Collecting to the Core — Media Literacy in the Post-Trutk World

摘要

"Post-truth" was named the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries in 2016 and, since then, renewed interest in "fake news" has generated countless articles and books on the subject. Fake news — information that is shared with an intent to deceive — is nothing new in America, but with today's information technologies it can travel faster and farther than ever before.2 The ability of fake news to disseminate rapidly with real-life repercussions was clear during President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, exemplified by the conspiracy theory-based "Pizzagate" controversy about a (fictional) pedophile ring at Washington D.C.'s Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant.3 At the time of writing, fake news is spreading misinformation about remedies for the novel coronavirus during a worldwide pandemic — encouraging people to drink bleach or eat fish tank chemicals to prevent infection, causing severe illness or even death.4 Whether it is gun-toting vigilantes showing up to family-friendly pizza restaurants, the ingestion of dangerous chemicals to fend off the coronavirus, or coordinated disruptions to democracy sowed by disinformation campaigns, "fake news" can have very real, alarming consequences in people's lives and across society.