 Welcome listeners to a new episode for the network world here on Radio Korax, the free radio around the local area in Germany and also on the internet. We are welcoming you, we are connected remotely by the internet, we are sitting in our own rooms and want to have a show and Lisa is our guest today. Hello Lisa. Hello. Also there are Nilo and Markus and Tim and Joti and today maybe you already noticed in my voice we are talking about something that I find a heavy topic. It's about fake news. Everything is fake. Lisa is doing research in that area and yeah we want to talk about that and of course the reason is the Covid-19 pandemic, well there was an incident in Berlin, the corona demonstration, they were demonstrating or protesting the corona, not the pandemic itself but counter measures. And people were trying to enter the western, yeah we want to talk about this whole topic. So Lisa maybe you can tell us, what made you look into this and what exactly are you checking out. Maybe at the beginning I should clarify that I'm not doing research, I am working in media pedagogy, sorry I have trouble with that word, so I am looking into reactions on the network and try to develop competences about doing research and how to distinguish fakes and conspiracies and fake news and I have been working on that for a long time. I have workshops with kids and teenagers, especially in the last few months we already mentioned with the corona pandemic, it got increasingly more so we are noticing it more and the public is noticing it more, the internet is over flooded with fake news and just people claiming things and that is my incentive. So yeah, people claiming things that are wrong, just like it happened to me, that I am saying you are doing research, that's part of your everyday work but that's what we want to talk about today as well. So we want to talk about claims that are done knowingly or what you put it differently. So maybe let me put it this way, there is the claim that this covid virus or this corona virus, there is the claim that it is a weapon created by the Chinese to attack all of us, so where does the claim come from, why don't people believe that, I think that first we have to differentiate, what are we even talking about and yeah, you already said that there are fakes and fake news and those are claims that are made knowingly, those are fakes that don't happen by accident but people know what they are saying, they try to manipulate something, it's not people telling something when they don't know any better and of course we have to learn how to handle that as well, we have to be critical with things we are reading online but that also happens in every talk we have in everyday life, whenever we are talking to someone, that can happen but here we have a political dimension, so this is used as an instrument to manipulate people's opinions and when we then go a step further with the example you mentioned, the virus that some government used it and created it, those are actually conspiracy theories, oh I'm not saying theories, it's because a theory would have some kind of evidence or scientific claim but here usually we don't actually have that so it's better to talk about conspiracy myths and of course that's a political instrument as well, to also use your own ideology or strengthen your own ideology and bring it into the public and convince people if possible, especially in this context because you were asking why do people even believe that, yeah that's also something especially in a pandemic it's a crisis, it's a health crisis and a public crisis and a lot of people don't know how to handle a crisis, they are really insecure about their own lives, how will I go on, will I get sick myself, will I lose my job, so they are losing control, basically for all people but some people can handle it better and others can't handle it as well and some can compensate for it and others can't and such a conspiracy myth that can be a crutch because such a myth, it provides a simple answer, stand and ideally it fits my world's image and that's easier to stand than all these insecurities so could it be said that the more crises there are because I'm seeing a lot of crises that came since, let's say at least the last 20 years I mean there was terror, there was war and now even starting more than 10 years ago the finance crisis could be said that the insecurity grows due to this and the people get more willing to believe other explanations other than facts provided by scientists for example yes and there has been research for that into that that people more readily believe those conspiracy narratives the more the crisis happens so that can be a public crisis like the pandemic but it could also be a personal crisis like losing your partner so whatever makes you feel like you lose control and adding the internet to all this and how the internet works with the social networks that also filter what we see that can also increase this yeah it can lead to filter bubbles where you only get news that go into a certain direction and that reinforces these narratives yeah just looking at the last 10-20 years that has increased definitely but it doesn't maybe only help me to me if I or does it happen to me more if I'm only in such groups and don't listen to real news anymore because just personally subjectively I can't imagine that because you said that it's that you are looking for more easy solutions rather than the complex reality when I look into this I don't really think the solutions they are offering are simple it's not a simple thing to say the earth has flat or the gates wants to control us so the gates created the virus so he can vaccinate us that's a complex story and difficult to follow so how does that work do you think if you mix your media well that doesn't happen well one thing to the Bill Gates conspiracy for example that's mostly because you have a person you have a face you have a project area where you can project your feet fears the virus is invisible and mixing the news and the media yeah of course that plays a role if you only are in social networks and for example Facebook it's a very they like it in those circles or for example messengers like telegram now that's a completely closed group and people in those groups all day every day they feed each other with reinforcing information yeah if I