Athena (00:00:04):
Have you been zombified by fake news?

Dave (00:00:08):
Well, not me because I have a team of intergalactic space aliens that verify things for me. Have you been Zombified by fake news?

Athena (00:00:17):
[Laughter] No, but I am zombified by imagining like where this team of intergalactic space aliens is that, you know, and who, who are these people, Dave, that you rely on?

Dave (00:00:27):
Uh, well they-

Athena (00:00:27):
Er, they're not people.

Dave (00:00:30):
Right, exactly. First of all, their space aliens. Um, and [laughter] they're all, they all went to journalism school, um, and they all now live on the moon and they send me, um, send me fact checks basically of tweets, little, little things that say when things are disputed. [Laughter]

Athena (00:00:51):
Sounds like, [Dave says "it's very useful"] it sounds like you've got a system going, Dave. Uh, so I'm, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna question your, uh, uh, you know, your, your way of verifying

Dave (00:01:01):
Yeah, definitely. You shouldn't, you should never question anyone's way of verifying. I think that's the lesson that we learned today, right? [Laughter]

Athena (00:01:09):
Yeah. So everybody welcome, um, to the Zombified Podcast. We are your source for fresh brains. I'm your host Athena Aktipis, psychology professor at ASU and chair of the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance.

Dave (00:01:22):
And I am your host Athena Aktipis. Um, I'm the real Athena Aktipis don't believe imposters.

Athena (00:01:30):
[Laughter] Nice try Dave.

Dave (00:01:31):
Who's Dave? [Laughter]

Athena (00:01:37):
I-I am going to have to, um, challenge you on that one because it actually interferes with my ability to put forth my truth, which is that I'm Athena Aktipis.

Dave (00:01:49):
Um, I don't know. I think you're Dave Lundberg-Kenrick media outreach program manager at the department of psychology at ASU and, uh, impostor. [Laughter]

Athena (00:02:00):
Well, whoever we are, um, we do share one thing, which is that we love brains.

Dave (00:02:06):
That's true. [Athena agrees]. I agree.

Athena (00:02:08):
And we also love this episode because it's kind of about, well, what happens when you don't know what's real.

Dave (00:02:17):
Yeah. Um, which is a big challenge these days for, for the rest of you. So, [Laughter]

Athena (00:02:22):
Yeah. So we uh get to talk with Kristy Roschke, who is an amazing researcher and journalist who looks at things like fake news and media literacy more generally. So, you know, how is it that we even figure out what media we can trust? Um, we figure out if there's, you know, intentions behind trying to convince us of things like, are we being persuaded or not? Um, are we trying to be influenced in our, you know, beliefs or behavior? And I think, you know, this is really important stuff for us to be engaging with right now, given how dependent we are on, um, social media and news sites for getting our information about the world.

Dave (00:03:11):
Yeah. Uh, and she talks about sort of how people have sensationalized news throughout time. And like she also at the very end may or may not discuss whether or not time travelers blew up the Hindenburg. You'll have to see. [Laughter]

Athena (00:03:30):
Dave. I have to say that I-I'm starting to wonder, um, about your beliefs or, you know, what, what you actually think about the world. Cause you also sent me that thing about the moon the other day. So I, I don't really know about the pictures of the moon and the, anyway, do you believe in the moon?

Dave (00:03:53):
[Laughter] Okay. Okay. I made up the thing about the aliens because I didn't want our listeners to realize that the moon is a hologram. Um, so, which I think is what I sent you, right. I sent you a thing about the moon being a hologram, so uh [Laughter].

Athena (00:04:07):
Alright. Well, Dave, I would suggest that, um, you talk with Kristy, maybe a little bit about some of this. Maybe she can help you figure out how to fact check, um, some, some of the, these, you know, ideas about the moon and space aliens.

Dave (00:04:23):
Oh, maybe, maybe. [Laughter]

Athena (00:04:27):
Well, so let's hear from this week's fresh brain Kristy Roschke.

Intro (00:04:33):
[Psychological by Lemi]

Athena (00:05:10):
Kristy, welcome so much to zombified. Uh, tell us, who are you and what do you do?

Kristy (00:05:17):
Thank you so much for having me, I'm very excited to be here. So I'm Kristy Roschke. I'm the managing director of the news CoLab at the Walter Cronkite School for Journalism at Arizona state University. And I study media literacy and kind of what it means to interact with information in the world that we live in.

Athena (00:05:35):
So media literacy, as in like, not just, can you read, but can you sort of make sense of media in lots of different forms? Is that the idea?

Kristy (00:05:45):
Yeah, pretty much. So media is, you know, there's a lot of messages encoded into different forms of media. Um, some of them are more apparent than others. And so, you use your basic traditional literacy skills of like reading and writing and you need to apply those in different contexts when you're consuming different types of information. So this kind of takes it a step further to just what you said, which is thinking about what you're looking at or hearing or reading and, and what the people are trying to convey to you, how they might be trying to persuade you, uh, what messages are missing, that sort of thing.

Athena (00:06:16):
So is some of it kind of like figuring out what the, almost the meta communication is? Like, you know, what is the message that people are trying to send or are they trying to persuade you of something or are they trying to inform you and like being aware of what that meaning or intention is behind the communication?

Kristy (00:06:33):
Absolutely. So purpose is a big part of it, right? And also issues of representation and sort of social cultural context of media. Um, you might see something in one context, like in a print newspaper, for instance. Um, and then the same thing on Twitter with an additional note that someone's tweeted out might make it something totally different. So understanding intent, purpose, um, you know, who's behind the messages, what voices are we hearing and why? So there's a lot of really great history and context you can get into there. Um, so yeah, it's really, it is very, it is very meta when we're thinking about how we're thinking about the information that we're consuming.

Athena (00:07:13):
Interesting. And, and it sounds like really with social media that has dramatically changed the landscape of sort of what media literacy really means.

Kristy (00:07:25):
Sure, sure. So when I got into my interest in media literacy, it was really with pre social media. So we were kind of more in the broader bucket of digital media. So when more of our information went online in various forms, and at that time it was more, you know, just reading things online or maybe blogs or early YouTube, that sort of thing. It really struck me that, um, these are different modes of, of getting information. So there's a, a different, you know, even a different comprehension behind how we're looking at that information. There's, people do studies on how we read differently, online, that sort of thing. Um, but then social media really sort of kicked it up a notch because sort of the first iteration of digital media was still pretty passive. You know, you had people creating information and putting it out and then on the other end, we're consuming it. But still not a lot of interaction between the two. Um, of course now in the digital world that we live in that still does happen, but anything that gets distributed to you, you can then do whatever you want with it and you can share it with others and you can take it and give it a whole nother life of its own via the communication you have around it. And and like your social circles and social media.

Athena (00:08:31):
It's almost like you can, like, you're a necromancer of sorts with information, right? You can like bring something to life that was already dead or, um, [Kristy agrees] in some cases, you know, like if you're say, you know, um, well let's cancel this person, you can kill them. Right. So you have like some powers over [Kristy agrees] the life that information does or doesn't have through social media that people never had before.

