TFGL2021 - S1 - Ep7 - The Youth vs Misinformation

Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.

Joining host Bex this week we have TFGLs Greg Ashton and Tom Passmore

Our special guest is Jodie Ginsberg. Jodie is CEO of Internews Europe. An international non-profit organization that helps provide people worldwide with the trustworthy, high-quality news and information that they need to make informed decisions, participate in their communities, and hold power to account.

Transcript

Bex: Hello and welcome to those who have both read and understood the standing orders. Welcome to another episode of the Tech for Good Live podcast. We are team Jackie Weaver and I will stand for no nonsense on this episode. With that out of the way, we've got a fascinating episode of highs and lows for you on the most glorious of days, Pancake Day. We’ll be talking about a more inclusive census: a sincere move or a tokenistic gesture. We'll be talking about cancer charities teaming up to collaborate, we love to see it. Kirst ventriloquist doll, Oliver Dowden, is apparently pressuring charities to protect British culture. If you didn't recognise that sound, it's my eyeballs completely into the back of my skull. All that and more coming right up. Joining me today we have Greg Ashton on the podcast. Greg, what's your favourite pancake topping?

Greg: As a kid, I was a massive fan of crepe suzette. 

Bex: [laughs] What even is a crepe suzette?

Greg: It's a very very thin French pancake with honey and hazelnut. And I think it's like an orangey…..

Jodie: Orange liqueur.

Greg: Orange liqueur.

Tom: Oh wow. 

Bex: Were you allowed that as a kid?

Greg: Yeah, I was obsessed. 

Jodie: I wonder what your parents are like.

Greg: Yeah. We'd go on holiday and my holiday meal would be steak and crepes afterwards. That was it. 

Bex: Right well. Excellent. What a great life as a five year old. And Tom Passmore is also here. Tom, same question.

Tom: I kind of just like the standard lemon and sugar. It's kind of a mix I never have in normal life.  Pancakes allow me to just have it.

Bex: Yeah, same here.  I’m here. I'm Bex. I'm your host and my favourite topping is just a bit of lemon and sugar, because like me my pancakes are classics. And we have a guest with us today. Jodie Ginsburg is CEO of Internews Europe, an international nonprofit organisation that helps provide people worldwide with a trustworthy, high quality news and information that they need to make informed decisions, participate in their communities and hold power to account. 

Jodie: Yeah, so I run a nonprofit that supports media organisations all over the world and particularly local information providers so that they can give accurate trustworthy information to people who need it most. 

Bex: It sounds great. How did you get into that?

Jodie: I'm a journalist by profession. So I spent my first part of my career working as a foreign correspondent, as a business journalist and then I moved into the charity sector and I worked for many years as CEO of Index on Censorship, which does what it says on the tin. It's an anti censorship pro freedom of expression organisation and so this was a natural next step for me to defend those who are supporting others to speak freely all over the world.

Bex: I’m going to try and not be too creepy about this but Index on Censorship, I went to one of the award ceremonies and it was the best award ceremony I've ever been to. And I've been to quite a lot. But the people that were winning awards, absolutely, 100% deserved them and I think I probably cried at some point or another. I’m not going to be weird or fangirly about this but I’m pleased to have you on the podcast. 

Jodie: Thank you. It's a pleasure.  Yeah, I used to cry every year, because what struck me most about those people was often they're doing that without any huge organisation behind them. No fame and fortune, not necessarily a big audience but because they believed that the cause they're fighting for is so important. And some of the bravest and most courageous and funniest people I've ever met.

Bex: Yeah. To put it into context. I think I remember one that stood out for me and it wasn't one of the ones that I cried at, I don't think but I just thought it was so cool and brave at the same time. It  was a gay radio station in Russia and they set up in a van so they could move like a pirate kind of radio station sort of thing, they could move around when people were coming to kind of shut them down, which is so cool and good on them for doing that. I thought it was amazing. 

Jodie: People do the most creative things in the most difficult circumstances. I never cease to be amazed at what people can do in really really difficult circumstances.

Greg: How are things for the censorship people at the minute? Because obviously it's a bit of a weird, weird world now, where there's lots of people decrying their own censorship and being cancelled and things like that.

