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TLDR 182

Viral Misinformation

Published: 2019-01-26 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Issue 182. Viral misinformation.

Hi all, welcome to TL;DR. My name is Ian O'Byrne. I research, teach, & write about technology in our lives. Usually in TLDR, I try to synthesize what happened this week in tech...so you can be the expert as well.

This week's issue will veer from the norm as I try to unpack an event that took online & offline social networks by storm. I'll focus on the incident between Covington Catholic and Nathan Phillips and the narratives that flooded the Internet. As noted by Julie Zimmerman in The Atlantic, if this incident was a test, most of us failed it.

I think this incident provides a powerful opportunity to study critical media literacy with students while developing empathy and other needed skills and dispositions. To that end, I started up a Google Doc to collect/share all readings & responses to this incident. It started as a discussion with one of my classes as we discussed how they would teach and contextualize this incident with their future middle and high school students.

Please feel free to visit the Google Doc to add your own resources and join the discussion. Please note that our (my students & I) main focus is on critical media literacy. This is a heavily nuanced incident with a lot of bias, perspective, privilege, and viral misinformation.

Before we get into it...I should note that I also shared a couple other things this week:

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

I tried to find one of the original video clips shared from the incident. As you can imagine YouTube is flooded with a multitude of response videos on the subject. This video does an adequate job of unpacking the timeline of the event.

The multiplicity of videos reveals information ecosystem fragmentation. Original clip, longer context, response videos, debunking videos, analysis videos—each with different framing, editing, commentary. No single authoritative account emerges. Instead: competing narratives, selective evidence, motivated reasoning. The video flood makes truth harder to find not easier because more footage doesn't equal more clarity when each clip gets weaponized for predetermined conclusions.

📚 Read

This is one of the first posts on the incident.

"In videos shared widely on YouTube and Twitter, a young man wearing a red "Make America Great Again" hat stands inches away from a native elder who is beating a drum. Different angles of the incident show a group of a few dozen young people, mostly boys, in the background, jumping up and down and jeering in unison at the group of elders present for the day's march. In some shots, the teens appear to be shouting, 'Build that wall, build that wall.'"

The post finishes by indicating that there is a lot more happening in the incident, outside of the original video clips. The story gets much more complex.

Initial reporting demonstrates how viral videos create premature narratives. Short clip shows confrontation, provides enough detail for outrage, omits context making judgment incomplete. Journalists facing deadline pressure and social media velocity rush to publish before full picture emerges. The lesson: viral doesn't mean verified. Emotional response doesn't equal accurate understanding. Speed of virality outpaces speed of responsible journalism creating information vacuum filled by speculation and tribalism.

The identities of the individuals in most of the video clips, especially the inclusion of the MAGA hats was a flash point for many as they viewed these events.

"In the clip, captured after the Indigenous Peoples March in Washington on Friday, an elderly Native American man beats a drum and quietly sings, and a small group of activists and allies can be seen in the crowd behind him. Perhaps 18 inches in front of him, a white teenager in a 'Make America Great Again' hat makes eye contact and smirks. A much larger crowd of teenagers—mostly male, mostly white, many wearing MAGA hats—hoots with delight at the wordless confrontation. The encounter was captured from multiple angles and circulated widely on YouTube and social media, generating widespread disgust."

The smirk became shorthand for entire event—visual symbol interpreted through ideological lens. Supporters saw composure under harassment. Critics saw smug entitlement and racism. Same facial expression different meanings. This reveals how visual evidence gets interpreted not objectively perceived. We don't see what's there; we see what confirms existing beliefs. The MAGA hat primes interpretation making teenager's face canvas for projecting preexisting narratives about privilege, politics, and power.

This is viewed as a tricky lesson as we see children/adolescents mimicking the behaviors of adults. This is further complicated as we see the media more than willing to fan these fires. The media was accused of having "wildly mischaracterized" the incident and not revealing a far more complicated interaction.

Debate has also focused on the tendency of the media to overcorrect in order to please readers and fuel the rage.

Media overcorrection reveals business model problem: outrage drives engagement which drives revenue. Initial story portrayed teens as villains generating massive traffic. Correction portraying teens as victims also generates traffic from different audience. Truth is complex and nuanced but complexity doesn't drive clicks. Media caught between journalistic responsibility and economic incentives with latter often winning. The overcorrection isn't about finding truth but about maintaining audience engagement through perpetual controversy.

L. M. Sacasas talking about memes and discussion in digital, social spaces.

"...we believe we know the truth about everyone and the truth we know is that there is no truth to be known. So our public sphere takes on not a cynical quality, but a nihilistic one. That is the difference between believing that everyone is a moral hypocrite and believing that everyone is inauthentically posturing for attention."

Poisoned discourse means assuming bad faith universally. Nobody believes anyone else is authentic. Every statement gets interpreted as performance, posturing, virtue-signaling, grift. This makes genuine dialogue impossible because authenticity is presumed not to exist. The Covington incident accelerated this: every perspective gets dismissed as tribal positioning. Native American elder accused of seeking attention. Teens accused of performing MAGA ideology. Commentators accused of signaling political allegiance. When authenticity is impossible nobody can be believed.

Why "Both Sides" of a Story Aren't Enough

Students are capable of processing complex narratives; we just need to give them the tools. A primer on the challenges and implications as we try to paint this as a debate/discussion between two sides of a story.

"Both sides" framing creates false equivalence and obscures power dynamics. Covington incident isn't "both sides" story—it's multiply-sided story involving teens, Native elder, Black Hebrew Israelites, media, school, broader political context. Reducing to binary misses complexity. "Both sides" also implies equal validity and power when often one side has structural advantages the other lacks. Teaching students to identify all perspectives while analyzing which voices get amplified, which get marginalized, and why, develops more sophisticated critical capacity than simplistic balance.

🔨 Do

Slow Down Viral Consumption

It's tempting to think that the short video at the Lincoln Memorial shows the truth, and then that the longer video revises or corrects that truth. But the truth on film is more complicated: Video can capture narratives that people take as truths, offering evidence that feels incontrovertible. But the fact that those visceral certainties can so easily be called into question offers a good reason to trust video less, rather than more. Good answers just don't come this fast and this easily.

Next time we see viral events bubbling up online...let's take a second to read, research, think, and question. What narratives are we hearing? What narratives are we missing?

The practice of slowing down requires intentional resistance to virality's velocity. Don't share immediately. Don't form conclusions instantly. Ask: What's missing from this frame? Who benefits from this framing? What happened before camera started? What happened after it stopped? Who's controlling the narrative? Viral content optimizes for emotional response not accurate understanding. Slowing down creates space for reflection, research, and nuance—precisely what viral mechanics eliminate.

🤔 Consider

"Let's create space for the teaching of tolerance." — Nathan Phillips

Phillips's call for tolerance teaching resonates after incident revealing intolerance's many forms. Media intolerance for complexity preferring simple narratives. Discourse intolerance for authenticity assuming all posturing. Tribal intolerance for nuance demanding ideological purity. Educational system's intolerance for difficult conversations avoiding controversy. Viral misinformation thrives in environment intolerant of ambiguity patience and humility about not knowing. Creating space for tolerance teaching means accepting complexity embracing uncertainty and building capacity to sit with discomfort while seeking understanding. Incident failed as test because we're intolerant of tests requiring reflection over reaction.

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