Kristy (00:08:54):
Yeah. And we talk a lot about that in, in our media literacy studies is that, that notion of power and responsibility, um, because yeah, I mean, if you think about a traditional news outlet, let's say like, you know, here in Arizona, the Arizona Republic, you know, so they're used to being sort of the main gate, gatekeeper of, of current events. You know, they, they are reporting on the things that are happening. They send it out now we're informed, but we can take that information and actually spread it farther, faster than the Republic even has the ability to, if it sort of catches someone's eye and it has that virality to it, that social media can have. So absolutely we have the ability to amplify information in some cases, even more so than sort of traditional gatekeepers. And then, yeah, we can also, we also have that responsibility to, um, promote things that are credible and not credible, that sort of thing. And if we decide we don't like something collectively, we can kill it. If we wish to.

Dave (00:09:49):
Can I ask who do you mean by, we, you keep saying we can do this and who is the we that you're referring to?

Kristy (00:09:53):
Yeah. So we, is everyone in, in this context, it's anyone who, who interacts with media. So my colleague, Dan Gilmore refers to we as the people formerly known as the audience. Um, so, [Athena: Hmm] you know, once upon a time it was this, this, uh, you had this very generic idea of, of someone's out there listening, someone's out there watching, we may be kind of have some demog-, you know, some demog- basic demography on them, but otherwise, like we don't really know or care who our audience is, um, but now in this more active way, we are interacting with that information all the time. So it is a collective sort of citizenry of we.

Athena (00:10:32):
That's really fascinating cause, I mean, it seems like, or like originally in human history, there was this engagement, this coupling with your audience, no matter what, right. Cause you were in person, you were around the campfire telling stories or maybe on like a makeshift stage in front of a few hundred people. And the audience was an active part of whatever you were communicating, whether it was a story or news or whatever. And then with, you know, the printing press and sort of broadcast media that became sort of more unidirectional. And now we're back almost to a more organic interactional, you know, opportunity, but it also has this bizarre, um, like new dimension of sort of both speed and like distance that can be covered that's totally unprecedented.

Kristy (00:11:29):
Absolutely.

Dave (00:11:32):
So can I ask [Dave sighs] you a question? What do you think that the, what is the purpose of news um, in its sort of pure state?

Kristy (00:11:45):
That's a great question. So I think the purpose of news is to have the, information that we need to make decisions in our daily lives, um, on the local and sort of on the more abstract, maybe national international level. So there is a certain degree of infor-, a certain amount of information that we need in order to live our lives. Right? What's the traffic like outside. I can turn to my local television station to tell me if I should leave for work five minutes early in the [Laughter], in a time when I actually drove a car to work. [Laughter] Um, and you know, or like, you know-

Athena (00:12:24):
In the before times!

Kristy (00:12:24):
That's right, that's right! Once Upon. They yeah, they still do traffic reports every now and again, I'll turn on my TV. That's just like all green. Everything's a go streets are wide open, um, but, you know, so there's things like that. And then there's things like we just finished a, a na-, a federal election and, and also state and local elections. So what do I need to know about my candidates? What do I need to know about ballots? I, I consider news to be information that is new, that is of, uh, civic importance mostly. Um, yeah, I mean, obviously not all news, that gets things that get classified as news fall under that category, but maybe that'd be my definition.

Athena (00:13:02):
How does entertainment fit in with it? Like, you know, both in sort of principle and in practice.

Kristy (00:13:10):
Yeah well, I mean, I think we've known, you know, coming from a perspective of, of working in a journalism school, we've known for a long time that people are more attracted to news that is entertaining. So whether that is news about entertainment or that is news, that's, it's, you know, salacious, sensational, scandalous, something that's gonna feel entertaining. It makes us feel something in some way. So, you know, uh, broadcasters have been taking advantage of that for decades. You know, that's why, you, you know, the lo- the local nightly news is gonna tease like the big story of the night all through the evening. And you're, it's always going to be the last thing you see, and you're going to have to wait through several commercial breaks to finally get to that thing, which almost always, I mean, no offense to local news, is a smidge of a let down. Right? Um, but you wait cause you're waiting to be entertained. So it's certainly not new that otherwise, you know, like the more stodgy news gets, I wouldn't say spiced up cause there's stodgy news still typically is stodgy, but there's a, there's a balance. Like if you're making a pizza, for instance, you've got the bland ingredients and then you throw in some spice via this other type of information to keep people interested. Um, you know, we don't, I don't love that cause I really wish people just wanted the stodgy information and we could dispense with all of the like fake in-, the stuff, not fake news, but stuff that's, you know, not important, but we pretend it is, but that's just the way it is. And now that we have social media and there are an infinite number of information providers out there, it is truly a, a platform or a, an experience designed to attract people's attention into and enter- entertain them, right. All of the algorithms are designed to keep our attention for longer and longer amounts of time. So the sad little- [Dave interjects] oh, sorry,

Dave (00:15:02):
Oh no, go ahead. Keep going.

Kristy (00:15:02):
I was just going to say the sad little news about like your taxes is going to be, you know, it's going to get one like, but the story of, I just saw, you know, Surrey and McKellen just got the COVID vaccination over in the UK and that'll have 20,000 likes. So.

Dave (00:15:20):
[Dave laughs] So you mentioned fake news, right. And that's become a, quite the buzzword these days and there's like this, it seems like there's a lot of skepticism over pretty much all news sources. Is that something new or has that been around for a while or what do you think?

Kristy (00:15:39):
It's definitely been around. Yeah. It's not a new phenomenon. Um, the, the skepticism is not a new phenomenon, fake news, also not really a new phenomenon, the volume, you know, Athena mentioned earlier about volume and speed. Those things have significantly changed the nature of fake and, you know, misleading information, but these are not new phenomenon. And then to a certain degree, we're responsible for that because of what we were just talking about. So in the effort to make actual news more entertaining and more appealing to people, it opens the door for stories that are even, you know, that are actually not real, but it'd appeal to people. And then you put them side by side on your Twitter feed. And if you don't know better, or you are not paying attention, you will equate them, you know, as equally valid.

Athena (00:16:30):
Well, and then there's this interesting sort of shift with like calling things, fake news, where at first it was sort of like, there are, you know, clearly there are stories that are not true that are out there. Right. And, and then at some point, like calling things, fake news started happening for things that are actually fact-based, but then people saying that's fake news. So it's almost like totally undermining even like, you know, our ability to have like news in the original sense that you said is the purpose of it. Right? Which is to inform, because if you know, anybody can point at anything that they don't like, even if it's fact-based and call it fake news, then you know, where does that leave us as a society in terms of being able to actually sort through the information out there?

Kristy (00:17:26):
Well, it leaves us in a pretty thorny position, I would say [Laughter] for a bunch of different reasons that you touched on. I mean, one is that the, um, the conflation of, like, bad news with fake news or, you know, I'm a person who someone has written something about, and I don't like what they said, I'm gonna say it's fake. And then that gets repeated over and over again. So there's that element of it. Then there's the element of people saying something that maybe is, you know, has a distinct partisan slant, or a very specific point of view, which, you know, may be fact-based, um, someone's going to call that fake because it, it doesn't comport with their preexisting beliefs. And so you put that in, they all get put in the same bucket, even though they're different phenomenon, right. And then you have people who are just making stuff up altogether. Then you have people who take actual fact-based information and change the context or add in, you know, maybe like, uh, making 47 in someone's hand in a picture. And all of a sudden, not- a factual story takes on an entirely different meaning. And, and to your point that all just kind of is now in this bucket of fake news, which makes news a loaded word also. Um, so we're all pretty much on the defensive, I think at this point when we're looking at information, which is tough.

