Week 1 Blog: Transforming the Internet into a Place of Trust

Claire Wardle, "How You Can Help Transform the Internet into a Place of Trust," TED Talk, 2019.

After watching Claire Wardle’s TED Talk, “How you Can Help Transform the Internet into a Place of Trust,” Wardle’s claim is that misinformation provided online whether it be social media posts, memes, news coverage, is not solely about the content being false in and of itself but also rather how the public interacts both mentally and emotionally toward it. Many people box in the issue as fake news or propaganda but there is a much larger spectrum than what meets the eye such as rumors, misleading posts, memes, misinformation can have a drastic impact as it plays out in a domino-like effect. Fear, familiarity, and personal beliefs all play a key role in what we chose to share and interact with online as well. Wardle gives numerous examples to validate her point, for instance, one that particularly stood out to me was the “banana injected with HIV" rumor. Although it has been proven to be false, it continues to circulate as it targets people's fears and drives them to share it with their loved ones. I can personally relate to this as my own relatives tend to find posts like these on platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp and in turn share it with me, which I know is coming from a place of love and wanting to keep me safe and informed but this in fact shows us how misinformation survives, it survives not through any logical circumstances but rather due to how much power it holds emotionally. Wardle continues to discuss how real images could easily be taken out of context and twisted, especially with the example provided displaying how not all misinformation is entirely fake but can be twisted to be misleading with the lack of context. I find Wardle’s argument convincing as it can be explained with the reasoning that we don’t have a rational relationship with online media. What we as a public need to understand is social media algorithms are known for pushing out items that gets reactions and what gets reactions? Posts that target our emotions and feelings rather than not what is entirely true. Although we must hold responsibility, I believe it should be shared as it is the doing of both the public and social media platforms together. Although users play a role, platforms do consecutively as they design the systems. In terms of solutions to the problem at hand, I find Wardle’s idea that “the missing link is us” to be true. People need to be taught to question sources, be able to distinguish misleading context, and think about the content they see online. I personally find this ideal; people do not just automatically understand information but rather learn how to interpret it. It is not ideal to instantly place blame on the people, just because they do not understand content online does not mean they are incapable of doing so. Humans learn by seeing things repeatedly and having them explained and without that structure it can be easy for them to blindly believe misleading information. For example, people can see information online repeatedly and without knowing how to question it they often accept it. However, there lies the issue; it does not make sense to blame individuals for believing misinformation as they simply have not been taught to question it. Wardle backs this up by arguing that we should shift away from blaming individua's and instead focusing on how we can learn the system to which influences how information is spread. Involving users to contribute and monitor information such as through the use of Wikipedia is smart as the platform allows us to review content and fact check. Overall, the TED Talk made me realize that misinformation is not the whole problem at hand but rather a learning problem. If we want to have a more trustworthy internet, we need to understand how people comprehend information and begin to question and validate the sources, not just judge what is being shared.

Here's a link to the TED Talk if you are interested: https://www.ted.com/talks/claire_wardle_how_you_can_help_transform_the_internet_into_a_place_of_trust