A Black Executive Perspective now presents Need to Know with the award winning hyphenated Dr. Nsenga Burton. Dr. Burton. What do we need to know?

Good afternoon and welcome to Need to Know with Dr. Nsenga Burton. I am Dr. Nsenga. I'm happy to be talking to you today about a very important topic. I want to discuss with you the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Why? Because both are important. Both have a Great impact and influence in society on society. And it's important that we engage our critical thinking skills in order to discern. And that's to tell the difference between things that are fake and things that are not. All right. So misinformation can, you know, it doesn't always have to be malicious. It's just someone just misstating facts, um, you know, or saying that something is factual and it's not having information wrong. You know, like somebody might say, Oh, You know, yeah, I heard Nsenga went to Penn State, you know, when I actually went to UPenn, like this misinformation, right? Some of those things are unintentional, people get confused or what have you. So misinformation isn't always deleterious or doesn't mean that people are trying to, lie, outright lie. Um, but you know, it can be harmful because, um, sometimes it can change the ways in which people think about, um, topics, people, places, things, um, you know, if they have incorrect information. So you always want to be mindful that you have your facts straight. And when the way that you know that you have your facts straight is to really listen, pay closely, pay close attention. Um, watch things for yourself, you know, get away from the soundbites, right? Um, so for example, the recent soundbite of Kamala Harris saying, um, you know, I'm speaking at a rally, you know, everybody can meme it to death. They can recount it to death. They can rail against it, whatever your response is to that. Um, but what was actually said at the rally? Most people don't know unless they attended the rally. Most people haven't taken the time to look at the speech and to hear what was actually said during the entirety of that time that she was there. Um, and for the time that she actually spoke. So what you're doing is just basically regurgitating what you're hearing, which is rumor, which is a type of. misinformation. All right. Then there's disinformation. Disinformation usually happens in the form of campaigns. It can, i. e. when you have different entities who connect or come together in order to spread malicious untruths, like they intentionally, right? So misinformation can be an accident. Disinformation is the intentional spread of false information. All right, and so we're seeing some of that definitely in the political landscape, but you can see that online any given day. I mean, people will just be making up stuff, you know, Samuel. Um, well, that can be misinformation. Samuel Jackson is, you know, uh, Tito Jackson's brother, you know, that can be misinformation, but if you intentionally engage in discussions that cause people harm, um, that cause people, you know, To want to harm other people, um, that change somebody's values or beliefs about something, then that is disinformation and that is the intentional spread of incorrect or inaccurate information in order to cause or do harm. And that is very much so deleterious. So as we move into. This next phase of this presidential election as we go into our next major sporting event, because, you know, there's a lot of misinformation going on about the Olympics, particularly if you didn't watch. There's a disinformation campaign going on against Jordan Childs by someone online. You know, it causes harm, you know, for example, you know, Jordan Childs, she has, um, stepped away from social media to, to protect her mental health because of the bullying that has occurred based on the disinformation campaign that some of those involved in the Olympics would have to justify, um, them trying to rescind her, her bronze medal. Um, if you actually watched. The, the actual meat, you know, that she had been significantly underscored for reasons unknown, um, based on technicality, uh, because she had one of the most technically advanced performances, um, and after that was, you know, Questioned by her coach, uh, they actually changed her score, which is how she got the bronze medal. Nobody gave it to her. She was not a DEI hire, you know, which I've seen all kinds of just craziness. Um, it was the score. She had been underscored from the beginning. Um, and it was a correction to the score, uh, because they had made an error. All right. And the coach caught the error and they corrected it. So it wasn't that they gave it to her or, you know, uh, she didn't deserve it. She was, you know, uh, number five in the beginning. Um, and they're just trying to give it to her cause she's black or biracial or whatever the hell, you know, people want to call her. Um, it is actually because there was an error on the part of, uh, the judges and they had to correct it. And, um, the reason that they're now trying to rescind it is because there's a rule, uh, that says you have to raise the issue within 1 minute of it happening. And, uh, they're saying that her coach was 4 seconds late. Um, although. The USA says that they have proof that the issue was raised within the one minute. All right. So, you know, this is like, as the world turns, but my point is, there's lots of misinformation in there. And then there are also people who are engaging in a disinformation campaign in order to change my people's minds about who Jordan Childs is. And it is impacting her because it's infecting her mental health and is causing others to do harmful things, like say bad things to her, threaten her with bodily violence. You know, all of these things, um, which is just, you know, Not necessary, um, and only serves people who want the worst for her, as opposed to those who may want the best for her. So, as we go forward, um, in life in general, um, we're going to have to become more sophisticated, um, in our analyses, and that is because AI is real. You know, deep fakes are real. Um, a lot of the political assets you're seeing, they're just splicing together, splicing together stuff and making a narrative out of it, taking it completely out of context. Um, you know, and, uh, we have to be aware of that so that when we make our decisions, they're based on real life, not artificial intelligence. Um, what you have actually seen and witnessed with your own eyes, um, which you have actually heard, you know? So. Be mindful of just taking sound bites and running with them, um, float memes, um, just because you know, your favorite, one of your favorite people posted it. Um, really think about how you use, you know, that really knowledge that you have that cultural, it's really cultural capital that you have because you have the ability to really shift, uh, people's trajectories and to, uh, change people's lives for the good and the bad. Join us next week on the Black Executive Perspective podcast. And I will see you then, um, until then practice discernment, learn what a deep fake is. Remember there's misinformation, which can be unintentional and disinformation, which is totally intentional and try to stay away from both. How about that? Have a good day.

A black executive perspective.