Decoding the Digital Maze: A Journey into Critical Thinking and Online Discourse

Written By Christina Sestan

Are you ready to navigate the digital labyrinth? In this episode, I embark on a journey through the complex and often misleading world of online information. With the overwhelming flood of digital data, opinions, and news at our fingertips, navigating the truth becomes a Herculean task. 

Listen in as I dive into the nuances of critical thinking, examining how headlines, social media, and the allure of clickbait shape our understanding and beliefs. I also discuss the art of critical thinking in an age crowded with information, dissect the intricate web of tribal politics online, and guide you through strategies for a more analytical, slow-thinking approach. This episode is a vital exploration into differentiating truth from fiction, fostering intellectual tolerance, and engaging effectively in a world where media narratives constantly intersect and diverge.

And as with everything I share on the podcast, this is what I believe based on what I’ve read and researched. But please don’t take my word for it. Keep what sticks, discard the rest and for goodness sakes, go out and test drive it!

 

What You’ll Learn In Today’s Episode:

  • The importance of critical thinking in the digital age.

  • How online echo chambers and algorithms influence our perceptions.

  • The rise of tribal politics and its impact on social discourse.

  • Strategies for discerning fact from fiction in the digital realm.

  • The value of diverse perspectives and intellectual tolerance.

 

Ideas Worth Sharing:

“Are you beginning to understand how easily you can be swayed without even realizing it?” – Christina Sestan

“Echo chambers and algorithms = a shit show of fake news.” – Christina Sestan

“Opinions are not absolutes.” – Christina Sestan

“It’s not easy to navigate among so many extreme and terrifying headlines.” – Christina Sestan

 

Resources:

 

Connect with me: Instagram

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  • Speaker 1 0:01

    Hey, it's Christina. Thanks for joining us. And welcome to the Squeeze. How confident are you in the veracity of the news that you consume on a regular basis? I Hey, welcome back. It is the second season of The Squeeze, and I couldn't be happier. It was a great first year. Took a hiatus over the holidays, and now I'm back hitting the ground running. So I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to be honest with yourself. I'm going to read you a series of headlines that I've been collecting over the last couple of days, and I want you to listen to each one and ask yourself whether A, you would click on the article, or B, you're not going to click on the article, but you are going to remember the headline and perhaps even refer to it later on. Okay, here goes. Those annoying smartwatch move alerts will save your life. That's from Android Central. Keanu Reeves travels by public transport and easily communicates with homeless people on the street and helps them. Facebook, Hamas airs video of Israeli hostages, says it will disclose their fate. Apple News: Twitter loses nearly half its advertising revenue since Elon Musk takeover. BBC Five monster waves caught on camera, that's from YouTube. Will Trump's politics of untruthfulness win again, Washington Post. Why Polivier doesn't deserve the 17% lead in the polls, and that's Reddit. Okay, how'd you do? I know it's a simple exercise, but what did you notice about your reaction to the headlines themselves? And I'm going to throw in a few wild cards, because these are definitely things that have shown up in my threads, and probably yours as well. This weird trick will cut your exercise time in half. A 15 year old influencer can now reach as many people as a newspaper, but with none of the responsibility. Teachers hate him. He got through high school without studying using this one simple trick all in caps. This is why business owners are investing in Bitcoin. And lastly, 166 photos you won't believe are not photoshopped. No time wasting in that one. Hey, bitch clicked, bitch clicked. I spent a lot of time navigating the, let's call it, rather staggering plethora of information that we see every day online. It's nothing new. I'm not unique, of course. We're all in this soupy mess together, wading through a quagmire of information, the result of our immediate access to a vast array of data and opinions, thanks to our little pocket tech buddy, our true BFF, the one who apparently knows us more intimately than we know ourselves. But that's not what this podcast is about. It's about how we wade through. I have, like you, I'm sure, adapted strategies for navigating the never-ending river of data that never slows down or stops replenishing each night while I sleep and waiting for me every morning when I flip open my laptop, how helpful. Let's just call these strategies my digital shortcuts, because who has time to just sidle up to the all you can eat digital buffet, like livestock at the trough, any time of day or night. Those time blind rabbit holes, only too happy to suck up an hour or two of my time without any conscious consent or effort on my part, but even without my somewhat discerning strategies, which I firmly believe might actually be above average, I can barely manage, stay on top of, or feel any kind of sense like I know what I'm doing. I can barely make it to the bottom of an HBR leadership article these days, with so many other juicy digital dishes vying for my attention. If we're being really honest here, have you ever just stopped at the headline and called it a day? This is very sad thing, treating the headline as the news, apparently putting a disproportionate focus on the surface details of a clickbait headline rather than delving into the actual content of the story, is a thing. This is what passes for news for an awful lot of internet surfers out there, and perhaps you recognize this kind of behavior from my little exercise at the outset.