diversify my information that gets thin so it's not reinforcing itself but people don't want that they want their own worldview reinforced so if they are looking for easy solutions yeah that's at least one reasoning because there are different reasons at least the question is it a new phenomenon or because you know fake news existed before now it did this get created by a filter bubbles and the technology or was this a thing early in history yeah there was something actually so the name fake news itself it was first used publicly 1890 in the American or in the English language American lexicon website dictionary that was the first documented use yes since then I would say since there are news and public communication there's also the phenomenon of fake news of course to varying degrees sometimes fake news are just accidents but sometimes that was on purpose let's just think about propaganda during the Nazi time for example there was a lot of fake news if you want to call it that so it's not a new phenomenon but what is changing because of the options of the possibilities due to social networks is that every single one of us has the possibility to publish publicly so you don't need to be a journalist anymore or you don't need to have some feeling of responsibility you can just put out your opinions into the net and what we could not do yet and so what's out to handle is even base that at the same time as the options the possibilities grow we also have the responsibilities grow so we should think about what is happening with all the information that I put out there all the news I put out there everyone can see that so it did change a little but the phenomenon itself is not a new thing yeah but the amount well it feels like the amount increased a lot this year but I can't really tell I saw the pictures from the thing in Berlin from the incident there were a few things where you would think okay well it's not just five to six crazy people that you see in the marketplace every week but it is quite a lot of people and I can't really tell how is it is it more because not all of them did go to Berlin this many people did go well it won't be a few million like they like to claim I don't know how many there were maybe 20,000 I don't know I think even 38,000 at the last demo so yeah it's crazy it's disturbing how many people there are it's all over the society and I mean 10 years ago I was laughing who could believe something like that but now I'm scared so no it's not funny what's happening there and that's not something I want to say it's something from Karina Nukun by a video that will be in the show notes people prefer believing and that's what I don't understand crazy stories I want to say for example I mean reality is that this virus mutated and it changed in a way that it can now jump from the animals to humans and probably humans are responsible for that in some way because of the markets what's happening with the animals there but it did happen and I think it's easier to accept that as reality than to think that all of this was planned for a long time and yeah just choose an enemy Bill Gates juice or someone to get world domination and I also think you have to recognize that the people who distribute those fake news it's not just some random person of course every day people also tell crazy things like onions can heal everything or can heal corona but a lot of these people they do it semi-professionally with a political agenda and those people it has to be said it is mostly a right wing and they try to justify their own worldview using now this way to attack the existing system the existing political system our free and democratic system they want to at least weaken it with this very emotional topic and they they tried that before they had different topics before but now they use this topic and yeah the same time I also think that yeah 38,000 people in Berlin that's so many people way too many but there were also other interviews that showed that at least 80 of the public are also wanting to fight corona using these measures that were taken so it shouldn't influence us too much because of course the media is looking at this very closely and we see it in the news every day all day and in the end you have a feeling like yeah hold up Germany is full of Nazis difficult for me I mean see at the marketplace in Halle and also one year ago this this terror attack in Halle where there was a person who is a politician and in Kassel and he was murdered by an extremist and I'm scared about that I want to go freely around in my surroundings outside without having fear of yeah people accusing me and this is attacking the stability of our of our living together of our society yes I mean the diverse leaks from conversation strategies for example from the identity chair next from a group in Germany and yeah what we see there is how they I don't know how to say it in the correct way but how they communicate in the net and they call it an informational war and this is actually a disinformation campaign which from above is enforced and yeah those are people who also in real life are ready to take violence to be violent and they are also radicalized in the net and radicalizing others and those are very fast at topics like hate speech hate speech in the internet and this is going to be a lot the fake news have to be a lot worse a lot harsher so that it's still going on because if this doesn't happen the people don't follow them anymore and this is how the radicalization is already part of this so what can we do can we do anything we can try to talk about it to educate about it to put it in context yes of course I think it is very important to have it on the radar that it happens that it exists and I hear from many people especially in the last years I did a lot of talks to this topic a lot of workshops and many people were really sad because they didn't know anymore what to do with their family members or their friends who never had anything to do with the extreme right but now I into the topic through those conspiracies and the people are searching for ways and solutions to talk with those people those friends and family members it's really difficult I don't know if you had the problem before or yeah if you know someone who comes with an argumentation like that you really have trouble getting to that person this