ML MOMENTThe skeptic demands evidence, and rightly so. The cynic assumes that what he or she is being told is false. Throughout this book we’ve been urging you

to be skeptical of factual claims, to demand and weigh the evidence and to keep your mind open.

But too many people mistake cynicism for skepticism. Cynicism is a form of gullibility—the cynic rejects facts without evidence, just as the

naïve person accepts facts without evidence. And deception born of cynicism can be just as costly or potentially as dangerous to health and well-being

as any other form of deception. (UNSPUN, p. 175)

Awareness

Cultural Values built through media“Media culture provides the materials for constructing views of the world, behavior, and even identities. Those who uncritically follow the dictates of media culture tend to "mainstream" themselves, conforming to the dominant fashion, values, and behavior….

Awareness

• What is the meaning of this information in larger social & civic contexts?

• What are the main issues in the information presented?

• What are the underlying assertions? • How are the stories being told? And

by whom?

TRUE ENOUGH – Awareness Theories

1.Selective Perception

2.Confirmation Bias

3.Social Reality

4.The Sleeper Effect

5.Cognitive Dissonance

Forgotten Worlds…

“Selective Perception says that even when two people of opposing ideologies overcome their tendency toward selective exposure and choose to watch the same thing, they may still end up being pushed apart from each other” (71)

Selective Perspective

Awareness & Framing EventsHurricane Katrina, the Asian Tsunami, and

Haiti

• The Washington Post’s slideshow of the Hurricane images:– http://www.usatoday.com/weather/graphics/hurricane/hurricane2005/flash.ht

m?strmName=Katrina&strmNum=strm12&tabName=b

• The Washington Post’s slideshow of the Tsunami images:

– http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/flash/photo/world/2004-12-29_quakeday4/movie.htm?startat=1&indexFile=world_2004-12-29_quakeday4

– [click on “First Days”]

• The Washington Post’s Slideshow of the Earthquake: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/01/12/GA2010011203712.html

Awareness, “Truth”, & Images?

“All images are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

For ExamplePhotographer frames eventPhoto editor

selects image, crops image, manipulates color, contrast, etc

Editor chooses what page and wherePage 1 or page 13, above the fold or below the fold

Layout designer tinkers with size (large, small) and location (left, right)

Contexts are always “framed”

Ask yourself:What is included?What is left out?What language is used?

Tsunami Photographs

What the New York Times decided

• 4:30 pm, Dec. 27, 2004: Page One meeting Considered 900 images

• How to evaluate those photos: How many dead? Who are they? How to communicate scale of event to Americans?

• Responsibility of newspaper as seen by editors To bear witness To tell “truth”

Tsunami Photographs

Understanding the Other…Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has courted further controversy by explicitly calling the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry a "myth".

"They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets," he said. BBC, December 2005

Contextualizing Culture through Media?

Context of the Other

What do we think of the situation, and how does it inform our understanding of the religious and ethnic beliefs of other countries as a whole?

Social Reality

“When many people around us feel that a certain thing is right or true—whether it concerns the combat-readiness of a division, the propriety of eating cow hearts, or even, indeed, whether John Kerry acted heroically during war—that group belief becomes, for each of us, an idea that we, too, take as fact” (53).

New Age for Information

• Peer Critique

• Some Fact-Checking

• Continuous Updating

• Never out-of-date arena for content

• Who controls the information?