24-Hour Media Diet: Spotting Misinformation
- braedensteele
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Blog Post Assignment #1
As part of MCO 427. students are required to post in their blog as assignments. For our first assignment, we were instructed to keep track of our media consumption for a day. I chose a Friday as I didn't have any classes or club responsibilities and would be able to focus on my media consumption better. While I am not hyper focused on the types of media I see and how much misinformation I get in my feed, I certainly am aware of when it shows up and try to be as vigilant as possible in spotting it and getting it off my timeline. But without further ado, let's get started!
9:30 a.m. Wake up and check X/Twitter. I have two accounts, a personal one and one that I use for a part-time social media job. So I always check so see if there is any news to post related to the NFL team I cover, the Saints. I saw that Taylor Jenkins, head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies, had been fired unexpectedly. This surprised me even though it has to do with the NBA because of how close the playoffs are.
10 a.m. I scroll X some more and see a lot of posts about an earthquake that struck parts of Asia. The first tweet I see about is an article by the NY Post, who I don't read because they are more of a conservative tabloid than reliable news source. But their coverage of the disaster seemed rather unbiased, and nothing stood out as inflammatory or false. Most of the stuff I saw on X as well were on-the-ground videos posted by various twitter accounts using #earthquake.
10:30 a.m. I scroll YouTube and see that one of my favorite content creators on the platform, Danny Gonzalez, has posted a new video on his second channel. His video had to do with a scam where someone impersonated Brad Pitt using AI and Photoshop, rather poorly as well, to fool an old French woman into giving them money. Danny's video pokes fun at the absurdity of the whole situation, and the fact that it has happened more than once! He uses footage from an Entertainment Weekly video about the event, and more offers his comedic opinion than an actual reporting of the scam.
11:00 a.m. I go get food and scroll X some more. I don't see anything except people posting about opinions and random videos about sports like the NFL and NBA, and occasional baseball highlights. I then play video games and do some homework for a little while.
1:00 p.m. I scroll YouTube again and see that another favorite creator of mine, Papa Meat, has released a video titled "The Worst Assassination Attempts." Similar to Danny Gonzalez, Papa Meat (or Hunter Hancock) discusses topics that can be serious but puts a comedic spin on it, usually making fun of the absurd aspects of these situations. For example, a failed "assassination" where a Japanese restaurant owner threatened two customers and put a bounty on them over a bad review. Hunter is open that his producer, who is off-camera, does the research and writes the general script for Hunter to follow and improvise over, and he usually asks him questions for clarification on certain facts about the subject matter. while they don't cite anything in the description or video specifically, they do use quotes from news stories and the people themselves and real footage/photos of the people involved, and self-research will confirm these stories are accurate.
2:00 p.m. I check Google News, which I do daily, to see what the major stories are. The earthquake is second to stories about Vice President J.D. Vance visiting Greenland, a controversial decision. This article by NPR stood out to me mos among the various articles Google News recommended.
3:30 p.m. Check X again and see that Elon Musk sold X... to his own company. Kinda lame in my opinion.
4:30 p.m. I see an ad for BetMGM, a sports betting site. I don't bet on sports, as I consider it gambling which I am not a fan of. I think that because I interact with so much sports content they likely target me in ads more than a normal person. The NCAA Men's and Women's Basketball Tournament, or "March Madness" as it is also called, is currently in action right now so betting sites will be pushing ads on people more aggressively right now.
5:00 p.m. I scroll X and see an AI meme of a chubby-faced, curly-haired JD Vance applying Cheetos dust to Donald Trump. While I could tell it was clearly fake, and it seemed to be made as satire and not meant to be taken literally, I am sure a surprising amount of people thought it was real.
I take a nap and wake up around 6:30.
7:00 p.m. I scroll Instagram, most of what I see are memes and sports clips. Occasional cat videos.
7:30 p.m. I scroll X and see that the Associated Press has posted a story about the death of Joe Harris, who was believed to the oldest living World War 2 paratrooper. The AP is one of the most trusted and reliable sources of news in the world, although they fell into controversy after being barred from White House Press Briefings for refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, as they have a very famous and strict set of guidelines on how to refer to people, places and things in news.
9:00 p.m. I scroll Instagram again and come across a very odd advertisement. It was for an account called "zerofollowersaz" that seemed to advertise that it prepares people for graduation, but I think it is a complete scam. Besides the poor writing in the description, the main giveaway was that everything in the ad was made entirely of AI. I knew something looked off to me, and the third video of the guy just standing confirmed it easily, but it was hard for me to fully tell if the first two videos of a girl and her parents was AI. But I finally confirmed my suspicions by examining the video closely for any signs of AI, and seeing the girl was wearing her graduation cap completely wrong, having the points of the hat out to the side instead of having a corner in the front. I looked online to see if this was an acceptable thing, and it is not. It may not even be possible with how the hats are made. The rest of the videos were very similar, leading me to believe it was just a scam of some sort.
After that, I play video games and get ready for bed the rest of the night. My day of tracking the media I see was over.
Looking back on the day, I can say that the clearest difference I see is in the media I get recommended on my two X accounts. On my personal account, I have virtually blocked every conspiracy theorist, racist, and otherwise harmful account I came across over the years so I got that filth off my timeline. But my other account is relatively new, and I have not gotten around to doing that. While I mostly get recommended sports tuff because those are the accounts I follow, I get recommended a lot of right-wing accounts and, for lack of better terms, a lot of conspiracy and racist accounts. This does not surprise me given that the owner, Elon Musk is known to promote those accounts, but I still don't like to see it.
I see lots of AI media, whether ads, memes, or scams.
I see that a lot of misinformation is spread by right-wing accounts, but I have grown use to fact-checking claims and generally just ignore anything that looks fake or has a community post under it to tell people it is fake or a lie. I do think critically about what I see, but I have occasionally fell for things that weren't real and felt dumb after. For example, I have fallen for fake sports accounts that parody real accounts and put out stories that sound real enough to be true, but aren't. One example I can think of is an account called "NBACentel," which is a parody of a reliable account called "NBACentral." The account posts memes mostly, but also real-looking quotes and reports that fool many people. It has gotten to the point that when something crazy or unexpected does go down, like the Jenkins firing I mentioned earlier, people at first believe it must be an account like NBA Centel. Even players fall victim to this. Luckily, I mostly see sports stuff, memes, and cat videos, which is what I want honestly.
In the future, I will continue to only read and follow reliable news sources, like AP, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. But besides that, I will continue to be vigilant in spotting misinformation, flagging it, and blocking it.
Comments