Conversations for Change - Media Literacy with Steph Sedgwick

Steph Sedgwick is a Teacher of Physics, Specialized Science, Astronomy, and Chemistry in the Nechako Lakes School District in British Columbia.  Steph's work with students has taught her the importance of understanding misconceptions and misleading information that is found (far too easily) online. In this episode, Steph shares tools to help us read online articles with a critical eye.

Resources mentioned in this episode:
How to Break Down Misinformation
Test Your Skills - Spotting Deepfakes

Hosted by Sylvia Byron
Produced by Haasen Pod
Royalty-free music by Purple Planet

Transcript

Conversations for Change, Steph Sedgwick

Sylvia: [00:00:00] Hello, Sylvia Byron from the Good Neighbors Committee here, and I want to welcome you to our new podcast series, Conversations for Change, Becoming Better Neighbors. Today, I'm sitting with Steph Sedgwick, who's going to talk to us about misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. And hopefully we can learn a little bit to help us clear away some of that stuff that we see every day and know what's real, what's not real, and what we want to pay attention to. Steph, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and why this is important to you. 

Steph: Hello, my name is Steph Sedgwick. I am a senior science teacher in our school district. And I deal with students dealing with information online all the time. Trying to find information for projects, reports, and things like that. And... There's a greater need for students to learn how to navigate the internet and how to check facts and [00:01:00] find out what they're seeing, whether it's on social media or on the internet or podcasts. What information they're getting is actually valid and correct. It's also a good thing for the community members to know as well. With our current technology and information that's out there, anyone can provide information through websites or podcasts like this one, infographics and things like that. We do need to be able to validate those sources and validate what's on either images or videos and make sure that what we're taking in is actually correct. 

Sylvia: So what is misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda? What's the difference between them? And how do we know what's coming at us?

Steph: The difference comes down to intent, and what is the intent behind it? So misinformation... you can think of as a mistake. So [00:02:00] somebody mistakenly put out some information, so for an example a breaking news story, and there's a bunch of information coming in, reporters are doing their best to fact check, but maybe something went through and a couple hours later they find out that that's not actually correct and they'll have to make an adjustment to that. So that would be an example of misinformation. There was no malicious intent, it was just too much information coming in and something got through that shouldn't have.

Disinformation is... There is the intent to deceive with disinformation. So, it is a way of either manipulating a fact or, sending out incorrect facts as a way of getting your point across.

Propaganda... takes that one step further. The idea of propaganda is to polarize an argument, make it so that there's only two sides, right and wrong. It takes away the gray [00:03:00] area so that there's no longer any common ground for people to discuss. 

Sylvia: So, misinformation is accidental. Disinformation is purposeful. And propaganda is influential. You really want to influence people to be able to see that what you're talking about is the right way, and not give them a choice. How do you see this rollout in the school? How do you see this affect the kids that are trying to wade through all this information?

Steph: I end up with more of a guiding role. Trying to show students how to navigate their research and trying to show them methods for finding reliable sources and what are reliable sources. So there's a lot of discussion about what makes a source reliable and how to look at different sources and ways of fact checking [00:04:00] and critical thinking about what source you're using, without actually going to the source.

Back in the old days we used to say things like check the URL, check to see if there's an "about the author" section check to see if the webpage is actually trying to elicit an emotional response or anger or fear response from you. And some of those are okay, but what it means is you actually have to go to that website in order to find out if that's what's happening. And so the newer method of media literacy talks about lateral reading. And what that is checking your sources without actually going to the webpage. So you aren't interacting with that. You can't end up going down some rabbit hole because you found something interesting on a webpage and three hours later you're like, "oops, I have no idea what I was looking up anymore." And it works for social media too, [00:05:00] social media posts. Things like looking at an image and that attracts your attention. And so you go to the page and you read something and maybe you share it, maybe you don't. But how can you evaluate these, these well, bits of data and information that are... coming at us?

Sylvia: So in the old days, we used to dive into that site. I mean, I even saw that there's checklists to take a look at: Okay, is it trying to elicit an emotional response? Do they have a lot of spelling errors? Quickly edited? But what you're saying is actually, don't do that, because that means you're spending a lot of time on that website. But instead, check what other websites say about that same information and sort of build your library. 