Jodie: Well, Greg it's an hour show and I could go on for about three years about this.  I think the censorship of people is an interesting question so things are great for people who love to censor. So we've got huge numbers of creeping authoritarian regimes, places that consider themselves democracies, engaging in censorship and bad mouthing the people that are just to speak freely, think freely, like journalists. But it is tough because a lot of people Coop’d free speech as a sort of mantra that basically means I can say whatever I like and what they really mean is, I just want to be able to say the most offensive thing that I want to say, but I'm not really interested in you being able to say the thing that you want to say and that gives freedom of expression and free speech, a pretty bad name and in turn, I think then opens the door to more censorship. Because if free speech is just seen as something that is only for negative speech, then of course, well, why wouldn't you censor it and that I think is really problematic for people like me who believe that we should defend free expression for everybody.

Greg: Yeah, I feel like it’s stealing a lot of their time currently, that topic, when actually you know the really important things are just kind of being forgotten.

Jodie: But I mean, you know, as you might have seen this week the government said that they want to have a free speech champion in the office for students to make sure that universities are championing freedom of expression. And I think that's an easy gesture to make. You can jump up and down and sort of say, well, we're taking action but actually, if we want to encourage people to listen to one another and be able to speak more freely, it means much more than sticking a free speech zar in with a big stick to oversee universities. It requires a much more comprehensive effort from government and from all of us, to think about what it means if we're going to tolerate all kinds of opinions, including ones that we think are seriously offensive.

Bex: Yeah, it seems like the work that you do at Internews now kind of plays into this, allowing people access to information that allows them to make informed decisions and giving people access to speech so, yeah. I'm a trustee, a new trustee, of a charity called Meteor, which is a community news organisation. It's become really important, working in tech, because I feel like we’re so responsible for all the misinformation and how it’s expressed. 

Jodie: I don’t think you’re responsible but I'm really pleased to hear that you're a trustee for  a community media organisation because I think that, actually, those are the kinds of organisations that are often ignored. You know when there is ever investment in the media and there's less and less unfortunately, it's often for big institutions. But if you think about it, especially like now in a pandemic, the information you most rely on is your local community information right. It's the one that tells you whether the shop down the road is open or whether you've got a vaccine centre nearby and actually, the big sort of global information players are important but they're not nearly as important, especially worldwide, as the ones who are on your doorstep countering very specific, like you say misinformation that's very specific to your local community or giving information that is really important so that you can go out and go about your day and live your life in a healthy way.

Bex: Good to hear I’m doing a good thing.

Jodie: You’re doing a good thing. 

Greg: For once. 

Bex: [laughs] Shut up Greg.  So, Stat of the Week. This is about the census so it feels like a good theme for the start of the week. The general question is going to be updated on the next census. Do you want to tell us a little bit more Greg? 

Greg: Yeah, so it's not a stat, but you know in advance of some stats, and this is a big change to the census. So they're going to include a question which reads is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth. People over 16 will be able to take yes or no and then specify their gender identity. So it's a pretty big huge step forward. This has kind of been criticised as being too small of a step by, I don’t know, I've been reading a lot of things this week where people are kind of going yes this is great, but what about x, and I just got a bit tired with it to be honest. I kind of thought well yeah, there's more that could be done but let's celebrate, like when this is huge because as I said, what's going to happen is there's going to be some stats and the census happens every 10 years and there's been a huge amount of change in attitudes towards gender issues. And this is going to be the first opportunity for people and the government to really understand how many people are identifying in different ways and that could mean a huge shift in the way that funding is delivered to those various groups. So it's a real opportunity for them to kind of see the light of day and get help where it's needed.

Tom: Do we know what that umm, how they specify their gender afterwards? Is that still binary or is that free text field?

Greg: There's not a lot of detail but I think based on what I'd read that it was going to be a free text field. 

Tom: Oh wow. Gotta love a brave person who puts a free text field into a census.[laughs]

Greg: But maybe that's part of it because I think that's going to be one of the most interesting parts, is to collate the information on how people identify. It's going to be a mess to kind of tidy all of that up.  But I think that is one of the challenges at the moment, is to understand how people are identifying.