    Speaker 1 4:32

    It's hard not to feel a bit like lambs to slaughter when you consider that most news outlets farm out the marketing of those lovely clickbait headlines to crackerjack online marketing agencies who are only too happy to work their magic and create something juicy that may not even be representational of the story itself, sensationalism over accuracy of content, but maybe if we didn't crave those quick sound bites and prepackaged answers as much as we do. We'd be wiser to the grift, but we want our Kohl's notes. Does anyone listening even remember Kohl's notes? We slide into the role of passive recipient like butter off a hot plate, unable to discern fact from fiction, but this is all getting too serious. Let me show you this funny cat video over here, ha ha ha. In an online guide entitled The Parents' Guide to Critical Thinking, the authors of Reboot, which is a French foundation that's dedicated to elevating critical thinking in children, write, quote, the internet has democratized the transmission of information, allowing anyone and everyone to put forward their ideas and opinions on multiple platforms. People usually post things online in an affirmative style, which presents any given statement, no matter how dubious or speculative, as a well-known fact. People's personal blogs, companies' promotional lifestyle websites, and free encyclopedias all feature articles on complex subjects, almost always with content that has not been vetted by any experts whose critical thinking skills and reasoning would be invaluable. End quote. So, I have a question for you. Another one ready. Okay. How confident are you in the veracity of the news that you consume on a regular basis? Do you believe most of what you read, whether it's a financial post article, a subreddit thread on the Canadian politics, or an Instagram post about intermittent fasting that your friend just shared. I'm serious, though. Do you even self-reflect or ask yourself if you believe what you're reading, or sadly, like most of us, do you just passively ingest it where it sits quietly until you find it springing from your lips later on, when a work colleague mentioned something about how dangerous intermittent fasting is, but how much thought do you actually give to the veracity of your digital diet? Because I have a point to make. The reason I'm questioning our ability to critically appraise what crosses our eyeballs is because I see a connection between the unfiltered stream and the way conversations and discourse are evolving in an arguably polarizing way, and it's not too difficult to make that point these days. Are you noticing that there's no middle ground, just positions and not much curiosity? I'm mostly talking about those larger global type conversations, conversations about things that have large impact, like topics that influence wide swaths of humanity, like war and elections and climate, and whether we're chatting with colleagues, acquaintances, or even friends and family. Have you noticed yourself being a little slower to weigh in these days, a little more cautious, maybe feeling like you get a little more emotional. I think we're living in a time, and that sounds super old and crotchety, but when so much of our news seems to contain within it the ingredients for building a bomb, I mean a social discourse bomb, like the headline drops, and then people seem to break the land speed record for self-organizing into the party lines, and I can almost imagine the kind of conversations that happen seconds before the Twitter storm erupts. So, what's our stand on Gaza, or the Republican caucuses, or the record low temperatures, or whatever? Do we agree, do we disagree? How are we going to discredit the other side? But the funny thing is that as the battle lines are being drawn so quickly, sides taken, positions confidently declared, we're not just talking about the traditional party lines of like liberal, conservative, NDP, or Democratic, Republican, independent. We're light years beyond that. Welcome to the world of tribal politics. Do you remember when CrossFit first rolled into town? I'll bet you 20 bucks you learned about it from the person doing it, and I bet you remember that being one of the first things out of their mouth, followed quickly by an admonishment that you should probably check it out yourself. Am I right? I mean, it felt a little cult-like to me, like they joined a gang or something.