So let's take a simple topic. Let's say, how to carve a pumpkin. So we have one URL that says, you know, the best way to carve a pumpkin is with a drill and to use a, well, that's to make it worse than that, to use a [00:06:00] chainsaw to carve a pumpkin. How am I going to ensure that that's not somebody making me make a mess?

So let's put it in really simple terms. I need to go and look at other, like a, a series of websites. Mm-Hmm. on how to carve a pump or a pumpkin? Or do I have to look at other websites that judge that website? 

Steph: There's gonna be a number of different things that are gonna show up. Usually the first thing that shows up are sponsored ads. So skip those. Because they're probably trying to sell you pumpkin carving utensils. And then you're going to look down at the different sources that are showing up.

Your search will give you a brief summary of what the page is about. So read that without actually clicking on it. And if it's telling you something that you find... either unbelievable or whatever, or it doesn't really appeal to you. Maybe the site says, "oh, the best way to carve it is by hand, and it'll take you [00:07:00] 15 hours to carve a big pumpkin."

And you think, well, that's not really for me. You can skip that website. Say it's a pumpkin carving organization and you can look up um, so it's given the name of that particular organization. So you're going to open another window so you can save your search results.

You don't need to try and find it again. Open another tab. And then. Wikipedia is really good for certain things like company names people of note, organizations anything that has to do with funding. Wikipedia will publish these things quickly, and if there are any inconsistencies in there, they get changed really quickly. But on a side note, they did a study between Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, and they found that in any particular scientific post in Encyclopedia Britannica, there are three errors.

Sylvia: Wow, did not know that. [00:08:00] My childhood has just been kind of destroyed. (Laughs)

Steph: And so then they did the same on those same scientific posts on Wikipedia and they found four errors. So the difference isn't really a lot when you think about it. However, with Encyclopedia Britannica, you have to reprint or even online Encyclopedia Britannica, it would take a while to change that.

Whereas with. Wikipedia, it can be noted that there is an error and it can be changed quite quickly. And it's actually not true that anyone can edit Wikipedia. For a lot of hot topics and things like that, they get locked down so that only your senior Wikipedia staff are able to make changes to that.

Yeah, so Wikipedia is just one tool to do your fact checking. If you look in the About section on Wikipedia, is there any controversy or anything like that that's showing up? [00:09:00] Another good thing about Wikipedia is the references list. Because that can send you to different different resources as well. But y'know, I mean, don't start and stop with Wikipedia.

Sylvia: I also learned something really positive in our conversation in that Encyclopedia Britannica Is also online, which I didn't know spent a lot of time in them in those encyclopedias when I was a kid as most of us of a certain age did, but it's nice to know that now we can reach out to those online as well, that they're still there.

They're still alive. They're just online and probably easier us to access. What are some other general good sites that would you be non bias that you would recommend that people could sort of take a look and say, okay, I'm going to go look and see what they say. 

Steph: I think that would come down to your topic.

I mean, if we're doing a project on astronomy or whatever, then your things like NASA and European Space Agency and, and things like that would be good places to go. But depending on [00:10:00] what your topic is, you might need to build your own sort of library of reliable sources by doing that lateral reading. 

Sylvia: What happens... I've got this, I like this article on, we'll just say pumpkin carving and I share it because it seems kind of interesting and it's. Got some good information, but then I learned, 'cause somebody's texted me and said, "Hey, do you realize that what this is is actually wrong?" And so you've gone and you've posted something that turns out to be misinformation.

What can somebody do? 

Steph: The best thing to do about that would be to own it. Go back to your post, edit, make it known that it was edited, and explain why you edited it, and make everyone aware of it. If it's something like Facebook, you have certain hashtags, like hashtag media literacy, hashtag facts matter. So that people following these things can find, can [00:11:00] find where the errors are and make it known in other places. 

Sylvia: How hard is it to take, get something on Facebook that you see that there's something wrong?

Steph: I've never tried to change the information. I have reported stuff that I found concerning. And I report those usually to the group that it's in. buT I've never actually succeeded in getting, I've never even tried to get something that information has changed.

