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Truth can be difficult to come by today.
Our rulers would like us to think it’s impossible; To feel overwhelmed, give up, shut up, and go back to work and mundane distractions. Or to embrace baseless conspiracy theories that make us even easier to manipulate.
To start with, here are a few good non-corporate, non-state sources, and below that is a short guide to media strategy:
Guide to Media Strategy
This short guide is meant to be an introduction to good media strategy. It is USA-based and we would warmly welcome additions or alternative versions of this article relevant to other national contexts.
The Problems We Face
The many obstacles we face to figuring out what the fuck is going on in the world today can be generally sorted into two broad categories: Information overload and high-tech censorship.
Information Overload
Every day we process more information than our ancestors evolved to encounter in an entire lifetime. Most of this information is worse than useless, designed by professional or amateur scammers and con artists, whether they work for powerful mega-corporations, the government, or your high-school ex’s MLM scheme. Without a strategy to confront it, this bombardment leads to overwhelm, anxiety, or a retreat away from the world beyond our immediate personal lives or into curated bubbles of ideological conformity. Right where they want you.
New Technologies of Censorship, Surveillance and Repression.
The twin of information overload is information monitoring and control. We are more closely surveilled than ever before, living our lives on easily-tapped devices in corporate channels that are also tapped (e.g. PRISM) by governments and other nefarious actors if they aren’t directly sharing information in the first place. This control allows for sophisticated information suppression, whether it’s overt censorship like the Chinese state’s erasure of the events of May 35th or the subtle algorithmic suppression employed by Meta against independent reporters like Popular Front. Everyone already knew that mainstream corporate news companies lie, upholding the interests of advertising partners and other ruling-class allies, but social media is arguably more sophisticated as a propaganda form: A hall of distorted mirrors that makes us think we’re hearing and seeing one another directly, but behind the scenes subject to corporate/state manipulation at all times.
So what do we do about it?
Here are some practical steps.
Go beyond soundbites.
Memes and 30-second video clips are a fine source of entertainment and occasionally you can learn a little something, but it’s really dangerous to rely on whatever mental junk food the algorithm serves up to you for your knowledge of the world, mostly because valuable context and evidence require more time than these formats allow. Also the pattern of information intake it reinforces in you weakens your ability to engage with things more deeply if you do it too often. Commit to taking a few minutes to inform yourself with longer form media every day.
Meditation is also proven to enhance your attention span and ability to process information. I firmly believe that for many reasons meditation is an essential practice for navigating today’s world with discipline and tact.
Find independent media, and always ask where the funding comes from.
Most organizations won’t bite the hand that feeds them. Find media that isn’t funded by governments or corporate advertisers. Here are a few good ones to start:
Don’t take our word for it and question everything (after all, conspiracy garbage and grifters like ‘Info-Wars’ are technically ‘independent’) but if you find reputable and responsible independent sources you’ll get a wider variety of good information. Look for the quality of verified evidence they are presenting to support their claims, and if important evidence is not available or is being withheld, look for whether they address this.
Listen to voices on the ground.
The people directly involved in an event are the experts in their own experiences. Even if any given individual is not necessarily trustworthy, intelligent, or correct, they are one very important thing: Involved. Any person or organization can only give you their perspective, and that’s valuable, particularly if they’re an expert. A physicist's perspective is very informative for physics. A refugee’s perspective is very informative on the condition and experiences of refugees. With social media you can directly connect with people almost anywhere in the world and hear their stories, but try to engage on grounds of solidarity, not charity or passive spectatorship, and keep in mind the dangers they may face from surveillance as well.
We shouldn't lower the bar for evidence just because we're listening to a direct participant. At the same time, your active responses should always err on the side of protecting the party with less immediate power in a situation, even when the fog of war has not yet lifted.
Cross-checking and Triangulation.
The information a media source gives you may or may not be true or useful in itself, but what it teaches you about their perspective is nearly always valuable. Even if you’re being lied to, you can learn who’s lying to you and toward what end. Check any claim across multiple and diverse sources to learn what is being validated and by whom. As a general example, I like to learn about a new event through participant accounts, government statements, and both liberal and conservative corporate media. In the process I’ll learn what the government wants me to think about something and who the various sources are aligned with on an issue.
OSINT, or open-source intelligence, is both a community and a practice of analyzing and sharing publicly-available information including things like social media posts, satellite imaging, and flight tracking. This is another useful way to do triangulation.
In comparing sources and trying to understand a situation, it is critical to examine evidence, and also not to let a lack of evidence be used as a smokescreen. Can independent investigators access evidence and if not, why not? If Government X denies that it is committing human rights abuses, on the basis that there is no evidence, but it is also blocking independent investigators from accessing its alleged victims - you can proceed under the assumption that it is likely guilty.
Learn to see the Ideology all around us.
Ideology refers to the set of underlying beliefs that make up a worldview. From the outside it’s obvious - think of cults and foreign dictatorships - but when you’re inside it, it passes without question. Ideology is visible in every advertisement promising joy through consumption or reinforcing the patriarchal so-called “traditional” gender roles, and in every film in which evil threatens the status quo but the exploitation, inequality and violence of the status quo itself is ignored. Even among the film critic intelligentsia where critical identity politics are in vogue, issues of class, economy, and exploitation are rarely mentioned. The best way to see ideology is to know where you stand. Study history, read revolutionary writings and critical theory, and start to see the hidden assumptions that surround and permeate our everyday lives.
Keep up with technology and know your tools.
Whether or not you face censorship and surveillance, it’s good to learn about and use VPNs, end-to-end encrypted communication, anonymous browsing tools like Tor, and social networks and search engines that are independent, open-source, and don’t track you. Also start learning about AI tools, and the ways they can be used to validate and search information or to produce disinformation.
Remember that your phone can be monitored remotely, even if you’re using encryption. Calculate your risks with knowledge rather than ignorance, and when in doubt, have very important conversations in nature without devices nearby.
Follow the news, but not too much.
Being informed is critical. Being addicted to news is useless. Once you’ve identified some trustworthy sources and ways to cross-compare and vet information, keep to a schedule of daily information intake, calibrated to the needs of your situation. Sure, if you’re in the midst of an uprising, try to follow constant updates on police movements and tactics. But if you’re monitoring a revolution a world away, it’s more helpful to everyone for you to get a daily update along with adequate sleep and community connection so you can do something meaningful to assist from where you’re at.
Go Analog.
Ultimately, there is no substitute for communication in the local communities in which we live. Get offline and build engaged and aware groups. Host community events. Set up tables to distribute news, art, zines, and pamphlets. Set up a ham radio broadcast and talk to others nearby. Post up street-art and stickers to spread information beyond the corporate algorithms. Digital channels are all too easily siloed and isolated. Break out and meet some people you didn’t expect. This might save your life when the internet gets shut off.
Build a culture of critical thought.
We’re taught that critical thinking and intelligence are individual pursuits, but a well-informed individual can’t do much until they have a well-informed community. And we’re all pretty ignorant without people around us to think of questions we may not have thought of ourselves or provide new information. Make talking about local and global events, and how you critically learn about them, a part of your everyday conversations. You’ll make your social circle more interesting and empower people to act.
Democratize the Media.
Most of these problems stem from the fact that we live under corporate and government tyranny, under the rule of a rich ruling class that controls the means of production and violence and all the tools we rely on. Ultimately we need a world where we collectively and autonomously control our means of communication. See if you can start building democratic media where you are - whether it’s a collective producing a newspaper or a community radio broadcast, or just a regular documentary film night. Be the media - that’s a start.
The medium is the message… so how will we finally say “we’re free”?
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