    Speaker 1 9:06

    CrossFit started around 2000 but really got cooking in the last five years. And, according to an online article by Tribute Creative, quote, Crossfires marketing strategy is centered around building a tight-knit community. Gyms, also known as boxes, foster a sense of belonging that goes beyond typical gym memberships. CrossFit community-first approach has led to organic growth through word of mouth referrals and social media shares. End quote. So, yeah, CrossFit built a gang, and that reminds me of a joke I heard about another easily identified tribe vegans. How do you know if someone's a vegan? The answer, don't worry, they'll tell you. Haha, this is in no way meant to disparage CrossFit or veganism. I have no beef with either of them. And, oh my god, I just made like a super big pun there. Didn't even know as I was doing it. What, anyway, what I'm point. Pointing to is a rapid rise in tribal or identity politics, but we need to unpack those terms a bit first. So, tribalism, as defined in a 2018 article from The Atlantic that was called The Trouble with Tribalism, is the fierce loyalty that people feel for their group, and according to another article from the Washington University Political Review. Tribalism refers to quote groups of people loyal to each other, no matter what. I did a bunch more research into the term, and I think of tribalism as viewing the world through the lens of your tribe, like it's a psychological inclination that we stick with the familiar, prioritizing loyalty to the group often, of course, at the expense of our open-mindedness and consideration of differing perspectives. In her book, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, Amy Chua writes, quote, Tribal instinct is seeing the tribe as exceptional and something to be deeply proud of end quote. In her BYU address on YouTube, she goes on to describe tribalism as quote belonging to a group, clinging to it, defending it, end quote. Where we get into hot water, she explains, is when our identity becomes inextricably linked with our tribe, and we risk retreating into an us versus them, becoming defensive and more explosive, and even going so far as to experience pleasure when out groups suffer. Okay, but what does this have to do with CrossFit? CrossFit is a simple example of a subset of people who perhaps identify a little bit too closely with their activity, so as to become a little bit of a drag to friends and family, because that's all they ever talk about at family gatherings. I'm kind of making a joke here, but there's likely sufficient emotional investment in that said identity that if someone listening to this does cross foot, you could actually be getting a little pissed off right now, and that's because identifying with something can make us feel like that thing, and then if someone criticizes that thing, it feels like they're criticizing us, and we become understandably salty. So, apologize, apologies to all you CrossFitters out there. I'm sure this doesn't apply to you, and that you don't talk to anyone about what you get up to in the box. Okay, today we have like this dizzying expansion of more tribal identities and more extreme tribal identities online, and they all sort of make the CrossFit example seem kind of quaint and wholesome. Many of these more recent groups foster not just passion but polarization, making constructive dialog with anyone outside their group difficult, and in many cases impossible. So tribes have long formed around things like race, gender, and sexual orientation, spiritual, religious beliefs, social, political affiliations, and they generate numerous benefits for their members, and things like a sense of belonging, emotional support, camaraderie, shared knowledge, security, and safety, but the tribal playing field has become much more crowded with countless subcultures and counter cultures, conspiracy theorists, extreme political groups, and even fanatical fandoms, just to name a small portion of the voices we see amplified across all of social media. While a degree of tribal diversity can enrich a larger community, that kind of exponential increase in the number of distinct groups tends to lead to a lot of conflicting needs, and the feasibility of, like, a cohesive and inclusive overarching identity can, like, easily be eroded. Doubt me, what do you think is taking place in the US right now?

