If we’ve discovered something because the COVID-19 pandemic upended all our lives almost 2 years in the past, it’s sanitize our arms, properties, workplaces, and absolutely anything we encounter to cease the unfold of the virus. Seems, we additionally want to take care of that vigilance when encountering details about COVID-19 in our social media feeds. Because the pandemic persevered, harmful misinformation about therapies, cures, and the vaccines flourished. This setting has underscored the significance of consuming and sharing on-line content material with care. And that method applies not solely to a public well being disaster, however to all data we encounter. We have to take steps to make sure a submit, picture, or meme is “sanitized” earlier than we belief it, prefer it, cross it on, or advertise in any method.
The News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan nationwide schooling nonprofit, has created steps you possibly can observe to make sure that you observe good data hygiene. NLP, a information literacy schooling chief since 2008, gives packages and sources that can assist you acquire the talents, data, and mindset to be sensible customers of stories and different data. If we sanitize the method round our data habits, we are able to forestall deceptive and false content material — which could be hazardous to our well being and society — from being broadly shared and doubtlessly doing hurt.
You don’t want any particular skills or expertise to find out how to take action. NLP gives you with important steering in its infographic, “Sanitize before you share: 4 quick steps to stop the spread of misinformation.” It might take solely 4 steps to maintain your self or others from changing into a “superspreader” of misinformation. And for those who discover credible proof {that a} social media submit isn’t true or the supply is unreliable, warn others in a reply to the submit, and if vital, report it to platform directors.
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