Media Savvy

We seem to know more about what goes on in Trump Land than we do about what is happening on our own doorstep. Is this a ploy to take our eye off the ball?

Marieleeze Which European leaders are unelected?
Also..I made it clear I was not excluding myself.

I cannot understand why certain people think others have no sense and, "do not understand anything", like they do of course!

If you were taught to "read between the lines" as I was in school. We knew what we wanted. Of course, there is always the odd person who believes everything they hear or read, unfortunately I find it mostly the young.

Please do not tie all of us with the same brush. By the way I voted leave. Why, I did not want a European state of unelected leaders.

Several of you have made points that I agree with. It is sad how many voted in the referendum on false information and how wrong the idea is of our relationship with the EU. I agree though that false information has always sways large numbers of people. And it isn't just a matter of intelligence that helps us spot when we are being manipulated. Good English and History teachers in schools teach how to evaluate data and spot what words are designed to persuade and sway.

I remember grandson in primary school for homework having to find examples of advertisements that persuade and to think and explain how they do it.

Much of the problem is a lack of factual reporting plus the loss of much of the press. Now we have to do the digging to get the news we should be getting and there is a lot out there that we can miss. With a smaller number of offerings we can easily fail to see the more important news. Relying on a small base is not good.

I try to look at Morning Star, Daily Mail & The Times on line to get a range of perspective when I am finding out more about some issues. I have a paper copy of The Grauniad every day.

Tbh I understood the issue was more about students not acknowledging the source and quoting Wiki as if it was their work: plagerism. Bans are rarely the best solution to an issue!

I keep finding posts posting them selves Grrr.

If students are told not to use Wikipedia it is because they need to learn how to search and find out information for themselves. I have seen wikipedia quoted as a source in academic journals.

Blanket bans on the use of Wikipedia are ridiculous, yes, if you are looking up contentious subjects of controversial people you need to be careful, but many of their articles are written by respected academics and are carefully checked. If you scroll to the bottom of a Wikipedia page you will find a list of academic and other sources from which the information in the article was drawn. Where articles lack proper sources, there is often a request at the top of the page for further information and corroboration.

I spent the whole of my working life providing background research for senior managers and that included being able to judge the validity of the information I retrieved and disseminated. Since retiring I have taken these skills into several other fields of work and research.

One of the things I learnt very early on, is never to make sweeping statements about the trustworthiness or otherwise of large collections of information.

If studen

We don't know what is going on if the truth be told, but unfortunately, we will never get to the truth either.

Have to agree with you PECS. It amazes me that people choose to ignore things that don’t fit in with their own expectations. When we know that politicians tell blatant lies, waste colossal amounts of public money, blame others for their own incompetence and yet they still get people to vote for them. Soul destroying.

I think there are people who believe everything they hear/read/see, and people who don’t. There always have been, and there always will be. In fact, there is considerably more information out there for all to see than at any time in history. My 90 year old mother regularly says that ‘these things’ have increased. ‘These things’ could be anything from an earthquake to crime. I point out to her that news is able to travel and be transmitted so quickly nowadays compared to her youth that it seems that ‘ these things’ happen more often. Of course with news items, people will choose to believe based on the available evidence, or not believe, choosing to think it’s all hyped up. Often news items are based on some truth, but not completely true it seems to me. Something must have started off the completely irrelevant story about cucumbers and bananas having to be a certain shape in the eu, but it’s probably been blown out of all proportion, and is a complete non story to me. Do we need to know that Jean Claude Junker is a drunkard, well yes I do, since he is occupying an important position.
What I do think is worrying is that it appears that many, most certainly not all, younger people are so tied up in their social media that they are turned off real news. But hey, what are we all on now, social media of course.

I think you have to read around everything and then make your own mind up. Read one story in three different papers and you will get three different slants. Just reserve a healthy amount of cynicism!

I think actually we are less 'brainwashed than we were years ago. Mainly because most of us are a bit more savvy and realise that we can't believe every word we hear or read. We are all aware there is much fake news, we can't believe all we see on Facebook and many politicians will twist the truth any way they can to win an argument.

I resent being lied to by politicians. And obviously those lies being magnified by the press.

It's sad but there are many people who can't or won't think for themselves. Consider how many wear the latest fashion, no matter how unflattering it is. 'Sheep' is the word for them. The worrying thing is that these people are able to vote, but their choice is very often influenced by how their favourite celeb is voting rather than their own opinion.

There has , equally, always been an element of off the wall ideas emanating from some elements in some universities & guess always will!
I also think it is not always correct to conflate intelligence and cleverness. Some folk are clever at retaining & regurgitating facts and information but limited in the ability to reflect , evaluate or apply them. Some are able to do both and some are very good at gathering info temporarily to use and apply. All can be good students but that depends on other qualities such as self discipline, perseverance etc etc.

There have always been sloppy thinkers and non-thinkers. There always will be. Likewise, there have always been, and will always be, critical thinkers and creative thinkers. I suspect it's related to intelligence. Although... when you look at some of the tosh that's coming out of universities at the moment...

Good point * Ginny*.

Now there's a good example of what we should think critically about - Wikipedia. Students are told NOT to cite anything from that source and to critically assess all information from all sources.

The methods of manipulating opinion has changed but the public at large are no more gullible than they were in the past, there are plenty of examples in the last 200 yrs where campaigns have changed opinions.

Going back further in history the population was ruled by fear, speak out of turn and you get burned as a witch, or if you are not that outspoken, conscripted into the army. Where either you toed the line or got put in the front line where survival was not likely, so to have any kind of life you supported the establishment line.

Thanks for the link M0nica though I have seen that before.

I was not intending to 'patronise' anyone. I was talking generally and not even excluding myself from my thinking. I am often surprised at how many people take news items at face value.
There is greater sophistication in approach to advertising/ propaganda/ spin etc. and it appears,in more outlets than before.
I try hardxto reflect and evaluate what I see/ read..happy to admit I can be wrong too!

What a lot of patronising tosh. I do not think we are anymore gullible than we ever were. Think about those poor old women burnt as witches because they were old and odd and someone's child died and somebody said she must have cast a spell so off to the stake with her.

Information has always been manipulated and distorted and people have lapped it up and invested money in useless shares, or useless gadgets or believed dreadful things like, during WW1, that the Germans killed babies and even ate them.

I suggest you read the following link on atrocity rumours.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda.

Every age finds its ways of propagating false information from the trivial to the serious and many people sup it up and believe it. They always have. They always will. We are no less - or more - gullible than before.

Yes I too agree Pecs,, we don’t know the half of it.

What made me think this was the knee jerk and, in some cases, quite vitriolic response to a headline about a vote at a university student union. When I dug deeper it seems the headlines were not exactly telling the whole story ..but by now there are people out there believing and perpetuating something that is not completely true! It is the swallowing of whatever we are fed...often peddled by people with a mission...in this case it appeared to want to undermine disability equality.

I think it creates a very dangerous climate when information is deliberately manipulated and unchallenged. Sad that we ae becoming so easy to con.