Information and Technology: Part #2
Those who know me well would probably characterize me as being a nice guy, a good person, quiet and maybe even a little boring. I admit to possessing those attributes in varying degrees. But one thing that people often overlook when sizing me up is that I am a bit of a control freak. I don't use that term in the sense of being possessive such that my wife needs to let me know where she is at all times and can never be out of my sight. I'm not like that at all. I also don't use the term control freak to mean that I am such an A-type personality that any little thing out of place or out of sequence drives me around the bend. Life is messy sometimes. I get that. What I actually mean by using the term control freak is that I strive to be as in control of what is happening to me as possible. I know that this is not always possible in this crazy, mixed-up world of ours. But, to the degree that I can control my environment and how it unfolds, I strive for that.
A simple example of this can be found in how I ran my classroom as a teacher. Saying that I was a control freak in my classroom does not mean that everyone sat in straight rows doing the same work at the same time and that absolute obedience was the order of the day. In practice, I was very much a child-centered teacher meaning that I designed my academic programming to best suit the needs of each individual student. I had enrichment opportunities available for those students who were ready to go. I had reinforcement activities for those kids who needed more time. Whatever each student needed is what I attempted to provide for them either through my efforts or those of the invaluable educational assistants who helped us out each day. However, the one thing that I could not abide as a teacher was outside interference by others as to how we did what we needed to do in our classroom. The teaching profession is notorious for constantly introducing new ways to teach the same skills. There are always new binders of strategies for literacy or math being foisted upon teachers. All of the time. Year after year. Now some teachers like having a binder that lays things out step-by-step. But I was never one of those teachers. I knew from my own experiences as a student back in Cape Breton that a standardized curriculum actually fits very few students. Without the ability for a teacher to adlib and alter the curriculum to fit those kids at the extreme ends of the ability scale, whole groups of students end up being left out when a one-size-fits-all education plan is dictated from above. So as a teacher, I always tried my best to ignore the political flavour of the month. I shielded my students from fads in education as much as I was able to and focussed on giving them 100% of my attention and energy. In this way, I was in control of our learning environment and the students were in control of how much use they made of being there in that learning space.
In the same way that I sought to control my ability to teach my students as I saw fit, I also strive to control how I live my life outside of school. One of the ways that I do this is by reading a lot. In the pre-Internet days, that meant that I read a lot of books, magazines and newspapers. I like learning new things and I like knowing what is going on in the world around me. So, I read. As times changed and the way we received information has changed, I adapted for the times. Instead of reading newspapers and magazines made of paper that I held in my hands, I started to do what many people did and that was to read and gather my information online. I started gaining access to work-related information online as the 1990s drew to a close and school boards began implementing online email systems. Many of these email systems had compartmentalized chat room features so that like-minded educators could collaborate together in spaces dedicated to math or the Arts or sports or whatever the subject matter needed to be. At home, I joined Facebook and Twitter in 2007. At the time, I joined those two social media entities because I was looking for a way to extend the reach of my blog. In the early days of my blog, my goal was to write "teacher stories" and maybe even to write a Chicken Soup for the Soul type of book about education. I was of the belief that Facebook and Twitter would help my work reach a broader audience so I climbed on board. *(The story of my first social media blog post can be read here, for those who may be interested).
Over the course of the next decade and a half, I remained loyal to Facebook and Twitter as my onramps to the information highway. As time rolled on, I began tailoring each social media outlet to suit my needs (because, as we now know, I am a control freak and seek to control my environment). Facebook became the place I went to in order to connect with the people I knew and loved. It was also the place I went to for local news and information about my town. Twitter, on the other hand, was where I went for information about the world. It was where I connected with authors and artists, scientists and politicians, athletes and sportswriters, activists and celebrities, too. To this day, my family always point to the moment when former Toronto Blue Jay baseball star Jose Bautista followed me on Twitter as being the high point of my time there. While my actual, everyday life benefitted from my association with Facebook, my mind and my intellect benefitted from my time on Twitter. I thoroughly enjoyed the first fifteen years that I had a Twitter account. I was able to access so much information on topics of personal and professional interest. I was able to access this information in real time from real experts. There was no better place to be when something was going down in the world than on Twitter. It was a truly amazing tool to use. I felt much more informed because of Twitter than I ever had from any other information source. And then things changed. Just prior to the US election that saw Donald Trump become President, Facebook and Twitter started changing on me. I assume they changed on you, as well. For me, the biggest change came in two forms: 1- the use of algorithms to display content really ramped up. 2- the information highway became filled with road rage and mistrust. Let me elaborate on each.
