by Erica Butler
Erin Steuter wants to help you win the fight against fake news.
Steuter heads up the department of sociology at Mount Allison University, where she focusses her research on critical media studies.
Her latest book is Won’t Get Fooled Again: A Guide to Fake News, a graphic novel produced with artist Alan Spinney of Moncton.
Won’t Get Fooled Again is presented through fictional characters encountering actual instances of fake news and figuring out how to deal with them.
Erica Butler spoke with Steuter about her book, and started off asking her about the choice to create a graphic novel.
TRANSCRIPT:
ERIN STEUTER: When I was thinking about how to communicate fake news, I was really aware that people were starting to kind of be silent and sort of stop talking. In fact, there’s been some research that shows that people are afraid of accidentally repeating fake news, or being embarrassed that they had been caught out by fake news. And so their response is to stop talking about like, controversial issues, which is very concerning. And so I really wanted to facilitate conversations about fake news among people, you know, in coffee shops, sports bars, students hanging together, family dinner tables, saying, “Oh, you know, do you think this is fake? How do you know? How would we find out? Oops, I got fooled, or you shouldn’t have sent that.” And sort of show how it is that we could have a conversation in which we would discover what was fake, and what tricks were being used and how you could educate yourself and explain what the motivation was for the spread of fake news.
And so we have 10 different sets of characters who go through a bit of a story arc as they encounter various types of fake news, and deal with it sometimes successfully and sometimes badly. But overall, as you read through their stories, you learn quite a bit about fake news.
ERICA BUTLER: Has misinformation always been a problem? Is it worse now, or does it just seem worse now?
ERIN STEUTER: It’s definitely worse now. There’s a lot more information out there because of the internet. And the information is very formatted so that it really looks identical. So a conspiracy theory doesn’t look like, you know, the tabloid newspaper at the grocery store with the screaming “bat child” or whatever, on the front. It looks exactly–literally exactly–like the Guardian or the New York Times or you know, some other mainstream media on your phone. Like the font, it’s all set up. And so it can be extremely challenging to just look at it and say, Oh, this… Like literally the font size used to kind of give it away with the screaming headlines, but that’s not the case anymore.
And there’s also a lot of financial incentive to produce fake news. So, it is definitely a lot worse and many more people are being exposed to it. And as we face important issues like the Coronavirus pandemic or election issues, there’s a lot of opportunities for disinformation when people are seeking new knowledge that they hadn’t really known that they needed to know before and knowledge that is changing quite quickly. Like do you wear a mask? Do you not wear a mask? Are you allowed to cross the border or not? All of this kind of stuff. This is all an opportunity for fake news to be perpetuated. And we’re seeing like a lot of that right now.
ERICA BUTLER: Yeah, it does seem like a particularly… especially with Coronavirus it’s tough because there there are also I guess what I would say… It seems like fake news can be embedded in real news. Stories can be so complicated. Like you mentioned masks… the official public health line on masks from various public health agencies around the world were sort of changing and altering and there was different studies saying different things. In a situation like that, how does one rely on, how do you find the reliable source?
ERIN STEUTER: Yeah, that’s a really good question. And especially because fake news has really been, like, weaponized as a term. And so you see politicians in particular, like Trump, but many others around the world, who when they get media coverage of themselves that they dislike, or that is exposing things that they’ve done that are inappropriate, they just say, “Oh, well, that’s fake news. You shouldn’t believe that.” And we’ve had such an onslaught of that in the last little while that there is actually an eroding trust in the mainstream news media. And so you know, when people then start seeing, here’s an official health alert that you should or shouldn’t be doing the following practices in the pandemic, people are already coming from a place of distrust, which is sort of new.
We used to have a lot greater trust in the mainstream news media. And if they just tell you, you know, you don’t have to wear a mask, and then you know, two days later, they say, oh, health officials have changed their view, now you should wear a mask. People would have seen that as, “Oh, the story is evolving, there’s new information that’s changing it.” But people are now more like, “Well, are you lying to me? Like, what’s true? And how do I even know?” People react a lot more strongly. So that can be quite challenging.
So, you know, in some cases, you would cultivate some news organizations that you trust and that you think, okay, well, they are trying to give you the best information that they have at the time. Sometimes you don’t have that. You think, well, this topic is too close to some kind of a corporate interest. Or this company has, you know, basically paid for an advertorial. Or there’s a partnership between the news media and say, the oil industry, which you’re starting to see. So I don’t really necessarily think that they’re my go to source on this. I’m going to go somewhere else for more information.
And in some cases, you just actually have to go to the original source, like a government document, or, you know, some kind of a record of what has actually happened because you’re like, I just need to cut through all of the different interpretation that’s taking place here.
So there is more onus on the viewer of information to kind of have to think, okay, whose interest is it to put this out? And why am I seeing only part of the story? And I’m gonna have to do a bit deeper digging. It can be a bit overwhelming, but it is also kind of fun to feel well informed, and to look at fact checking sites and to do a deep dive. And you don’t have to do it on every single piece of news. There’s some issues where you’re like, I would like to be more informed about this. And then it’s not that hard on the internet to be able to go and, you know, start tracking down a few sources for yourself.
ERICA BUTLER: Now, this new book… I would think that under normal times, there would be a launch and some events, but with COVID-19 restrictions in place, how have you launched this book? How has that changed?
ERIN STEUTER: Yeah, we did have some pretty fun things organized with the NB Media Co-op and Mayday organizations in Fredericton. They were going to do a fun launch. I had some comic book pages with empty speech bubbles, and I was going to get participants to fill in the speech bubbles on a particular topic and make it very interactive. And we were going to blow up some of the pages from the comic book and bring them out. But we’re not doing that right now. We might do that again in the future when things ease up. But there have been a lot of people stuck at home looking for something good to read. So the indie media bookstores have been saying that they’re getting orders in and people are looking for books like this.
The editor at Between The Lines, which is the publisher of the book, she said I’d really like this book to also be able to be something that I could give to my daughter who’s in grade six. So I kind of kept in mind that there could be a readership from you know, youth all the way to adults. And there’s sort of something in there for everyone. So there is an opportunity for more people sitting at home looking for something to read. And having a fun kind of comic book style book on a current issue might, you know, this might actually be a good time for it. So I’m sort of hoping that’s the case.
ERICA BUTLER: Well, I’m looking forward to it, Erin. Thanks for your time today.
ERIN STEUTER: You’re very welcome.
