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What the Fact?: Finding the Truth in All the Noise
![What the Fact?: Finding the Truth in All the Noise](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
What the Fact?: Finding the Truth in All the Noise
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Overview
What is a fact? What are reliable sources? What is news? What is fake news? How can anyone make sense of it anymore? Well, we have to. As conspiracy theories and online hoaxes increasingly become a part of our national discourse and “truth” itself is being questioned, it has never been more vital to build the discernment necessary to tell fact from fiction, and media literacy has never been more vital.
In this accessibly-written guide, Dr. Seema Yasmin, an award-winning journalist, scientist, medical professional, and professor, traces the spread of misinformation and disinformation through our fast-moving media landscape and teaches young readers the skills that will help them identify and counter poorly-sourced clickbait and misleading headlines.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781797146898 |
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Publisher: | Simon & Schuster Audio |
Publication date: | 09/20/2022 |
Product dimensions: | 5.84(w) x 5.57(h) x 1.09(d) |
Age Range: | 14 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: Contagious Information
CHAPTER 1 CONTAGIOUS INFORMATION
ON THE AFTERNOON of February 27, 2020, Peter Lee Goodchild, an 84-year-old retired art gallery owner from Buckinghamshire, England, posted a message on his Facebook page. “Last evening dining out with friends, one of their uncles, who’s graduated with a master’s degree and who worked in Shenzhen Hospital (Guangdong Province, China) sent him the following notes on Coronavirus for guidance...”
Peter’s Facebook post offered a friendly list of warnings and tips about a new coronavirus that had sprung up in China around Christmas 2019. The infection was quickly making its way around the world. “If someone sneezes with it, it takes about 10 feet before it drops to the ground and is no longer airborne,” wrote Peter, via his friend’s uncle.
A post containing all sorts of nonsense about the novel coronavirus went viral on Facebook in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: Snopes.com.
Pictured is one version of the viral Facebook post that was shared in February 2020. The post “mutated” over time as it was updated, shared, and translated into dozens of languages.
Peter’s post included advice about swishing the throat with liquid to prevent infection: “A simple solution of salt in warm water will suffice,” he said. He included a timeline of the illness that said the virus “will first infect the throat, so you may have a sore throat lasting 3/4 days. The virus then blends into a nasal fluid that enters the trachea and then the lungs, causing pneumonia.”
Peter also issued this warning: “The nasal congestion is not like the normal kind. It can feel like you’re drowning.” There were even details about exactly how many hours this new virus could survive on metal and fabric, alongside advice to avoid ice-cold drinks.
Peter’s Facebook post was liked by his friends, who shared it with their friends, who shared it with their friends... until it was shared more than 400,000 times in a matter of days. And that was just on Facebook.
A few days after Peter hit “post,” his Facebook message went from Buckinghamshire to Melbourne, from Hong Kong to Cape Town and beyond. Translated into Arabic, Spanish, French, Italian, Amharic—around a dozen languages in all—Peter’s list of tips and warnings popped up on websites, on internet message boards, and in private group chats from Bali to Bologna.
Peter’s virus post was read by millions of people all over the planet. Peter had gone viral.
The problem was this: Most of Peter’s viral message about the new virus was nonsense. Throat gargles don’t get rid of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Avoiding icy drinks won’t obliterate the infection. And had you asked any honest scientist back in February 2020 about the exact timeline of infection and how long the virus lingered on metals and fabrics, they would have said, “Umm, can I get back to you on that? We’re still trying to figure it out.”
But it didn’t matter that Peter’s message was mostly nonsense. A new disease was spreading, fear was brewing, and people were desperate for information. And here, right when we were ravenous for facts and figures, was a helpful post from a man whose Facebook profile photo showed a smiling, grandfatherly face.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Hi, Freethinker 1
Chapter 1 Contagious Information 11
Sidebar: Fake News Is Old News 14
When Bad News Goes Viral 17
Social Networks of Contagion 19
Viral Vectors and Patient Zero 25
Sidebar: How to Spread a Lie-The Disinformation Playbook 30
Words Matter 33
Sidebar: Red Flags for False Information 44
Information Disorder … and Pasta 45
Chapter 2 Bias, Beliefs, and Why We Fall for BS 61
Tell Me a Bedtime … Fact? 61
Your Brain on Stories 66
Sidebar: Changing Minds 74
Your Biased Brain 75
Sidebar: Spurious Science 84
The Backfire and Pushback Effects 87
Why Your Brain Is Weird (Answer: Other People) 89
Can You Believe Anything? The Sunrise Problem 95
Chapter 3 News, Noise, and Nonsense 103
Nineteenth-Century Clickbait 103
Not-So-Neutral News: A Partisan Press 110
Breaking News … via Pigeon and Pony 113
"What Hath God Wrought?" Twentieth-Century News, Twentieth-Century Problems 117
Sidebar: Breaking News 124
What Is Newsworthy? Who Decides What Is News? 127
Sidebar: Blavity, the Defender, and Black America's News Publishers 134
All the News That's Fit to Print …? Local News, National News, and the Flint Water Crisis 138
Ghost Papers and News Deserts: What Happens When Your Town Loses Its Local Newspaper? 144
Sidebar: Timeline of (Mostly American) Journalism 150
How the News Is Made: Facts… or Framing? 155
The Framing of Operation Iraqi Freedom 157
Sidebar: Contagious News-The Vienna Subway Suicides 162
Does News Influence Behavior? 166
"Alternative Facts" and the Myth of Objectivity 170
Like Eating Poop 192
Sidebar: Journalists under Attack 194
How to Consume News Like a Pro: Fact-Check the News and Create Your Media Diet 198
Chapter 4 Social Media 207
Algorithmic Bananas 207
Your Brain on Social Media 217
Into the Rabbit Hole 226
It Doesn't Have to Be This Way! 237
Chapter 5 How to Debunk and Disagree 241
Is There a Vaccine against BS? 241
Sidebar: Critical Thinking Feeling? 256
Prebunking versus Debunking 259
How to Disagree 261
The Ten Steps for Effective Disagreements 265
What Is Good Conflict? 283
Sidebar: The Socratic Method (and the Sad Fate of Socrates) 286
How to BS-Proof Your Brain 294
Epilogue: Hi, Critical Thinker! So … What Now? 301
Gratitude 305
Sources 307
Index 345