F. William Summers Lectures

Dr. Nicole A. Cooke

Tell Me Sweet Little Lies: Racism, Bias Confirmation, and the Disinformation Epidemic.

About the Lecture

The Internet is increasingly saturated with an inordinate amount of misinformation and disinformation (mis/dis). Mis/dis is information that is false, salacious, and even malicious enough to be damaging, especially as it pertains to images and messages related to people of color and other marginalized groups. If such information is ever challenged, retracted, disproved, or corrected, the damage has been done and the racist mis/dis lives on. How can consumers become more competent and intelligent users of information, to the point of becoming culture jammers who interrogate and critique information to challenge the status quo and resist the dominant practices and messaging that demean or ignore those who fall outside of the norms of Western white culture? An approach to reaching this level of critical consumption is to impart literacy skills to information consumers. Specifically, information literacy, media literacy, racial literacy, and cultural literacy would facilitate the average Internet user’s ability to seek, find, and use appropriate information, which in turn would facilitate more thoughtful dialogues and learning. Literacy skills will enable a shift from the rote crowdsourcing of information to substance-based community inquiry processes.