We Must Investigate for Ourselves!

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of reading books. As Timothy Snyder and Nora Krug put it in On Tyranny, we read books for a myriad of reasons, and one of the most important is to provide us with the frameworks we need to cut through the noise and soundbites to provide us with the words to explain and explore concepts. Reading, on its own, though won’t necessarily eliminate the threats of disinformation. Reading must work in conjunction with other tools to battle disinformation and to cut through the clutter. For me, the most important tool that we must use in conjunction with reading is Snyder and Krug’s eleventh lesson, investigation.

Instead of taking things at face value, we must investigate them. We have to “figure things out for” ourselves, and we cannot look at everything we see, particularly on the internet, as truth because “some of what is on the internet is there to harm” us and to steer us in the wrong direction, presenting us with disinformation. We must, ultimately, “[t]ake responsibility for what [we] communicate with others.” With lesson eleven, Snyder and Krug cover a lot of ground laying out the importance of questioning and researching on our own when presented with information. Part of this exploration calls upon readers to consider what it is like to do “actual journalism,” and I’d add research.