Calls for the increasing need for digital media literacy run rampant in the contemporary information environment. One example is provided by the Canadian Journalism Foundation: https://cjf-fjc.ca/keep-truth-human/: “Today, artificial intelligence is spreading misinformation faster than the fact-checkers can keep up with. And only about half of Canadians are confident they can recognize AI-generated content on their newsfeeds.” The Foundation then asks people how competent they are at spotting artificial information in a quiz that is part of their campaign to “help keep truth human.” This evocative slogan highlights the scope of the problem when computational “enhancement” actually threatens people’s cognitive capacity to ascertain whether something is real or fake, true or false, computer-generated or human-made. And when these distinctions get blurred, it increasingly seems that, “new information technologies appear to exacerbate social inequalities and cause social problems rather than mitigate or solve them” (Wooley & Howard, 2018, p. 245).

Detecting Digital Propaganda (Nico)

Detecting propaganda is no easy feat, as its production speed has historically been ramping up. With the introduction of digital media and aritificial intelligence, the challenge is tougher now than ever before to accurately detect and address propaganda in the digital sphere. Perhaps another factor to consider is that “digital information channels radically increased in popularity as a news source” as accessibility to digital devices has increased (Macmillan, 2022). Thus the question emerges: how can we as a public detect propaganda in the digital sphere and subsequently address it? In a perfect world and ideal society, tools for propaganda detection need not exist. However, that is not the case. As a result, tools for detection must exist and be explored.

Fact-checking is the first step to detecting digital propaganda, and this step is perhaps easier than its non-digital counterpart. Given that the propaganda you are examining is digital, a simple Google search will more often than not reveal if the information is true. In some more popular cases of digital propaganda, websites like FactCheck.org may even address the claim and break it down. This leads into the second layer of detection, which is analyzing the credibility of the source (you may notice many of these steps are similar to detecting non-digital propaganda, though the scope is larger and tools easier to access). Is the propaganda coming from TMZ or People magazine? It’s likely untrue and written to sell or generate clicks.^[1] But if the piece in question is coming from a reputable source, such as a (democratic) government website or publicly funded media, then it may not be propaganda.^[2]  Exercise smart judgement when looking at a source’s track record and credibility.^[3]

The remaining two steps are titled information flow analysis and manipulative style recognition (Macmillan, 2022). Information flow analysis is the act of critically examining the way the information (and possibly propaganda) flows. A simple way to understand this step can be information spreading speed. On a platform like Instagram/Facebook/X, AI bots are often created to spread propaganda at incredibly fast rates, far faster than any non-chronically online person can keep up with. If the piece in question has been shared by millions of users in mere hours, it could likely be fake and propagandistic. However, the reverse is also true; if a piece of information is being spread by hundreds of users within the hour, perhaps it is true. The final step, manipulative style recognition, is quite simple: does the information being digitally spread seem harmful? Oftentimes, digital propaganda does not disguise itself all that well – it wants to generate a particular response from users, and it isn’t shy about it.

Exercising best judgement is often the best approach to detecting digital propaganda, all things considered. If something seems like propaganda and you’ve gone through steps to detect propaganda online, then it likely is. Unspoken steps like using common sense and asking people in your life about the potential propaganda are also helpful. You know that expression, though: “Common sense isn’t that common”? It seems as though that’s even more prescient given how our contemporary human diet of information is so thoroughly suffused with computational content. Now more than ever, we don’t need just tactics of information literacy, but “skills of algorithmic literacy are increasingly intractable at the individual and social level in order to inoculate the populace against this rise in computational propagandizing and preserve the epistemological viability of our information ecosystem” (O’Hara, 2022, p. 6).

Resistance

more blah

References

Macmillan, P. (2022). Challenging online propaganda and disinformation in the 21st Century. SPRINGER NATURE. ^[4]

O’Hara, I. (2022). Automated Epistemology: Bots, Computational Propaganda & Information Literacy Instruction. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2022.102540

Wooley, S. C., & Howard, P. N. (2018). Conclusion: Political Parties, Politicians, and Computational Propaganda. In S. C. Woolley & P. N. Howard (Eds.), Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media (pp. 241-248). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190931407.003.0011 Pages 241–248