Athena (00:18:46):
Yeah. You know, Kristy, I don't know if you remember this like, uh, a year and a half ago or so I think we had this retreat about like, you know, fake news and information. And it was, um, you know, out in the desert at basically like a dude ranch kind of place. And we went horseback riding and the guys who were leading the horseback riding, asked what we were doing. And we said, you know, we're having this, you know, workshop about fake news and stuff. And they're like, Oh, isn't all news fake news. Right? And I was like, Oh, like, that's what, you know, trickles down to a lot of people in the general public is like, Oh, I just can't trust news because it's all fake. And, to, to me, like, you know, when there is no like trust in information, it just it's like, I mean, literally the Wild West and not the, in the good way. Right? [Laughter]

Kristy (00:19:42):
Yeah. And I mean, even when people are joking about it, right. Because it is, it is a funny thing to say like, Oh, you're fake news, ha ha ha isn't that a funny joke? Um, it does, it, it, it sort of denigrates the job that professional journalists do. And it also dismisses the idea that there is a set of professional ethics that we ad- adhere to, you know, there are standards that, um, all good journalists keep in mind whenever they do anything, you know, and I it's, it's sort of one of those things where we've done some research on the difference in trust levels, in local news versus like natur- national news or sort of news as an abstraction and similar to politicians, it's like, oh, my local reporter, I had, I talked to this person and she's great. And you know, I, I love her on the TV or whatever it is, but news is terrible. You know? So part of it is that we've lost that connection even as we are bett-, we are, um, greater participants in media, in some ways we've also sort of lost that connection to the people who are producing news and who are out there on the street reporting. And a lot of that is, you know, journalism as an industry bears the blame for some of that. So when you can't connect that information to a, a credible trustworthy person who's producing it, it's much easier to, you just be, well, it must all be fake then because I'm seeing enough examples of where that's true, that I've did my, you know, my skepticism has bled into cynicism now, and I'm just, I'm just not, I'm not hearing it. Um, I will say one other thing though, which is sort of the, the interesting, like paradox to that, which just fascinates me all the time is that, and yet we still need information. Then the only place or the main place to get information is via reporters who can go to city hall and find these things out or attend school board meetings and find these things out. So even as we're saying all of these things, we are still actually using news to inform our lives.

Athena (00:21:36):
Yeah. Well, it strikes me that what you're articulating is essentially that like, no matter what, our willingness to, um, to believe what we hear is based somehow still in interpersonal trust, right? Like I trust this reporter or, you know, I trust, you know, I mean maybe this station, but because of who, you know, who I hear and it, it's interesting then to think about, well, like what, you know, what does that mean for news, for how to, um, you know, are there things that we can act-, are there ways that we can leverage that to actually fight against the like, fake news don't believe anything you hear kind of idea?

Kristy (00:22:25):
I absolutely believe so. And I think there's a lot of research, including some that my colleagues is doing- are doing at the Cronkite School and sort of this movement movement in, in more engaged journalism. So this, this idea that journalists really need to be of the community. They're not reporting on the community they're of the community. And that involves actually talking to people and not just people in a transactional sense of like, Hey, I need to interview for a story. Let's ask you some questions, then I'll go on my way, but really over time getting to know a community and the people in it and what, what, the things that are important to them, um, and cooperating with them in that way. And that has not been, uh, that is, I mean, sad to say, that's not been a priority in, in sort of 20th, 21st century journalism, it's really been much more transactional. And that's been one of the things that we've been having to play catch up on, you know, and are really quite behind sad to say, in terms of like the way we think about our role in the community, um, we've, journalists have traditionally seen themselves set apart, you know, and, and some people would argue sort of like up on this hole that they've created for themselves, you know, throwing the information down the mountain and when really we should be rolling up our sleeves and being in it and to your point, which I think is a great one. Um, learning more tactics about how to be in the community and cooperate with them, I think is really vital to the survival of, of journalism as a profession and, and the dissemination of news, and, and how we find trustworthy credible information to make decisions in democracy. Um, there's always been this notion that if you do that, you're not objective, like you are veering into some form of advocacy, which journalists have issued, I think to a degree that's unnecessary because no one is objective, no one is neutral at all. Ever.

Athena (00:24:16):
Yeah. It reminds me of, um, you know, sort of similar debate in academia, more broadly about, you know, being a, you know science communicator or being, um, you know, really involved in the communities that you're studying, sort of, you know, all of these things that, um, people worry, could compromise your ability to be objective. Um, so I, I, but I think it's, you know, it's essential that we kind of grapple with, well, how, how do we maintain sort of, you know, the processes that allow us to be, you know, objective and bring information from multiple perspectives to the table while at the same time, you know, being real, having genuine, authentic connections with the people who we're trying to communicate with or understand. And I think there's a way to do it. It's just, you know, not, uh, it's not necessarily gonna be a one size fits all, so.

Kristy (00:25:14):
Yeah. There's a lot of parallels there for sure.

Athena (00:25:17):
Yeah. Um, so we've kind of been talking about Zombification without talking about Zombification, right? So like all of this, you know, all of these ways that we are influenced by, you know, the news that we see when we go to news sources or, you know, the reports we see on social media, whether they're, you know, from news sources or, um, you know, other sources of information that, you know, might not really be like proper news sources, but are still putting out information, those have a huge impact on all of us. Right. I mean, and, and I know like during election time during, um, you know, a lot of these uncertain times with COVID when it wasn't clear exactly what was happening. Um, so many of us were just glued to like the refresh buttons on our phones, right? Like what what's happening, what's happening now? You know, where are things going? And I mean, just the scope, the scale of the influence that news has on us just seems huge. And to me, it seems like it's bigger than it has been before. Is that something that there's been empirical work on, like sort of the scale of that influence and, and what's been happening with that?

Kristy (00:26:36):
Sure. So, I mean, clearly there is more news available than, you know, at any point in human history and that will be true tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Um, if you think about the, um uh, the number of touch points you have with new information on a daily basis, you know, like I wake up and I look at my phone and there's a series of, of news alerts that have been waiting for me as I've been sleeping. And it just goes on from that. Um, so there are a couple of different effects to that one is that we, we ignore more, right? So surprisingly for most of us, a lot of the information we actually end up absorbing ends up being in- what they kind of refer to as incidental news. So we're not, most of us don't seek out news in the ways that we used to do so very, you know, obviously newspaper subscriptions are not non-existent, but they're way down. Digital subscriptions, I actually just read as, a paper yesterday, digital subscriptions this year are up. I think that has to do with COVID and, um, probably the election also and fire and paywalls, you know, like, uh, digital sites paywalls have gotten a little bit tighter. And, um, so you'd only get so many free articles before you have to subscribe. So that kind of thing is also it's way down and that's really hurt the journalism industry, but incidentally, we find a bunch of information via all these different modes. And, and sometimes that's from credible organizations. Sometimes it's not sometimes it's news via, you know, your mom, it's like, I just saw this thing on the news, but that's not a new thing. Like that's like, your mom is always giving you, your, your family's always giving you, I saw this on a thing and I heard, you know, that's, that's been going on forever. So in terms of like how it, um, like the, how the scale impacts our trust, I'm not sure. I don't know, I don't know if I've seen anything that like, connects those two things. Like if too much information makes us trust it less, I do, I can say that too, too much information confuses us, which may then lead to like, not knowing who to trust. It might be some indirect impact, but I'm not sure if the volume is, is directly, has a direct effect on like how credible we think it is. That's an interesting question.