isn't what this person wants to discuss facts it's more like a psychological thing that yeah you have to be like more therapy you have to make a therapy and you can't claim this from people who aren't educated in it and you can't just come from the outside if you see someone I had a I met someone in a staircase a person whom I know from a long time ago and I didn't have much of a motivation to discuss with him but yeah if it's like in your personal inner circle with friends or people it's very difficult I think it's hard because you can't start with real arguments because they say you're the sleeping sheep or they don't believe you and no argument is working yeah exactly it's not about having the best argument or scientific data but Katharina Nodun is writing about that in her new book and it's about yeah it's about relations maybe you should ask how are you actually I can relate with that with my grandparents in their generation they are very skeptical against migration and people from other countries and if something goes wrong they always say it's the people who came here from abroad and you can't argue with them but you have to sit down very calm and tell them well it actually isn't like that and if you look around we aren't actually really affected by that but you can't think that they people given eventually but sometimes maybe they think about it in the aftermath yeah you have to differentiate when they got in this dust is belonging to their whole world view especially the people who just drifted away in the last month there you should really try it before they get into this deeper what I asked myself those people don't realize themselves they drifted away but do you realize it yourself that you are in such a filter bubble that you believe such a theory yeah that's a very good point because of course also we maybe probably everyone has their theories and their bubbles who are maybe a little more transparent than others but the difference or yeah you have to reflect yourself if you realize that you yourself in discussions talk yeah don't argue with facts but with just one answer and always tell that there's just one answer then that can be a hint that maybe you are a little too too focused if you only have like one answer and I think that in my filter bubble and also in the networks but generally also with the people who are in my surroundings there you already realize in the communication and how people say things that you are still open for other views but I don't know maybe also this is just something I use as an excuse what I can imagine is that especially because of the pandemic the science and everything that is evidence-based should be shared with the public so that people can relate to it see it and that the communication with the science have to be so good that fact-based things can be transported into the public they're very nice introductions into that that are backed by studies and presented in a nice way maybe you can use this as an introduction this is right but this only gets a very small part of the population because you need to have some knowledge to understand it and there are big parts of the population who you need to pick up at a very different point and for example people who are very placative in speaking like you are a mother of three children no father and you have to think about nurturing the children and you don't have time to get into such stuff but there is some point where you have to get off steam and then I might be more prone to those easy answers I mean this is very placative it don't have to be like that in all cases but I think this is a very important point and school I mean much of that that now is helping me to identify fake news and to identify for example how trump is agitating much of this knowledge I know from school from histories lessons but also from science what can I trust in what can I use already as a young person and now this helps me to um difference th things topic school is very interesting for example in a german newspaper there was an article about this about the competence of teachers and I will pack the link in that you can see it it's about how teachers trust in the usual media and also in this group there's a lot of skeptics against the media so yeah they don't trust the established channels channels and if you have the situation that even the teachers in the school don't believe in this then who is showing it to the children yeah maybe the youtubers who have a lot of followers and maybe they are like a big brother assistant who can educate the children but then of course in your youtube account also the pretty bubble has to be the right one yeah then you don't have those who like do tiktok and want to play like a nice word but to educate them and I mean it's actually really funny because this youtube thing it's all from a capitalist standpoint that it emerged but yeah you say it's very difficult to get to this target group and I wish that this is a lot easier like earlier like in the lessons with the teachers tell me something in like 20 minutes and not with all those scientific effects and stuff and I just wanted an explanation like simple that you explain it to me yeah I mean it's not like you only can be there for 20 minutes with your head um it's very interesting but it's very difficult and then you'd rather be yeah when you think about kids they have school already all day they have those lessons that scientific stuff that you want to have and maybe they want to change they want something more entertainment for a change now there was once upon a time there was this trend to have documentations or docus and they try to make those to an hour and just have four facts but I want more yeah so we are already talking who is still listening who is radio very good white people with music oh short music intro right now there is a short interim that explains to the radio listeners what was happening yeah when I think fake news I think twitter and I noticed that twitter posts now nowadays are marked sometimes even by the yeah even by people who were told several times that it might not be correct do you think that is a good way that should be used more in the future to mark obviously wrong things well that has been a bit debate for a long time who is responsible for yeah for hate speech but also for fake news to remove that from the net or how we should handle that and politicians often say well the networks they are responsible they should do it but the networks say well so far they said no we are only having a platform and whatever the users do that's not our responsibility well in the past the networks also were slow to react then there came this new law in germany that was that was supposed to force the networks to remove hate speech for example surprisingly now with all these fake news around corona we could see that the networks were reacting quite quickly in a very short amount of time they were changing their standards community standards and changing their algorithms so at least at youtube on youtube fake news were deleted more quickly and also the algorithms they were working differently from before differently from before so you were not getting 10 more fake news right after this conspiracy and also twitter now has this mark not only that now they also have this banner on this location where it says yeah here you can get scientific information and a link so youtube is now linking to the official website where you can find scientific information and i like that they are reacting more quickly but i also have a bit of a stomach ache because i am not certain i want to trust the technology there because it's never as reliable as who would like it to be so it's not exactly filtering what we would like filtered but what what about satire so the german version of the onion post york that's not fake news it's satire and it's very difficult to decide what is fake news who has the authority to write on the internet and that is a whole different kind of worms basically because i don't want profit-oriented companies to decide on those so yeah filtering as well but more content at the people that's mostly it and yeah more netiquette i heard an old thing on youtube and one of the comments was i am old and i listened to this a long time ago and i still like it and a lot of other people said yeah i'm also older than 60 older than 70 and they were very polite and someone said your old people are so cute and i'm sitting there and thinking your old people you're not cute you are not cute you're civilized you're talking about a topic and that's what the platform is there and in this case it was a song of course they were talking nicely and they weren't saying the other one was better and no you are wrong and youtube comments are sometimes like terrible i'm not saying that's that way everywhere but you have to choose your community well and i myself think i closed that i don't need that as a teenager i can see the pressure to also be into the more cool or established communities as a grown-up i can see well it's a toxic community i'm not reading that anymore i'm not needing that i have enough hate without having hate in my free time as well but yeah i know that i'm building a bubble myself just a bubble without hate yeah but i also think that's a it's a nice wish because i also would like that and we were talking about responsibility before so people don't understand what are the options what are the possibilities and what are the responsibilities of talking freely and being careful about what they write online and how they might hurt other people with what they're writing and that's something that has to be learned and i have a feeling that some people have no impulse control i notice it in myself sometimes you're reading a tweet and think wow that's so stupid and you would like to start a flame war basically but i usually try to keep myself back and lay it away and think about it maybe write something qualified but not in this emotional process but that's what happens it's like like a high where you are putting out exclamation marks you also never know how older people are i could imagine that maybe they have less experience some of these people might have less impulse control and that would be my question what part of the problem are kids and teenagers because that's not what you see in the public discourse how old someone is that varies widely you cannot just generally say kids and teenagers because it's also a question of groups and well communities just as they are talking to each other differently in the schoolyard it's also online and i would say in part they sometimes know better what they are doing and what is uncool online more so than some adults but yeah it's a very personal thing but yeah teenagers at least in school they get the option to talk about these things depending on their teachers of course they might even be workshops to these topics about these topics yeah but some adults it's really difficult don't you think that in with kids in school that there is a very different socializing when i think back that we had a chat for our classroom and if someone was misbehaving then this group could also self-regulate especially if there was just one sticking out yeah definitely that is happening and i would say in many classrooms i would say pretty much every classroom has a whatsapp group now but in most classes that i have seen there are rules for the chat room so the students together they talked about it together with their teacher and they talked about cybermobiles and that's something that's definitely happening but they are creating rules for themselves how strictly they stick to the rules that's another topic as always and how well the teacher can observe that but yeah there are many groups where it's quite well self-regulating but also there are other groups of course where there is terrible cybermobiling that definitely exists well if nobody controls it and the parents usually don't know these chats maybe that's changing now but especially if you have a pandemic and it's about homework and control that is an important topic i don't know but i can definitely imagine that if nobody is checking that and nobody is self-regulating nobody is saying that's too much that's not cool then it's probably increasing yeah it's getting worse yeah that always existed mobbing in school classes that was always a problem and when i remember back i don't know a single teacher who went in there and said guys that you don't do that we don't do that you shouldn't that was always self-regulated and for many it was not self-regulating in a positive way and now we have the same thing in a digital way and sometimes it's even worse