General Discussion

I went back to look at older headlines. Australia, European nations, Indonesia, Canada, and the US are just some of the targets who are seeing the telltale signs of efforts to disrupt and exacerbate divisions.

All media are potential purveyors and commercial media (especially the right wing ones) are certainly boosting the messages. But it's he explosion of social media that completely bypasses gatekeepers (legacy media owners) and makes it so incredibly prolific.

Mis- and dis-information is happening at too great a volume for fact-checkers to counter it. It takes time and by the time they've proven it's a lie, there are newer ones. The audience that heard the lie may never hear the fact-checked truth. Pre-bunking appears to be the best tool to get ahead of the flood.

The League of Women Voters of Maine and Alaska put on a webinar this week that I attended by Zoom. The misinformation expert who presented was with Google's Jigsaw project. An excellent and informative webinar.