Giant man-bats that spent their days collecting fruit and holding animated conversations; goat-like creatures with blue skin; a temple made of polished sapphire. These were the astonishing sights witnessed by John Herschel, an eminent British astronomer, when, in 1835, he pointed a powerful telescope “of vast dimensions” towards the Moon from an observatory in South Africa. Or that, at least, was what readers of the New York Sun were told in a series of newspaper reports.
This caused a sensation. People flocked to buy each day’s edition of the Sun.
The paper’s circulation shot up from 8,000 to over 19,000 copies, overtaking the Times of London to become the world’s bestselling daily newspaper.
There was just one small hitch. The fantastic reports had in fact been concocted by Richard Adams Locke, the Sun’s editor.
Herschel was conducting genuine astronomical observations in South Africa. But Locke knew it would take months for his deception to be revealed, because the only means of communication with the Cape was by letter.
The whole thing was a giant hoax – or, as we would say today, “fake news”. This classic example illuminates the pros and cons of fake news as a commercial strategy – and helps explain why it has re-emerged in the internet era.
That fake news sells had been known since the earliest days of printing. In the 16th and 17th centuries, printers would crank out pamphlets, or newsbooks, offering detailed accounts of monstrous beasts or unusual occurrences.
A newsbook published in Catalonia in 1654 reports the discovery of a monster with “goat’s legs, a human body, seven arms and seven heads”; an English pamphlet from 1611 tells of a Dutch woman who lived for 14 years without eating or drinking.
So what if they weren’t true? Printers argued, as internet giants do today, that they were merely providing a means of distribution, and were not responsible for ensuring accuracy.
But newspapers were different. They contained a bundle of different stories, not just one, and appeared regularly under a consistent title. They therefore had reputations to maintain.
The Sun, founded in 1833, was the first modern newspaper, funded primarily by advertisers rather than subscriptions, so it initially pursued readership at all costs.
At first it prospered from the Moon hoax, even collecting its reports in a bestselling pamphlet. But it was soon exposed by rival papers.
Editors also realized that an infinite supply of genuine human drama could be found by sending reporters to the courts and police stations to write true-crime stories – a far more sustainable model.
As the 19th century progressed, impartiality and objectivity were increasingly venerated at the most prestigious newspapers.
But in recent years search engines and social media have blown apart newspapers’ bundles of stories.
Facebook shows an endless stream of items from all over the web. Click an interesting headline and you may end up on a fake-news site, set up by a political propagandist or a teenager in Macedonia to attract traffic and generate advertising revenue.
Peddlers of fake stories have no reputation to maintain and no incentive to stay honest; they are only interested in the clicks. Hence the bogus stories.
Thanks to the internet, fake news is again a profitable business. This growth of fabricated stories corrodes trust in the media in general, and makes it easier for unscrupulous politicians to peddle half-truths.
Media organizations and technology companies are struggling to determine how best to respond.
Perhaps more overt fact-checking or improved media literacy will help. But what is clear is that a mechanism that held fake news in check for nearly two centuries – the bundle of stories from an organization with a reputation to protect – no longer works.
Although the tricks of persuasion may be as old as time, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry.
Fake news is sometimes hard to recognize for what it is, constantly evolving to fit seamlessly into our lives. We now primarily rely on news we get from our friends, families, and colleagues (rather than the once widely respected gatekeepers of reliable information, the traditional press).
What is unprecedented is the speed at which massive misinformation, from deliberate propaganda and fake news to trolling to inadvertent misunderstanding, flows around the world like “digital wildfire,” thanks to social media.
Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow’s recent study “Social Media and Fakes News in the 2016 Election” noted three things:
1. “62 percent of US adults get news on social media,”
2. “the most popular fake news stories were more widely shared on Facebook than the most popular mainstream news stories,” and
3. “many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them.”
In fact, the World Economic Forum in 2016 considered digital misinformation one of the biggest threats to global society. Researcher Vivian Roese furthermore points out that while traditional media has lost credibility with readers, for some reason internet sources of news have actually gained in credibility.
This may do lasting damage to public trust of the news, as well as public understanding of important issues, such as when scientific or political information is being repackaged and retold by the media, especially when coupled with our collectively deteriorating ability to interpret information critically and see propaganda for what it is.
