Week 5 Assignment: Current Event & Misinformation Analysis by

California Wildfires

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 10:15:12 UTC

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 18:36:54 UTC

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 18:38:37 UTC

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 18:41:48 UTC

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 18:43:56 UTC

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 18:45:46 UTC

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 18:51:30 UTC

"Journalists, scientists, and policymakers must be wary of pressures to overstate or oversimplify complicated wildfire issues to garner attention in a competitive media ecosystem (West and Bergstrom )"

"For example, misinformation about climate change spreads by repeated overexposure of “climate contrarians” whose media visibility far outweighs the quality of their science or scientific credentials (Petersen et al. )"

"Requires partnerships between scientists, land managers, and journalists. . .prospective authors must provide sufficient scholarly context and caveats."

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 19:12:19 UTC

This article debunked misinformation from a previous wildfire, but it is an effective example of how social media can spread a false sense of reality.

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 19:15:55 UTC

Another older article regarding a previous wildfire that generated a spread of misinformation online because journalists and social media users were circulating photos from other unrelated wildfires.

Assessing the credibility of the sources

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 20:21:41 UTC

When looking over the research articles, the common trend is that social media circulation in the news tends to be the culprit of misinformation--when such misinformation is exposed to the truth. Distinguishing between fact and fiction often begins with published articles providing, "sufficient scholarly context and caveats," (esajournals). When news sources do not reference the work of scientists, doctors, and experts on the topics, it raises suspicion as to the validity of their claims. Would a student write a research paper without any cited sources? I believe the same goes for our news outlets--they must be in continuous dialogue with the experts and specialists on the matters they are discussing and amplifying.

Potential Impact of Misinformation

alyssaandrews80 — 2024-12-15 20:29:11 UTC

When the line between fact and fabrication is dissolved, we get exactly what we see in the tornado of digital media. In the whirlwind of this influx in media consumption, it is important to ask questions about the who, what, where, when, and why of what we consume. The danger of media illiteracy is that people become increasingly divided and fear-mongered into a mass hysteria. It takes away citizen's trust in their news sources, and narratives become blurred. To prevent this from worsening, it is important to spread the message of media literacy, and how to stay vigilant against falling for misinformation.