Last evening I had the pleasure to speaking on the topic of “fake news” at the Pikes Peak Library District 21c campus. The sponsors were PPLD, Pikes Peak Women, Citizens Project and Jody Alyn Consulting…and there was a good turnout for this second part to the three-part series.
The reference to “Brain Bugs” comes from the idea that we all have cognitive blind spots…biases that hinder our ability to process news and other sources of new information. Thanks to a suggestion of one of the sponsors of the event I recently read the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I won’t go into detail here but the book really opened my eyes to the way that we process information. Spoiler Alert: we are not very good at critical thinking and the kind of careful analysis that is often required when confronted with news (real and fake), propaganda, advertising, etc.
I’ve posted on the topic of “fake news” in the past, but if you’re interested in what I said last night the presentation was audio recorded by folks at Studio809 and I understand that it will be made available on their website [www.studio809radio.com]
If you give it a listen, let me know what you think in the comments.
The podcast is now available at http://studio809radio.com/special-unconscious-bias-media-literacy/