Media: The Begging the Question Fallacy
Jezebiel publishes column urging witch’s curses on Charlie Kirk 2 days before his assassination – and then says this “is not who we are”.
Media: Canada’s “mass graves” story collapsed
Several years ago, the world erupted in anger over allegations that perhaps 1000s of indigeneous children had died in Canadian schools and were buried in unmarked graves. The story turned out not to be true.
If you do not closely follow politics you are a “political ostrich”
Name calling from the elite at The Atlantic: The People Who Don’t Read Political News.
“Crafting your scientist brand” – the rise of the celebrity expert
Scientists work with PR offices to establish a personal brand as a celebrity expert.
Social: How not to respond on social media
Eventbrite founder and chairman makes a fool of himself on social media.
Using social media to destroy your career
A medical professional posted on Twitter that she can and will withhold care from patients based on her perception of the patient’s sex, race and political beliefs. By Monday, her hospital bio page displayed “Page not found”. Far too many engage in inappropriate emotional outbursts on social media that have led to severe consequences, including being fired from a job.
Old social media posts cost another job
Google’s head of diversity has been re-assigned after old blog posts showed him denigrating Jews and possibly making inappropriate comments about the LGBTQ+ community. Old blog posts and tweets have resulted in many losing their jobs.
A social media meme has been modified with numbers, because numbers make it more convincing
An Internet meme propaganda poster appears to contain false percentage data.
Climate communications and Journalism’ish: Crisis, Emergency, Deniers and the language of propaganda in The Guardian
The Guardian announces that it requires their staff to use pejorative propaganda terminology rather than the facts of atmospheric CO2 levels rising, sea level ice and temperature changes, ice mass changes and so on. Anyone who does not 100% adopt The Guardian’s perspective is to be labeled a “denier” (name calling, transference from “Holocaust denier”, get on the bandwagon). The word “climate” should be associated with “crisis”, “emergency” or “heating” (transference, fear). Shrill terminology designed to inflame and create emotional outrage is a turn off and causes readers to tune out from the issues.
Climate Communications: Climate media coverage lacks facts, say researchers
Two professors took a look at how the media has reported on the topic of climate and found that almost all news reports leave out critical and basic facts about climate. A corollary is that instead of reporting facts and the use of logic that supports anthropogenic climate change, most turn to propaganda methods such as appeal to authority, fear, name calling (“deniers”), get-on-the-bandwagon and so on. Incredibly, as I was writing this post The Nature Conservancy sent an email fundraising solicitation which illustrates the point: the first sentence of the email makes 4 demonstrably false claims to create fear about changes in climate. “Factfulness” teaches us how to detect when we are being misled – this turned out to be classic example of a charitable organization making exaggerated claims not supported by reputable science organizations (IPCC, NOAA, The Royal Society).
This post may be the first of several on how climate communications has been badly bungled by reliance on propaganda methods, rather than sticking with facts and logic.