    Speaker 1 13:35

    And the more extreme a tribe becomes, the, like, say conspiracy theorists, for instance, the more fervently they strive to assert their message and fiercely protect their digital territory, engaging in a relentless battle for both audience capture and ideological dominance. The erosion of trust in traditional news sources has led to a significant decline in the influence these outlets once enjoyed, and it's created a vacuum, where people increasingly turn to what we're seeing as independent online news sources. There was a Pew Research Center online article, it was from October 2022 and the authors write, quote, adults under 30 are now almost as likely to trust information from social media sites as they are to trust information from national news outlets. End quote. Yikes, all the parents out there are shuddering. They continue, quote, adults in all other age groups remain considerably less likely to trust information from social media sites than information from national and local news outlets, and quote, few were off the hook. Closer to home, Global News did a story that reported on the polling done by the Privy Council office, and that's a government department that supports the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. The polling was done between july 3 tonight last year, 2023 and they shared the results of the survey. So, Canadians were asked, quote, "To what extent do you trust the following groups to make decisions in the best interests of the public? end quote. The groups included. The local government, financial institutions, Government of Canada, Canadian news outlets, provincial government, social media companies, and in BC, where I live, people rank their trust in news outlets at 37.3% That was compared with the national average of 32.5 Okay, if you know anything about Canadian politics, and you're not going to be surprised to see that Albertans had the lowest levels of trust at 18% according to the survey. Since 2008 474 news media outlets had closed in 335 communities across the country. Respondents were asked to what extent this was concerning. 47% said it was a matter of some concern, while 30% were not concerned at all. The poll also looked at where Canadians were getting their news on a daily basis, and there's no surprises here. 40-4.6% said your own internet search, social media platforms ranked 43.5% and conversations with family and friends ranked at 39.5 Do you think your friends and family would like to know that they have less credibility than Facebook? I don't know. Mine probably wouldn't. Anyway, to me it all starts to look like a pretty simple formula, which I'll sketch out for you now. So, you take the closure of the traditional news outlets, you couple that with the rise in all the independent news sources, right? Anybody who's got a microphone, well, you don't even need that, you can speak right into your computer mic. Anybody can be an independent news source if you find yourself a follower. You couple that with the rise in extreme tribal identities, and what you end up with is a very high potential of fake news, but that's not the whole story, because there's one more nail in the coffin that I want to pull out to convince you, and that's really to convince you to listen carefully to the second half of the podcast, where I actually hand you some tools for how to think more critically overall. I'm talking about echo chambers, and if I had my hands on the controls of my audio right now, I would make my voice sound echoey. Maybe my manager will do that later, but anyway, echo chambers, so I know you know what this is, but the Oxford Dictionary defines an echo chamber as an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own. No surprise, algorithms, of course, are the linchpins of these echo chambers, and they track what you click on, and then they show you not only content that is similar to what you've already expressed interest in, but content that garners high engagement online more generally.

    Speaker 1 17:28

    So, pause, because that is really crucial that you understand that you already know that algorithms show you stuff that is similar to stuff you've already looked at, but did you know that algorithms also operate from an assumption that if everyone is looking at something over there, you definitely want to be looking at it too, and that's wonderful if it's like milk of human kindness stuff, not so much if it's dangerous misinformation or polarizing political dogma. So, let's revisit that formula again. So, you take the closure of traditional media outlets, you add to that the rise in tribal identities online, and they're, you know, attendant online platforms of informal news, and then you add the echo chambers and the algorithms, and here's what you get. You want to know what you get, you get a shit show of fake news. Is it any wonder there's so much online conflict that, let's be frank, contaminates real-life interactions as well? Are you beginning to understand how easily you can be swayed without even realizing it, manipulated into parroting false information and unwittingly reinforcing its credibility? Oops, and if you're doing it, so is everyone else. Hey, you're listening to the Squeeze, and if you like what you're hearing, there's a whole world of citrus couching to discover. We've got an online leadership program, it's called Citrus You, and it features those three key tools you need to be a better leader, well, to be a better human, we also have a number of mini learning bundles that you can get into, and there's plenty more. If you're interested, you can follow us on Instagram, or check out our website at w w w.citruscoaching.com And the show resumes now, you in his book, The Outrage Machine: How Tech Amplifies Discontent Disrupts Democracy, and What We Can Do About It, Tobias Rose Stockwell describes how social media has been designed to hack our deep tribal instincts and psychological vulnerabilities, creating a society-wide crisis of trust. He asks, what happens when we increase the speed of a network? What happens to our shared perception of her flooded with new information? We begin to reach the limits of our ability to carefully parse knowledge. Rose Stockwell defines two systems of thinking: fast thinking, which is made up of reactive. Emotional, unconscious, and automatic, and slow thinking, which is made up of reflexive, reflective, reliable, effortful, and deliberative fast thinking. He explains, is fraught with biases and mental shortcuts, and is what the social web was inadvertently built to capitalize on. The entire architecture, he goes on to explain, has the specific goal of capturing our attention. Our fast thinking brains simply can't tell the difference between emotionally urgent and genuinely important. This is why it's too easy to accept someone's opinion online as fact and adopt beliefs without subjecting them to thoughtful scrutiny. Since early 2020 COVID 19, and all the attendant issues like masking protocols, and anti-vax conspiracies, and school closures, and PPE shortages, and lab leap controversy, and on and on. They've continued to provide what I'm calling combustible reactions all across the internet. Have you noticed? Like, you'd have to be in a coma not to. What's fascinating about Covid 19 is that as a divisive issue it hasn't followed predictable tribal lines. Covid 19 has brought together very strange bedfellows, for instance, far left wellness tribes and far right mega tribes are actually in alignment with regard to some anti-vax conspiracy theories. Who would have thought it? In an article from the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, Kate Starboard explains her series of infographics that describe something she calls participatory disinformation to demonstrate how large online audiences can be mobilized around issues based on disinformation from online influencers. It's worth a look, and the link is in the show notes. Starboard uses the january 6 Capitol riots in the US to demonstrate the phenomenon. The process is initiated when the influencer spreads a rigged message to their followers. The influencer could be a politician, a political pundit, a well-known former MMA announcer turned podcaster, you name it, but someone with a very large following, and these large online audiences then parrot the rigged message, creating a frame through which now everyone is going to look at the issue.

