Episode #1 | Toward Responsible Engagement with Information
The Quandary
In mid-June, during the heart of the Black Lives Matter protests, a friend showed me the Venn Diagram copied in Figure 1 below. She had received the image from a college friend along with the message “I can’t believe I have to explain to my mom what’s wrong with being in the middle of these circles” (located at “Me”).
Figure 1: Black Lives Matter Protests Venn Diagram
Initially, I puzzled over the diagram with my friend. Although it felt wrong to be identifying at the middle of these circles, I couldn’t immediately explain why. To some extent, I did resonate with each of these viewpoints. It got me thinking about different types of information and how to sort through the barrage of content and viewpoints we both consume and transmit. This episode is my attempt to grapple with that quandary and arrive at something coherent on the other side. It’s not revolutionary by any means, but I do hope it adds value to the way you think about our information ecosystem and your role within that ecosystem.
Introducing the Framework
After reflecting on the diagram, I eventually arrived at a simplifying framework for the types of information available to exchange in the world (Figure 2). On the left side (rows), there is information that is “True” and information that is “False.” On the top side (columns) there is information that is consequential and inconsequential. Note that while the left side is a binary, the top side is a spectrum.
Figure 2: Information Ecosystem
While True/False is relatively self-explanatory (see below for elaboration of the complexities here), Consequential/Inconsequential is less intuitive and also more subjective. I’ll start with a definition and then move into some examples to further elaborate the point.
· Consequential information is information or viewpoints that have significant explanatory power over the outcomes we see in the world.
· Inconsequential information is information or viewpoints that have little explanatory power over the outcomes that we see in the world.
I’ll acknowledge upfront that there is a lot of grey area here. A simple distinction between “True” and “False” is difficult to come by and quickly gets into epistemological challenges. However, for the purposes of this post, let’s make the assumption that at least some things are demonstrably true, and some things are demonstrably false.
There are even more complexities for consequence. Immediate questions that come to mind include: consequential related to what question or from what perspective? When assessing consequence, perspective matters a lot, so it is a tricky thing to analyze definitively. Similar to truth, let’s at least acknowledge that if we define a frame, there is some information that is demonstrably inconsequential and some information that is demonstrably consequential, and then a large grey area of unknown or debatable consequence.
These definitions may feel a bit fuzzy at first, so let’s start by walking through a relatively simple example.
Framework Illustration: The Boeing Example
We’ll start with the Boeing 737 airplane crash and fill out information in each quadrant.
Figure 3: Information Ecosystem — Boeing 737 Scandal
In the top left, we have the statement, “Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) collaborated on assessing the safety of the plane.” This statement is both true and very consequential (i.e., it has significant explanatory power) for the outcome that we saw in terms of the safety of planes. Because Boeing and FAA were collaborating, the standards were less rigorous than they would have been had review been independent from manufacturing, which (in part) led to the flight crashes.
In the top right we have the fact that Boeing ran over 1,000 rigorous safety procedures on the plane prior to it being approved. While this is also true, it is relatively inconsequential for the fact that the planes crashed. If, in the aftermath of the crashes, a news reporter spent a lot of time emphasizing this piece of information, it might seem at best, bizarre, and at worst, misleading. Although they would not be “lying” by the technical definition, they would be creating the impression that Boeing was more thorough in their safety measures than they actually were.
In the bottom left, we have an example of a false statement about the Boeing debacle that, if true, would be enormously consequential. This is the type of fake news and conspiracy theory that sometimes makes its way through social media on a variety of topics.
Finally, in the bottom right, we have a false statement that I completely made up that is also inconsequential. This is pretty random, and I can’t imagine why someone would promote this information but, ya know, there is some crazy shit in the world, e.g., Pizzagate). (Actually, as a side note on Pizzagate, it’s somewhat interesting because it started off as inconsequential but then eventually had very real-life consequences…but that is for another post).
Zooming Out: Framework Extrapolation
Having walked through a simple example, we can start to extrapolate into broader categories of information within the framework (remember, this is a framework for thinking about information and will necessarily lose some nuance). Figure 4 summarizes the type of information in each quadrant.
Figure 4: Labeling Information Segments
Let’s walk through each of these quadrants in more detail and think more specifically about how we should engage with each type of information.
Important Information. This quadrant contains information is both true and consequential. If we are in position of power to direct people’s limited attention to information (e.g., news reporter, editor, professor, manager, etc.) we would want to focus attention here. As consumers of information, we also want to focus our attention here, this is the important stuff to thoroughly understand and incorporate into our worldview.
Potentially Relevant Nuance OR Potentially Distracting Information. This quadrant is the trickiest to manage because information here is technically true, it’s just not the most important thing to discuss related to a topic. IF you are doing a deep dive into a topic, trying to cover ALL explanatory factors and nuance, it is genuinely important to discuss this information: we would want to explore lesser-known theories, vantage points, and pieces of information. However, if this information is not presented in context, it can be misleading, it can seem to be more important than it actually is. Engaging with information in this quadrant requires a high degree of responsibility and intentionality to not mislead the audience (if transmitting) or be misled (if consuming).
