Truthiness in A Connected World - Part 3 -Shelly Palmer - MediaBizBloggers

Over the past few weeks we39ve been discussing the concepts and constructs of Truth with a capital quotTquot truth with a lower case quottquot truthiness as coined by Stephen Colbert reality wikiality also coined by Stephen Colbert and facts as they apply to our connected world You can read the part one by clicking here and part two by clicking hereIt39s time to look at trust circles truth clusters and the way information travels We39ll try to map Truth truth and facts and think about ways to navigate the body of knowledge as we continue to explore truthiness in our connected worldIn part two I highlighted a story in the New York Post about the John Concepcion case The Post reported that Concepcion a convicted murderer who had damaged his own liver by attempting suicide had somehow made it to the top of the transplant list ahead of seemingly more deserving people and been given a liver transplantIf you remember I had a Socratic debate with Judge Jeanine Pirro in the makeup room at Fox 5 about how this happened and what could be done about it We had a lively discussion Both of us retained our point of view no minds were changed and the facts of the case were never in dispute Sadly this story was not a Truth truth nor fact On July 28th 2010 the Post corrected itself saying that they could not actually verify that the transplant took place The correction was made in a tiny 2amp2153 box on the inside flap Author39s note I read the paper version of the New York Post almost every morning it is one of my guilty pleasures It is not my intention to beat them up over a mistake This particular incident just happens to work perfectly for our truthiness thesisThis week I also ran into Judge Jeanine Pirro in the makeup room just before our respective segments on Fox 5 We chatted about stuff and then I asked her if she saw that I mentioned her in last week39s piece Remarkably Her Honor had not seen the Post39s retraction and she did not know that Mr Concepcion had not received a liver transplantThe facts didn39t change Jeanine39s opinion about how the hypothetical situation should have been handled but it did render our discussion moot Now Jeanine Pirro is very smart and she had no trouble adjusting her worldview to incorporate the new evidence But there are hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of people who did not see the Post39s retraction And they are still operating under the assumption that John Concepcion received a liver ahead of other possibly more deserving peopleI39d like to examine how this information traveled around the InterWeb but first we need some definitions Let39s define a quottrust circlequot as our immediate must trusted sources friends relatives colleagues thought leaders Our test being that we would trust their opinion over Brian Williams39 You can use your own benchmark for trust we trust Brian Let39s define a quottruth clusterquot as a group of trust circles with similar beliefs And just for fun let39s imagine a quotsuper clusterquot as a group of truth clustersAlthough this story was initiated in print by a New York Post credentialed journalist within a remarkably short time it was broadcast in the local market using both radio and television While it was not known to be true the Post39s standards and practices allowed it to print the story as fact And due to the sensationalist nature of the story emotions on both sides of the issue instantly came into play Significantly faster than the story was translated from print to broadcast media it put the InterWeb in OverTweet There were dozens of blog posts tweets status updates comments emails smoke signals and carrier pigeons flying all over the place telling all kinds of stories about this storyThere were no facts just the quottruthquot with a small quottquot printed in the New York Post However this truth became a Truth with a capital quotTquot to some and was assumed to be a fact by others The idea that a convicted murderer who damaged his own liver while trying to commit suicide was somehow put on the top of the liver transplant list made people39s blood boil Trust circles embraced the idea and a huge super cluster of complete misinformation appeared within hoursIn a physical explosion the energy would have dissipated by now And so it did with this story It39s no longer in the news cycle practically forgotten by all Except the misinformation can never be unpublished and the rhetoric can never be unsaid it is all part of the body of knowledge of the InterWeb the blogosphere the tweetosphere Facebookistan etcWe have all seen this kind of behavior before It39s not new People make mistakes or simply lie all the time Storytelling is an art form and there is always plenty of artistic license taken no matter who is telling the story However this is the first time in history that we have seen trust circles empowered by instantly scalable technologies In the next and final installment of this series we will look at message management in the information age and explore the techniques that may help us find truthiness in our connected worldShelly Palmer is the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer a daily show featuring news you can use about technology media ampamp entertainment He is the author of Television Disrupted The Transition from Network to Networked TV 2008 New York House Press and the upcoming Get Digital Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy 2009 Lake House Press Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts ampamp Sciences NY the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards For information about Get Digital Classes visit httpwwwshellypalmercomseminars Watch Digital Life with Shelly Palmer Tuesdays at 10p ET on WNBC39s NY Nonstop httpwwwshellypalmercomdigitallifeRead all Shelly39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Shelly Palmer MediaBizBloggersCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBlogger

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Truthiness in A Connected World - Part 3 -Shelly Palmer - MediaBizBloggers

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