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Podcast for the Digital Literacies and 21st Century Skills course at Adelphi University's Educational Technology program.
Ayanna: I'm Ayanna. And—
Brady: I'm Brady.
Ayanna: So today we're gonna be talking about disinformation.
Brady: And the external source that we have is the the claim from the Trump administration of, the Iranian nuclear threat and just the immediate aftermath of that being these last few weeks, what everything that's happened because of it.
So that's what we'll cover today. Yeah...
Ayanna: Absolutely. I think we can definitely start with talking about the difference between disinformation and misinformation. Was that what it was?
Brady: Yes.
Ayanna: The difference is disinformation is more of a strategy that produces and allows for the spread of false or misleading information but deliberately, in a deliberate manner and effort to confuse, influence calls like any type of, like kind of chaos, while misinformation is done without intent.
Brady: Yeah, so I think if you just believe something that's not true and then you tell people that, you tell people the sky is green and you truly believe it, you're not, you don't wanna hurt anyone, but you're spreading false information. So I think a lot of people get those two mixed up a lot.
And I know I do.
Ayanna: Absolutely. And that's definitely how Spies had talked about it in his 2020 article about how misinformation spreads. We actually read this article last week, and it also is something that he mentions in both how misinformation spreads and in his disinformation—
Defining Disinformation, which was also in our recommended reason reading, which was his 2019 version. And he talks about how important it is to know the difference between one, 'cause they both affect society and, people, overall and, mass chaos. It can be terrible for us.
In many different ways...
Brady: Yeah. And I think the common theme with all of this that I'm noticing is what he calls amplification, where a small group of people start out, I don't wanna say a rumor, maybe a lie if it's disinformation, but start this false information, I guess you could say. And then it gradually moves on.
And expands, where the mass media and a larger group of people in general kind of pick up on the information that's being spread from the smaller group. I guess you can break it down like the word amplification, amplify to heighten or grayton, or not even a word, but just make bigger, I guess you could say.
That's a common theme that I'm noticing with all this, and that's something that definitely has happened with the whole Iran war situation. If we wanna get into that now or just wait a few minutes, but...
Ayanna: I think I kind of wanna just slide media literacy before we round ourselves back into, more of a big example that we're talking about, especially in something that is, like very intense for right now. [Brady: Yeah.] So I, I feel like it helps us glide over into media literacy because that was talked about in the other article that we read, by Bulgar and Davison. And what media literacy is overall and why it's important and what it actually has to do with the spread of disinformation.
But like you said where people like amplify. Like you were talking about the amplifying of it, how it starts small and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. But if people were more literate when it came to media literacy and they were knowing the difference between being able to look at a post and just seeing it versus analyzing it, evaluating it, and doing their own research behind it.
But we live in such a generation that it promotes the quickness of everything and how it's just not meant to, what am I trying to say? It's not meant to necessarily.
Oh gosh. I know what I wanna say, but I don't know how to say it.
Brady: It's okay. I think, wow. I think, okay. Something that our generation could benefit from is headline literacy.
Because I think a lot of our generation doesn't even look at. Don't, doesn't either one, don't even look at the the actual article to see what the context is or what really is happening.
They just look at the headline of said article and then they make their opinions from there. But absolutely, a lot of headlines are also misleading, so I think it's important for us to distinguish what is, first of all, we have to say to ourselves that we can't just read the headline and go from there.
We need to actually read the whole article, which a lot of us don't do. And I've been guilty of that many times.
And second, we need to see, we need to say, okay, if we're just gonna look at the headline, what are some maybe buzzwords that are thrown around a lot that really aren't, that are just signs of an unreliable article or what?
I don't know. It's just what screams falsehood from the headline. If all we're gonna do is read the headline.
Ayanna: Absolutely. And allowing and having people understand that they have to do more research or they can't just, like you said, rely on a headline. But it's like, how do we hold people who spread this information accountable, especially as we're in such a tech savvy, internet, everything is fast, everything spreads so quick? And even the fact that we don't necessarily know who everybody is, who do we hold accountable for all of that? Like how do we think about it in a way of trying to solve it as best as we possibly can, or I guess initiate new things to solve it.
Brady: Yeah, I, for regular people like civilians, like me, you, our professor, and anyone who happens to listen to this, we're not gonna hold any, there's really not a way to hold these people accountable because there is First Amendment, which does protect free speech, whether it's disinformation, hate speech, anything along those lines. It, even though it may be wrong, it's still protected under the First Amendment. So there's really no legal ramifications for spreading falsehoods or hatred or whatever else.
I think for government employees, whether you're a member of Congress or an assistant, or the president or whoever.
