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Reading Laterally and Evaluating 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

Introduction:

The term “fake media” has been highly popularized over the recent years. It has gained more popularity and has been used as a loose term thanks to the internet, technology advancements, social media that popularize it. Though, the term has been subjected to a lot of ownership, skepticism and criticism throughout the recent years and has only been strayed away from its original definition. In this day and age, it is important now more than ever to analyze and make sure that we are spreading credible, factual and scholarly news sources and information that can be backed up with statistics, science and hard evidential truth. Given that the online news sites and social media channels such as Twitter provide us with our daily U.S. and World news, we have to make sure we are not being misled by the opinions of others but rather presented with the facts and truth. Imagine if...

Goals:

The goals for this blog is to dive deeper into analyzing the credibility of a news source such as social media outlets or online news sites. I will focus my attention on Twitter and use online sites to try to see if I am able to verify the source as being credible or not. Throughout this process, I will look into a given news topic and ask/answer these two questions:

1. How to establish a legitimate source?

2. How to read laterally throughout websites?

Terms/ Concepts to Know:

Let me fill you in on some very important key terms to know before we get started:

1. Infowar: The use of computer technology to disrupt the activities of a state or organization; cyberwar and/or The use of computer technology to disrupt the activities of a state or organization; cyberwar. (Oxford Dictionary)

2. Lateral reading: Analyzing the author’s qualifications or trustworthiness of sites by evaluating them through multiple and thorough research, using other sites and sources in order to search if that specific website is credible or not

3. Legitimacy: Ability to be defended with logic or justification; validity.

4. Sources: A place, person, or thing from which something originates or can be obtained.

Important Websites to Help You Fact-Check Your Sources:

I’m really trying to help ya’ll out here by making a list of credible websites. How do I know they’re credible? Because I’m always right (As some news outlets love to say).

Jk. But on some real, according to https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/chapter/basic-techniques-domain-searches-source-checks-whois/ , these are all credible domain search websites such as:

1. (insert full website name) -site:(insert full website name

2. https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=motherjones.com

3. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

Alex Jones, the content creator of Infowars, (what does he do)….In order to demystify infowars on 9/11, such as Alex Jones’ conspiracy theories on 9/11. First off, I want to define the word “infowars”. According to Oxford Dictionary, it is defined as “The use of computer technology to disrupt the activities of a state or organization; cyberwar.” and “Propaganda war waged via electronic media.”

Reading Laterally and Fact checking  9/11 Conspiracy Theory:

Let me tell you guys what I did when I ran into one of Alex Jones’ videos on his 9/11 attack conspiracy theory:

So I ran into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Hk1-BpXO8

In this video Alex Jones is going off and on about the 9/11 terrorist attack and how it was staged by the government etc. First of all, I do not know who Alex Jones is and I don’t know what is real or not real about what he is saying. This is where lateral reading comes in.

Step 1:

So what I do when I see this is, I check the account and the profile of the person who posted the video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/911REICHSTAG/about

Go ahead and check it out. It seemed to me as he was trying to inform people about terrorism and how the government was linked to most of them. He also had other videos on 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Step 2:

So when I saw his page, I got a sense of what this person was about, no judgement, it’s all chill. So I go back to the original video that I was looking at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Hk1-BpXO8 and I decide to look at the description below the video.

I notice that it refers to the link https://www.prisonplanet.com/ and I decide to copy/paste it and check it out. Go on y'all take a look and explore the page for yourselves.

Step 3:

The first thing I see is the top part of the page which says “Alex Jones’ Prison Planet”. I’m going to pretend I don’t know who Alex Jones is and i’m going to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones

After I learn about who Alex Jones is, what he does and what he’s about, I decide to check out his “Notable work” section and click on where it says “infowars” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars

So i decide to google “Alex Jones infowars” and his website appears https://www.infowars.com/

Step 4:

So I don’t know about you guys but so far,  https://www.prisonplanet.com/  and https://www.infowars.com/ seem and look like any other news websites. So I google “New York Times and 9/11” and I get: https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=CmDHXIPKEcT3-gSi9LuIBQ&q=new+york+times+and+9%2F11&btnK=Google+Search&oq=new+york+times+and+9%2F11&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30l10.718.7995..8124...4.0..0.172.3050.12j16......0....1..gws-wiz.....0..0i131j0j0i3j0i22i10i30.cI2-z7e8EEw

I click on the first link which is: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/9-11imagemap.html?pagewanted=all

Step 5:

I also go on twitter and on the search bar type in “Alex Jones 9/11” and click the “news” tab and I get: https://twitter.com/search?f=news&vertical=default&q=alex%20jones%209%2F11&src=typd

Step 6:

I click the first post which is from “The Hill” and then go to their Twitter page. I check to see that they have a blue check mark which means that they are “Twitter Legitimate”. I go to their website: https://thehill.com/ and take a look around. The website looks legit too!

Step 7:

Last but not least, I gather all of the websites that are linked to Alex Jones’ name and that are under his name and use https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ to see if they are credible and to see how biased they are. This is what I found:

1. The Hill: Left Center biased. It’s factual reporting is high, Overall, The Hill slightly Left-Center biased based on story selection that very slightly favors the left and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing.

2. PrisonPlanet: Conspiracy-pseudoscience. Conspiracy level is Tin Foil Hat and right wing biased. Pseudoscience level is moderate.

3. Infowars: Conspiracy-pseudoscience. Overall, InfoWars/Alex Jones is a crackpot, tin foil hat level conspiracy website that also strongly promotes pseudoscience. The amount of fake news and debunked conspiracy claims, as well as extreme right wing bias, renders InfoWars a non-credible source on any level.

4. New York Times: Left Center Biased. Overall, we rate the New York Times Left-Center biased based on word and history selection that moderately favors the left, but highly factual and considered one of the most reliable sources for information due to proper sourcing and well respected journalists/editors.

Step 8:

So now that we have seen what these news websites and sources are about and what their biased is. For the most part, the websites are all right wing biased and we can conclude that they are not credible news sources. The only two news websites that are credible sources are The Hill and New York Times. The link on The Hill was about a controversial blog that was posted by Joy Reid on Alex Jones’ movie “Loose Change 9/11”. The Hill describes the controversy and how it is not the first time she posts controversial content on her blog. The New York Times on the other hand, reported what happened during 9/11 and the fact that they were terrorist attacks. However there are scholarly articles that make sense of how it would be mistaken by some actions taken by other people in regards to correlations between the U.S and certain extremist groups.

Your Turn:

Try reading laterally by finding out the author, and the credibility of the authors/website that I’m posting, critically thinking and bringing forth facts as to U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern affairs.

http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=662cb0f1-e31b-4ae5-ab81-19eb7cc3b41d%40sessionmgr4006&vid=0&format=EK