Don’t argue with strangers… and 11 more rules to survive the information crisis
Feeling overwhelmed by divisive opinions, endless rows and unreliable facts? Here’s how to weather the data storm
We all live in history. A lot of the problems that face us, and the opportunities that present themselves, are defined not by our own choices or even the specific place or government we’re living under, but by the particular epoch of human events that our lives happen to coincide with.
The Industrial Revolution, for example, presented opportunities for certain kinds of business success – it made some people very rich while others were exploited. If you’d known that was the name of your era, it would have given you a clue about what kinds of events to prepare for. So I’m suggesting a name for the era we’re living through: the Information Crisis.
Related Knowledge Center: Media literacy
Digital technology has irrevocably altered the media landscape. As traditional sources of credible information — gatekeepers — lose influence, jostled and often replaced by content of uncertain pedigree, many users lack the requisite skills to separate fact from fiction, truth from lies, sense from nonsense. The market doesn’t reward one over the other — social media algorithms often produce better business outcomes with falsehoods — prompting some dedicated efforts to empower users with better critical-thinking tools.
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors