Disinformation

Events of early 2017 in Canada and the US raised once again the question: why are Islamic people so often subjected to discrimination, repression and violence in our societies and abroad? Among the reasons is denigration of Islamic religion and culture by intellectuals whose writing has long been given prominence by Western mainstream media. Their disinformation helped to generate a political environment in which some people in the West uncritically accept severe actions against Muslims by governments, groups or individuals, and curtailments of rights for all.

Disinformation, claims of competing economic imperatives and an inadequately informed public account for why governments have not acted effectively in response to the grave dangers posed by climate change.

In January, perhaps reacting to some of the more interesting “alternative facts” stories emerging from the United States, Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly tweeted the following: What role can government play to support credible sources and counter the fake news phenomenon? #DigiCanCon #cdnpoli

Many people understand that humanity and the planetary ecosystem are at grave risk from nuclear weapons and climate change. But many more are only dimly aware or worse, ignore or deny these risks.

Every interaction by or about a person on the Internet, whether intended as public, semi-private, or private, is vulnerable to instant digital tattooing. For this reason, the right to be forgotten is emerging as a compelling companion to privacy. Privacy, like Article 19, features in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 12 states: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.

A while back, I made the decision to take a longish vacation from all things social media. The weeks (months… years…) leading up to the last American election saw my various social feeds fill with bile, anger and surprisingly little fact-based discussion. It exhausted me to shovel all that stuff out of the way each day in order to get at the nuggets of book news and friend updates I was actually looking for.