#83, focus attention on the real-world applications of #fakenews
After seeing pictures on TV—real, fake and hard-to-tell-and-does-it-really-matter (how can I know if the picture I include below is “real”? There are currently very few images of the damage from Trump’s missile strikes available online outside of those produced and shared by Russian journalism. Meanwhile the American military and press are releasing embedded images of the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air. How are our images being produced, controlled, circulated? What are the larger forces that influence virality and visibility? We need time to understand these and all images. We need to think throughwhat to do with what we see. We need time and context and care) …
After he and we saw a picture on TV, Trump, the traditional and social media all moved fast. Too fast. Internet quick. With algorithmic speed. This is the dangerous cycle and logic of virality—one that moves with barely human (what I have called proto-being) momentum from images and tweets to missiles, directives, policing, travel bans all with long-term lived consequences for human beings and nations.
In #100hardtruths #80 I suggested we need strategies to “outlast virality.” “Outlast virility,” I suggest, in relation to a cycle of news, #fakenews, and related actions that have accelerated to a dangerous pitch where rational, legal and ethical care and consideration can no longer be exacted before we act. “Outlast virility” in connection to said speed and the virile weaponized powers of patriarchal aggression it authorizes.
In 5 #hardtruths and 2 new pledges @#50 I worried that:
the delightful ambiguities of the fake/real binary are being played by this administration, and the sectors of the media and internet that are built upon and refract them, in ways that are at once confusing, entertaining, distracting and also deadly real for actual people and communities. Understanding and not simply producing contradiction; naming and not evading complexity; breaking through the digital hall of mirrors allow us to breaking through the digital hall of mirrors allow us to focus our attention and action upon the real-world applications of #fakenews, a critical project of this time.
See More:
- How Do I (Not) Look? Live Feed Video and Viral Black Death,” Alexandra Juhasz
- “The UnWar Film,” Alisa Lebow
- Gendered Tropes in War Photography, Marta Zarzycka
- “The Production of Outrage: The Iraq War and the Radical Documentary Tradition, Jane Gaines
- The Right to Look, Nicholas Mirzoeff
- Practices of Looking, Lisa Cartwright and Marita Sturken
- #100hardtruths-#fakenews: a primer on digital media literacy
