Educate yourself — and your friends and family — about disinformation
Part 2 of 5 Ways to Fight Disinformation this Election Season
As we move on to the next stage of “Election Season”, it’s more important than ever to guard against disinformation. False information can prevent people from voting, cast doubt on the credibility of the election process, and potentially even be used as the basis for a coup attempt.
So it’s up to all of us to fight back against disinformation.
This short video from PEN America, Shireen Mitchell’s All of us have been targeted by disinformation, and Jen Soriano’s Disinformation is like a virus, are all great two-minute introductions to what you can do about disinformation. Please pass them along to your friends and families!
Of course, a two-minute video is only the tip of the iceberg. Fortunately, there are lots of other great resources out there as well. How to Talk to Friends and Family Who Share Misinformation, an excellent short tip sheet by PEN America, is a good next step. ReFrame also has some great infographics on how to not amplify disinfo.
Shireen Mitchell goes into more detail (and discusses other topics including the importance of changing the narrative) in this longer video on How To Respond to Disinformation and Digital Voter Suppression. The slides are available at https://digitalsista-disinfo-slides, and the video’s also available on Facebook.
Here’s some other excellent resources
- Protection from Deception and Que no te quenten are free text courses from First Draft.
- Canaries in the Coal Mine: Racialized Disinformation in the Digital Age is an outstanding discussion featuring Ruha Benjamin, Bridget Todd, Shireen Mitchell, and Fadi Quran, moderated by Erin Shields of Media Justice.
- If you’re an organizer or advocate, the Disinfo Defense Toolkit from the Disinfo Defense League (curated by ReFrame and PEN America) and How Civil Society Can Combat Misinformation and Hate Speech Without Making It Worse by Joan Donovan and the Technology and Social Change research team at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center are both important reading.
- Big if True’s Disinformation Awareness Week conversations explore a wide range of topics.
- Background: Disinformation and Digital Voter Suppression, on the Indivisible Plus Washington blog, includes links to reports on the 2016 and early-2020 landscape, as well as several excellent videos.
- PEN America also has a guide to verifying images and sources, and a video on Election Disinformation: Using Media Literacy to Spot and Stop It.