    Speaker 1 22:14

    Sometimes people parrot the rigged message intentionally, but often it has been misinterpreted and passed on unwittingly, grassroots activists and social media influencers begin to amplify a collective story of grievance around the issue, which then gets amplified back to the original influencer. Shared grievance is incredibly powerful and can easily be translated into political action. Audiences continue to build on the growing sense of grievance, inciting violent language and calls to action. It's at this point that the influencer has the potential to organize and mobilize rallies and protests. It's probably that many well-intentioned and smart people get caught up in these massive online grievances every day. I can't help seeing the mechanics of online cancel culture in here too, I mean, criticize one of those big influencers at your peril. In an era of online cancel culture and participatory disinformation, fostering a culture of critical thinking becomes imperative, equipping individuals not only to discern fact from fiction but also to engage in meaningful conversations with those holding divergent points of view. Recognizing the value of diverse perspectives becomes essential, as it's within the collaborative space of differing opinions. When I call that juicy friction, that's where innovation and creativity live. This is the ingredient we need more of to tackle all those big hairy global issues, but inviting divergent points of view is not a popular pastime. If you haven't noticed, which is sad, because I know from both theory and practice that one of the most valuable wells of innovation lies somewhere in the convergence of divergent positions. We'll never tap it if everyone is playing nicely and doing the old go along to get along, dance. I have seen how leaders who privilege harmony over prickly yet essential discussions are unknowingly saying yes to languishing in a pool of mediocrity and status quo. So many people express a strong aversion to anything resembling conflict, and divergent thinking can and does easily pass for conflict. You have an opportunity here to build more intellectual tolerance, and how to relate to others who are different. Remember that intelligence means that you are able to learn from anything, evaluate ideas without personal bias, and sit with an idea without accepting or rejecting it, which reminds me of one of my university students from several years ago, I was teaching a module about conflict within organizational behavior, and I asked the class to imagine that I represented conflict, and then to stand as close or as far away from me as their actual comfort with conflict dictated, predictably like no one was right beside me, but the student I'm thinking. Have couldn't have seemed further away from me if he had opened the classroom door and run down the hall like he was clinging to the wall. Conflict was terrifying, and this is normal to some degree. Perhaps in future podcasts, I mean, you know, I'll delve into that topic a little bit more, our woefully inadequate response to conflict. But let's get back to the story here, because for now, my plan with a podcast topic is twofold. Firstly, I genuinely want to help you dodge the on-ramp to Rose Stockwell's aforementioned outrage machine, never mind the larger social implications of being hijacked in there, but you actually need to reduce all that needless emotional hijacking within yourself that comes from those hyperbolic click bait headlines. Secondly, I want to share some practices to help you shift from fast thinking and all its attendant costs to slower thinking. In an MIT Sloan paper entitled Cognitive Reflection Correlates with Behavior on Twitter, research affiliate Moshe Mosla and Professor David Rand found that people who engage in more analytical thinking are more discerning in their social media use, sharing content from more reliable sources. They went on to report that people in the sample followed more selectively, they shared higher quality content from more reliable sources, and they tweeted about weightier subjects, particularly politics. In contrast, Professor Round found that more intuitive users tended to follow similar types of accounts, which were notably avoided by more analytical users, and that they also tended to share content related to scams and sales promotions. Rand continues, quote, "Lack of thinking is an important contributor to undesirable behavior. It also highlights the type of users at risk for falling for scams. End quote.