Tom: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting field to be putting in and the kind of interesting knock on effect it's going to have because of all of the different government organisations/institutions that just have that as a bit field in the database. So are you like gender one or zero kind of thing. And now actually it’ll throw up some really interesting kinds of questions that the database people are going to have to talk about as well. No, I like it. It's good, it's good.  So I saw in their article something about a token gesture. Is that just, you know, or we could always just make more steps?

Greg: Yeah. I think it is that pushback that it's one small gesture amongst many other policy decisions but I think my view is, yes maybe but let's not discount how big these things are. I think we were always focused on, in many cases like the, you know, the vision, the mission, getting to the end and we kind of miss the opportunity to celebrate these small steps that can have a huge impact really

Bex: And as someone who's built a lot of forms, I'm just interested in this generally because how many times over the last ten years have I had a conversation about why are you even asking gender because that has nothing to do with anything. Why are you asking Mr, Miss, Mrs. It's just an extra thing on the form that you don't need. Or then there's the complex health questions, it gets complicated. They’re like, how do you ask for sex and gender there and does it matter.  So many questions on the form to do with gender so really interested to see it’s in census mail now which is like THE form.

Greg: It's the ultimate form.

Jodie: I think I’ll reflect on this. Our slogan, if you like for this year, has been information saves lives. Really thinking about COVID and the role that information has played there but I think the key thing about all of these things is data is crucial because if you can't, if you don’t measure it, you can’t see it. And so, the more detailed you can get on these things and the more granular and I know that's more forms, more fields, which isn't always loved by all but the more granular you can get, the more you can see what's in front of you and I think that's really, really key to any of these exercises. Being as granular and as specific as possible with what you're measuring so that you can see what the challenges are and then do something about them.

Bex: Yeah, absolutely. To make the distinction, when I'm talking about why are you asking that on the form, is more of those forms for access to a service rather than collecting data and like, people just need to get in. Stop putting barriers up. When we're collecting data for collecting data’s sake, definitely the more the merrier.  I love some data. Talking about the more the merrier, charity news of the week is three cancer charities are forming a partnership, which is, you know, brilliant news. I think we’re all pleased to hear about the partnership as every single podcast we've ever done, we've complained about the lack of collaboration in the sector. So, Greg, do you want to tell us more about this great news? 

Greg: Yeah. This blew my mind, because, yeah, three charities working together, God bless them for attempting this because it is really really hard. So this is Teenage Cancer Trust, Click Sargeant and Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust. I hadn't heard of or kind of heard the name Ellen MacArthur but I hadn't heard of the organisation, apparently I said they work with young people using sailing and other outdoor activities. They've worked informally together in the past and this is kind of a formal collaboration. They were really clear to stress that this isn't like a merger. They're not going to become one behemoth cancer organisation but they are really keen to work more closely to make use of limited resources and work together. I think one thing that kind of stood out for me when I was reading about this was they were talking about funders and funding and people wanting to fund a cause, rather than an organisation. And I thought that, you know, they're really understanding like how people are thinking here so it's a really good thing to see them kind of moving down this route.

Tom: Yeah, it’s a quote in there that's really interesting that I passed the problem within the sector is that we’ve associated growth with income rather than impact. And it's just like, yes, that’s a great quote and it really kind of highlights the issue of fundraising doesn't always mean impact. No, it's good. I support this.

Jodie: I love this story, I absolutely love this story. And Tom, you picked the remark that really hit home for me. I think it's changing now but certainly for years and years, unfortunately, funders and charities have measured things in terms of outputs. You know, either we've managed to get this amount of money in or we've trained this number of people, we've helped this number of people but that's not the same as impact. That's not the same as outcomes and I think having the, frankly, maturity, it's really grown up right.  To say the three of us are working in slightly different ways but on similar things at the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether we get the money or you get the money. The important thing is that the issue is tackled. That's amazing because most of the time in charity people will say, we really want to collaborate, the cause is most important and meanwhile, back at the ranch the elbows get sharpened, ready to go into your battle with your supposed collaborators, but who actually seem to be competition in because many of these charities operate for good reasons but have to operate as businesses and so they have that competitive need in order to be able to deliver that kind of work. So I just think this is a brilliant, grown up story that we should be celebrating and championing. 