Then also for media members, I think it could, I'm not sure how this would be enforced, 'cause the president spreads false. Whoever the president is, they spread falses all the time as well. But it should be automatically assumed that media and government are under oath anytime they speak to the public.
So if they lie, then there's legal ramifications. 'Cause we see it all too often with CNN, Fox, Trump, Biden, whoever else. They lie all the time just to serve their purpose. And nothing ever happens to them besides, I don't know, people make memes and make fun of them for a little bit, but nothing really ends up happening.
Ayanna: Right. And this kind of, it reminded me of something that Spies had mentioned about how these under the table deals are happening for people to support their platforms and push messages that, whether they believe it or not, they're pushing because they're getting paid under the table.
So how do, like, how, but it's, it's hard to hold somebody accountable to that when that's a lot of things we don't know.
Brady: Yeah, and it just, it's difficult because it's one of the things that...
I don't know. It's one of those things where in theory it's nice, but none of us have any power at all. So what could we possibly do about this? And also just the impact that this has on the democracy that we live in and just, our way of life. If we don't trust media or the government or anyone else, it's just automatically assumed that they're lying.
How can we possibly move on from this?
Ayanna: I don't...
Brady: I don't really remember a time. We're both young and I'm sure we were younger. News media was reliable, but we were kids, so we didn't really pay attention.
I don't remember a time, I don't know about you, where the president or CNN, Fox, MSNBC, whoever says something, and I automatically think, yeah, that's true. I don't remember a time thinking that. I just, no matter what the president says, someone was like, really? Did that actually happen? Is that really why we're at war?
Ayanna: Because there's this—
Brady: —major distrust. Is this where the money is going? Is this what taxes are going to?
Ayanna: Absolutely. [Brady: I don't remember a time like that.] Absolutely. And it's like you look around and it's like you're trying to find the proof behind a lot of the words that are said, but then when it, everything comes into fruition, it's not, no needs are being met that said that they were gonna be met.
And I feel like that, but when you cause such a huge distrust and it's something that politics is built on, is just, there's no trusting the party. You're gonna go in the parties. Both parties are always gonna lie. There's always gonna be slander, propaganda, everything that's involved when it comes into politics.
It's the messy side of politics. But like, when it comes to certain things like that, especially when it comes to, even just like pushing people to endorse you, you know how this brought up like another kind of thing, which was like, you know how Twitter nowadays and like Instagram and a lot of social medias makes you, make you not you, influencers. [Brady: Yeah.] Disclose the fact that they make money off of it. Oh, this was an endorsement, I was sponsored by, or—
I just wanted to know because it's just something that popped in my head. If we did something like that, like with politics where like everybody had to be held accountable.
If, it'll be like the biggest scandal if it's, oh, we found out you were paid under the table. You promoted this person, but you were being endorsed by them the whole time, or sponsored, you got, you gained money from it.
Brady: Yeah, it's so rough because politics is such a foul business inherently.
And media should be one of the purest businesses on earth, spreading truth and facts. And however the people wanna interpret those facts, it's their prerogative. But the media should say, this is what happened, this is the story, this is who said what and did what. We leave the interpretation and your opinion up to you.
But instead, they're like, this is half of what happened, and then we're gonna leave the part that doesn't feed our narrative to the side, and then we're gonna have two warring factions going at each other while the people at the top are doing whatever the hell they wanna do.
Ayanna: Right.
Brady: I don't know, it's just, it's so hard because we, there's a lot of talk about we should do this, people can do this, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, what really can we do? That's like the age old question.
Ayanna: That's true. And to think that media literacy alone is something that can fix it. I feel like it's something that could help.
Yeah. Even 'cause I know that, I'm sorry I keep messing up their names. Bulgar and Davison. There you go. That when they kept talking about how we can start incorporating media literacy now and teaching how important it is, I a hundred percent agree. I think that is something that's important and that everybody should know.
But for us to be naive to think that it's gonna magically solve things, it'll help. I think it definitely will help to have kids be able to take the time to analyze, look at the stuff that you know, and teach them that there is more research that needs to be done than just what meets the eye and what's presented in front of you.
But having this knowledge, I think it's something that is important and I just don't think it's necessarily gonna solve things and maybe not make as big of a change as it probably should have, or other things that could possibly be done to help these narratives and the lessening the spread of disinformation overall.
Brady: Yeah. I think also a big thing now is how do we determine real images and videos from AI images and videos, because—
Ayanna: That's not even scary here.
Brady: Yeah. I don't know if you've done the, there's this assignment that we have to do for this week.
And it's like we have to just, it's a one question survey. How confident are you in your ability to determine what's fake and what's real?