because it's around the clock in the analog world you are limited to public to personally being there and it's only during school time but now it's around the clock and it's black on white yeah i mean it's also a thing of proper behavior and usually yeah the is the job of the parents to educate the children and if i remember back at my childhood when i was misbehaving my parents were saying yeah think about how they feel would you like being excluded like that and that worked on me and when you are a teenager that starts anyway yeah definitely empathy is a keyword and we are back at hate speech in the net on netiquette how we call it in german would i like being talked to like that and that's how i should talk to others as well for example in youtube there's a fraction of the comments very few where people change their opinion where they say yeah i said something and i did some research and i was wrong and that's something a person a social being should be able to do because it can be it's always possible that you misread you mix something up and then you write something and you are certain and later you figure out you were wrong but that is something everyone should be able to do and i would say if more people were able to do that and willing to do that we would have a nicer community yeah i think nilo wanted to say something yeah just that it's mentioned what's not helpful as well i think we weren't really talking about that is this this laughing about people and enjoying people from these demonstration protests where the press is going and interviewing and of course listening to the most strange narratives obviously drunk sometimes and i think that hurts and it's not necessary to watch to that i mean it's insane yeah but media is also responding to the people who want to consume that kind of thing and it has to increase it has to be faster worse and there is this very terrible tabloid in germany it's always getting worse and it has to increase ever further in some private tv stations they do the same thing yeah you have to think about if as state as politicians you want to sanction such things if we think as a society like we boycott these newspapers or these formats where you've already feel that this is trying to insecure you and yeah the the mark should the market doesn't regulate it there has to come someone and say we don't do this yeah i mean we already had the topic that we don't want that there is no um state where we have this like um public broadcasting um and um there is also a program that is responsible for um critiquing but there is the press and um yeah there is this um newspaper um the german and uh they critique it very much but it doesn't show any yeah they ignore it and in this place i i think it's more about media competence it's difficult to just say the subject is the one responsible always which has to see through everything um it's difficult i mean if you see that some media or press companies like companies which think in an economic way and to have to sell um which even increases with the internet because there's even more confidence and you need those um incomes and this makes that it's always like um yeah higher faster further and yeah there's there were a lot of moments when also renomated newspapers wrote um rubbish just because they wanted to be the first ones and this makes people um mistrust the news the media and yeah you have to think about this the the redactional media they are journalists who learn that and and sometimes they make mistakes and they do such things and if you look in the history you see a lot of press which is just um just rubbish just fake i mean i don't want to be censored um i don't want any censorship but um yeah you we live in a world where pictures and symbols are important even more important than facts and maybe you have to do something against that and maybe the first pages which um i mean this has to hurt those media who do the um fake news it has to hurt them but um i mean i'm ready to discuss about this i think we do too less we we let them do too much and um it's the luxury of living in this society that we can um let them do that and the open society also has to take limits to say there is our limit we don't go beyond that and we maybe not laws but maybe there should be like actions of um yeah you have to apologize like in the first ten sites of your pages of your newspaper instead of putting advertisements there i mean a strong democracy has to suffer a lot um has to um yeah cope a lot of things and yeah there have to be limits um like we're standing with one leg on the um on the law and there are a lot of laws that tell how those things um have to work but maybe we just have to use our laws and our tools more effectively or maybe you should we just um yeah educate more also teen ages and children and media competence and yeah maybe especially those kids and teen ages are those whom we still can help who haven't drifted away so far yet um and maybe if they know it better then they tell and maybe this is how we can go a step further how we can progress yeah yeah with children you can still talk um in discussions you still can reach them but sometimes i ask myself how good you actually get to them um but in the end um you need to um educate not only children but all people i mean yeah you have those colleges and but also you maybe the employers should um be responsible and also educate their people because yeah also those people have a responsibility with the digital transformation of society this is new land for many people and you have to um see how you work with it maybe this is a nice uh pleasure here for this for the end i would like to summarize which means we want more media competence and in the end it's right you should um question things that are said somewhere that are distributed in the end but um you shouldn't believe the the most simple truth um that's what i would like to summarize nice i would like um more polite comments on youtube and more respect in the internet maybe then people um yeah really want to write and want to uh talk about things and yeah maybe if the next time someone writes bad words and capital letters then maybe you have to think um it's like uh yeah a shout for love like a shout for help and maybe and this is about yeah you should show the how difficult it is for them maybe you should