    Speaker 1 26:44

    I want to start with a bit of a meta critique on critical thinking itself and why it can be a tricky bridge to cross. I'll start with this: we can't productively critique the arguments of others if we don't share their definition of the concepts I said that intentionally slow, because it's so important. A lot of what I'm going to be referencing in this next bit comes from an online guidebook developed by an organization called Reboot in France, and it was designed to help adults teach children how to think more critically, and like so many things in life developed for kids, there are more than just a few pages suitable for adults that we can borrow from this particular playbook. I'll link in the show notes. Consider a discussion on COVID 19 precautions, where one party perceives lockdown as a strict stay-at-home order, while the other interprets it as a more flexible set of restrictions in heated exchanges, each side might think the other is stubborn or misinformed, not realizing that a difference in how each understands the term lockdown is what is actually causing the disagreement, and if this could be addressed, they might actually realize they agree on something, but this is where so many conversations implode or explode, as the situation may be. You see, the fact of the matter is that we all learn about the world through our interactions with it, with objects, with people in formal logic. This is called learning through extension. I don't think it's a big stretch for you to understand that everyone's extension learning is subjective and therefore, doesn't necessarily match other people's concepts precisely. In spite of having the same name, our learning is dependent on our own individual histories of encounters with relevant examples, and are experience dependent. You know, the old saying: songs are as sad as the listener. Recognizing the potential for mislabeling in such scenarios is crucial. Acknowledging the discrepancies allows for more constructive dialog, enabling both people to clarify their definitions and engage in a more meaningful conversation about something like pandemic response. Learning through intention, on the other hand, is a world of shared and precise meetings. It has a formal and in some cases scientific definition. It's based on a higher level abstract reasoning. In this case, when you say lockdown, if we have both learned about lockdown through intention, I know that we are talking about the same thing, and our discussion or debate will proceed accordingly. We may still have disagreement, but we're clear about what we disagree on, and can offer our reasoning behind it. That's one big pitfall. Sadly, there are others. I'm one of those people that, if someone I know, like, and trust sends me an article, I'm going to read it plain and simple, based on something called the halo effect, as in angels with halos. I'm likely going to bestow a certain degree of credibility on the article, simply because it came from someone I trust, whether the article is deserving of that fanfare or not. With this particular cognitive bias, we're particularly susceptible to those sources of information coming to us, recommended by friends whose judgment and endorsement we are inclined. Trust makes it so easy to passively accept what we see or read, but what if my dear friend or esteemed colleague also has a penchant for quirky wellness blogs that are not well researched by any science and could in fact harm me. Just because you trust someone doesn't mean you should trust their link. Here are a few other pitfalls I want to share. They appear logical, but they're actually based on fallacy, and the first is going to be really obvious, you know. This one, false generalizations, the name is super easy to understand, and you're probably familiar with what I'm going to share here. So, here's an example: social media is absolutely the best way to find love. Several of my friends met their partner that way. Okay, hypnosis works for giving up smoking. My brother managed to quit that way. Yeah, okay. One or two people does not make a population, that one's obvious. How about arguments from authority? This is so common. Oh my gosh, how many headlines? Many scientists dispute the global warming phenomenon. Okay, hold up a minute here. Who are the scientists? What studies have they based their opinions on?