Ayanna: Absolutely.
Brady: And then you go from there and you answer a series of questions. And some of them are fake. Some of them are real. Some of them are pictures and videos that are like AI and not AI and I don't know, like there was—
Ayanna: There was—
Brady: —one video on there of a guy pretty much standing on a drone, going however many feet in the air, pretty high. And the camera quality following him was so incredibly smooth. I was like, all right, this needs to be AI. There's no way, first of all, his weight would not be supported by that thing.
And second of all, the camera quality is too high. So it must be fake. And it was real. It turned out, and I was like, huh.
Ayanna: Yeah. And sometimes as you see stuff and it's wow. Like even with just nowadays with simple pictures of just landscape, it's, oh, this picture is stunning. But it's, is this generated or did a photographer really just know—
Brady: What they're, sometimes they, sometimes there are giveaways, like in AI. That's true.
Fingers sometimes there are giveaways where you're like, all right, there's no real person spoke like this, or the tone of speech of the AI people is different than real people.
Ayanna: Absolutely.
Brady: You can tell, but not really.
Ayanna: That's true. And it's like you, you'll see a lot, like a little bit of discrepancies, but I feel like the, since the kind of progression of AI, especially on social media, like seeing the advancement of it within just the last like year alone and even from the videos and with the amount of discrepancies. Yes, there's a lot, but not as many as I felt like I personally noticed. Maybe a year or like even six months ago really.
So the constant, just like improvement of it is just, it's gonna make it insanely hard to really be able to decide what's real and what's not. And that's where like it starts to get a bit scary.
Brady: Yeah. I just can't wait for the day where they have AI teachers. 'Cause they're, I don't know, there's conversations about, oh, teachers will be replaced by AI robots.
And I'm like, all right, the kids are already misbehaving now with human teachers, with robotic teachers, they're gonna be even worse.
I can't wait for, I can't wait for that headline in 20 years, robot teacher gives students attention, gets water balloons thrown at it, thrown out the window. I can't wait for that.
Ayanna: What if it malfunctions, are so like, so funny? You have a, now you have an unsupervised class full of children because you have a malfunctioning robot in the corner and it's just. And kids, kids are not the nicest either. So that's a lot of expensive technology to have around them, especially from how they're trying to, I feel like I've been seeing a lot more pushed recently towards younger ages and grades.
Like—
Brady: Yeah. Like a lot of technology is getting pushed towards—
Ayanna: School. Absolutely. There's no reason that an elementary school student should be having a laptop. It doesn't matter if you're in fifth grade or anything. Like when we had pens and pencils in class and we had to write essays with—
Brady: We're talking about the good—
Ayanna: Days. We're back up in—
Brady: Case we're both in early twenties talking about the good old days. But yeah, like pens and pencils and notebooks were—
I remember when the teacher would roll in that prehistoric TV—
Ayanna: Oh my gosh, of the week—
Brady: Skip TV to watch like BrainPOP or something. That would be the biggest thing in the world house.
Ayanna: Now they have smart TVs, they have all these things. Like even towards like me graduating and watching all the new stuff come in, I'm just like, that's crazy. And then to see now like my mom's a teacher and I was just like, wow, you have to learn all these new type of different systems and different things to incorporate it and throw it in a classroom.
Brady: Yeah. And for my student teaching placement, so my first one was in an elementary and middle school. The younger kids, not even just the middle school kids, the younger kids had Chromebooks, like fifth, fourth, and I'm not sure about third grade. I didn't really go. It's on different floors, so I didn't really see the third grade too much.
But like fifth and fourth grade had Chromebooks. I'm like, guys, you're eight years old. What do you need this for?
Ayanna: Absolutely.
Brady: You should be coloring. What, what are you doing?
Ayanna: I think that, and it's just, and it's like how do we expect for things to not get lost under the disinformation things when it's like we're starting them so young, because especially since kids are so young and they're naive.
I feel like it can cause, especially with them just having access to the internet overall at such a young age, and then now with all the disinformation, like I hear kids talking about things that kids have no business talking about at certain ages. Yeah. And I'm sitting here and I'm like, wow.
To think the world is so scary through your eyes. And it wasn't a thought through mine because you're—
Brady: Reading, I know. Information. I was watching SpongeBob when I was their age.
Ayanna: What? I was watching cartoons. I wasn't allowed an iPad.
Brady: What I, no, I didn't get my, I didn't get a, I didn't get, and even then I got a crappy phone.
I didn't get a phone until middle school.
Ayanna: Me too. I got a flip phone in—
Brady: Yeah, sixth grade. But kids being so young, they can't determine, it's hard for adults, for many grown adults with college degrees and high school educations and all that. So for kids to, for us to expect them to determine what's fake and what's real.