Bex: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's getting way better in the sector but even just last year I spoke to a very old charity that's been around for a long time. They had a very particular thing that they wanted to change in the world, and I liked it because it was very narrow, which I always like to advocate for.  You want to change this little piece of the puzzle and you're going to make sure it happens. And over the twenty or so years they've existed, they've basically done it and that was brilliant. And I thought it was the thing to celebrate. And they said to me, we're a victim of our own success. They saw it as, what are we going to do now.  We're like, we've done the thing we want to do, now what but in a bad way and they kept talking about competition and moving on to some other thing. And we're still stuck on this but we've solved it. And I just thought it was a really strange way of thinking about it. 

Jodie: Well if you think about it, the ultimate aim of a charity would be to go out of business. That ought to be our aim.  I've done the thing and nobody needs me anymore. Thank goodness for that and that should be our goal. Not to keep going and keep funding ourselves, it should be to fix the thing that you set up to do and then you've done it and then you're out of business. Which is counterintuitive from the normal way that businesses work but that really ought to be the end goal but you don't often see that in people's mission statements.

Bex: No. Even if you set up a big supportive charity with lots of stuff that supports the people that you're trying to support, and then they don't need that particular support anymore. You know, then dismantling all of that is a challenge but especially in this instance, I was thinking of you this idea of, well now you need to shut down, would’ve been a big deal. But there were so many things they could’ve pivoted to as well and changed and actually there are so many nuances to the issue that they’re trying to solve that they could’ve quite easily gone, well this now, instead of seeing it as, we’re a victim of our own success, which is a really strange way of seeing it. 

Tom: Yeah they could’ve celebrated that.To be like, we solved this problem, we don't need to exist anymore because we solved this problem. That's the power of charity. That's the power of this sector. That's what we can do. Okay, next. One down, how many more to go. 

Greg: They should have been doing a roadshow of like, this is how you do charity, like make yourselves obsolete. That would have been a great conference.

Jodie: There's a great story from the archives that the annals of index on censorship which has been going on for forty years trying to tackle censorship, that in 1989 famously one of its big funders after the fall of the Berlin Wall said, right, it's done now. I think we set out to achieve affinity so we don't need a magazine that reports about censorship anymore because that's not really an issue anymore. So we'll fund you but you can do something else. And I just thought that the optimism in that idea. I would love to find that person who kind of optimistically declared that censorship was dead in 1989 and take them on a bit of a tour of the world in 2021. 

Greg: I'd want them to take me on a tour.  I'm sure it's a lot nicer than the tour we’d take them on. 

Jodie: Yeah. 

Bex: Back to this story. I absolutely love, love what's happening, especially where they put their service users first as well. I think a lot of the work that we do with charities yeah, some of them are very, you know, oh I really really want to work with Click Sargeant. I know them, I trust them.  But some people just want help and don't really care where it comes from and don't see the brand names at all. So this idea of we're just trying to give people support no matter where it comes from, I think is really really powerful and people get so hung up on their own brand and people need to start doing that maybe.  And they're doing it so good on them.  It's been really positive so far but the next story doesn’t sound that good. So the Culture of Secretary is to meet with charities reportedly to tell them to protect our heritage. Greg, I don't want to ask you to tell me more but go on. 

Greg: So full disclosure. I am a civil servant, so I am unable to comment in a biased way. Apparently, I asked to be unbiased in any kind of commentary about the government, which basically means I'm not allowed to say anything. So I'll read the notes from the article and then let you guys go at it. There's been a couple of these stories coming through in regards to MPs wanting to have discussions with charities about topics which have currently been kind of going around this year. Kind of references to Woke culture and things like that. This hasn't happened yet. It's just been reported by I think 25 different news outlets, basically saying that there has been a meeting organised by the Culture Secretary, the specifics of that meeting, are obviously kind of hearsay at this point but he's expected to say that they should be defending our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down. It makes reference to the National Trust who kind of found itself at the centre of the debate last year. I think we talked about it on the podcast, in regards to the report that they released, looking at the links between its properties and slavery. Interestingly though, the third sector, who I got this from did a Freedom of Information Act request and found that the Charity Commission only received three complaints, in regards to that report. So although there was a lot of discussion on social media about it, formally there wasn't really that much of a complaint. 