Harmful Fake Information. This quadrant contains information that is false yet consequential. It is essentially “fake news” or conspiracy theories that, if true, would be highly consequential. If we have power over the content of the information ecosystem or people’s attention, we want to ensure that we don’t disseminate information in this quadrant and, if we do accidentally, that we correct a transgression. As consumers of information, we don’t want to be led into believing harmful fake information. Finally, as managers of content platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) we would want to ensure that this information does not spread rapidly throughout an information ecosystem.
Eroding Fake Information. Finally, this quadrant contains information that is false but inconsequential. It is the small lies that are told and consumed regularly but are relatively innocuous, for example exaggerating a number when making a point. It is likely that this type of information erodes our information ecosystem slowly over time, even if the falsehood in itself is not immediately damaging. Our dear outgoing President makes a habit of transmitting a lot of eroding fake information (not to mention harmful fake information!).
Zooming In: Black Lives Matter
This exercise is relatively banal when thinking about the Boeing 737 airplane crash but gets much more interesting when thinking about the Black Lives Matter protests that provided the initial framing for this post. In the diagram below, we can actually map some of the competing opinions from the original Venn Diagram, along with narratives that we experienced in the news.
Figure 5: Information Ecosystem — Black Lives Matter Protests
Starting with the “Important Information” category, we can assess that what was both true and most consequential in this instance was that black and brown people had been treated unfairly by the police for centuries. THAT was what the moment was about; THAT is what should be emphasized and discussed most frequently. It was and is critical that people incorporate this information into their viewpoints and examine it thoroughly and deeply.
Yet as we well know, some news channels and influential individuals emphasized alternative narratives about the Black Lives Matter protests. These narratives often focused on the “looting” that occurred in downtown neighborhoods of cities across the United States. It’s not that this information is completely unimportant: I generally believe protesters should consider the potentially deleterious effects of their actions on society. However, discussing looting must be done responsibly, contextualizing the damage inflicted on property within the broader point about the moment. Similarly, it’s not inaccurate to acknowledge that there are some good police officers and to support those individuals. Yet talking about this must be done very intentionally, so as not to mislead recipients of the information regarding what is most important about the moment. In my opinion, one excellent example of responsible discussion in this space was Trever Noah’s video about the Black Lives Matter.
The “Harmful Fake Information” in this diagram illustrates false and consequential information. This type of information was spread by some individuals or news organizations in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter but is importantly different than the information in the top right quadrant. Finally, the “Eroding Fake Information” quadrant contains a largely irrelevant exaggeration.
Moving to Responsible Engagement with Information
Societally, we have a strong (yet sadly degrading) norm for communicating truths. While truth is critical, I believe that in this era, to progress to a responsible engagement with information we need an equally strong norm for assessing and communicating consequence. Instilling this norm would have the following important impacts on our information ecosystem.
Creating more space for importation information. In an increasingly crowded information ecosystem, we need to use power and platforms to direct attention to what matters most. With a stronger norm for consequence, people with power to direct attention would be more required to justify why they are promoting the information they are promoting, not just to justify that the information is true. This norm would align with a fundamental characteristic of the information age: that in an era of nearly unlimited information, the limiting resource has become our attention.
Better awareness of and discussion of nuance. In creating a norm for communicating consequence we also build the space to discuss nuances responsibly, in a way that acknowledges their relevance to the issue at hand. Addressing problems holistically and comprehensively does necessitate engaging with the nuance, alternative theories, and challenges to mainstream ideas. There will, of course, be good-faith disagreements over consequence — and there should be! People will have different opinions about what is consequential. However, in these instances, we can ensure that these conversations are actually about what is consequential (i.e., the horizontal axis of the information ecosystem framework), instead of what is true (i.e., the vertical axis of the information ecosystem framework). I believe these conversations will be much more productive and help our societal conversations evolve.
Fewer communication breakdowns related to conflation of truth and consequence disagreements. Finally, and related to the previous point, I think many of the communication breakdowns arise due to a conflation of the “Potentially Relevant Nuance/Potentially Distracting Information” category and the “Harmful Fake Information” category. People make statements that are technically true, but that are relatively inconsequential. These people or organizations sometimes get attacked for their statements, which makes them more defensive because what they have said is actually accurate, it’s just misleading. For example, my friend’s mom might feel targeted for getting backlash after arguing that there are good police officers in this world. The problem is not in saying this, the problem is not properly contextualizing this opinion against the other facts and opinions that are relevant to the situation. If we had a norm for communicating consequence, we would discharge some of these disagreements and miscommunications.
Where to next? I think the best place to start, or where I start at least, is to make a habit of assigning consequence to information that I consume or see in my news feed, on the NYTimes App, etc. This simple act of information categorization can help me sift through the world, spend my attention more judiciously, and grant me perspective on societal disagreements. Eventually, however, I’d like to see consequence more embedded into our information ecosystem as a norm for those in power. What could this look like? Maybe Professors would need to justify and contextualize the readings and cases they assign in class, news organizations would need to post more information on why they decided to publish a story, and more. If you have thoughts on what a consequence-laden information ecosystem would look like, I’d love to hear them. Reach out! Onward to a responsible engagement with information!