They can't do that. I'm sorry. Most adults can't do it. So what makes us think that eight year olds can do it?
One other topic that we would like to cover for a few minutes at least, is the article or just the general story about the ongoing war in Iran and the reasons at least that the government's giving that we got involved in the war.
How it started. What really affected me, or not really, what really caught my eye was, you remember last year, I wanna say it was late last June when the US bombed Iran first, like the first time around and apparently obliterated the nuclear arms and their, or their nuclear progress.
Ayanna: Yes, I did hear about that briefly.
Brady: So we did that. Apparently everything was totally obliterated, Trump's quote, and now, not even a year later, he's saying that we're doing this because they were on the verge of a nuclear weapon again, not even a year later after their program was totally obliterated the first time around.
And that just doesn't really, I don't know. It just doesn't really make sense to me. And there've been a bunch of people that we could talk about.
A few of them, but there've been a bunch of people within his administration and just in general that have said they really, like the Iranians really weren't close to getting a nuclear weapon.
They weren't really trying, this really just seems like a popularity grab in my opinion. I don't know. What do you think?
Ayanna: Okay. I see what you mean. When you say like a popularity grab, what do you exactly mean by that? Hold on.
Brady: Yeah, so my thought, because like he knows that the midterms are kind or, midterms are coming up.
Like the Republicans are gonna get whooped in, at least in my own opinion. They're not gonna do very well. So to me he's like, all right, what could I possibly do to distract people from the problems with ICE and the TSA not getting paid and the Epstein files not getting released.
Ayanna: Like a big hoax essentially.
Brady: We can always invade a Middle Eastern country. We know how much the Middle East is a big fear of Americans.
Ayanna: Absolutely.
Brady: And without, there, there is some merit to that for the reasons why, but we could just invade the Middle East, say they have weapons of mass destruction, same as Iraq.
We'll be popular and you'll be a huge wave of patriotism and will win the midterms. So he won't, so I won't get impeached. But, so I guess that's what I mean, kinda not really a popularity grab, I guess you could say, but more of a just clinging to anything he possibly can to—
Ayanna: I get what you're saying more now, to sway the audience in a way that's gonna benefit him in the long run.
Brady: Yeah.
Ayanna: Which I a hundred percent agree and as we know, that's how politics likes to get down.
And I feel like that's, looking at it from this perspective, it was very like, wow. It made me sit back and be like, even like me with my own use of social media or when I look things up to check if certain things are real, but it's like not knowing that you're a target audience of being swayed to be like, oh, everything doesn't seem that bad when realistically if you're actually doing your research and really staying up with the times and you're really open to everything else that's going on instead of trying to get thrown off by a chaos that's trying to be created, a distraction to real issues that are going on and can make that candidate look guilty in the long run.
Brady: Yeah.
Ayanna: And if people were to, like I said, going back to the conversation of media literacy and knowing what's real and being able to look and analyze and, I feel in a way it falls on us, but it's, it's hard for a lot of people who are ignorant to this type of practice.
Brady: Yeah, and I think, so there's multiple layers of why this isn't believable at all. Why this claim isn't believable. One, not even a year ago, he said that their nuclear program was totally obliterated.
And that means totally gone. There's no remnants left, nothing. It's just, it didn't exist. And now he's saying that not even a year later, that they were two weeks away. I don't know what kind of scientists they have over there in Iran, but that doesn't stop. Very correct. And also just the amount of conservative pundits too, that have come out against this.
This actually is not true and we don't want this. I don't know if you're familiar with Candace Owen, Tucker Carlson, all them.
Ayanna: Yeah.
Brady: They're all coming out and saying this is dishonesty. This isn't the real reason. Why are we doing this? They're not. Another person, I have notes here because I'm working on the mini project on this article.
Ayanna: Absolutely.
Brady: Tulsi Gabbard, who has a position in the Trump administration. I forget exactly what she does. Lemme see if I can find it. But she does have a high up position in his administration and she testified before Congress the other day and said that they, that the Iranians were not close.
I'm paraphrasing, but were not close to getting a nuclear weapon essentially. The claim, the reason why we went into Iran, not true.
And then have you heard of Joseph Kent? Joe Kent?
Ayanna: No, I haven't.
Brady: So Joe Kent was the counter terrorism director for Trump. So I guess maybe a branch, a mix between DHS and the DOD. Like in the middle, the sweet spot there.
Counter terrorism. So he should have intimate knowledge of all of this stuff. Here it is, Joseph Kent, or retired Green Beret, which is just Army Special Forces.
