Author Archives: Guest Author

Sabrina Joy Stevens: […] we’ve got to be thinking in terms of relationship, we’ve got to be thinking in terms of who are we actually connected to, versus trying to say, convince the people who are spreading the false information intentionally. Our goal can’t be to try to change their minds, but rather to think about, when we’re talking to our friends, our communities, our professional communities, all of these places, these are all opportunities for us to be either upholding narratives that are going to help people find, claim, use their power well or are going to be upholding narratives that cause people not to use their power well. And so, every time we’re making those choices, we need to think about how are we helping set people up to take the kind of action they need to, in order to help blunt this sort of movement?

Something that I remind people of consistently is that bad actors are outnumbered. That is why they work so hard to…trick the rest of us into repeating their framing, into repeating their messages. And it’s focusing on the things they want us to focus on. Because there’s an opportunity cost; when we’re focusing on what they want us to focus on, we can’t also be focusing on what we want to be focused on. Rather, we can’t have people thinking about two different things at the same time.

And so, a lot of the work that I do is in helping people understand how to be doing double duty with their communications. How are you talking about your communications in ways that are not only neutralizing, are not only moving your own agenda forward, and they’re helping people build the world they want to see, but are also neutralizing the lies and misinformation that they’re getting from so many other places?…that’s a lot all at once.

…it’s obviously a very challenging moment, but it’s also really exciting because I think more people than ever are realizing the importance of being really intentional about this kind of work. Because you don’t accidentally do a good job of fighting against disinformation. You actually have to make a choice. This is what I want to be talking about. And despite the concerted efforts to pull me off of my message, to pull me off of my narrative, to pull my focus away from what I can do, and to either pull me into doing something that’s unhelpful or demoralize me so that I do nothing, because that’s really what’s going on here. There’s a divide and conquer attempt. There’s an attempt to mislead and misdirect people into unhelpful action. And then there’s an attempt to just overwhelm people so that they don’t do anything at all.

And so, when I know that that’s what’s going on, that gives me a new sense of agency and urgency, to be really, really intentional about how I’m using every single opportunity to communicate. I think about this kind of stuff when I’m talking one on one in the grocery store line. I think about th[is] sort of thing when I’m communicating en mass to my email list, when I’m on TV, et cetera. We want to help people get that mindset that they’re seeing every opportunity to speak as either upholding something that’s going to help people use their power well or that’s going to undermine people’s ability to use their power well.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Kris Hayashi: Clearly, we are all still…in the midst of a global pandemic due to COVID-19, escalating climate crisis, [and] growing white supremacist and anti-democratic forces. This is a time where the failure of our society to value people, to value humanity, to value our world, is so clear. And what I think is important to know is that for trans communities, even before this current time and moment, we already were struggling to survive, facing high rates of violence, harassment, discrimination, and overall, just [a] lack of having our basic needs met.

I think this is most clear when we look at the increasing murders of trans people in this country. Every year for the last few years has been the most reported murders of trans people in the US, of which the majority are Black trans women and femmes. So, I just think it’s important to name that in this time that is hard for everyone, for trans people, the conditions that we’re living in have all just gotten so much worse.

And on top of that, over a decade ago, we started to see…the conservative Right really started to promote anti-trans legislation and policies. Over a decade ago.

However, this really ramped up around 2015…or 2014. That was when we saw a slate of anti-trans legislation and policies in multiple states across the country. This was just an organized and strategic attack against trans communities by the conservative Right that we hadn’t seen before. This was a time of the so-called bathroom bills, of which folks likely most remember the bill that was passed in North Carolina. At the time, our opponents were showing ominous images of men in girls’ bathrooms to make their case.

It’s important to name that under these false narratives, which were really about bringing up this specter of trans people, of queer people, as sexual predators, it’s also an assertion by our opponents—and a false assertion—that trans women are men, that trans women are not women. So, we‘ve seen our opponents, since that time, continue to push for this strategy. They shifted a little bit to also include showing images of teenage boys in girls’ locker rooms, seeking to cause harm. They use[d] those narratives for a number of years, and they still continue to use [them] today.

