{Is it True or False?}
Källkritik = Source criticism
MIK - Medie- och informationskunnighet
MIL - Media and information literacy
"Homo sapiens" or "Homo narrans"
Our big, beautiful brains are
obsessed with finding patterns
to make sense of the world around us.
Homo narrans, means the "narrating" Storytelling human.
Stories are important to us as a way of remembering, creating consensus and in the way we understand the world.
Stories are also connected to our feelings.
This is why we are vulnearable to
MANIPULATION!
Manipulation = to influence or control another person, usually in an underhanded way.
Important questions to ask
Källkritik = source criticism
Who said What and Why?
When did they say it?
What was the context?
Political, historical, societal
Can I corborate what I have read/learned
by an independent source?
Can we trust the facts?
We have to understand what facts are.
Facts are things we know and are proven to be true.
The only thing that can change a fact is a new scientific finding.
Facts can be changed by
scientific discussions or findings.
"The Blue marble"
this famous image was taken from space by a Swedish
Hasselblad-camera
With improved tools for measuring we know now that the earth is not round, but spheroid in shape.
(1972)
Truth decay
in swedish "sanningens sönderfall"
Facts and personal opinion gets mixed up
Established facts are questioned
Opinions are given more weight than facts
Trust in established sources has diminished
Facts are not opinions
Facts are facts
Influence and leading questions
Deep fakes
Bots in comment sections
Trolls
Campaigns to sway influence
These things hit hard because they manipulate our brains by using our psychology against us.
Text
Is this image plausible?
Our brains are easily manipulated:
Expectations
Selective awareness
Influence
Forgetfulness
Fear and adaptation
Münchhausen by Internet
"Internet information disorder"
Whodunnit?
Expectations
„It dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae“.
The brain processes information often by checking what do we already know.
Gammal gumma?
En ung dam?
Selective awareness
We see what we expect to see
An accident in a factory.
Influence
Within a week all witnesses will tell the same story about the accident.
Some people will have to change their view of the accident because a consensus has been created.
This has to do with influence and bias.
Influence and leading questions
A panel was shown the same movie and asked did the red car drive too fast after it passed the red barn.
After a week 17% will say they think the car started speeding by the red barn.
There is no red barn in the movie.
Walking legends = Vandringssägen
The grateful terrorist
A man who has recieved a warm welcome at a
refugee facility warns one of the staff working there "Hey, psst, be sure not to be downtown in Gothenburg on monday next week."
When this story is told it is usually longer, more detailed and has key traits of a walking legend.
Signs that you have heard a walking legend:
It seems plausible
Often there is a place name
A friend of a friend has heard it
People of authority: a priest, police, doctor
Matter of fact
and plays with strong emotions: patriotism,
love, fear, disgust.
Finland does not exist?
Conspiracies!
Anti-vaxxers, Incels, Flat earth, holocaust deniers, Illuminati...
Conspiracy theories are stories
that are supposed to make you feel:
Smart
in control
part of a collective
placing the blame elsewhere
Alt. Media
Factoider
Conspiracy theories
Propaganda
Advertisement
Sources that are biased
Walking legends
Who can we trust?
Distortion of history
Troll factories
Established media
Trusted news oulets
Public service (in Swe)
Institutions
Scientific databases
Wikipedia
Encyclopedias
We have to be critical of sources, but there are sources we can trust = källtillit
Public service TV and Radio
Wikipedia
Nationalencyklopedin
Encyclopedia Britannica
DIVA
Printed journals and
magazines
1. Identification of the sources,
Authenticity
2. Time
3. Dependency
4. Tendency
The four principles of source criticism
Dependency
Time
Authenticity
Tendenc
y
Pharaohs grave - discussion
A news source reports
"Archeologists find a pair of sunglasses inside the tomb of an Egyptian Pharaoh."
The tomb has been sealed for thousands of years.
What questions needs to be asked?
Pharaohs grave
Did they have sunglasses in those days?
What news source?
What drives the news source to publish this?
Who profits?
Have they found other glasses in other ancient graves?
What about egyptian tombs?
Which archeologists? Why are they not the ones giving these news?
Pharaohs grave
Can you trust the librarian?
Is this the primary source?
Secondary, tertiary?
On bus stops in Russia these posters spread disinformation about Swedes who were supposedly nazis.
The Swedish author Astrid Lindgren was one of them.
In her diary she wrote "I am more afraid of Stalin than I am of Hitler".
The poster says
"We are against nazis, they are not:"
Disinformation
We call it the Second World war
In russia they call it
"The great patriotic war"
In the way they tell the story about the Second World war the blame for the war is shifted
towards the Western super powers and Poland ?!
In our way of talking about the Second World War
Poland was the first casualty.
So why does this matter?
This is something we call distortion of history
"Historieförvanskning"
Distortion of history is basically propaganda.
Propaganda = information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.
Russian propaganda says:
The Ukraine is threatening Russia
The Ukraine is commiting genocide on Russians
The Ukrainian leaders are nazis
So why does this matter?
Video som påstås visa svenska militärstridsplan. Visar i själva verket bilder från spelet "War of Thunder".
"Kievs spöke"
Debunkat av bland andra Snopes
Sant!
Falskt!
Falskt!
Falskt!
Falskt!
Propaganda war
To summarize:
Distortion of history
either by changing, omiting, fabricating events
Bias
(partiskhet) = inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair.
Vikings!
The roman historian Tacitus wrote that the
Norsemen were tall, blond, strong and ferocious!
The Germanic tribes were wild,
dangerous and waged wars.
Tacitus had never himself seen these people that he was describing. In this case the propaganda was that The Roman Empire is civilized and we need to protect ourselves from these people.
A case of distortion of history
Our modern idea of the Vikings is also romanticized
by notions that stem from the 1600s when Sweden was a superpower, also a type of soft propaganda.
How do you justify waging wars, amassing wealth and occupying lands?
One way is to point to your glorious history.
"Our ancestors the Vikings were clean, upstanding people.
They lived in equal societies and were proud farmers."
In this case the historical artefacts were interpreted with bias, if the findings did not tell the "right" story they were discarded
We see that the Vikings had a clear societal hierarchy
by looking at Viking burial sites.
Some Vikings were buried with expensive weapons and these belonged to the aristocracy and a class that were not farmers.
DNA-testing!
Towards the end of the Romantic period
the blue eyed, blond and tall Viking
was seen as a superior being.
When we look at the artefacts now