Athena (00:28:55):
Yeah. I was really struck by something, you said a few moments ago about how so much of the information that we're getting now is incidental rather than something that we're purposefully seeking out. And it seems like that is that's, that's huge, right? Cause if you're like, Oh, I want to read the, you know, newspaper and you sit down on Sunday morning and read your, you know, your newspaper of choice. Um, then you're, you're kind of aware that you are in the mode of absorbing information, right? And you can like bring all of your faculties, you know, to the table as you're doing that. Versus if you're like getting up in the morning and you see a thing on your phone and you sort of process it, but not really, um, and then, you know, you see it again later on your feed and your brain is like, Oh, I've seen that several times, it must be true. And you might not even be aware that you have, you know, where you encoded that information from, or even that like, your brain is kind of making these assumptions, right. That it's, something's more likely to be true, just because you've been exposed to it multiple times, right. It's like with ads, right? Like ads work because of these multiple exposures and they don't even have to be fully conscious. So does that open us up to being more manipulated by news and news sources and, you know, information coming at us in general, if, if it's incidental, as opposed to really intentional?

Kristy (00:30:25):
I think so. I think for two reasons, I think one is what you said it's, it's, um, in that ind- incidental exposure. So the ways also the ways that many of us have sort of our, our, I'll say feeds, but they're not always feeds, but the way we have sort of our digital mechanisms set up, we're going to see the same types of things in different places. Right? So I have news alerts on my phone from particular news outlets, and then they're also represented in my Twitter feed. Let's say, I also f- maybe follow them on Facebook. I probably subscribed to a newsletter or two. So in all the different places I go, I might be exposed to New York Times content five different ways, and chances are at least a couple of those stories will be repeats. Um, the num- I mean, I'm embarrassed to admit I'm a, you know, obviously voracious consumer of news, but the number of articles I click through and read to the finish in a day is [Laughter] it's, it's not high. So [Laughter] most of it I'm getting, I'm getting headlines, I'm getting social media teasers, I'm getting a little bit of context in an email newsletter. So those pieces that get repeated stick. The other thing, and, and, so, so if yo-, so my feed is filled with trustworthy sources. If your feeds are filled with different types of sources, you're going through that same process, but the things that are getting repeated are potentially not true, or they're, you know, they're very, one-sided versions of a story and they're gonna stick in the same way. The other thing that I think hap- the other sort of phenomenon that you're talking about is sort of like lower versus higher order processing, right? So you're you, when you talk about the intentionality of sitting down to read the newspaper, or even watching the six o'clock news, you know, that's a time you're dedicated to this activity, you're opening yourself up to it. So you're gonna potentially use, you know, different mental heuristics to kind of take that information and so different, we process things differently, um, in this incidental way, you're just using those quick memory tips, right? Like, so a word that gets repeated in a headline is gonna stick and it's not it, yeah. So it is, it, it is more persuasive in that, you know, it relies, it takes in those tactics of persuasion more maybe than it does, um, you know, trying to get the whole story about something.

Athena (00:32:40):
So why is there fake news anyway, or, or, you know, untrustworthy sources, like who benefits from there being things out there that are not reliable that are not true, that are, you know, like why, why are we having to deal with this? Like, you know, who, who is behind it, or what set of, you know, uh, motivations and incentives is behind that?

Kristy (00:33:05):
Right. Well, like anything else, power and money and, uh, you know, control our motivations and they can be motivations of foreign adversaries. They can be motivations of, um, organizations that espouse and and I'll use that term, loosely organizations, groups that espouse certain beliefs and want those beliefs to be adopted by more people. Um, you know, like we're see-, we've seen in the last month, you know, a, a, a full month goes by before we can, we can acknowledge president elect Joe Biden. So we, you know, have to wait until the electoral college actually votes, even though in all recent elections, except for 2000 special case, you know, we, we trust in those processes so that we know on, you know, basically the day after the election who won, these are all symptoms or, or maybe not symptoms. This is, this is what you see happens when you, when you lose the audience in that way, you lose that trust because these, um, misleading false narratives. And then there's combination of both in there, right. Seeped in enough to create enough chaos, to leave us open to like, I guess we're gonna have to wait until we're really, really, really, really sure to say this one thing that four years ago, we said, you know, as we always have said, like, this is the results of an election, this is how our process works. We're gonna go out and say this now. So you're seeing how susceptible we are, and then like the, the, um, what the information providers are doing now, or is it being extra special, careful. Like, we want to make sure that we've, we're giving you as much information as we can before we say something, because we know you're not gonna believe us otherwise. So, and in that way there, I mean, all kinds of vulnerabilities have been exposed in that month. There's lots of news about how not letting president Biden start his transition, puts us in a vulnerable place. And that's what happened in 2000. And that's what was part of the reason that like made us more vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks. There's all these different things that lead into that so theres a lot. If you, you can let your imagination run wild and the number of people or agencies, or, you know, agents would want to make that confusing for the U.S. For all of us, for groups of us. Um, and it seems to work pretty darn good.

Athena (00:35:36):
Yeah you mentioned the sort of, you know, foreign adversaries issue. What's the sort of current evidence for like what, what's the scale of influence that foreign adversaries are actually having on, you know, what we see when we go on to Twitter or Facebook, or, you know, um, you know, see other, you know, sort of broader sources of news, like how much influence is there?

Kristy (00:36:03):
Well, there's a lot it's pretty significant and and it's not my specific area of expertise, but, um, you know, there's mounting evidence in, in the ways in which Russia's manipulated our media systems, you know, dating back to before the 2016 election. And, you know, probably even before that, but we really started paying attention. And in 2016, their tactics change, you know, you mentioned before, like there's not as much straight up fake news, like being produced by content farms and in, you know, Macedonia anymore that where they're just like churning out these entirely false pieces of information that doesn't happen at the scale that it did. Now, it's much more, how do I pick a narrative that I want to seed someplace and find some information that's out there in the news world and attach some other stuff that can make it sort of different, right? So there's probably some kernel of truth in it somewhere, but it's definitely fitting into a narrative. So we're, we're either, you know, we're either targeting people who are Antifa or afraid of Antifa or, you know, something like that, just as an example. And those messages are highly specific and they're highly targeted using social media tools that can say, like, I know that Dave's gonna want this so I can deliver this message directly to him. So what's sort of terrifying about these like next level tactics is that they are more individualized. So they're in that way, a little harder to track, right? They're not, that's not the same fake news message that's being sped out there to everyone. There's, they're highly tailored so they can, you know, there are a lot of people that continue to monitor Russia, China, Iran, places like that for different tactics. And they all kind of have their different motivations, different ways of doing things. So it's kind of like this ultimate, it's like the spy game, right? The cat and mouse spy game of, of the 21st century,

Athena (00:37:59):
Did we like shoot ourselves in the foot as America by like creating all this social media infrastructure? That's really good at manipulating people's psychology and then like, being willing to sell it to [Athens laughs], you know, other parties who might not have our best interests at heart?

