EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT .........ON FACEBOOK ? --------- By Claire Wright Stanard
Isn’t it amazing how relevant something we were taught in high school has become today! Remember footnotes and bibliographies and citations when writing term papers? A student could get suspended from school for failing to cite resources, plagiarizing, or representing erroneous information as fact in research reports. As irrelevant as it all seemed years ago, today we search in vain for sourcing and long for reference integrity when assessing articles online or listening to cable news pundits. Today’s online postings are basically anonymous as to where they come from and how they arrived on our screens. China, Russia, robots, extremists, political PACs, or targeted trolling, they all have one thing in common – propaganda. For those who did not live through the Cold War 75 years ago, propaganda is “the deliberate spreading of fabricated ideas, facts, and allegations to further one’s cause or damage an opposing cause.” Oppressive regimes control their citizens throu
