As I thought of the manipulative ways that the media can be used and the ease of simply accepting a sound bite or image as truth and reality, I thought about the processes we need to employ to determine what is most truthful and what is mostly a lie. I suspect that Russia and other national/foreign powers will assume many identities in their info wars for the 2020 campaign--they'll likely kidnap profiles and use them in troubling ways to forward their agendas--we will have to be alert to this, report inconsistencies, and not trust as readily.
What processes will you use in your search for truth during these times of heightened info wars and information manipulation?
I will use the following:
- hone my research skills to more readily find out if a comment, image, or video is true or not; share what I learn
- resist one-size-fits-all comments/answers and either-or, right-wrong speak, but instead look at the complexity of issues to identify the truths that exist and the questionable falsehoods embedded
- work to to understand information with an open mind--even though I'm not a fan of trump or his cronies, they, like all of us, are not all bad or all good, we're all a mix of positive and not-so-positive and fall on continuums of right and wrong w/regard to all issues.
- Use questioning as an approach to learning
- See civil discourse and debate as a way to educate each other about the truths we believe in and the information we trust, and be willing to openly revise our beliefs as the result of civil discourse and debate
- use graphs and diagrams to relay complex information more
- cite resources as much as possible
- go deep with good articles/information by experts
- follow experts in multiple fields who are able to dissect information w/ease and readily relay important facts, concepts, events, opinions
What will you do to better and more critically assess the information that comes your way? How will you determine if information is more honest or false? What will you do when you learn of bogus accounts, information, share? How can we use social media to our advantage rather than our disadvantage, and how will you promote leadership's ethical use of social media?
These are big questions we all should consider in the days ahead as we work to choose the best, brightest, and most positively collaborative leaders for our governments and organizations, and as we hone our own leadership skills for the work we do in arenas both great and small.
