9 Responses

1. I agree that when the news item is short it cannot be thorough. I liked Tangle News that you linked. It presented both sides, then an editorial about it.

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2. Great ideas with the three rules of thumb. The short clips can be great for deciding what to think about, but more in depth research really should be done before an opinion is formed.

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3. I waited to respond here until I had a chance to follow some of the links. Tangle and Semafor definitely look promising.

   Long videos or audio are not on my list. For that matter neither are short videos. I prefer to get my news by reading. However I did have to cut my news consumption a lot over a year ago. It took me several months to detox, and I still have to watch myself. I listen to NPR’s 4-minute headlines in the morning, and sometimes in the evening. I allow myself to look up a local website with local news and some articles on the biggest stories, which I may or may not let myself read. If I feel something is important enough I want to opine on it, I try to look up articles from mainstream news organizations and get more facts.

   What I have discovered is that politicians have mostly just kept making the same bad decisions they did when I was following the news very closely and allowed them to live rent-free in my head and get the benefit of my splendid opinions. It seems I was wasting my time all those years.

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4. Nice rules of thumb,it is too easy to hear some little tidbit and choose to accept it as fact. I was just visiting an older friend. As we were talking she mentioned something local and then stopped herself and said “Actually I shouldn’t say that, that’s how rumors get started.” Which got me thinking about the difference between hearing what happened and hearing what someone thinks about what happened. There’s -the school is closed today. And then there is -The local children are falling father behind because of more school closures. I am trying to not confuse being informed with having an opinion about everything.

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5. Overall I really like these rules. The first two rules I want to apply to my life because they don’t take much effort and they will protect me from getting swayed easily by inflammatory rhetoric. The third one says “if I want”, which is important since it takes a lot more effort to do! My additional rule is that I want to be aware of the sources biases. For example knowing who is sponsoring the source. Also, I like to pay attention to how the content is delivered. I like it when the content is respectfully delivered and not filled with inflammatory rhetoric or hateful language directed to the other side.

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6. I absolutely agree with being skeptical of short-form content. I will always go to the more long-form and for science, scholarly articles, for more comprehensive information. If I see that something is short-form, I admit I do assume (probably wrongly, in some cases), that it’s shallow or click-bait. I will always search out long-form content, even videos, when I really want to learn about something. I skip everything else – not worth my time.

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7. I tend to stay away from short- form content because it sucks you into wasting more time on social media. If something does catch my eye I go to more long -form content.

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8. I do not use any social media, so I do not have very much experience with short-form sources of information. When I do need information for creative writing, I use a long-form source like Wikipedia; I never use short-forms like Reddit or the AI overview for writing. I may look at the overview and read it briefly, but I after that I will go to the Wikipedia page to get the information. However, if I am asking a question out of curiosity that I simply want to know the answer to settle an argument, like “Which US battleship was the last to fire its cannons?”, I will likely use the AI overview since it is a short question. In general, my rules are:
   1:Never use Reddit or anything like that; it is too inaccurate for information
   2: It is okay to read the AI overview, but if I need a lot of information for writing, use Wikipedia or another long-form website
   3: If it is a relatively unimportant or short question, the AI overview is adequate.

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9. If I am trying to learn something accurate, I go for long form content, and look for info in multiple places to verify that what someone is saying is true. It is also important to recognize when someone is giving an opinion rather than stating facts, they can sound very similar.

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