And then Trump was elected. They then moved their attack to the federal level. The Trump administration basically did everything that they possibly could to roll back the few rights and protections that trans people have, to deny our humanity and ultimately to deny our very existence. As they did for so many communities.

Now that we are under a different federal administration, these attacks by the conservative Right on trans people have basically moved back to the states. And what we are seeing now in the US is really an unprecedented level of attack in the form of state-level anti-trans legislation. This past year, we saw around 150 bills in 33 states. Most of these bills are seeking to keep transgender children and youth from simply living their lives—whether it’s [by] playing sports, getting health care, or simply naming that we exist in schools. At this point, we’re talking about a majority of states in the US [that] had some form of anti-trans legislation or policy. To put this in context, in 2015, when the bathroom bills started to take off, there were about 21 bills across the country—anti-trans bills.

What’s also important to know is that more [of these] bills are passing. And that even when these bills do not pass, for the trans people who live in those states [where these laws are proposed], for the trans children, for their families to be bombarded by anti-trans rhetoric and anti-trans hate—to know that their elected officials are out to harm them—is absolutely devastating. This is [especially true] for communities that already face high rates of suicide and other mental health conditions.

Over the last decade, it has been clear that the conservative Right is attacking the humanity and the rights of trans people as a strategy. They are attacking trans people as a way to stay in power, to build their base, and to win votes.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Jacquelyn Mason: I always like to start off by saying that each and every one of us is susceptible to spreading misinformation, or we’ve all believed false content at some time, right? Misinformation is false content. But the person sharing doesn’t realize that the content is false or misleading.

I can give a few examples of this. Many posts that were shared earlier in the pandemic revolving around certain groups’ susceptibility to COVID-19 were shared, but those were shared in order to help oneself or help loved ones. Pre-vaccine distribution, we saw pages and groups on social media, which were overloaded with false information about cures and remedies or distrust, and misinformation about the vaccine—which can also be disinfo, but I’ll get to that a bit later.

Often, we share things in order to help rather than to hurt. There was a plethora of misinformation surrounding the voting process, particularly where voters can register deadlines for voting by mail, et cetera. And all of these can also be examples of misinformation.

Now, disinformation, on the other hand, is content that is intentionally false and designed to cause harm within communities. It’s spread to make money for political gain, or simply to cause chaos. The biggest example that I can give of disinformation currently is the Big Lie, or that the 2020 election was somehow stolen. This proliferated most notably in groups on Facebook, but also in all aspects of the social web. Some popular posts, for example, are ideas that poll workers were discarding votes, and these were usually poll workers of color who faced harassment afterwards, with targeted campaigns against them. Also, that certain election officials were in some kind of cahoots in order to steal the election. This resulted in real world violence that left social media and went out into the streets. And we saw this on January 6, and we are still dealing with the repercussions of this to this day, as witnessed in the ongoing testimonies at the January 6 committee hearings.

So, one very important thing to note is that often, when disinformation is shared, it turns into misinformation. You know how groups [are] legitimately believing the narratives that have been spun by many bad actors and taking that into their own world? For instance, a beloved family member saying something false at a holiday party does not mean they intended to cause that harm, but someone else did. So, we’ve all heard of the term “fake news” and how it’s since become a no-no to describe what we see as mis[information] or disinformation. But disinformation has become a buzzword within itself. Many are now asking, “Is disinformation just code for news or things we don’t like, or things we don’t agree with?” We’ve been struggling with these terms for years. And the reason we continue to struggle with these terms is because it’s about more than specific pieces of granular information; it’s about our entire information ecosystem, which is polluted.

To understand the current information ecosystem, we need to break it down into three elements. The different types of content that are being created and shared, the motivations of who creates this content, and then the way this content is being disseminated, most notably on social media, but we also have TV, Fox News, and the radio. So mis- and disinformation, also thinking about these definitions, but then zooming in a bit. Mis- and disinformation has disproportionate effects on communities of color. I will also, before I kind of go into racialized disinformation, I’d like to note that the media often frames communities of color [as] more likely to either be targeted or even more susceptible to misinformation. This is an extreme falsehood. And in addition to that, those in Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities have legitimate reasons to be skeptical of information given the legacy of historical traumas we faced in our communities related to vaccines and civic participation.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.