Retired Green Beret in the US Army, and the former counter-terrorism director who resigned his post because of Trump's unauthorized decision to start the war. In his resignation letter, he said, I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.
Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. This is one of a number of powerful quotes in an even more powerful letter in which Kent stated that Israeli officials and American media outlets have spread misinformation, which undermined Trump's America First platform.
Additionally, he reminded Trump of the fact that he had deployed to combat 11 times. Had lost his wife in a war manufactured by Israel before closing a letter by praying that Trump would take time to reflect on and reconsider his decision. He said that he would not be party to sending young American men and women to a war which wouldn't benefit the nation. He says, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives. This coming from a man who has extensive combat experience both in the Army and the CIA, 'cause they have power, paramilitary wings and branches of whatever.
And the CIA is possibly the most damning opposition to the war that there is. So that really stuck out to me. And he was on the Tucker Carlson podcast, which I haven't listened to. But I want to, I just haven't really had too much time. But that to me, really just like seals the deal that the counter-terrorism director is saying, this is not true.
I don't know. I don't know what your opinion is, but to me that kind of seals it as, this is not like someone's forcing Trump's hand or he's losing his mind. One of those two, like weapons of mass destruction. It's the same as what we heard with Iraq in, I believe, oh three.
That to not be true. And if Kent is right, this reason is not true either. So I just, brief opinion on that. If you have any.
Ayanna: I don't wanna keep going back, but I know I was talking earlier about the mistrust that is built and I feel like this signifies something that's huge and now that the mistrust, it, we're seeing it cross from the people against the government. It's breaking down within the government now. And to have such a big—
Brady: To have such an important figure. Yeah. To have just a big impact on the way that we're supposed to handle it and go about everything. And the reason, and you have your team now coming out saying these things aren't true. I can't allow, like that alone is like allowing, when you had said that it allowed that, that he doesn't wanna allow people to be sent to fight a war.
Ayanna: That is being said that we're fighting for a reason that isn't true.
And I just feel because it's gonna, he wants it to, in his head, benefit him, but it's just, I don't necessarily see how this is beneficial to kind of anybody.
Brady: Yeah. If there's a legit reason to go to war with anyone, I think most Americans would say if there's a legit reason and if that's laid out to us being like, hey, this is why we're going, this is how it'll affect you and the country, this is how it'll benefit us to go.
Ayanna: Right.
Brady: And if news media, fact checkers, whoever else is saying this is actually true. I don't think there's many Americans who wouldn't sign up or who wouldn't support the war effort.
But it's just, I don't know, false pretenses. There's very little in this world that needs more than the wellbeing of our country, but I'm sorry. Like this clearly is the equivalent of grabbing onto the side of a cliff with your bare hands, like you're just holding onto your political life for dear life.
And it's so clearly a manufactured fake reason. I'm sorry. No one can, no one supports this. Do, have you heard of the hashtag Send Baron?
Ayanna: No.
Brady: Oh my. So it's funny, but also not funny at the same time. So it's on social media, so take it with a grain of salt that like, all right, social media doesn't really represent real life.
Ayanna: Yeah. But there are many people who feel this way, even if they don't use the hashtag.
Brady: But it's so, Baron, Trump is obviously Donald Trump's son, who is like eight, oh—
Ayanna: I think I briefly did see the hashtag.
Brady: Yeah, he's 18, 19. He goes to NYU.
Ayanna: Yes I did. Yes he did.
Brady: And so for any of our audience who don't know, the people on social media are starting to hashtag Send Baron with the, and the general feeling among the population is, okay, this war is so gosh darn important, then you should send your own son to fight.
If you're gonna, if you're gonna, and he didn't waive the possibility of a draft too, which is prompting this as well. So if you're gonna possibly draft all of us to go fight and die in a meaningless war, if this really is so important, then go send your son.
But we know you won't do that.
Ayanna: And that definitely is a way to cause discourse on the internet.
Brady: Oh my goodness. The internet. It is certainly an interesting place.
Ayanna: Absolutely. And winding down, our time is coming to an end. Is there any last statements you would like to say? And I thank you. I enjoyed your opinion a lot and you informing me on things that I haven't been caught up on fully.
Brady: Just in a world full of horrible, crazy stuff happening. Always try to see the light, always try to be happy and keep your spirits up because each day above ground is a blessing. And I think that if all we look for in the world is evil and wrongdoing, that's all we're ever gonna find.
Keep your heads up, live your lives, be happy as best you can, and just enjoy yourself. What will happen.
Ayanna: Absolutely. And—
Brady: Thank you. That's my message.
Ayanna: And thank you. And with that, we will be signing out.
Brady: See you later.