what a treat from @unc_citap. As @shannimcg said: "all the information in the world couldn't have countered this (01/06), this was not about misinformation or not having facts." Stellar line up, plus a personal treat to see @tressiemcphd & @alicetiara faces again

Rachel Kuo: we need to also pay attention to gradients of violence, not just the spectacular violence, but the everyday legitimated violence, when we make sense of what happened.

. @beccalew this could have also been predicted by observing altr internet celebrities, who were dabbling in ideological or very violent humor & memes, they'd delve into these issues then pull back, and would say in advance they'd go

. @ftripodi on how less fringe groups have previously organized online, but off the radar. RSVP, then actively wipe RSVPs so it seems like not many ppl are coming. for 01/06 anti covid19 lockdown FB groups were used to push stop the steal, so between group connections

. @tressiemcphd the internet helps people assemble their racial repertoire, and how they build their lens of understanding the world and expressing themselves. and what social media has done, it has bracketed the tools available to people to build this repertoire.

. @tressiemcphd further the participatory potential of social media is used (by taking selfies etc) to graft historical iconography onto current media spectacles & through that other people's racial repertoires.

. @dfreelon people could choose to use platforms that are harder to surveil or less surveilled, but they use generic social media, which both indicates increasing social acceptability of open racism and feeds it. this makes it easier to study but scarier to live with

. @shannimcg we have to keep in mind that social media is not a window into ppls private ideologies & thoughts, it is performative. so when interpreting social media data, we need to remember that these are public, relational performances of whom people want to be seen as

. @alicetiara allowing people to connect and build community around these issues really increases the importance of these issues for their identities and in their lives, because these issues then become imbued with camaraderie and belonging and warmth for them.

. @alicetiara one of my worries about studying misinformation as pieces of problematic information inserted into an otherwise unproblematic information ecosystem is that this erases the historical, cultural and social baggage of how those information ecosystems have been built

. @kreissdaniel focusing on the internet also allows us to sidestep underlying problems: information disorder is not a de-raced general phenomenon, polarization is not something just afforded by social media platforms, both are political issues which stem from US political history

. @robyncaplan can we now talk about this discourse of individual responsibility in terms of media literacy and media diet. how did these logics feed into what we're seeing here?

. @ftripodi spreading and seeding problematic content is often very manipulative and clever and they build on how people make meaning. for example lifting texts from sacred texts to decontextualize their meaning, but to maintain their rhetorical power and persuasiveness

. @ftripodi not only are people being said "do your own research," but this "own research" has been previously seeded, so Google is made a tool of reconfirming the ideas you came to the search engine with

. @ftripodi so we are seeing a weaponization of media literacy

. @alicetiara usually "do your own media research" or "be media literate" means reject the mainstream media or official sources and go read 8chan.

. @alicetiara so doing your own research often involves looking at someone's YT conspiracy video, it gets you to follow a thought process from mildly unusual to full on bananas.

. @alicetiara so us having taught kids to "do their own research" is really backfiring, sometimes we'd really benefit from people having someone smart to take them through information

. @dfreelon to the extent that there is disinformation on both sides, we need to accept that the real life consequences of that disinformation are very very different

. @beccalew I wanted to add some things that can't be solved with media literacy, first the deregulation of legacy media that led to 24hrs, commercial news cycle, fox news etc in the 70s and 80s, there's not only a hyper-proliferation of partisan news but also crisis of local news

. @beccalew when we frame it as media literacy we reinstate the creators vs viewers boundary, where in fact we've found that creators radicalize often as a response to audience demands

. @tressiemcphd plus, being racist feels good, so when you program for affective response you program for racism

. @robyncaplan ok, moving to "where do we go from here?" How can we reconfigure power between platforms and people to maintain the participatory potential

R.Kuo: platforms aren't really a good space for high stakes deep organizing, so it is important to not rely on them for everything. Further, platforms treat incidents of harassment or conflict as highly individualized, which they aren't, they stem from a broader (lack of) justice

audience Q, by @TarletonG I totally agree that this is not caused by disinformation by itself, that it’s disinformation that speaks to deeper epistemologies of white supremacy. So, when we ask questions about how the biggest social media platforms should change, is there any 1/2

hope of convincing them that they’re now ensnared in & supporting decades/centuries of racial animus? Maybe the real change has to happen elsewhere. But what might changes at the platforms look like, if they could embrace a deeper, socio-political understanding of what’s wrong?

. @shannimcg if platforms want to embrace their role as democratic gatekeepers then they need to have moderation policies that don't claim to treat everyone as equal users, while they empower and undermoderate politicians. they need to account for what needs to be corrected.

. @kreissdaniel platforms have had numerous reversals of policies & a lot of interpretational flexibility in they are applied, & that let a lot of things go in ways that were harmful to democracy in the us. There should be deep red lines around health and electoral misinformation

. @kreissdaniel i also think platforms need to commit much more strongly to combat and counter hate speech

. @tressiemcphd we are looking to psychological solutions to political economic problems, 'democratic' is not about the form of participation it is about the form of control, platforms have to be made to be responsible through regulation and economic pressure.

. @tressiemcphd because platforms want to make money and if the best way to make money is by tapping into peoples undemocratic impulses, so as long as there are economic incentives for people to 'not know' they will not know.

q from . @marylgray Is there value to teaching people how they could more easily get out of the way of others slinging crap around online? Put another way, could we disentangle information & media literacy campaigns that equip people in how to manage (vs 'understand') information?

. @dfreelon it feels good for people to present as engaged in critical thinking/media literacy, but it is really hard to do. a way to check - if your critical thinking always makes you feel better about yourself and always confirms what you think it is not critical thinking

. @alicetiara harassment support doesn't necessarily be facilitated by social media platforms, but i think it should be funded by social media platforms

. @ftripodi i think there is a value in teaching media literacy, but these concepts of media literacy have being exploited and weaponized, so if we do want to teach media literacy, we have to acknowledge how people make meaning before jumping in and posing solutions

I'm all tweeted out folx, if anyone who is following the panel and this thread wants to take over, pls feel free to add

ah, but had to add . @beccalew brilliant rebuttal to typical arguments against deplatforming. 1. no one man/ company should have the power - very true, but they had that power when they left it up as well, 2. they might go and congregate and radicalize elsewhere - they might but

... most of the alt platforms and apps have a hard time staying up, bc expensive. so it really is important to not just focus on the dark corners of the internet as dangerous, amplification is very dangerous too