    Speaker 1 31:02

    Do they have any personal, political, or economic connections that could benefit them from challenging global warming? Do they even have specialization in the area of climate? Easy peasy. Okay. Next is arguments based on numbers. Wow, Taylor Swift's new song already has 500,000 views in the first five minutes. Must be an incredible song, really. That doesn't say anything about the quality of the song. Or how about this? The new XYZ version phone is already owned by 2 million people worldwide. Again, so what? This says absolutely nothing about the suitability of a product for you. So next time you're surfing online, consider employing a technique that is known as lateral reading, while scrolling primarily involves vertical trajectory, you go up, you go down. Lateral reading entails branching off the main page to investigate links or Google-related information from the article. Personally, I keep multiple tabs open alongside the article, often closing the original one long before completion, if information from another tab exposes credibility concerns, and if something just looks suspicious, hop over to one of the fact check links that I'm going to put in the show notes, and then you can actually find out if Trump really did wear his pants backwards at that rally. Okay, what I offer you next are a quick series of questions for you to keep in your pocket as you review headlines and online stories, and just grab a few that stick. So, here's one. Who benefits, or how about this one? Why now? Why is this showing up now? And what are the credentials of the source in the story? Who's funding the content? And one I enjoy, because it speaks to a much bigger context. When I think all of our news is interrelated, and we look at things through a geopolitical lens, what's getting eclipsed by this headline? Okay, as we navigate this landscape of practicing greater critical analysis with online news, it's equally crucial to recognize those moments when our own engagement turns emotional and a little divisive. So, the next time you find yourself a little more emotionally invested in a position, then maybe you'd like. Pause. That's a good cue. Are you just repeating something you heard without looking more deeply? How strongly do you feel you're right, and you need to prove you're right? Can you back it up? Can you back up your position if someone challenges you? That's crucial, because if you're having a hard time backing up your position with anything other than opinion, it's quite possible you've been co-opted by the outrage machine, and that's okay. Just recognize it and extricate yourself as quickly as you can. It's not easy to navigate among so many extreme and terrifying headlines. We all get co-opted more than we'd like. Let's make it safe to admit it. All right, let's wrap this up. What's important here is that you recognize your opportunity to awaken a more critical perspective for when you're online, a standpoint from which you can interpret an issue through a well-considered, open-minded position. Essentially, this is an opportunity to practice a little metacognition and think about how you're thinking. I'll leave you with a few last words. Remember that opinions are not absolutes. Each semester, I lead an eye-opening exercise with my students, grouping them to assess a concise case study that features two employees' attributes. Their mission: decide which employee to let go due to organizational downsizing. Notably, in each rendition, the majority relies on personal opinions for their choices. What adds a twist is that I intentionally don't provide specific criteria or clarify the distinctions between opinion and fact upfront. Most students, initially confident in their judgments, are genuinely surprised when we later dissect the exercise, realizing they've just terminated someone based on something as fleeting as opinion. Consider all the decisions you've made. Made trusting what appeared to be expert opinions only to discover they might lack a solid foundation in facts. It's a powerful inquiry into the essence of influence and expertise that urges us all to scrutinize the sources that shape our decisions and behavior. And if you've just watched the Iowa caucus results, then this Reddit comment I saw earlier this morning might land for you.

    Speaker 1 35:20

    Quote, I was in a bar in rural Colorado a couple of years ago as they were closing down, and the bartender heard my friends and I talking, and basically said, You're not from around here, are you? Then he went on to say that basically the people around there are really nice, they'll give you the shirt off their back, but they only ever talk to their neighbors, so they just don't ever hear perspectives different from their own on a regular basis, and that's the problem. A lot of these Trump voters mean well, but they don't know anything about the world outside of what they hear from their neighbors in right-wing news, and it's really hard to go against what all your friends and family will tell you. End quote. So practice that critical thinking, and until next time, so you've been listening to The Squeeze. Thanks for joining us today. If you want to continue tuning in, don't forget to click subscribe, and as always, we want to hear your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, and challenges. If there's anything you don't agree with, thanks for joining us, and see you next time.

    Unknown Speaker 36:24

    Bye.

Christina Sestan
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