Kristy (00:38:16):
I mean, yeah. It's it's the que-, it's the [Laughter] I mean, I don't know if it's like limited to America, but like, it's the classic, you know, we can dream up, we can invent this new technology and, and, but yet we don't exactly know how to control it. Right. So it, it, it takes on this life of its own. I mean, if you've watched any of the, the briefings that the, um, the congressional hearings that have happened over the last few years with the, you know, the heads of the platforms, it's like, we never anticipated this to happen. How could we have predicted this? Like we, this, like we didn't create, you know, a dys-, a dystopian other world where we could, you know, fake news is King. Um, and yet that's what happens. So there's a lot of, um, you know, important discussion around ethics in AI and, and, and, and bringing more humanities into the development of technologies and how we can integrate these ideas. Um, we can minimize the harm or we can threat model what the harms are going to be before we put these products out onto the market. Um, you know, I think the worst thing about these platforms is their business model. Um, if they weren't making billions of dollars off of our user behavior, they would be different spaces. I don't exactly know what that would look like. And maybe people wouldn't like them as much, but, um, you know.

Athena (00:39:48):
Or maybe they would like them, but not necessarily be as addicted to them. Right. Like they might not use them as much, [Kristy agrees] but they might like them more

Kristy (00:39:57):
If you've never downloaded. I don't know if you are face-, if either of you are Facebook users or Twitter users, but if you've ever, if you've never downloaded your, like the, you know, what does Facebook know about you? What does Twitter know about you? You can download their, the sort of dossier they have on you. Um, and it is a trip to go through that information.

Athena (00:40:15):
I'm biting my lip here cause I haven't done it. And I'm kind of afraid to.

Kristy (00:40:19):
I mean it's terrifying and, and it's humorous. And and then uh there's definitely plenty of times when you're like Facebook, you really get me, you know, like, but it's, it's, um, I think everyone should do it once. Um-

Dave (00:40:32):
So is, what's the, when you, I assume I take it, you did this for yourself?

Kristy (00:40:36):
I've done it a couple of times, yeah.

Dave (00:40:37):
And and was there anything that you were sort of surprised to see that you'd be willing to share with us?

Kristy (00:40:42):
Well, I, I don't, I, I can't remember specifics, so I'm not go-, I'm, I feel like I'll have to call you back and give you something, but one, some of the things I thought were particularly funny were like, um, you know, like entertainers that I might like, so there's, you know, there's whole categories of like things I might like so that they can think about the types of content they're gonna, you know, a- ads they're gonna put in my way and stuff. And it was like certain singers and entertainers that they said that I- they thought I would like, that were just, it was just so far flung. And I'm trying to figure out, like, what did I say that would ever make you think that I was like, you know, like a K-pop super fan for instance. And, um, and and so it's that kind of stuff that's really, um, or like certain politicians that I would probably like where some of them were correct. And others were like, I don't even, I don't know where you would get that. And so just trying to like game how that happened is really interesting.

Athena (00:41:38):
Right this idea that in some ways Facebook might know more about us than we know about ourselves. Right. Like, but we could like these things that we've never even heard of. [Laughter]

Kristy (00:41:48):
Yeah. Well right, I mean, maybe that would be a fun experiment would be to like, take those things and of the, the ones that you aren't familiar with, you know, like go check out that Spotify playlist and be like, you know what, you're right. I do love K-pop. [Laughter]

Athena (00:42:02):
K-pop's actually pretty good [Kristy agrees] my 15 year old daughter is into it. And now I kind of have that Dynamite song stuck in my head, so. It's pretty good. [Laughter] So whe- when we think about like all of what is going on in the, you know, information space, um, and with social media and how it's interacting with news, do you think there's, a, a problem for like us uh, in terms of our autonomy? Like is, is this impinging on our ability to, you know, be intentional autonomous beings? Or like, are we, you know, when we're interacting with news, like doing it with enough intentionality that we don't really have to worry about the, you know, sort of it zombifying us entirely

Kristy (00:42:58):
And I, It is, I think it is something that we, we need to be more aware of, which is, you know, part of, part of that is like when I teach media literacy classes, that's a lot of, sort of what we talk about is just, even again that meta piece of it, like knowing what's happening, even if you are still, you know, participating in those behaviors and you're, you are mostly an incidental news consumer, you know they're, just having that awareness, even in the back of your mind that something is feeding you something for a specific reason. If anything, I think helps you take pause before you, you take a significant action on that information right before you commit to like believing it or, and that's a little bit more abstract, but even before you commit to like sharing it with friends or like telling anyone that you might believe it, like those kinds of like intentional acts, having that background in, in what's going on is always kind of there as your, a little bit of a safety net, I think, um, it's funny, I've been thinking about ways like this word has been in my head for the last few minutes of, um, you know, there's that [Laughter] sort of like maga word of like calling people sheeple, right? Like I'm, you know, all of you mask wearers are sheeple because you just blindly follow these directions. And, and, you know, there's, that's, there's irony in that in all kinds of ways. Um, because really the following of the directions is based on the critical thinking that's taking place to identify why, why you would take these actions and the fact that it's a collective action doesn't mean that we're a bunch of sheeple or zombies or whatever it is. And so it's interesting that in that sort of libertarian minded, I do, I, I, my intention is I'm always going to follow my own intention and my own intention alone is actually kind of more of in some ways the zombie mindset at this point, like, it's like this reverse of like, okay, you're not going to wear a mask because it's your individual right. But there- there's, there's like, you know, the consequence is on you. It's, it's just, I dunno, it's such an interesting [Athena agrees] thing. And-

Athena (00:45:01):
I, I totally agree. There's so much irony there, right? Because it's almost like is- that, that people have this like, switch where if you say, hey, I think somebody is trying to control you. Right. Then you can control them with that. Right. You can say, Oh, these people, they're trying to get you to do that. Then people be like, well, I don't want them to control me. I don't want them to make me do that. So I'm going to do the opposite. Well, that's actually a really powerful tool then for changing people's behavior, if you make them worry that someone else is trying to get them to do something that, you know, maybe they think is not in their best interest, regardless of whether it is or not. Right. It's just, it's like we have [In the background, Dave says "oh did I just lose..."] this, this button that can be pushed or this lever pressed or whatever of like [Dave in the background says "hello, hello?], Hey, you might be being manipulated right now. And then that there can be a huge counter response to that that actually allows people to manipulate us.

Kristy (00:45:52):
Yeah. That's right. It's right. And, you know, in some of the there's research that would indicate that some of the more effective ways to get people to understand that something that though it really, really ties into a deeply held belief they have is not factually accurate. Right. So if you, if you are, um, for instance, someone who hasn't, who, you know, doesn't believe in, uh, vaccines or believes that there is a link between vaccines and autism, for instance, um, it's can be really hard to tell you otherwise, if you really, really believe this, and particularly if you have like anecdotal or firsthand experience, um, but one of the ways that that can be successful in, in helping to like fight that is by saying like, you don't want to, like, they're, they're trying to manipulate you, you know? So using that, like, you don't want to be had no one wants to be had. Right. So if you can convince someone which you know, is not a tactic, I like to employ because it feels like using deceptioned. If I- deception, like I would, I, I really just wish I could be like, but here are the, the set of well-established facts and the body of evidence behind it. Um, but you know, as we've learned has become abundantly clear, facts won't change most people's minds. Um, unless you put it in the context and for some people, that context has to be like, they're trying to fool you, like don't get had. And for some people that can like, like you said, that can be very effective and that can be a way to break through. Um, but it is partly-

Athena (00:47:29):
Yeah but it can, it can also then be used to control people. Right? So like, uh so I just finished, um, watching both of the, um, the Nexium cult documentaries, and like part of like, what they were doing was like, you know, break free from all the ways that these things are controlling you with these techniques. Right. But then those techniques actually were allowing the leaders to control the people. So if you offer someone like, you know, a, a way of getting freed from these things that are zombifying you, um, a lot of people will take that, right? Like, oh yeah, I don't want to be zombified, but sometimes what they're actually accepting in place of that is being zombified. [Kristy agrees] So, yeah. So it, it just seems like there's some weird loophole in our human psychology where it's like, if you tell people they're getting manipulated, sometimes that can actually allow you to manipulate them better.