Tom: But I thought that bringing down Britain was part of our culture. So then surely, that is an important part of what needs to be protected. We've been doing it for centuries. That's what we do. 

Jodie: That story just makes me want to tear my hair out. It's illustrative of the binds that I think government and we talked about this at the beginning right, about the way in which we think about free speech, get themselves in a bind. So on the one hand, the government is out there saying free speech is a fundamental British value.  David Cameron said it when we were talking about British values back in 2010, you know, it's always sort of brought out as a great British value. And yet, at the same time that the government's putting out papers about how we need to better defend freedom of expression in universities, they're telling us the ways that we can express ourselves and deciding to weigh in when people express themselves in ways that the government doesn't agree with and the cognitive dissonance that goes on. It just really makes me want to scream. Freedom of expression is about everybody being able to express themselves freely and that includes our ability, most importantly, to say things that upset the government I mean, it's most fundamental. It's absolutely key that we should be able to say things that challenge the government. That's the cornerstone of democracy and the fact that the government doesn't seem to be able to see that is mind blowing frankly. 

Bex: I’m kind of a bit speechless about it. I don't really know what to say about this sort of thing anymore. I also have personal, I struggle with heritage and culture. Like, what is it, I don't know what it is to me, so I don't know how we can define an entire culture and say that this is definitively what it is so you need to do it this way. I think that's like a really strange concept. 

Tom: Culture and heritage is kind of manufactured by the future looking at the past. It's not definitive. You can't say this is our heritage, because we define as we go along. So they’re kind of going, you need to defend this made up thing that we created to define ourselves is just bonkers really. I mean there's loads of things with our history that we don't celebrate because they're quite dark and sinister, but at the moment it seems to be, this dark and sinister thing we need to protect. And that's what I don't understand. Yeah, I always feel like heritage from a building perspective. I really like buildings so I really get upset when people knock down old buildings because I really like them. But I also like this concept of, you know, modernism and brutalism were seen as negative things at the time, probably still to most people even though it's become a little cooler. So loads of buildings got knocked down, whereas we would have liked them now because modernism is coming back in fashion again but we knocked those buildings down so now it's too late. 

Tom: I don't know.

Bex: So who are we to say like what now.

Jodie: I'm probably still a fan of the knock down brutalist buildings. What I do think is really chilling about this kind of thing is, let's see it for what it is right, which is a government trying to control the narrative about how we talk and to see ourselves as Britons in Britain. And people always, especially when you work in free speech you hear a lot people talk a lot about slippery slopes and people always say oh you're exaggerating, it's never as bad and then, you know, Donald Trump came along and people stopped saying you know you're exaggerating, that these things can happen. But if you think of someone like Poland for example who introduced a law that prevented people talking about the Holocaust in a certain wa. So you couldn't say that Poland had been involved in the Holocaust at all, and that's where you end up getting to when you let governments decide what is the right view of culture and heritage. It's an attempt to control the narrative so that we all see and think the same way and frankly, whether or not you get government money as a charity, I don’t think it's the business of government to be telling these institutions what version of British heritage and British culture, they can tell and does it stop at the National Trust? Or we go to every single institution now and decide how all the various different archives that look at specialist groups and specialist interest groups get to present their versions of history in the past. I think it's to me as someone who watches the way in which authoritarian regimes are operating all over the place, I find this actually really upsetting and disturbing and certainly not a defence of free thinking and free speech from a government that purports to be championing those things. 

Greg: So given that there were apparently only three complaints about the National Trust report, do we think this is perhaps a fool's errand. Why are they doing it, why would this conversation be suggested and do we think these kinds of conversations could even work. 

