Back to misinformation

 


I thought I would switch gears this week and return to a previous topic; misinformation.  The title of this blog "Safetogototown", reflects a desire to make the correct and safe decision.  Specifically whether or not it was safe to go into town during a pandemic.  One of the facets of making a type of decision like this is the information we use.  I can explain this even more simply.  I need to go to a town that is about a 1 hour drive.  I live in Texas and violent weather is always an issue.  There have been reports that current weather conditions could spawn storms.  Before deciding to head out I check a couple of sources to get a more detailed view of the weather.  From these sources I make a determination as to whether or not it is safe to make the trip.

When I do this I am making a determination as to the validity of the sources of information.  Those sources could be the weather channel from TV or a local news outlets web site.  Also I should check weather forecasts for the area I live in but also the area I am going to.  So what has lead me to put a stamp of approval on these weather sources.  So much so that I would risk life and limb based on the information they provide.  Maybe a little over dramatic.  However exposure to certain weather can be dangerous.

When I talk about disinformation (or misinformation) I am really not interested in branding any particular source as "misinformation".  I am equally not interested in giving any source of information a seal of approval.  I am trying to convey how I look at a source and how I determine how much stock I put in the information provided.  I am going to try and give examples as best as I can.  One of the frameworks I will use is from the University of Iowa Libraries.  This is a great article outlining types of misinformation Types of Misinformation.

I do not plan of going trough each type of misinformation listed.  I am selecting a few of them and will try to analyze them a little deeper.  I hope to determine more specifically how I determine the misinformation and how much stock I should put on the source.  I am going to look at the first type labeled "false connection"  I have come across this type of misinformation before and I wish I had kept examples.  One I do remember, was seeing a headline "Man jailed for collecting rain water".  I envisioned from the headline was some poor gentleman using a 45 gallon barrel to collect rainwater from his roof.  According to the IU library site false connection is described as "visuals, cations or headlines do not match the content".  As I read the rainwater article I realized that the headline greatly understated the gentleman's actions.  It turns out that the rainwater was coming from a mountain stream that was feeding a river in the area.  This gentleman was damming the stream to create a pond for himself and blocking the stream water from feeding into the river.  I would say that this was a form of "False connection".  This I believe is the incident Man collecting rainwater.  It does use the term "reservoir" in the headline but you do have to read the actual article to see the scope of his collection.  13 million gallons is quite a collection.

I looked for a more current example and came across this on MSN.com Alien mothership ......  this to me is a more subtle form of false connection.  Many of us read a headline as a statement of fact or certainty.  This headline may be factual correct but it contains 2 phrases that beguile the facts.  Those phrases are "Believe and "could be".  One could add phrases like this to just about any statement and It would be somewhat correct.  How is this headline; "Michael Schindler believes Cylons could be mounting an attack on Texas A&M".  Reading the article further this type of speculative language is used continually.  The language makes the entire article speculative and in my humble opinion difficult to take too seriously.  In short a nice thought exercise but I am not going to put on a tin foil hat.

If I relate this back to my opening discussion about sources of weather information I see a lot of similar language.  Weather reports use terms like possibility or could be a rainy day.  Why do I take the information from the weather source and disseminate it.  Where as I discount the Alien article as pure speculation (at best).  I think the answer is quite simple.  I have experienced weather before and have never experienced an alien encounter.  I have watched a weather man on TV report the possibility of severe storms and then experienced said storms.  I am sure a weather person in Buffalo has reported the possibility of lake effect snow and 2 hours later Buffalo is covered in snow.

Weather is real and for now alien encounters are speculation

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