Kristy (00:48:27):
Yeah. Well, and, and there's such a, there's this, there's a, you know, I'm fascinated by cults and cult behavior and, and there's ties into, you know, conspiracy theory, believing, and as conspiracy theory, a belief in conspiracy theory is becoming more widespread, you know, like five years ago, when I would teach a media literacy class, I would treat con- these conspiracy theories, like slightly different as a, like an edge case of, of misinformation. Right. But I don't see that so much anymore. Cause like, particularly with like, QAnon related conspiracy theories, it's seeping very much into our daily vernacular and more and more people are at least finding reasons to believe some of that. And, um, which is so that it's intere-

Athena (00:49:15):
Like electing people who do?

Kristy (00:49:16):
Yes. Correct. Yeah, yeah. Right. And so how I talk about that has to change because you know, the worst you, you can't ever let people think that they're stupid for believing these things because that's feeding into that whole idea of like, well, I'm trying to control you by, you know, saying you're dumb for your beliefs. So it's an interesting like the, the response to these things has to adapt as well. Um, but I was going to say with the, the whole free thing, like oftentimes when I'm just feeling like these are all the same story that just gets repeated over and over again, it does, it comes back to power and greed and control. And, and so you were saying like, what is it in like our sort of our human psyche? And obviously I'm not like an anthropologist or a sociologist, but I just always come back to that. You know, there's always that one guy that like has to have control and, and, and, and, and oftentimes it's under the guise of freeing people. They fall under the control of this, whatever, demigod or some such. Um.

Athena (00:50:16):
Yeah. The other thing that's so interesting to me about conspiracy theories in relation to sort of like news and, you know, facts and investigation, is this whole idea. Um, I mean, almost the tagline, like for QAnon is like, you know, do your own research, right? Like figure it out for yourself when, um, there are, you know, sort of all of these sort of online, like, you know, rabbit holes that you could go into that will just confirm all of these conspiracy theories. Right. They sort of, you know, they point to websites that, um ha-, you know, have similar, um, information on them or, you know, are sort of all in sort of this cluster. Right. [Kristy agrees] And that then gives the feeling that you discovered something, right. It's almost like, you know, it's a, it's a mystery made just for you to figure out. Right. And then you figure it out. And it has this feeling of like you yourself discovered something, even if it was actually sort of placed there for you, like, uh, you know, like a game or a, a mystery for you to solve. Right. So there seems to be another sort of vulnerability that we have of like, if it feels like we found it ourselves, um, then we, we trust it.

Kristy (00:51:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Like I am using my best critical thinking faculties to discover what everyone wishes they knew, you know, like I am now in, on that secret in a way that all of the sh- if only all of the sheeple could, you know, they like I'm, yeah. Now I have the power because I have this information it's, it's truly fascinating. And, and it's something that, um, people who want to manipulate in that way, they, um, they capitalize on vulnerabilities in, or absence of information. So something that scholars refer to as data voids. So if you are coming to a new term, you know, that you've never heard of before, and, and that's, you've heard in the news, or maybe you've seen it on Reddit or something like that, and you want to learn more about it. So you Google it, you Google the term to find out more. Um, if there aren't credib-, if there's no, like if credible people haven't written about it, that's where you're going to find the things that you're talking about. If you know, whether it's a YouTube video or wha- or you're gonna go down a 8Chan rabbit hole or whatever it is, they fill the void of cre-, of, of, you know, credible information with this information that then becomes this cycle of all pointing to each other. And that does make you feel like you're discovering something. And then it leads to that narrative of like, why isn't anyone talking about this? This is something you don't, the mainstream media don't want you to know about this. And that's a real struggle for the mainstream media is whether or not to fill those data voids because some of that information is just dangerous and it doesn't deserve a space. But then the argument is like, well, if you're not trying to correct that, or like put context on it, you know, sort of from the real world, from the non-conspiracy theory world, then the conspiracy theory gets all the tra-, gets all the traffic, you know? Um, so it's really hard to know what to, what to do in those situations.

Athena (00:53:36):
So that's really the sort of infopocalypses, you know, when you have these voids being filled with a bunch of, you know, information that is potentially actually dangerous and untrue.

Dave (00:53:51):
Um, can I ask about, uh, sort of the end of the era of sort of news anchors, right. Like, so, um, cause when I was a kid, so you, you work at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Right. And I feel like I grew up in the sort of era of like Walter Cronkite and Ken Jennings. And there were people who, not Ken Jennings, is that the wrong guy?

Kristy (00:54:14):
Peter Jennings.

Dave (00:54:15):
Peter Jennings. Yeah. And so, but it was real people, right. Who would sit there and sort of tell you the news. And I think it was kind of easy to build trust in people. Um, and now I feel like we're looking at, like, when we're thinking about this infopocalypse, it's anonymous, Reddit users, or sometimes news sources like the New York Times where it's a bunch of names of people who may be trustworthy if I looked them up and read their resume, but I do- at a glance, I don't know who they are. Right. Um, and so [Dave sighs] is there a way that in this current information system, I guess it's sort of a two-part question one is how important is it to have a person, a face that we can actually trust? And if so, is there a way that we can sort of recapture that in the modern era?

Kristy (00:55:03):
Yeah. So I do think that for some, or maybe a lot of people that face is important and that familiarity of like this person's in my home delivering the news, um, that does engender a lot of trust and has, and I don't know, I don't think we can recapture that in that exact form. And simply because people don't watch TV [Laughter], like we have too many choices now. So I think because of that, there are too many Walter Cronkites, you know, there still are people who deliver news on the major networks and, you know, you've got Anderson Cooper who technically is kind of a hybrid between a pundit and a commentator and an anchor. Um, but he's a notable person on CNN. You know, you've got some of these personalities, but actually now that I'm thinking about it in the cable world, most of the personalities that we recognize are not newspeople. So Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, none of those people are newspeople, but those are the people that we, that come to mind and that, you know, when we're thinking of modern day sort of Walter Cronkite's. Um, so I, I mean, there's, there's things we're doing within journalism that I think are important and may perhaps at some point catch on, but a lot of it is so inside baseball that I don't know that it's catching on. So to your point about the New York times, so the New York times puts photos and bios on every story now to try to do just that, to say, you know, Kristy's a reporter, you, like, she was just a name before, but now she's a face. And, and you can see that she's been working there for, you know, eight years and she's, she focuses on, you know, health, she's a health reporter. So that's trying to make that connection. And I think that's some people notice that, but probably most people don't. Um, and also if you're skimming headlines on social media, you're not gonna see that anyway, you know, and the chance of you, like, you know, a, a lot of stories don't get clicked through. So you get your news via a headline where you never even see a byline, you know, never even know who wrote the headline. So it's hard to recreate. Um, but then on the flip side, you know, there are a lot of personalities on YouTube and Tik Tok that people they're widely known. Um, and one of the things that I think is an interesting, I don't know, avenue to explore for media literacy, but also just sort of for trusted news is to use these influencers, to direct people to trusted news. You know, so I'm not suggesting that like a popular YouTuber should become a news person. Um, in fact, quite the opposite, unless they're, unless they're good at it or, you know, they are gonna do it right. But that person can help lead people to good information. Um, oftentimes they lead people to bad information. So it's, so there is, I think this connection between who are our influencers now? If not Walter Cronkite, um, and how do we connect them to helping get people, the information that they need? Um, yeah.