Jodie: It's hard to say. I mean I've seen that some of the reports about this being a kind of ‘’war on wokeism’’ and I hate that expression with a passion. I think in previous incarnations of this government we've seen a desire to control the kinds of history that's taught, right. You know, that we should have the empire taught in a certain way, we should celebrate Britishness in a certain way. I think it comes out of not a desire to respond to public complaints but an impulse control that I think we're seeing a lot from this government. 

Bex: That was really scary and horrible. So, thanks for that Jodie. 

Jodie: Sorry. We can talk about cats again. 

Bex:  Well that was news of the week. Looks positive. And thanks to you and the reporting that you’ve been doing at Internews, it looks like now people are starting to use tech to counter rumours instead of what I was talking about earlier and spreading misinformation. So this sounds good. Greg, you found some articles related to this as well as the work that Internews have been doing. Do you want to give us an update?

Greg: Yeah. It was a weird conjunction of things. I was reading an article about Colorado schools in the US, looking to start teaching children to spot fake news and basically kind of media literacy stuff and then Jodie had suggested talking about how young people can help fight misinformation. I just thought there was some really really interesting stuff there around okay if we're going to teach them but what’s the next step. And I think Jodie’s story is a really great example of how we could even take it further. So yeah, Jodie, did you want to talk us through it? 

Jodie: So we run a large number of projects that we do quite a lot of work about how you can best counter misinformation and disinformation and I suppose it won't come as a surprise to anyone that, you know, there isn't a one size fits all approach. I know we all think that tech is amazing and you can do many things at the touch of a button but this countering misinformation and disinformation is not one of those things. It requires quite patient and detailed responses within communities because rumours pop up in all sorts of different ways. We're running a project at the moment called Rooted in Trust which works with seven different communities across the world, to really capture the kinds of mis and disinformation that there is particularly around COVID, and then help communities source their own mechanisms for countering that disinformation. So for example in the Philippines, we're working with a number of youth volunteers who are trained to sort of spot myths and disinformation about COVID but also really crucially, the tools to argue back to people often who are perhaps older than them or have more established positions in society and more authority positions and be able to argue back in community meetings and so on, with their own information and ask questions to tackle roots. So rather than treat anyone who is sceptical for example about vaccines as an idiot and dismiss them or laugh at them, really start to think patiently and meet them where they are and talk about their fears and concerns and dig into why they might have thought something and then also try and help counter that with some real life examples.  So they also, in this part of this project, often brought people to community meetings, who worked for example in the health sector who could say, actually it's not the case that all of these COVID cases are made up just so that we can get money you know I've experienced this directly and talk from personal experience. And that does seem to have really positive outcomes for countering rumours and misinformation and also we've used technology. So people have used WhatsApp in communities in Zimbabwe, for example, to send information to people about the vaccine that specifically counters rumours and the results are really positive, that people who had seen these messages that sort of break down some of the misinformation or disinformation are much more inclined to be sceptical about some of the negative rumours about the illness. So I think there are ways, both of marrying tech and if you like, traditional face to face interactions which are really important. 

Bex: Yeah, so some of the stats from this are really great. A study from Stanford University found that 82% of middle school students can't tell the difference between an online ad and a news story. I've seen that before. I've been working with an organisation called Digital Life Skills Company. And I was shown first hand a bunch of information that suggests how challenging people finding this, distinguishing between what's real and what's not on the internet but also how important it is to do that, and how it can affect your life really negatively if you’re unable to distinguish between misinformation on the internet. So it's really great that you managed to find a way around it because it seems like a really challenging topic. It's all rooted in people's emotions and what they believe in and who they think is credible and yeah it’s a tough one. 

