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- 31 Mar
#Coronavirus #Quarantine_The evolution of INFORMATION into DISINFORMATION
The spread of the Coronavirus has called our information production and connection patterns into question.
Through this global freak occurrence, everyone want to know what is really happening, so we get information on all digital platforms. We then quickly realized that the Internet allowed us to influence the masses with “fake news” called “infox” in French.
Why does Information evolve into Fake News?
-Because we are a zapping society: as soon as we receive information, we pass it or discard it quickly without integrating it.
-Since most people trust their friends and therefore transfer information without taking the time to check the source.
-As we can easily be fooled with the latest technologies that increasingly convince to create THE REAL FROM THE FAKE.
Some people think that videos are not impacted like texts, but they are not. It’s called “deep fake videos”, and under Trump’s mandate, they increase.
If you are not familiar with this growing phenomenon, I’d suggest to read my publication on Linkedin where I used the example of Obama’s video.
“The most compelling story becomes reality,” as the French novelist Fabrice Humbert recently said, while publishing his latest book “the world does not exist”.
Why? you might ask.
Because
our brain loves fake news!
-When we receive information, whatever it is, our brain tends to “rearrange reality to convince us of things we already believe in. If, for example, I think that GMOs are dangerous for health and some information confirm it, I will believe it more easily than other information that proves the opposite.”
-The brain would tend to believe in fake news, “rather than take the risk of not believing it.”
If information scares us, we will rather believe it and act accordingly to go to the same direction of our fear to reassure ourselves, rather than going beyond our fear and check if it is true.
-Also, we are not suspicious enough when there are many people who already believe in the same information. This is what we call the group effect, the “conformism bias” that our brain goes for.
I related some comments in “…” by Albert Moukheiber, who is a Doctor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Clinical Psychology, the author of the book «your brain plays tricks on you».
I agree with him in regards with fake news that affect our health, as they are doing right now through the Coronavirus playing with our fears!
He finally adds: “Fake news about health are often made up around notions of danger and death.
As regards vaccines, this is even more obvious when it affects children. We are poisoning babies. Some parents will say, “I’m not going to take any risk, when in fact it’s based on a belief”.
Everyone has their own point of view on this last point of Albert Moukheiber, which I respect. What is important is to teach children what Information is, by including misinformation from now on.
Jobs in Information ?
We’ve been noticing that the job of Journalist is being called into question because of the respect of the truth of the facts and the verification of the information disclosed.
Many people believe that information jobs are accessible to everyone through social media.
Some even think that we now have various stories that make up the reality of facts.
Let us go further if I may: when the real of facts is defied, is it forbidden to change reality?
Isn’t reality a story with a level of propaganda, a legend and a truth?
Do you really want Authenticity?
We saw it with the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a political journalist.
He recounted the real facts of the sinking of 8 Colombian sailors through a fictional narrative, while the government’s version was quite different. His revelation with photographs later then gave rise to strong controversies and threats against him.
So we’re in a time where we don’t know where truth and fiction are.
Also, we don’t understand where the interests of both sides are to hide the truth from us and think we’re “suckers”….!?
So I let everyone check their sources and define their truth.
Above all, we are moving to a world where there will no longer be a single truth but several and varied… to be known!
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The bottom line is most people are too lazy to do their own investigation on the actual facts of a story to verify if it’s in fact real news. It’s easy to read an article and believe it, but what about the references? Are the references reliable? Are there even references the article is supplying? That’s when we need to investigate the matter to find out on our own so that way we come up with our own individual conclusion of the matter.