Athena (00:58:08):
It kind of comes to this issue of like responsibility of being an influencer. Right. And I don't know that that's something that has been a huge part of the culture of being an influencer, at least in, you know the early stages [Laughter] of it. Right. I mean, it's kind of a, a new thing, right. This idea that you could sort of rise to stardom, um, you know, just through your webcam and YouTube channel. Um, and you know, it does come with a lot of, I mean, influence, right. [Laughter] And that, that means that, you know, ultimately you do have responsibility, whether you sort of accept that responsibility or not is another question. [Kristy agrees] Yeah. So Kristy, we always ask when we're kind of getting to the end of the episode, um, what is the like version of the zombie apocalypse for information influence? And, and so like, if we were even more influenced by this, you know, barrage of information coming at us, through, you know, news sources and social media, some of which might be, you know, fact-based, some of which might not be, um, what kind of zombie apocalypse, like, are we in, if we're way more susceptible to being influenced by the things that we read on our feeds?

Kristy (00:59:40):
Yeah. Well, I think it involves some sort of authoritarian rule. You know, I think it becomes this it's, it's a scenario where we are, um, we don't have choices, um, because those choices have been stripped from us in the chaos of not knowing who to believe and who to trust. So when, when we, when, when we're all confused and we're all so cynical that we're not going to trust any information, it leaves the door wide open for a person or a group of people to just swoop on in and say, okay, so we're gonna do this now. And, and w-, and at that point we're gonna have there, it will be very difficult for us to there, you know, there may be a point of no return. Um, I feel, I felt that way a few times over the last four years to be perfectly honest [Laughter], skating, dangerously, close to the point of no return where our ab- inability to collectively agree on a shared reality, um, makes someone else decide what reality is. So that's kind of what I see as the ultimate infopocalypse is that we, um, just have to go into somebody else's version of reality because we, we weren't able to figure it out for ourselves. Um, I always think of, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Wall-E, but this image comes into my head all the time. So, you know on, on the big ship on Wall-E, they all are being s-, like, led around in sort of like this virtual reality experience where they're looking at these screens and they're eating these, like, drinking these sodas and no one can move and exercise and they don't even realize it because they think they're on a, you know, home on a beach enjoying their lives. That's where I imagine it to be. We don't even know that we're in this pseudo, you know, living these pseudo events because our concept-, you know, our, our perception of reality is so skewed at that point.

Athena (01:01:33):
Kristy that's so much scarier than anything I could've imagined you saying. [Laughter]

Kristy (01:01:38):
I love it. It's fantastic. I mean, I really like, so when I was in grad school, I had to read a lot of critical media theory. And at the time these are people like Theodore Adorno. Um, and, and, and this is a lot of like, pre-World Wars kind of influence of media and how media- mass media can influence people, how propaganda influence people. And at the time I was like, Oh, this is so hard to get through. And this isn't really where I'm, like, this so abstract, and I, I don't, I don't like this is so also kind of like simplistic because that's not where we are. We're so much more sophisticated with our media these days. And I l-, I find myself going back to that Stuart hall and people like that all the time now. Cause I'm like, Oh yeah, we're more advanced technologically. But that, that brings new problems that makes those kinds of, those ideas ever present.

Athena (01:02:27):
So did they articulate these kinds of concerns back then?

Kristy (01:02:31):
Yeah, so there's a lot of, you know, all kinds of things like pseudo events. So like, you know, things being staged for the purpose of entertainment, going back to you asking about entertainment that, um, that they're not really things that are happening, that, that the things that are being mediated via, you know, the mass media are really just pseudo events that, that become reality. The Bachelor is actually, maybe The Bachelor is really reality. Who knows? No, I've never watched it, but maybe it is our reality.

Athena (01:03:01):
Yeah. Well, reality TV is in this weird space where like, yes, those things actually are happening, but they wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't set them up. Right, so.

Kristy (01:03:10):
That's right. Right I mean, that's a pretty meta example of what, what I'm talking about too. So it's, yeah. I mean, it's pretty scary stuff, but there's fortunately conversations like this always keep us, keep us grounded in the present and, and, you know, hopefully more mindful in the information that we're consuming and using.

Athena (01:03:31):
Yeah. So, so for us kind of as individuals, how do we keep from being zombified by our smart phone feeds and, you know, obsession with um news? I mean, especially, I mean, I, I can see there's a good side to like being up on current events. Right. But that can bleed into like, obsessiveness, even if we're looking at reliable news sources.

Kristy (01:03:58):
Yeah. I mean, you really do need to limit yourself. And I would love to, you know, I, if someone has a great solution, I will take it, but yeah, I try to be more intentional. So getting back to that intentionality, and even though I don't subscribe to a physical paper, maybe carving out some time over my breakfast to look at the news and then trying to stay away from it for some amount of time until I go back to it, that's, I'm gonna have to relearn those habits because I think that's actually how we're meant to be informed. You know, it is, it is dangerous and it's not healthy to know, um, everything all the time. And, and to have that expectation that if a big story breaks, for instance, you know, there's something horrible is happening. It's a mass shooting. That minute by minute, we're going to be updated on, on what's what we, what the latest is, you know? So I always counsel my students to, don't do anything and just like, turn it off. If that's five minutes, if it's 10 minutes, if it's two hours because the story is gonna unfold naturally. And you know, in many ways I think we were much better off when we didn't know something until five o'clock, right. [Laughter] Like we had to wait until that appointment to find it. So that's one thing I think is just ripping the phones out of our hands, which is, you know, important for any number of reasons. And then, um, when we have a really strong reaction to something, I think this is important, you know, just recognizing that taxes, aren't probably going to make us furious. So if something's making us furious about a story about taxes, it's probably not the taxes, it's something else in that that you're reacting to. And that's the worst time to make a decision, right? And then you also really need to think about why is this making me feel this way? Um, and that's where you get into, like, who's telling me this, what are they trying to convey? Am I being manipulated or persuaded in some way for some- someone's agenda? Um, what is it that I, I really feel so strongly about and taking a few minutes to sort of interrogate that for yourself, I think is really important. Um, and before you go and share it with somebody else to cross check it against a couple other sources, because chances are, as we were talking about before most news, isn't super exciting. So if something crosses your feed, "you'll never believe what just happened". It's probably not to be believed. And a really easy thing to do would just be Google it and see if you can find another example of that story someplace else. And before you share it and put it out there again with that responsibility, that agency that you have to, to, you know, make something go farther into the world before you do that, decide whether or not it's worth being out there in the world. And you have that power just slowing down in that way, I think can help ward off the infopocalypse. I- I'm hopeful.