Jodie: Well precisely. And that's precisely the point actually. One of the pieces of work that we’re doing as I said, is called Rooted in Trust and it's about identifying trusted individuals within communities whom other people will consider to be trustworthy and credible. So in other words, if you see something on the internet you might think, oh that has authority because it looks like it comes from an actual newspaper and therefore I should believe it. And then, in order to be able to successfully counter that you need somebody or either something or somebody who carries more weight and more authority to counter that. It's incredibly challenging. None of us have all of the information, all of the time, to our fingertips. So the work involved in trying to counter misinformation and disinformation when you hear someone say something that you kind of know instinctively probably isn't true. But often we just don’t have all that information at our fingertips and the conversation, whether it’s online or off, to be able to immediately counter that. And I think that's the big challenge is almost  through this media literacy programme in Colorado is sort of to get people to question themselves rather than be able to immediately say, well here's the truth. What we could all usefully do is sort of say, is that really the case? Why did you trust that organisation? Why did you trust that piece of news, rather than get into a battle about the facts themselves because sometimes we don't always have those to hand. 

Greg: I think that's really interesting because I was gonna say like, the number of times I've had conversations with my family and they don't believe a word I'm saying. They'll continue believing what they believe. But yeah, I think that conversation about why they trusted a source and why they believed it rather than what they believed,  I think is really, really useful. 

Bex: I also like the quote, ‘‘we don't want to teach kids what to think’’. We just want to give them the tools so they can figure it out and understand what makes a credible source. I think some people worry that you’re trying to tell them what's right and wrong. Well, that's absolutely not what this is all about. 

Greg: Yeah, the Colorado school learning that they're talking about, it's not like a unit that they would do. Their plan is for it to be reiterated, for it to be a skill. So every time they're producing a report or, you know, doing any kind of essay or anything like that, they're going to constantly be challenged on you know where, where they've got the sources from and how they've challenged those sources. So, you know, I think we've talked about it years ago actually. We were saying how curriculums needed to change to tackle the modern realities of accessing information. We're not going to the library and getting a book anymore and going through it, like we would traditionally. Now they have access to this huge resource but having access to that comes with its challenges and its dangers as well. So, you know, by not teaching young people how to tackle those challenges and dangers, were doing them a disservice. I think that's right because I think it's also something to do with the breadth of information that we have available to us right. So if you went to the library and you've got a book you might think, well this is written by some eminent historian who spent years researching that and therefore I can sort of trust that. Whereas when you're presented with a raft of different sources on the internet, you know, you can't be taught everything about which ones might be the most trustworthy because a tiny local news outlet might on a particular issue be the most trustworthy but you're not going to necessarily have been taught the name of that particular news outlet. What you need is some skills to make an assessment about whether the information that particular outlet is providing is right or not. So yeahI think it's got to be about skills and not so much the what. 

Tom: How do adults get those skills because actually when you were talking I was like, that's a brilliant point. Do I have the skills? I've kind of assumed that I would probably not trust a small local new source that had something over a much bigger news source, but one that was actually writing in the field of it. Yeah, that's fascinating actually, because I've always assumed oh yeah I know, but no I don't think I would. 

Bex: No. And I guess we don't, isn’t it? That's part of the challenge.

Tom: It’s hard. 

Bex:  We're training the kids and that's great. Go directly to the source. Let's train them and hopefully when they grow older, they can teach the next generation because I don't think we've got it right. And the work I'm doing on this project that's related to this, is with teachers. Because teachers don't know the answers either and they're trying to teach children. They know they need to teach children how to do it but they don't know how to do it themselves and we get it wrong as well. All the time. How do you distinguish trust in something? I think we're all trying to figure it out on a daily basis. When we retweet something, we probably should check first. 

Jodie: I have this conversation with people all the time, is that when people reach for legislation and regulation as the kind of be all or end all or a technical solution is the be all and end all of the challenges that we face around misinformation and disinformation or online harassment, we've got to think that, as a society, we're only two decades into the world of Facebook and social media and being able to communicate. We're all learning this stuff, we're all learning how to be able to pass information and what's trustworthy and also how to behave when we receive that information. So you're absolutely right. I think we probably do need, over time, to develop a bit more of a kind of instinctive, almost kind of muscle memory about, oh, maybe because my friend, Bex has just tweeted something maybe I shouldn't, without myself reading it, just immediately retweet it because then I'm responsible for spreading a message and making it go viral but we haven't got that as an instinctive behaviour in a way that we might do in the offline world. I'm trying to be optimistic. That's my optimistic bit but I do think we will get there. I think that those things come with time and with use and with practice, and we just haven't had that much time to get used to how to behave in the online space. 