Other research has also found that most readers spend most of their reading time scanning headlines rather than reading the story, in fact, “for the modern newspaper reader, reading the headline of a news item replaces the reading of the whole story.”
In today’s world, readers can have diverging interpretations of the same story, because they have not done their research and practiced critical thinking..
The difference lies in the editorial framing of a complex story for maximum eyeballs, particularly in the sneakiest signal of all: the humble headline.
This means that the headline, not the story, has become the single most important element of the news.
The headline is not merely a summary, picking out the most relevant aspect of the story, the way we tend to think of it.
Headlines are also actively designed to be attention-grabbing, persuading readers to read the story.
By telling its own micro story, quite apart from the news it accompanies and supports, it’s supposed to tell you just what you need to know, but it quite often tells you things you don’t.
It’s a linguistic trap that we don’t often notice, that can be easily exploited, and that makes the problem of “fake news” even more dangerous than we realize.
By now, we may think we know fake headlines well enough not to fall into the trap.
What we think of as the “prestige” media, news outlets with established reputations for careful journalism, are now often copying, intentionally or not, whatever happens to go viral on social media.
There isn’t anything particularly wrong with using the language of headlines that everyone else uses. But it is a signal that there may be something wrong with the news today, when the institution of the press is following the fashions of fake news found on social media.
In identifying misinformation, we often focus too closely on the superficial and obvious aspects of this shiny new concept of fake news—a fake headline accompanying a fake news article of actual falsehoods.
The public’s attention, after all, is a delicate beast, easily distracted.
Rather than newsworthiness being decided by a media gatekeeper, users actively have become their own gatekeepers, deciding whether content is “shareworthy”.
Stories go viral because of this “shareability” factor, but there may be no rhyme or reason as to why.
The traditional news can no longer just passively rely on their reputations to get their stories read. To survive, media publications have had to adapt their way of telling stories to social media standards, beating them for the scoop, in a competitive struggle for limited reader/viewer attention.
In doing so, they partially give up their role as gatekeeper to what is newsworthy, and the relationship of trust between the news outlet and its follower can start to erode, especially if expectations are not met.
This doesn’t mean a change in the accuracy or neutrality of their core coverage. But it results in a provocative framing for their headlines, tenuously true, that can leave a disastrously false impression.
So, at the outset, a headline, and how it’s framed, can do a lot of damage to how readers receive information and how they interpret that information.
Researchers conclude that “news consumers must be (made) aware that editors can strategically use headlines to effectively sway public opinion and influence individuals’ behavior.”
Based on all this information, it appears we, the public, have become the the new drivers of what is considered the truth when it comes to news.
So, how do we fix this mess?
Let’s start with a couple of quotes:
What is the hardest task in the world? To think. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it. – Henry Ford
Every day, I’m amazed at the amount of information I consume; I listen to the news in the morning, check my social media accounts throughout the day, and watch some TV before I go to bed, all while getting constant updates via email and social media.
It can be overwhelming , but things get really interesting when some of that information is biased, inaccurate, or just plain made up. It makes it hard to know what to believe. Even with all the competing sources and opinions out there, getting the truth — or at least close to it — matters. What you believe affects what you buy, what you do, who you vote for, and even how you feel. In other words, it virtually dictates how you live your life.
So how can you figure out what is true and what is not?
Well, one way is by learning to think more critically. Critical thinking is as simple as it sounds — it’s just a way of thinking that helps you get a little closer to the best answer.
Critical thinking is just deliberately and systematically processing information so that you can make better decisions and generally understand things better.
So the next time you have a problem to solve, a decision to make or information to evaluate, here are methods you can use to help you find the truth.
1. Don’t Take Anything at Face Value
The first step to thinking critically is to learn to evaluate what you hear, what you read, and what you decide to do. So, rather than doing something because it’s what you’ve always done or accepting what you’ve heard as the truth, spend some time just thinking. What’s the problem? What are the possible solutions? What are the pros and cons of each? If you really evaluate things, you’re likely to make a better, more reasoned choice.
As the saying goes, “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.” It’s quite easy to make an ass of yourself simply by failing to question your basic assumptions.