Your artificial intelligence in terms of video and and images And I've stopped following in groups that this is more prevalent So things like I don't know if you remember Maybe a couple months ago The image that went viral of the giant dogs and that was bigger than the than the person standing on Facebook Did you see that one?

Sylvia: I didn't but 

Steph: I can imagine it. Okay, so it said the last of the great Irish Of greyhounds or something [00:12:00] like that. And it was a picture done up to look like it was taken around 1902. And the image is actually of an Irish wolfhound. And it's made to look larger than a man. This was done with artificial intelligence.

It's a website you can go to. Mid Journey AI. And you can go there, try it out. It's kind of neat actually. And you type in whatever you want the image to look like. And the more descriptive your image, the better it's going to be. So, that's how this particular image was made.

But it went viral because it looked like an old fashioned image. So I did some lateral reading on it, and it didn't take long to find out that it was made through through mid journey.

 So we play this little game every once in a while called share or beware. And it's something you can do at home, even by yourself or with a with a friend. And if you find something, say on Facebook or some other social media, [00:13:00] ask yourself, is this something I should share or is this something I should beware of?

And it's a way to practice your media literacy skills. Or you can do a reverse image search and there's tools for that too. It is possible to do lateral reading on an image or a video. The video artificial intelligence is getting really good. it Used to be that you could tell when something was tweaked. Either they do a voiceover and it was somebody else's voice, or they put a different picture of somebody on top of something.

And those are what are generally now called cheap fakes. Because... They're easy to make and they're cheap to make, whereas an actual artificial intelligence video is called a deepfake. It comes from deep learning and, and fake. anD these are where the computer is actually making the video. And those are a lot harder to distinguish between what is real and what isn't.[00:14:00] 

Sylvia: Wouldn't AI help with the disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda? Or does it make it worse?

Steph: I think that again comes down to intent. Okay. I mean, there are people who use AI to make satire. oR to make a political commentary and in that moment and in that context, it's fine. But as soon as you take a snippet of it and put it into a different context, then you've now changed the intent of it.

So now it becomes disinformation or possibly even a propaganda tool. Another way that people use disinformation is to take an image that's real of an event that is real, but it is unrelated to the commentary um, but they're using the image.

Can you give me an example? Usually used in politics, so it would be maybe they have [00:15:00] a photo of a, someone who's on a campaign uh, talking with a former prime minister or something like that, but the image was taken three, four years ago, and now they've attached it to a current story. Okay. So then it looks like this is something that is recent, whereas...

If you do a fact check on the picture compared to the story, you find out that there are two different timelines. 

Sylvia: So going back to my pumpkin carving with a chainsaw, somebody could have pumpkin carved a really beautiful chains, a pumpkin that was 15 years ago, a huge pumpkin, and put it with their brand new article to make it look like That article is talking about this pumpkin when they're actually not related.

Yeah, okay That person before could have been using a specialized chainsaw. It could be completely different to what the content means They're just borrowing that image. Okay, where can we go to find out more information , and where can we go to [00:16:00] learn to be able to how to wade through this? It feels like overwhelming amount of information coming at us.

Steph: One of the sites I really like is spotdeepfakes.org. It's maybe half an hour to go through and it goes through different videos that are done using AI and how to spot what is AI created and what isn't. It also does a bit of a lesson on how to spot things, what should you be looking for.

It asks you a number of questions and to be perfectly honest, When it comes to the videos, I'm not very good at spotting them. I pick the AI generated one every time. So it's, it's interesting. It's only maybe 20 minutes, half an hour to go through that little lesson, but it's, it's really interesting.

So maybe have a look there if you're interested in the AI part. There's some online, free online courses if you want to really dig deep into it. From the [00:17:00] States, there's KQED, which does a whole course on evaluating online sources, checking facts and identifying misinformation. It's free, and you can take, it says to do it in a month, but there's no reason you can't sign up.

We are going to list a few resources at the end of this Podcast as well just some different papers that you can look at if you're interested in finding out some more information about it

Sylvia: So 

again, like even what we're suggesting to learn about misinformation, disinformation and propaganda do your research, take your courses, learn and educate yourself.

And I think that's really important for all of us to be a little bit more media savvy because we have so much coming at us. How does it help us become better neighbors? 

