# notes --- - [[our engagement with media and culture are shaped by our epistemological frameworks]] - [[epistemology is the context in which we think]] - [[media literacy does not address epistemological differences]] - [[we cannot assert authority over epistemology]] - Updated [[{1.2a2b1a3} broadcast vs viral communication]] - [[media literacy requires people to doubt what they see]] # highlights --- ![[nothing can radicalize someone more than feeling like you’re being lied to|no-title clean]] >She was trying to make sense of what distinguished class in America. In her mind, it wasn’t race. Or education. It came down to what construction of language was respected and valued by whom. People became elite by mastering the language marked as elite. Academics, journalists, corporate executives, traditional politicians: they all master the art of communication… although it’s taboo in America to be explicitly condescending towards people on the basis of race or education, there’s no social cost among elites to mock someone for an inability to master language. >This is why this is a culture war. **Everyone believes they are part of the resistance**. ![[they always believe that they are engaging in critical thinking|no-title clean]] >For better and worse, by connecting the world through social media and allowing anyone to be amplified, information can spread at record speed. There is no true curation or editorial control. The onus is on the public to interpret what they see. To self-investigate. Since we live in a neoliberal society that prioritizes individual agency, we double down on media literacy as the “solution” to misinformation. It’s up to each of us as individuals to decide for ourselves whether or not what we’re getting is true. >…for many people in this country, both education and the media are seen as the enemy — two institutions who are trying to have power over how people think. Two institutions that are trying to assert authority over epistemology. >It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s fiction, what’s cruel and what’s a joke. But that’s the point. That is how irony and ambiguity can be weaponized. And for some, the goal is simple: dismantle the very foundations of elite epistemological structures that are so deeply rooted in fact and evidence. >Many people, especially young people, turn to online communities to make sense of the world around them. They want to ask uncomfortable questions, interrogate assumptions, and poke holes at things they’ve heard. Welcome to youth. >The difference between what is deemed missionary work, education, and radicalization depends a lot on your worldview. And your understanding of power. >Perhaps you want to encourage people to think critically about how information is constructed, who is paying for it, and what is being left out. Yet, among those whose prior is to not trust a news media institution, among those who see CNN and The New York Times as “fake news,” they’re already there. >**Doubling down on investing in individuals as a solution to a systemic abuse of power is very American.** But the best ideas don’t always surface to the top. Nervously, many of us tracking manipulation of media are starting to think that adversarial messages are far more likely to surface than well-intended ones. >I want us to grapple with reality, not just the ideals that we imagine we could maybe one day build. >**It’s one thing to talk about interrogating assumptions when a person can keep emotional distance from the object of study. It’s an entirely different thing to talk about these issues when the very act of asking questions is what’s being weaponized. This isn’t historical propaganda distributed through mass media. Or an exercise in understanding state power. This is about making sense of an information landscape where the very tools that people use to make sense of the world around them have been strategically perverted by other people who believe themselves to be resisting the same powerful actors that we normally seek to critique.** >… the power of weaponized narratives.. >It’s called gaslighting. Do you trust what is real? One of the best ways to gaslight the public is to troll the media. By getting the news media to be forced into negating frames, they can rely on the fact that people who distrust the media often respond by self-investigating. This is the power of the boomerang effect. And it has a history. >I’m not convinced that we know how to educate people who do not share our epistemological frame. >What’s common about the different approaches I’m suggesting is that they are designed to be cognitive strengthening exercises, to help students recognize their own fault lines, not the fault lines of the media landscape around them. I can imagine that this too could be called media literacy and if you want to bend your definition that way, I’ll accept it. But the key is to realize the humanity in ourselves and in others. We cannot and should not assert authority over epistemology, but we can encourage our students to be more aware of how interpretation is socially constructed. And to understand how that can be manipulated. Of course, just because you know you’re being manipulated doesn’t mean that you can resist it. >The first wave of media literacy was responding to propaganda in a mass media context. We live in a world of networks now. We need to understand how those networks are intertwined and how information that spreads through dyadic — even if asymmetric — encounters is understood and experienced differently than that which is produced and disseminated through mass media. >until we start understanding their response to our media society, we will not be able to produce responsible interventions. So I would argue that we need to start developing a networked response to this networked landscape. And it starts by understanding different ways of constructing knowledge.