VANCOUVER —Fake news comes in many forms, from narrative to imagery to data and statistics, and combating its power and pervasiveness has become a daily chore for anyone with access to the internet.
The misinformation phenomenon, however, is neither new nor surprising, says Jevin West, assistant professor at the University of Washington’s Information School.
“Most people, whether they’re young, old, from left-leaning politics or right-leaning politics, I think everyone knows … that (some of their) information is unreliable and insincere, and I think people are looking for ways to combat that,” West said, speaking to StarMetro from Washington a day ahead of his Thursday appearance at Simon Fraser University’s presidential colloquium on making knowledge public.
What is new, West said, is how casual and constant access to the internet — and in particular social media — has created an environment in which fake news can be created and shared at breakneck speed and with a reach far greater than at any previous time in human history.
This outsized power, often wielded more deftly by fake news than by any other medium, requires a corresponding acceleration of education centred around how people can be their own best defence against the power of misinformation, West added.
And while journalists, librarians and educators — professions which are, by definition, centred around critical analysis and fact-checking — have long acted as filters between the general public and the reach of fake news, said West, the sheer volume of information modern humans are exposed to means that filter is sometimes overwhelmed.
With that in mind, West and his colleague Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington biology professor, have created a course called “Calling Bulls__t,” designed to teach students how to tell fact from fiction in an increasingly polluted digital environment.
A raft of studies and real-world examples demonstrate this problem is the same the world over. Fewer than half of American academic papers are available to be read by the public, according to one source, meaning many times readers must rely on journalists or other intermediaries for access to scholarly work. Canadian science literacy is also poorer than one might imagine, with a 2016 study suggesting that 40 per cent of Canadians believe climate change science is inconclusive or unclear, while roughly one in five believe there is a potential link between vaccination and autism.
Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford is testing the many ways in which politicians can wield staff and taxpayers’ dollars to hamstring news coverage they can’t otherwise control. Stage-managed news conferences, a government-controlled news outlet known as “Ontario News Now,” and labelling reporting on his broken campaign promises as “fake news” are all a part of Ford’s weaponization of communication against coverage critical of his administration.
And in the U.S., President Donald Trump, in lock-step with his ongoing habit of uttering demonstrable empirical falsehoods, took issue Thursday morning with the number of deaths — recorded in a months-long effort by the George Washington University School of Public Health — resulting from the impact of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017.
All of these examples testify to the profound timeliness of West and Bergstrom’s curriculum. The main thrust of their course is education around how to see through and vet spurious statistics and duplicitous data.
Many news consumers are aware that there is a human being behind the traditional media and political narratives they encounter, said West, meaning that they are more likely to be skeptical of implausible claims delivered to them through that medium. Data and statistics — whether it be as part of an article, a press release or a politician’s speech — tend to slip past a reader’s caution, he said, because of what he calls a “veneer of authority.”
Numbers often feel as though they come directly from nature, he said, whereas in reality, raw data can be interpreted and presented in any number of ways, and people need to be as wary of numbers as they are of what they hear from their local politician or talking head.
“If (people) hear a fancy statistic or they see a graph, it almost signals that it must be true or scientific. Because that’s what scientists do: they collect data and they put it in graphs,” West said. “It’s this veneer of authority that we want to unpack for students and show them the ways that you can B.S. as much with numbers as you can with rhetoric and language.”
Fact-checking data, therefore, needs to be seen as a requisite part of responsible news consumption, he said. And according to West, two pieces of advice can start Canadians on their way to building up their defences against being taken for a ride by false facts.
First, if something appears to be too good (or too bad) to be true, it probably is, he said. And second, always question your source.
“Our three first questions that we provide to the students as a way of spotting B.S. are: Who’s telling me this? How do they know it? And what do they have to gain from it?” West said. And if people can bake this instinct into their interaction with media and information, he added, they’ll be well on their way to becoming wily and judicious news consumers.
But West acknowledged that, aside from the simple and muscular power of data and rhetoric, there is a human element to the persuasiveness of fake news which complicates people’s ability to spot it and dispense with it decisively.
Asking people to actively seek the truth, West said, requires that they be prepared to confront a reality which may undermine their values, or even their entire world view. Truth-seeking, in other words, sometimes runs counter to human beings’ deep-seated inclination to accept facts which confirm their perspective, and reject those which threaten it.
“It’s highly uncomfortable, it’s exhausting, it’s unsettling to engage in conversations that shake a world view you’ve built … and likely over years.” West said. “One way that we (can) address this issue is to bring civics and dialogue back into the classroom instruction.”
If students are taught from a young age that debate and civic engagement are a natural and healthy part of a functioning democracy, said West, people will grow into citizens who feel more empowered, and are less likely to see partisanship as an existential threat.
And despite the grim churn of warring perspectives beamed directly to our phones and computers every day, West said he remains optimistic about society’s ability to find ways to overcome its information issues.
“I feel that history has taught us that we can get through it. But I’m not completely oblivious to the fact that what we have now, these tools, especially social media and the speed at which information passes, this is a little different,” he said.
“It’s (simply) going to take even more effort to clean these polluted environments up.”
