A November 2019 article in the British Medical Journal showed how difficult it is to change peoples’ minds, especially with regards to vaccinations. Facts don’t change peoples’ minds. Lesson 2: don’t bring a fact to a narrative fight Experts and health professionals can arm themselves with white papers, peer reviewed studies, and symposia; but if… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Democracy
a global clown show
In 2007 I was concerned that Facebook was selling personal data. That same year I asked if there could be a public alternative to Facebook. By 2010 I had left the platform. This year, after our local newspaper closed, I commented that we are now dependent on this global corporation — that uses our data… Read more »
debunking handbook 2020
The Debunking Handbook 2020 has just been published and is an excellent free guide to address the mass amounts of misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda that flow through our digital communications everyday and then influence real life behaviours. I have discussed some of these phenomena previously, in confronting the post-truth machines and pre-bunking the conspiracy theorists…. Read more »
non-violence + 3.5%
How many people does it take to change an organization or a society? Minority groups need 25% to influence the majority in a society. But it only takes 10% if the group is committed with unshakeable belief. Inside an organization, the right mix of people requires only 3% to influence 85% of their colleagues. There… Read more »
smarter networks through better narratives
Leadership in a networked world is making our networks and communities smarter so they are able to make better-informed decisions. In early 2020 New Brunswick’s Education Minister, Dominic Cardy, worked very hard to make his network smarter. “When Canada’s chief public health official, Dr. Theresa Tam, was talking about there being no need to “panic,”… Read more »
a global human sensemaking platform
The thinking that got us into this mess will not get us out of it. If we are to create a new economic order it has to move beyond civil society, governments, and markets. A quid pro quo between private firms and public authorities will only reinforce the status quo. “A new economic order requires… Read more »
strong ideas, loosely held
Blogging is one way I make sense of the world. I have now written over 3,300 posts on various topics. My ways of seeing the world have changed over the years and blogging has helped to keep my thoughts in a state of perpetual beta — strong ideas, loosely held, in order to deal with… Read more »
prebunking the conspiracy theorists
In confronting the post-truth machines I looked at different types of fake news and what could be done to counter them — Propaganda, Disinformation, Clickbait, and Conspiracy Theories. I mentioned that the researcher danah boyd defines agnotology as — “the strategic and purposeful production of ignorance”. Today, as ever, many forces are at play promoting… Read more »
the reality of missing out
When Tim Berners-Lee invented the Worldwide Web he made it free and open source, so others could build upon it. In the early days it was quite open with individuals sharing knowledge through blogging and collectively building knowledge with wikis, the largest being Wikipedia. But as more people joined the web two things happened. Commercial… Read more »
beyond civil society, governments, and markets
Binary thinking is an easy sell. It appeals to our emotions which we developed as children. Binary thinking blinds us. It’s not black and white, or right and wrong, or even Left and Right. Human society is many shades along various spectra. But often politicians and others tell us it’s a simple, binary choice —… Read more »
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