted on hiding information, altering information for political ends. That was clear and just part of their general war against science.
The difficulty there is, once people lose faith in an institution like that, rebuilding that so that people can trust the really important, mission-critical kinds of information coming from that source, takes a long time. I think it’s very clear that the current administration is honoring science, putting it at the forefront, honoring transparency. Government not only has an obligation both from a moral point of view, but also from a policy point of view.
It also has a role in promoting and funding, advocating for the development of the set of skills, the knowledge that people need to be able to critically analyze information.
Is the government doing this work now?
Not to the extent that it needs to, for sure. It needs to be moved way up the policy agenda.
Government needs to fund things like curricula in schools that focus on critical thinking. Those aspects of the curriculum are rarely tested and what’s not tested gets pretty short shrift.
I think there’s a lot more that can be done. It’s something that needs to start in the early years. So that we can at least graduate high school students with some basic sense of how to critically analyze information. How to identify media sources that are credible. Recognize an outlet like Fox News for the entertainment source that it is rather than any source of actual news.
How should schools be teaching these skills?
To be honest, there are resources in most schools to help with this and that is school librarians.
They’re well trained in supporting teachers to deliver curriculum that would assist with this. But the problem is, school librarians aren’t often recognized for the experts that they are. They’re often viewed as sort of an adjunct.
What do you suggest?
Just trying to shift people away from the quick Google search as a solution to all information. As well as disabusing people of the falsehood that younger people who’ve grown up with computers and are skilled at throwing a key word or two into Google and coming up with five million hits are somehow digitally literate.
Doing quick searches and uncritically accepting whatever Google throws back at you, does not make you very skilled at all.
It takes deliberate teaching and learning of how to search well: How to sift through the nonsense that you get and actually critically evaluate what you have. So, it’s got to be integrated into education. I will also say that it’s not just digital skills or media literacy skills.
It’s also a sense of civics because a real problem that I think we have now is people don’t understand how government is structured, how it works.
I would say that’s also part of the issue, particularly here in the United States, where there’s so much political alienation and divide and misinformation in the political arena. If you don’t understand how government works or how it’s structured, you can believe all kinds of silly things.
What is misinformation?
I’d like to distinguish between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation being information that is problematic in some way—not true, heavily biased, perhaps. Whereas disinformation is the same thing but communicated with intent to deceive.
Misinformation and disinformation have been with us for a very long time—since people started communicating.
My main focus is really on misinformation. That’s a “wicked problem,” a term used in some fields like computer science for problems that are seemingly intractable because they’re so complex.
You say that through the recent change in presidential administrations, the Centers for Disease Control has illuminated distinctly different approaches to information sharing?
The CDC has a global reputation for high quality, accurate analysis, research and information. That reputation was severely challenged and tarnished under the previous administration because political appointees insisted on hiding information, altering information for political ends. That was clear and just part of their general war against science.
The difficulty there is, once people lose faith in an institution like that, rebuilding that so that people can trust the really important, mission-critical kinds of information coming from that source, takes a long time. I think it’s very clear that the current administration is honoring science, putting it at the forefront, honoring transparency. Government not only has an obligation both from a moral point of view, but also from a policy point of view.
It also has a role in promoting and funding, advocating for the development of the set of skills, the knowledge that people need to be able to critically analyze information.
Is the government doing this work now?
Not to the extent that it needs to, for sure. It needs to be moved way up the policy agenda.
Government needs to fund things like curricula in schools that focus on critical thinking. Those aspects of the curriculum are rarely tested and what’s not tested gets pretty short shrift.
I think there’s a lot more that can be done. It’s something that needs to start in the early years. So that we can at least graduate high school students with some basic sense of how to critically analyze information. How to identify media sources that are credible. Recognize an outlet like Fox News for the entertainment source that it is rather than any source of actual news.
How should schools be teaching these skills?
To be honest, there are resources in most schools to help with this and that is school librarians.
They’re well trained in supporting teachers to deliver curriculum that would assist with this. But the problem is, school librarians aren’t often recognized for the experts that they are. They’re often viewed as sort of an adjunct.
What do you suggest?
Just trying to shift people away from the quick Google search as a solution to all information. As well as disabusing people of the falsehood that younger people who’ve grown up with computers and are skilled at throwing a key word or two into Google and coming up with five million hits are somehow digitally literate.
Doing quick searches and uncritically accepting whatever Google throws back at you, does not make you very skilled at all.
It takes deliberate teaching and learning of how to search well: How to sift through the nonsense that you get and actually critically evaluate what you have. So, it’s got to be integrated into education. I will also say that it’s not just digital skills or media literacy skills.
It’s also a sense of civics because a real problem that I think we have now is people don’t understand how government is structured, how it works.
I would say that’s also part of the issue, particularly here in the United States, where there’s so much political alienation and divide and misinformation in the political arena. If you don’t understand how government works or how it’s structured, you can believe all kinds of silly things.