Athena (01:06:42):
Yeah. I love this idea that, you know, if you do have a strong, emotional response to something that you're reading, that should at least be a yellow flag, right. It's like [Laughter] , you know, well, real news about what's actually happening in the world. Shouldn't like, necessarily rile you up really intensely. So if something does, then, then that should be a moment for that like metacognition to like kick in of like, uh, is there something else going on here and maybe something isn't, right? Maybe it is just a really exciting development in the world. Um, but chances are, it might be something that, you know, has some agenda behind it that is trying to rile you up to get you to share it or to engage in some other action, um, that might not be in your self-interest or in the self-interest or in the interest of your whole community. Right. So, [Kristy agrees] important to have that awareness.

Kristy (01:07:33):
I refer that to them as like speed bumps, you know? So if you think about driving through a neighborhood and you're like, ugh, so many speed bumps, but there's a, there's a very real purpose for those speed bumps. It's so you slow down and you don't hit somebody. So in that same vein, creating these speed bumps for yourself, which is like check your emotions, um, you know, think, think about whether or not something's real before you share it. Um, platforms have started to put in some speed bumps where they're they're, you know, they'll put warning labels on things that says this information has been, um, fact-checked are you sure you want to share it? That's a speed bump. It's it's maybe not meant to change your mind. In fact, research would show it's not going to change your mind about the content of the piece. The fact-check alone is not likely to change your mind about whether you believe it or not, but the speed bump might prevent you from sharing it, which in the grand scheme of things is maybe the bigger thing, right? Cause it's hard to change people's minds. Um, but if we could keep people from, you know, if we could keep Aunt Sally from sharing every meme that she sees and putting it out there for all the other Aunt Sallys like, that's a step in the right direction. So those speed bumps are, we have them for ourselves. There are some that are starting to be put in place by the platforms, which is helpful. You know, it's, it's not enough, but, um, it, it can make these experiences- slow down these experiences a little bit. So we are reacting with a full mind more often than not.

Athena (01:08:58):
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So my last question then is, you know, are there ways that these dynamics of sort of influence that can happen through new media? Like, is there a space for, for those to really be a force for good, whether it's, you know, our individual good or our collective good, um, you know, is there a, a non-infopocalypse future that we could achieve using these platforms?

Kristy (01:09:28):
Yeah. I mean, I'm very pro- I mean, this podcast is a perfect example of that, right? Like you, as people who have interests can have this technology to put something together that anyone can access and you don't need to own a printing press, you don't need to be Jeff Bezos, you can do it just on your own. And I am very pro-media in that way because voices, historically you know the loudest voices have been the ones that are the dominant voices and they're usually the rich white males of the world. And so this is a way to help equalize in, in many ways who gets to be heard. And, you know, so I mean, it's, for all the bads, there are also goods and I liked we're moving in a direction where we're thinking about that more about how to minimize harm for people who put themselves out there, because that's a very real issue with, you know, the democratization of media. Um, certain people get harassed obviously much more than others. Um, so that's something to, to, we still have to contend with, but the fact that we can have voices in that way at all is, is a huge improvement over sort of any other time in history. And, um, and I think is very important and will continue to be more important, particularly as we're trying to figure out where journalism as a business and an industry sits, um, right now it's not a healthy industry. And so when you think about losing, losing the people who keep us informed, that's scary. Um, so the fact that there are ways that other people can fill that void, um, good people with good information and you don't need, you know, again, a printing press as an example, or you don't need like airtime on your, your, you don't need to own a television station. That's, that's very important. And it makes our world more interesting and also helps people who don't live places where they have access to free media. So, so yeah, there's lots of upsides to being able to create media easily and cheaply and that sort of thing.

Athena (01:11:38):
So there's hope.

Kristy (01:11:39):
Always.

Athena (01:11:42):
[Laughter] That's what I need to hear, you know, when we're in the middle of the zombie apocalypse of information, so.

Kristy (01:11:46):
Yeah. I mean, it's good days and bad days, right. But it's, it's, uh, gotta keep fighting the good fight.

Athena (01:11:55):
That's right. Keep beating those zombies down, kicking 'em back. [Laughter]

Dave (01:11:59):
Also, Athena, I saw a YouTube video where a guy said that a council of sentient bigfoots said everything's gonna be okay, so everything's gonna be okay. So [Laughter]

Kristy (01:12:10):
That seems very credible. [Laughter].

Athena (01:12:10):
Well.

Dave (01:12:16):
He said there were 12 bigfoots and they all agreed. So, I mean, that's a consensus, right? [Laughter] Consensus endorses. So I, I believe it. [Laughter]

Athena (01:12:26):
Alright well. Um, I'll have to, um, look up that and follow them on Twitter so I can stay up to date. And, uh, and Kristy, thank you for sharing your brains with us today on zombified.

Kristy (01:12:37):
Thank you, it was so much fun. I appreciate you having me.

Outro (01:13:49):
[Psychological by Lemi]

Athena (01:13:57):
Zombified is a production of Arizona State University and the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance.

Dave (01:14:03):
And we would like to thank everyone who has helped us make zombified possible, including the psychology department at Arizona State University,

Athena (01:14:14):
The Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative and the President's Office at Arizona State University,

Dave (01:14:20):
The Confederation of Intergalactic Time Travelers who add the subliminal messages to every episode,

Athena (01:14:27):
The Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics,

Dave (01:14:32):
And everyone on the Z-team, uh, who help us with social media and transcribing and all sorts of things.

Athena (01:14:40):
Yes. Thank you Z-team, you guys are awesome. Uh, also Tal Rom who does our awesome sound. Thank you, Tal.

Dave (01:14:49):
And Neil Smith, who makes all our illustrations.

Athena (01:14:53):
Yeah. Our creepy, great illustrations that I don't know, they, sometimes they keep me up at night.

Dave (01:15:01):
Yeah. Well, they look at you, so [Laughter] he embeds, he embeds human souls in each illustration, so. Literally are cursed.

Athena (01:15:11):
[Laughter] Yes, yes. And Lemi the creator of our song, Psychological.

Dave (01:15:15):
That's right. And the song has also got soul. So, uh,

Athena (01:15:21):
And it has subliminal messages in it?

Dave (01:15:21):
Yeah, it's got that. Yeah. [Laughter] So, um, and, uh, let's see, is there anyone else that we normally thank?

Athena (01:15:28):
That's our Z-team, um, and you know, all of you listeners, thank you for sharing all of your brains with us as well. So, [Inaudible talking over each other].

Dave (01:15:38):
Also go to uh zombified.org [Laughter]

Athena (01:15:47):
Got it, and if you play this episode backwards, you'll realize that actually most of it is Dave saying go to zombified.org over and over again, so.

Dave (01:15:55):
Yeah, yeah. So, um, yeah. Uh, you should try it, but [Laughter] if you have free time, so [Laughter]

Athena (01:16:08):
You can also support us on Patreon, um, or by buying our awesome merch, um, and definitely check out Channel Zed. It is our video concept channel. I mean, it's basically a way for us to like kind of keep talking about zombies and the zombie apocalypse all the time when we're not recording these episodes. Um, and it's not just me and Dave it's a, it's a whole bunch of awesome people thinking about zombies and the zombie apocalypse as a way of kind of engaging with the craziness that is our present and the uncertainty, which is our future.

Dave (01:16:41):
Yeah. It is really fun and really cool. So that's true. [Laughter].

Athena (01:16:45):
That has been fact checked. [Laughter. Dave agrees] Well, thank you, Dave, for, um, sharing the contents of your brain. Um, and thank you all for listening to Zombified your source for fresh brains.

Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
[Psychological by Lemi]