Some of the greatest innovators in human history were those who simply looked up for a moment and wondered if one of everyone’s general assumptions was wrong. From Newton to Einstein, questioning assumptions is where innovation happens.
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. – George S. Patton
2. Consider Motive
Where information is coming from is a key part of thinking critically about it. Everyone has a motive and a bias. Sometimes, it’s pretty obvious; other times, it’s a lot harder to detect. Just know that where any information comes from should affect how you evaluate it — and whether you decide to act on it.
3. Do Your Research
All the information that gets thrown at us on a daily basis can be overwhelming, but if you decide to take matters into your own hands, it can also be a very powerful tool. If you have a problem to solve, a decision to make, or a perspective to evaluate, start reading about it. The more information you have, the better prepared you’ll be to think things through and come up with a reasonable answer to your query.
I have a personal library of over 3500 books and I use them all the time for research. You have access to your local library and an unlimited amount of good info on the internet.
Don’t rely solely on Google. The Library of Congress online is a great source of information. Another search engine I use a lot is called Refseek (www.refseek.com) It contains over a billion books, documents, journals and newspapers.
When you’re trying to solve a problem, it’s always helpful to look at other work that has been done in the same area.
It’s important, however, to evaluate this information critically, or else you can easily reach the wrong conclusion. Ask the following questions of any evidence you encounter:
How was it gathered, by whom, and why?
4. Ask Questions
I sometimes find myself shying away from questions. They can make me feel a little stupid. But mostly, I can’t help myself. I just need to know! And once you go down that rabbit hole, you not only learn more, but often discover whole new ways of thinking about things. I tell people all the time, there are no stupid questions. That is how you learn.
Sometimes an explanation becomes so complex that the basic, original questions get lost. To avoid this, continually go back to the basic questions you asked when you set out to solve the problem. What do you already know? How do you know that? What are you trying to prove, disprove, demonstrated, critique, etc.?
5. Don’t always assume You’re Right
I know it’s hard. I struggle with the hard-headed desire to be right as much as the next person. Because being right feels great. But assuming you’re right will often put you on the wrong track when it comes to thinking critically. Because if you don’t take in other perspectives and points of view, and think them over, and compare them to your own, you really aren’t doing much thinking at all — and certainly not the critical kind.
Human thought is amazing, but the speed and automation with which it happens can be a disadvantage when we’re trying to think critically. Our brains naturally use mental shortcuts to explain what’s happening around us.
This was beneficial to humans when we were hunting large game and fighting off wild animals, but it can be disastrous when we try to decide who to vote for.
A critical thinker is aware of their biases and personal prejudices and how they influence seemingly “objective” decisions and solutions.
All of us have biases in our thinking–it’s awareness of them that makes thought critical.
6. Break It Down
Being able to see the big picture is often touted as a great quality, but I’d wager that being able to see that picture for all its components is even better. After all, most problems are too big to solve all at once, but they can be broken down into smaller parts. The smaller the parts, the easier it’ll be to evaluate them individually and arrive at a solution. This is essentially what scientists do; before they can figure out how a bigger system — such as our bodies or an ecosystem — works, they have to understand all the parts of that system, how they work, and how they relate to each other.
7. Keep It Simple
In the scientific community, a line of reasoning called Occam’s razor is often used to decide which hypothesis is most likely to be true. This means finding the simplest explanation that fits all facts. This is what you would call the most obvious explanation at least until it’s proven wrong. Often, Occam’s razor is just plain common sense. When you do your research and finally lay out what you believe to be the facts, you’ll probably be surprised by what you uncover. It might not be what you were expecting, but chances are it’ll be closer to the truth.
Some of the most amazing solutions to problems are astounding not because of their complexity, but because of their elegant simplicity. Look for the simple solution first.
Conclusion:
Critical thinking is not an easy topic to understand or explain, but the benefits of learning it and incorporating it into your life are huge.
Remember :
1. Don’t Take Anything at Face Value
2. Consider the Motive
3. Do Your Research
4. Ask Questions
5. Don’t always assume You’re Right
6. Break It Down
7. Keep It Simple
I will close with one final quote:
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. – Henry Ford
What do you think? Can you adopt critical thinking in your life? Better yet, can you pass it on to those who refuse to use it?