Why Does Fake News Spread on Social Media? Because Of Our Caveman Brains

November 6, 2017November 28, 2017 Jaigrisinformation flows, mcluhan, public sphere, social media, Social Media and Society, technology critique, tribesLeave a comment

In a world of 24/7 cable news, round the clock Amazon Deliveries, and infinite social media notifications, it’s been difficult to not notice how the ways we interact with each other and information is changing each passing day. Chief among these changes of course is the problem of fake news (#fakenews, I guess) or the spread of misinformation in an online environment. Some people blame Facebook and Twitter, who are currently in the news for the role their platforms played in Russian trolling of the 2016 US election. Their involvement notwithstanding, it seems to me that though the platforms had a role to play in the spread of fake news, it was more a passive role in which they took advantage of human frailty, rather than an active one in which their algorithms spread fake news because it’s more exciting content or something. Allow me to explain.

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Digital Literacy: What Do We Really Need?

August 25, 2017November 28, 2017 Jaigrisinterdisciplinary, sharing economy, Social Media and Society, student advice, surveillance, technology critique, transdisciplinary2 Comments

A picture of a google search box for digital literacy — Digital Literacy by AJC1. Available on Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/dwkZMM

Last week I mentioned that I would write a post discussing the gaps I see in current descriptions of digital literacy, particularly as it’s described in the popular press, and why a more holistic or even interdisciplinary understanding of digital literacy is needed. Well I’m back this week to continue that discussion. We must move beyond the idea that digital literacy is about teaching people how to create a website or learn to code. We need to recognize that a skills based approach to digital literacy will only serve to exacerbate certain social and democratic challenges inherent in digital communication, and we must instead consider digital literacy as something that stretches far beyond equipping students for jobs that may or may not exist in the ever-fickle digital economy. The best example, I think ,of why this is the case is the current problem of “fake news”.

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Yellow is the New Black

August 14, 2017November 28, 2017 Jaigrisinformation flows, public sphere, social media, Social Media and Society, technology critiqueLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about social media as a source of news, and how we are currently experiencing parallels with yellow journalism. I think that if we can identify similarities with our current media environment, and the rise and management of yellow journalism during the Hearst/Pulitzer years, we may be in a better position to brainstorm meaningful solutions to the fake news challenges that we are seeing today. And there are indeed many parallels to be drawn, so I’ll begin with a few important ones, as I see them:

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From Print to Digital – Information Overload and Folk Wisdom

August 2, 2017November 28, 2017 JaigrisEisenstein, Filter Failure, public sphere, Rainie, Shirky, social media, Social Media and Society, technology critiqueLeave a comment

Lee Rainie’s Keynote in Image Form from #SMSociety 2017

Last week, I had the great pleasure of presenting my work at the International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety2017), hosted by the esteemed team at the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University. While in attendance, I listened to a fantastic keynote by Lee Rainie, the director of Internet and Policy Research at the Pew Research Center. His keynote, titled “The Reckoning for Social Media” focused on the research work conducted by the Pew Internet and Technology research center, about how social media have changed the relationship of people to each other and to public institutions. Some of his findings were disheartening such as, for example, recent research that shows that people polled in the US are experiencing declining trust in academic institutions, or that people are becoming more polarized in their political views. Other findings were more hopeful, such as the fact that there is substantial reciprocity across social media platforms.

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Jaigris Hodson, PhD.

Critical thoughts about digital communication technologies and how they impact our lives, by Jaigris Hodson, PhD.

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