There are whole books written and entire documentaries produced that are dedicated to illustrating how foreign countries engaged in informational warfare during the 2016 US election, as well as the Brexit debate in the UK. The essential thing to know about each is that as part of these campaigns, social media was weaponized to shape public opinion. This was done primarily through the use of algorithms. The Mark Zuckerbergs of the world who run these social media sites claim that algorithms are a user-driven feature of their sites. To listen to Zuckerberg speak, you would believe that we are in control of the online choices we make and that all he and his staff are doing is helping us to receive online content that meets our interests. It sounds rather benign when stated that way. We all like what we like so why not have even more of what we like delivered to us without even having to make the effort to search for this stuff ourselves. For example, it should surprise absolutely no one who follows me to know that my Facebook timeline is filled with music posts that have been suggested for you by Facebook's algorithm system. However, as history has shown us, there is a very thin line that separates us, as consumers of information, from us being manipulated by advertising trends. Every time we hit that "LIKE" button and every time we opt to click on the link to an article, we are feeding information about ourselves and our interests and beliefs to Facebook or whatever social media site you are using. Those clicks and likes help these social media companies develop a profile on each user. Not only does this allow them to tailor content delivery to us, it also allows for access to us by organizations, political groups, charities, etc. that fit our online profile. The case put forth against Facebook during the Trump election was that they allowed their algorithm-based method of content delivery to also be used to target certain demographic groups with specifically-themed advertising campaigns that drew upon hot-button political topics. For example, people in the US who indicated through their clicks and LIKE button choices that they had an interest in crime and safety issues were suddenly seeing ads or articles stating that Hilary Clinton and the Democrats were soft on crime or were going to change gun laws and make America "less safe". Nothing was ever overtly stated that these ads were sponsored by Trump or his backers but, over time, the information that Facebook users had access to began to be less about their own interests and choices and more about being programming conduits for political movements. For a more modern example of this practice, those same forces that promoted someone like Donald Trump are also interested in promoting someone like Pierre Pollievre here in Canada. I know that like Donald Trump in 2016 when he ran against Hilary Clinton, a large part of Pollievre's campaign mindset right now is constantly working to discredit current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I see memes popping up all of the time on Facebook with photos of Trudeau wearing a photoshopped clown nose being shared by people I follow. The fact that it is memes being shared and not those same people stating their own opinions suggests to me that an organized online campaign is already being waged by Pollievre against Trudeau in anticipation of an election in the near future. Like those who backed Trump in the years 2015 and 2016, Pollievre's backers are busily using social media sites as a way to campaign long before an election is called. Once again, Facebook is being used to drive public opinion, rather than reflect it.
Secondly, when Donald Trump was campaigning, one of the tactics he used right from the very beginning was to label everything being reported as being "fake news". I knew that this was a dangerous tactic right from the beginning because once mistrust in professional journalists is sown into the minds of the public then it becomes easier to blur the lines between reality and fantasy, between truth and lies. It is not just a mere coincidence that Pollievre's latest public relations exercise was him engaging in a "debate" with a "woke journalist" and coming out on top. Discrediting those people whose profession is to report the facts is a key part of election campaigns. What this means on social media is that it has become almost impossible to state a political opinion online and have it accepted as simply being your own opinion. Now, when someone states that they are getting the latest Covid vaccine, for instance, the expected response is for their comment box to fill up with those mocking the opinion or action. Vitriol has replaced polite discourse. Everything has become a shouting match. The thing about this trend is that being shouted down is not the same thing as having a passionate, reasoned debate with someone. No one doing the name calling and uttering threats is open to having their minds changed by virtue of a reason presentation of the facts by one side to the other. Online discourse has ended up being used as a tool to shut down debate and communication. Many people are genuinely reluctant to state a public opinion anymore. I am definitely not a pro-Trudeau fan but what I do wish is that those with their F*uck Trudeau flags or online memes would state what he could do differently that would still help the economy or the environment rather than offering nothing but profanities and silly internet memes. I wish those same people would promote Poillievre with the same vigor that they chastise Trudeau. But that aside, getting unbiased information online is becoming almost impossible these days.
So then, what does one do if they want access to information? There are no really easy answers to that anymore. For my money, I find the lack of access to accurate, unbiased information to be very disconcerting. One of the things that national governments all over the world have started trying to do is to rein in the private companies who have taken on the role of information gatekeepers of our society. In many countries, companies such as Meta (who own Facebook) have engaged in the same sort of predatory business practices that Walmart has often been accused of. They have gone into countries and have become the de facto information source for a majority of that country's citizens. The impact of this is that local newspapers, radio stations, television stations, magazines, etc., are no longer being accessed by readers/viewers/listeners as they were before. As a result, advertisers no longer wish to allocate their ad revenue with these dying organizations. Consequently, revenue streams that used to fund workers such as journalists and broadcasters are drying up. People are losing their jobs. Local news coverage is becoming a thing of the past. Organizations such as Facebook are assuming control over the information flow for entire nations. In Canada, it has been stated that four out of every five Canadian advertising dollars are flowing into the coffers of this US-based private company. Locally generated news coverage is becoming harder and harder to find. We, as consumers, are becoming completely dependent on a private, for-profit company for how we see the world and how the world sees us. I feel that this is a very dangerous thing for our country and for democracy.
Say what you want about Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau but I support efforts to force companies like Facebook and Google to pay for the Canadian content that they share on their platforms. Right now, both companies have responded to legislation introduced into Canadian Parliament by censoring all news coverage. As a nation, we have become so dependent upon social media companies for our information that, at their whim, they can turn off that flow of information and deny us, as citizens, the access that we deserve to the information that affects our lives. As someone who is a bit of a control freak, having some omnipotent authority figure mess with my access to information is something that I simply cannot abide by. So, the question remains as to what can be done to rectify the situation. I will take that up in tomorrow's post. Until then, take care everyone. Bye for now.
The link to the trailer for the Netflix documentary about how social media data was weaponized for the 2016 US election can be found here.
***As always, all original content contained within this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2023 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com
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