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Given yesterday's events, I want to talk about how woefully inadequate media literacy is for thinking about...violent fascism and the spread of a pandemic, + how focusing on this elides bigger problems about white supremacy / a fundamental epistemological rift in the US (1/n) https://twitter.com/sivavaid/status/1347178928872558592
2/ I've been seeing a lot of well-intentioned takes about how media literacy could have been one tool in the arsenal of fixing misinformation. It's usually part of a triad: critical reading, media literacy, empathy. If only people were better equipped, they wouldn't do this!
3/ There's already been a lot of great work that has taken these arguments to task. @zephoria has shown that while media literacy on its face teaches people to "challenge their assumptions," the painful reality is simply that these efforts often backfire.
4/ if anything, "critical thinking" often gets weaponized and sows *increased* distrust of the media and of government institutions. https://points.datasociety.net/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you-7cad6af18ec2
5/ we see this is a couple of different cases, too: the tobacco and oil industries have capitalized on this impulse to show that the "science is not yet settled" on issues like whether cigarettes cause cancer or if climate change exists. They weaponize skepticism.
6/ additionally, sociologists like @chris_bail have shown how being exposed to *more* opposing views actually increases political polarization; people don't actually revise their stances when presented with new (and opposing) information. They double down. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/37/9216
7/ so what accounts for this rift? Why do people come to such different conclusions? One answer to this is a difference in epistemology -- people have different frameworks for evaluating the same information.
8/ @ftripodi has a *great* report about how evangelical conservatives interrogate news: it's not that they are "misinformed," but that the epistemological framework they use (honed by their approach to Biblical text) changes the way they talk about Tr_mp https://points.datasociety.net/alternative-facts-alternative-truths-ab9d446b06c
9/ "but Crystal! Can't it be "both, and?" Why do you have to make it an "either/or?"
10/ I think there are a couple of different ways that this framing is problematic. One, as @zephoria has mentioned, media literacy often just makes the problem worse. It can't be the solution if it further aggravates the problem.
11/ More importantly, tho, focusing on this (along with empathy, which I will take to task downthread) erases the role that white supremacy plays in these situations. Dismantling that requires much more that education; it is a social reality entrenched in bloody institutions.
12/ as @surliertexan has put it: overselling media literacy (or historically, "good judgment") often props up white supremacy. https://twitter.com/surliertexan/status/1347256621370646529?s=20
13/ this doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how these kinds of narratives get spread by influential accounts across influential platforms. Let's be clear. These are well-calibrated, powerful campaigns *designed* to appeal to skeptical people https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1149427140728770560
14/ it's easy to demonize individual people passively consuming propaganda. It's not that: these are systems that rely on people questioning, interacting, and sharing these ideas with other people
15/ these ideas -- along with people's lived experiences -- are the animating forces behind what Arlie Hochschild calls the "deep narrative." Like @ftripodi, she shows how the *framework* that people use to interpret information matters more than anything https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land
16/ let's come back again for a second about empathy: no, I don't think that getting the mob to listen more to Black folks' experiences in this country would make things better. Again, this is a *systemic* problem, and it's not about individual people.
17/ Also, why should marginalized folks have to enact pain and perform their stories humanize themselves and gain empathy by people who are literal white supremacists?
18/ again, this isn't a problem of individual people. Say it with me again: this is a *system* of coordinated disinfo that relies on participatory dynamics. Telling people to think critically minimizes how powerful platforms + political orgs are https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1347029209189740545?s=20
19/ this is as good of a time to mention this as any: I actually have a paper about how similar dynamics play out w coronavirus skepticism (co-authored w @itstabya, @arvindsatya1, + others)
20/ it's easy to say anti-maskers just need to better understand the science. In reality, though, their viewpoints do not result from a *deficiency* of data literacy; they deploy skills that are supposedly part of this kind of edu in spades
21/ if anything, they leverage data visualizations + papers published in the likes of Nature to show how we need to be *increasingly skeptical* of the current epidemiological data since it's by nature incomplete
22/ for the anti-maskers, the "deep story" is about how the politics of knowledge have been usurped by a condescending elite that values submission (let's listen to the scientists) over critical thinking (question the CDC, they lied about masks the first time)
23/ indeed, they seek liberation from what they see as an increasingly authoritarian state that weaponizes science and critical thinking to exacerbate persistent and asymmetric power relations. Sound familiar?
24/ in case anyone is interested (gonna post the pre-print next week), here's the abstract of the paper:
25/ okay, let's come back to THE COUP.
26/ is sunlight the best disinfectant? Would giving people better tools for understanding how the history of oppression works in the US have changed this? Um...no. It's not a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of choice. https://twitter.com/sivavaid/status/1347224493912109058?s=20
27/ until we really grapple with that -- the fact that it's *not* about ignorance/education, but about LITERAL white supremacy -- we can't have a serious conversation about the horrifying state of American democracy. It's not a yesterday thing, it's a centuries-old problem.
28/ anyways, I hope everyone is staying safe and taking care of themselves while state houses across the country are being mobbed by armed white supremacists. Hug your pets and drink some tea, thanks for reading 
