Tackling Misinformation and Conspiracies: Information literacy

In November 2020 as part of Saolta with Development Perspectives and Aontas, I was lucky to be given the opportunity to facilitate a workshop Entitled: Development Education: tackling misinformation and conspiracies during a pandemic. The workshop addressed the current state of the seeming growth in misinformation and conspiracies currently facing many societies, how the issue has been exacerbated during Covid 19, the effects that the apparent growth in misinformation and conspiracies has had, and what role development education can play, in particular in the adult and community education space, in tackling the issue.

 

Social Power and Privilege in Society.

Development Perspectives Workshop: Hosted by Stephanie Kirwan and Bobby McCormack.

On Thursday October 26^th last, Stephanie Kirwan and Bobby McCormack, of Development Perspectives, hosted a fascinating workshop in the Carmelite Centre in Dublin City. The workshop focused on ‘power’ and ‘privilege’ in society, specifically the invisibility of power and privilege, and how it creates and maintains particular sets of norms and conventions which sustain unequal access to social capital, and resources.  Under guidance from Bobby and Stephanie, the conversation developed quite organically taking us down an enlightening rabbit hole of issues surrounding topics such as education, social status, language, discourse, rights, duties, obligations, privileges, and responsibilities etc.

There was a broad range of people from different backgrounds in attendance bringing multiple perspectives to the table.

The event inspired me to write about power and privilege in society. So here it is…

(As a quick disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Development Perspectives and the views in this article are entirely my own)

An excerpt from my Doctoral Thesis introduction: A comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of British and Irish media coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

The issue at question: Media representations of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict.

Media coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict (hereafter IPC) has become increasingly diversified in recent years. This diversification of news in general, and the IPC in particular, have occurred somewhat in parallel with the rapid growth of the fields of critical thinking in language and discourse analysis. Critical Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Systemic Functional Linguistic, Cognitive Discourse Analysis and Discourse Semantics are just some of the areas which have contributed to the impressive body of knowledge about human communication and the dialectic that language, ideology and power maintain in societies.

The Road to hell… and all that: how intentionality and social and discursive loci of the words you speak can act as a window onto your values.

Understandings of the concepts of "language" and "discourse" are slaves to what might be called “common sense” – the notion that through adherence to a logic of social norms we might better navigate surrounding social orders. 

“Words are just words”, “sticks and stones…”, “actions speak louder than words”, are generally considered strong guiding principles in relation to people's attitude towards, and understanding of the purpose of language.

Household chores and children versus the rest of the universe: news values and views towards women in The Korea Herald and The Korea Times, a CDA perspective.

Published in The Journal of Media and Performing Arts.

Household chores and Children versus the rest of the universe: news values and views towards women in The Korea Herald and The Korea Times, a CDA perspective.

ISSN 1975-8928.

Abstract:

This paper comparatively analyses the discursive construction of women’s societal roles in two online Korean English language newspapers. It addresses the question; how are women represented in English language ‘broadsheet’ online news journals of record in South Korea; and how do those representations of women maintain the social conditions which sustain gender inequalities?  Linguistic data was gathered from The Korea Herald and the Times of Korea over a two day period based upon headlines that had a direct reference to ‘women’.  A Critical Discourse Analysis approach (CDA) was used drawing on various theories of discourse analysis, pragmatics, and cognition.  The findings pointed to an ideological predisposition towards representing women in traditional roles in line with a socio-cognitive legacy of Confucian values. There was also a notable confusion in the language which reflects the discord between these Confucian values and modern globalised values.

Keywords: cognition, Confucianism, feminism, Critical Discourse Analysis, linguistics, media, values, ideology

The socio-linguistic function and representation of science and scientific discovery in society

I have recently been thinking about the broader function of science and the application of scientific rules, processes and language in relation to society, cognition and discourse.

Science is simply observation, probability analysis, pattern recognition and discovery. By that definition all people are scientists on some level.  We discover that if we drop a glass from height on a hard surface it will, in all probability, shatter. If the action is repeated we discover that, all things being equal, it will probably shatter again. A simple scientific discovery has been made, albeit without the formalities of academic rigour, control, scope, method and conclusion. It is nonetheless scientific in a broad sense.

A thought about my Reasons for Writing this Blog

Like most people, every day, from when I wake to when I sleep my mind is consumed with thoughts of one kind or another.  Basically I daydream lots. I reckon that this is the natural state of the human mind: figuring out items, events, states, actions, reactions and problems.  Is that not what daydreaming and 'zoning out' entail: the ability to process life.  Anyway, daydreaming is an important part of what I do to navigate the world around me.  When I'm not daydreaming I'm usually over thinking things - whatever that might mean.  In fact I was once told that I think too much. On receiving the information I began to think about why someone might think that I think too much. Then I thought about that for a while until I drifted into a daydream... lovely stuff.  

(Critical) Discourse Analysis Briefly Explained

"Discourse Analysis" means the examination and study of communicative events. The term “communicative event” refers to any act of communication whether it is written, spoken, pictorial, or sign. A communicative event can consist of anything from a single morpheme (a single meaningful unit of language such as a word or a meaningful part of a word) to a book, speech, film, TV series, political speech, news report, or other semiotic event.