Greg: Well going back to somebody and I don't know if this is 100% true, but anyway. 

Tom: Share it anyway Greg. [laughs]

Jodie: Are you spreading misinformation? [laughs]

Greg: It's going back into the midst of time. So apparently Socrates didn't like writing. He didn't want his teachings written down and the reason for that was, he said that if you wrote it down, it’s done then. That idea is solid and if somebody reads it, what they read is what they read and you can’t challenge that. So he believed that vocally communicating these messages was better because then you could have a conversation about the ideas and challenge the ideas. Whereas if it was written down, there was no opportunity to challenge that.

Jodie: I don’t know about Socrates but there is a great QI episode where Benjamin Zephaniah makes this exact point in relation to something called the Anancy stories, which were used to teach kids and the whole point was and he says it much much better than me, so I would suggest you go look at it, that the stories evolve and as soon as you wrote them down, they became fixed and they didn’t have the same power and I just found that a really powerful way of thinking about knowledge and who owns knowledge and how we share knowledge and challenge knowledge. It's definitely worth checking it out. 

Bex: I do think, as a kind of final point I guess, that we talk about digital literacy a lot and teaching people how to use digital platforms, but I think in most cases the bigger problem is information literacy and we missed that more than we should. So it's good to see it being worked on. And on that note, my cat is destroying my laptop again but we'll move on to finally and end on a cheery note. Greg, apparently the number of front gardens with no greenery has halved in five years. 

Greg: Yeah. Fantastic news from the RHS here. They did a study in 2015, it's been updated recently and they found that there's an estimated planting area 70 times the size of Hyde Park. It’s just from people, particularly in the last year because people have been at home more and kind of looking at their spaces but over the whole of those five years, people have been planting more and although it is tiny spaces on their own when you add them all up, it creates a lot of greenery. 

Bex: That’s a nice story. I would have more greenery in my front garden if I had a front garden. 

Greg: You’ve got a good back garden though. 

Bex: Yeah, it's very green. This is a better story than last week's tree story, where it was only like eight protected trees in the Manchester City area, which is terrible. So this is good. Yay. People, plant more trees in your gardens because it's allowed. 

Greg: Yea. Any greenery, no matter how small it is. A few pots, things like that. Get some wild flowers in there. It's dead easy and they're great for bees and other things. So, yeah, just do as much as you can. Your cat is just having the best podcast.

Bex: I'm holding my microphone down at the minute because she's rubbing her head on it and that's not really very helpful.

Greg: [laughs]

Jodie: She's obviously heard that cats on Zoom are a thing and just wants to get in on the action. 

Bex: It's very annoying. She's adorable but likes to sit on my keyboard, which is not adorable. And on that note, that is all we have time for today. Thanks everyone for listening. Jodie, thank you for joining us. Was that all right? Did it good alright?

Jodie: Oh, it was great, thank you. It’s nice to just chat, isn't it?

Bex: Definitely. Where can people find you on the internet, if they want to check out your work?

Jodie: So I am on Twitter @jodieginsberg or you can check out Internews at internews.org. 

Bex: And is there any particular project you want to plug as a final note?

Jodie: Our rapid response fund which is actually paused at the moment but we gave out a huge number of small grants to the community and local media organisations and there are some great stories on our website of the ways in which people have used that money to really make a difference in their community. So just check those out because they are real feel good stories. 

Bex: Which we all need more of right now. I'm definitely gonna have a look at that. Listeners, what did you think? We'd love to hear your thoughts. Get in touch on Twitter @techforgoodlive or you could even email us at techforgood.live and we'd love it if you gave us a nice iTunes review and told your mates about this podcast. Thanks to Podcast.co for hosting us on the platform. We used to be in an actual mirrored studio, live with humans face to face and it was beautiful and it says that in this script because it’s an old script and now I’m sad about our mirrored studio because we don’t have it anymore.  But they still do host us on their digital platform. So shout out to Podcast.co. And that's all. Thanks everyone. Bye. 

Greg: Bye.