Steph: Well there's one more thing we need to look at and that is, humans are biased and we all have, with our upbringing or with our, what's happened [00:18:00] to us throughout our lives, we've developed certain biases. And we need to be aware of our own internal biases because they're going to come through with our fact checking.

We might look up a particular site and we read that little information on the bottom and it rings through loud and clear with what we're looking, what we're looking for. And so we're going to go to that and we're naturally going to gravitate towards that one. So being aware of your own biases.

Spending time thinking about where they came from, and do they fit with who you are and with the community that you live in? Are they something that is positive? Is it something that might be more negative? And just being aware of what these biases are, and are they influencing you with your... What you're learning about online and through social media.

Sylvia: We talk a lot about being [00:19:00] uncomfortable. Yeah. And staying uncomfortable. And learning to lean into being uncomfortable. Because that is sort of running up against your biases. We don't want anybody to do something that would harm themselves, but it's always good to check out. Okay, this doesn't feel as comfortable as I thought it would.

I have a cute story about that, that always helped me. In that a granddaughter was learning to make a pot roast. And she said to her mom how do you make a pot roast?

And the mom said, well, you, first of all, you cut off the two ends of the pot roast and you put it in the pot roast and then you put it in the oven. And the girl was like, why do I cut off the two ends? She said, that's just the way we do it. That's how my mother did it. That's how my grandmother did it. And so you just cut the ends off the two pot, the pot roast before you put it in the oven.

And that's what makes it so good. So. Didn't sit quite right with this girl, so she decided to check the source. So she went to her great grandmother and said, Great granny, why do you cut the ends off the pot roast? She said, Oh, [00:20:00] because I had a very small pot! And that always reminds me that sometimes we're taught a way to do things, and it's not actually for good reason.

So that always helps me. Is it, am I just cutting the ends off the pot roast because we have a small pot? Or is this really the best way to do this??

Or do I need to learn into more of that fact check the source? Go to somebody else. Why is this, why are we doing it this way? Even though it's comfortable, right? Maybe go to the discomfort. It might not have been so comfortable for the mother to have her habit checked, but that's a good thing.

Okay. So I kind of want to end on, is all hope lost? Is there too much misinformation, disinformation out there? And, and what do you think? 

Steph: I wouldn't say all hope is lost. In fact, what we need to do is to remain skeptical rather than cynical. If you're [00:21:00] cynical and you get into that everything is out there is been manipulated, and it's there to manipulate me too much misinformation, disinformation out there, that's actually disempowering.

Mm hmm. And it, unfortunately, it leads you to being more open to taking in more misinformation and disinformation. Okay. 

Sylvia: Let's go a little bit deeper in that for me. Can you tell me about why being vulnerable or being disempowered would leave you more open to being manipulated? 

Steph: If you honestly believe that all the information that's out there is meant to deceive you, then you aren't doing anything to check your sources. You might completely shut off from all of it, in which case... It's, it's not going to affect you in any other way, unless of course you're talking to [00:22:00] people. But generally what it does is it causes you to not bother doing the fact checking.

You're not going to be aware of how things are making you feel because you feel like everything is out. is being manipulated anyway. You're not going to sit with those feelings of wait a minute, this particular page is causing me more uncomfortable feelings than this other one.

Whereas if you remain skeptical and say, okay, there are certain things out there that are misinformation, disinformation, propaganda. I need to do my independent fact checking. What that's going to do is it's going to build a resilience and it's going to build critical thinking skills while you're doing your fact checking.

So 

Sylvia: balance. Don't get overwhelmed, but don't believe everything you hear and do the work to be able to say Okay, I got to find more information about this, but not necessarily from the same source I gotta get outside [00:23:00] sources and at the same time check yourself Check why are you thinking that way or if you are vehemently disagreeing Why?

Check your own process is what I hear as well as check the process of what you're reading. Thank you very much for all of your work that I know that you have done for this podcast. I really appreciate it. I really hope that people are able to take. Lots of information and to be able to apply it to their own lives and to have feel a little bit of hope that, okay, I can do this and we can be better neighbors by again, that balance, not being afraid to say, that doesn't sound credible, but you need to do a little more work or Hmm, maybe I need to check my own thoughts about that.

Steph: Thank you.