Guess who's back, guess who's, guess who's back? Yes, after a year or so spent transferring my blog from WordPress to my website which is home to some of my work, I am officially back to delivering the cold, lukewarm, and hot takes you didn't know you needed! Today's blog is a short read, I had a really great blog drafted for Black History Month but as I went to hit publish, Putin went to invade Ukraine.
As these insane events play out, I just want to remind digital consumers to be skeptical of the pervasive misinformation in the digital ecosystem, much like I did in 2019, "My advice is to become media literate by analyzing and evaluating media and always, always, always, do your googles!" Easier said than done when user-generated content is the source for so many across social media platforms. In 2017, Facebook, now Meta, published Working to Stop Misinformation and False News addressing the platform's issues with misinformation. January 2021, Twitter introduced Birdwatch, which is slated to be a community-based to curve misinformation, and TikTok updated its community guidelines in February 2022, stating that it will remove content that is misinformation. All great actions to stop the dissemination of misinformation. However, some things still get through the cracks.
As we move to support Ukraine further during this time, here are a few guidelines that may be useful to approaching content:
Be skeptical of all content and fact-check before sharing things amongst your network.
Skeptical, but not cynical. Lack of access to user-generated content is harmful to our community, and could sometimes be the only source of accurate accounts for countries with strict media policies. Do not disregard because you're distrustful of user-generated content.
Once you've fact-checked content share it amongst your network.
Comments