After reading the article Social Cybersecurity; An Emerging National Security Requirement, authored by Lt. Col. David M. Beskow, U.S. Army, and Kathleen M. Carley, Ph.D., I was struck by this passage:
Quality control of information flow is now decentralized. Fact checking is now conducted at the user level rather than the journalist level. Users, many of whom grew up in an era where news was largely trusted, are now unprepared to digest news in an era where truth and untruth are mixed, especially if distortions of the truth are designed to validate their own biases.
This synthesizes very well the feelings in 2020 and 2021 relating to the height of the COVID pandemic. Among articles covering mitigation techniques for the spread of COVID, were articles highlighting the need to revolt against Center for Disease Control health mandates. Anti-fascist groups began seeing more media coverage and videos regularly showed conflict between these groups and self-proscribed nationalists and white supremacists. Qanon also became much more prevalent in the news cycle, as their fringe ideology was gaining momentum in the public eye. At the time, feeling very much like an outsider, it was difficult to digest everything that was happening. The snippet above reminds me of this time mainly because we also saw a rise in social media platforms “fact-checking” posts. As a consumer, we want to be able to trust our sources of information. Trust though may no longer be enough.
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