Social Media: It’s role in spreading epidemics of mass hysteria
Social media has become a vector for epidemics of mass hysteria.
A dumb incident coupled with social media spirals out of control to create a community filled with outrage
Woman makes a dumb remark about a teen girl’s t-shirt. This in turn is blown up on social media and quickly devolves into a community of outrage in the real world and takes on a life of its own.
Zohnerism: use of a true fact to lead an ignorant public to a false conclusion
Zohnerism is the “the use of a true fact to lead a scientifically and mathematically ignorant public to a false conclusion”.
This is a good example of why we must practice “factfulness” and verify what we are told daily by media and activist propaganda urging us to adopt someone else’s agenda.
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.
Journalism: Perennial fake news Newsweek fails to report on Nobel Peace Prize winner
This is how fake news service Newsweek reported on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize today. Seriously. They did not write a single headline report on the actual winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps this is because Thunberg is white and Prime Minister Ahmed is black and Newsweek is racist?
Journalism: Every attribute in this story is reported as a negative even though most are positives
We live among the best of times in world history yet even positive economic news, as in this article, are all translated into negatives. Journalism focuses on negativity, causing anxiety and a culture of outrage where everyone is upset all the time. The linked article is an amazing example showing how the news was deliberately spun into negatives; each item listed is then rewritten in the positive, dramatically improving the emotions of the reader.
Factfulness: Wildfire threats are not growing every year
The media continues to drum beat a meme that wildfires are growing every year but the data shows otherwise. Always remember to practice “factfulness”. What we think we know, especially that which we learn from the media and social media, is often incorrect.
Social media: 2 years ago, Google shut down the blog, email and all services of a prominent statistician
In 2017, without warning or recourse, Google shut down all services associated with Salil Mehta, a professor of statistics, editor of a statistics journal, author of a best selling book on statistics, a former Obama administration official and later, a polling statistics adviser to the Trump campaign. His offense? He ran a blog about mathematics! Google, Facebook and Twitter have become the totalitarian governments of the 21st century, stifling speech their algorithms choose to flag. Unlike us peons, Mehta is well connected and a huge outcry caused Google to reinstate his account.
Climate communications: Professor thinks climate communications should be more hysterical
Professor advocates even more hysterical propaganda messaging for climate change communications. As we have repeatedly pointed out, this is the wrong approach: “Improved communication comes from honest and accurate presentation of facts and logical arguments. Unfortunately, the climate communications community has, rather consistently, engaged in increasingly shrill propaganda messaging that eventually results in the “The boy who cried wolf” phenomena where no one believes anything anymore.”
Journalism: An example of excellent journalism
Good journalism is being done. In addition to the embarrassing mistakes noted on this blog, there are also examples of excellent journalism. To provide some balance between the dreadful and the excellent, examples of great journalism will also be shared here.
This blog is primarily about propaganda messaging. Media plays a role in propaganda delivery, some times as propagandist and sometimes as counter propaganda. An example of the latter would be the BBC’s good reporting on the Amazon wild fire situation, noting that both media and social media spin were stretching the truth and leaving out critical context.