Infomocracy
Feb. 27th, 2022 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I want to apologise in advance for the repeated posts about Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and I want to also make it clear that this post is not (I hope) my ill-informed hot take on the situation. Rather, it's about something that's of increasing concern to me as a librarian, particularly a librarian with responsibility for teaching people about information literacy.
The world being what it is — 24-hour news cycle, breathless, real-time social media saturation, easy interconnection across geographical boundaries — means that when terrible things happen, they are broadcast at us at all times, bombarding people who are safe and far away from dangerous horrors with a constant reminder of human terror and suffering. People in this situation have little — almost nothing — within their control to minimise this suffering: they cannot travel to a war zone and take up arms, they aren't in positions of political authority in which they can use their power to influence things, nor are they wealthy enough to make a difference with their money. The immediate impulse is to do something, anything, to retain a sense of control in the situation and feel as if they've done something concrete to help. The problem is that this leads to a switching off of critical thinking when engaging with the information presented, particularly when such information is being presented at speed, containing terrifying things that evoke a strong emotional response.
These are things that I've seen on various social media platforms, including my Dreamwidth feed (albeit in limited amounts compared to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram), which I would strongly discourage doing:
Sharing aggregated lists of charities supposedly helping the Ukrainians, encouraging people to donate to them, without any effort to vet the list (one of these days I will write that post about how the impulse to indiscriminately signal-boost places to donate is a really bad form of activism) Updated to add: sharing details of charities is fine, as long as you have vetted them and put them in context. It's the context-free aggregation of 'donation links to help Ukraine' that is a cause for concern
Sharing PayPal details of complete Twitter strangers, purportedly belonging to individuals living through the siege on various Ukrainian cities or attempting to seek refuge in neighbouring countries, without any attempt to verify the legitimacy of such accounts (there are a whole host of reasons why I distrust this particular thing, and not just in this context)
Retweeting various Twitter essay-length threads from self-appointed exports on a) urban warfare b) guerrilla tactics against tanks c) how to make Molotov cocktails d) NATO e) reading the body language of Vladimir Putin, etc etc. I'm not an expert on any of these things, I don't have the knowledge to be able to verify what these people are saying, and so I don't want to risk amplifying their words into the world
In general retweeting any old nonsense if it appears to fit with one's general hopes as to how this horrendous situation will unfold, without making a single attempt to fact-check or even seek out further details of the source
Boosting the opinions of someone who appears to be a) not in Ukraine and b) has said extremely racist and Islamophobic things about Afghan and Middle Eastern refugees as opposed to Ukrainian refugees (this latter is why I don't just look at a single tweet from a stranger, I go and look at their entire feed, and, in the context of this war, I look at what they were saying about unrelated subjects before the invasion actually started)
Cluttering up the comments under tweets from Ukrainian politicians, officials, and media outlets sharing crucial information with rambling hot takes and even advice for said individuals, who are currently engaged in a fight for the existential survival of their country
Sharing tweets which purport to have information about Ukrainian troop movements and positions (honestly, this last one just left me with my jaw to the floor)
I want to stress that I haven't seen much of this from Dreamwidth people, so if you don't recognise yourselves in this list, please rest assured that I am not directing any of this at you. I am also extremely well aware that I have friends here who are far more directly affected by Putin's invasion of Ukraine than I am, and whose judgement on these matters will be far more expert than my own. I realise this post focuses solely on what not to do, but given the urgency of the situation, I felt it was warranted. (I wrote a similar post when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.) I feel very strongly that what with Russian propaganda, and the huge number of social media trolls who have latched onto this crisis, there is enough disinformation going around without adding to it.
The world being what it is — 24-hour news cycle, breathless, real-time social media saturation, easy interconnection across geographical boundaries — means that when terrible things happen, they are broadcast at us at all times, bombarding people who are safe and far away from dangerous horrors with a constant reminder of human terror and suffering. People in this situation have little — almost nothing — within their control to minimise this suffering: they cannot travel to a war zone and take up arms, they aren't in positions of political authority in which they can use their power to influence things, nor are they wealthy enough to make a difference with their money. The immediate impulse is to do something, anything, to retain a sense of control in the situation and feel as if they've done something concrete to help. The problem is that this leads to a switching off of critical thinking when engaging with the information presented, particularly when such information is being presented at speed, containing terrifying things that evoke a strong emotional response.
These are things that I've seen on various social media platforms, including my Dreamwidth feed (albeit in limited amounts compared to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram), which I would strongly discourage doing:
I want to stress that I haven't seen much of this from Dreamwidth people, so if you don't recognise yourselves in this list, please rest assured that I am not directing any of this at you. I am also extremely well aware that I have friends here who are far more directly affected by Putin's invasion of Ukraine than I am, and whose judgement on these matters will be far more expert than my own. I realise this post focuses solely on what not to do, but given the urgency of the situation, I felt it was warranted. (I wrote a similar post when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.) I feel very strongly that what with Russian propaganda, and the huge number of social media trolls who have latched onto this crisis, there is enough disinformation going around without adding to it.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-28 05:29 pm (UTC)