Given the fact that most major social media platforms are in trumps back pocket I feel like it’s important that people question everything they see more than they have before, particularly in the us. there’s this very useful technique I was taught a couple of years ago back when i studied history since we had to look at sources of information (particularly in pre Nazi germany to see the techniques he used to gain power and reasons why people supported him) and we had to analyse whether or not it was a good historical source, to help us do this we used PANDA:
purpose- why has this been created/ shared what’s the point of it?
author- who created/ shared this? What views do they have? Are those views visible in the content
nature- what is this thing? (Is it a painting? Photo? Video? News article? Internet post?) what is it telling me?
date- when was this thing created? What stuff was happening at the time of creating this?
audience- who is this meant to reach? Is it supposed to be solely seen within one group of people or is it supposed to be widespread
While it isn’t exactly the same because in history you have the benefit of hindsight I think that it would be useful to use this whenever they see a post, regardless of whether it opposes with your views, because sometimes stuff will act as though it agrees with you but include one or two small things to shift your perspective until suddenly you are against your original beliefs (eg ‘I’m fine with gay people I wish they wouldn’t shove it in our faces though’ could be P- to see how much homophobia they can get away with, A- someone who is against being gay N- a statement often used to perpetuate homophobia while being able to hide behind being fine with gay people, D- it’s a reasonably recent statement made by people coming from a time where being queer is more acceptable but only recently, A- often said to people who are queer people or ally’s as a way to say ‘I’m fine if people are gay as long as I don’t have to know they are gay’. And if you were to accept that statement and go “yeah it’s a bit annoying that people are so obviously gay” then you are more likely to allow it when someone else goes “being gay is a sin so I hate that they are gay but I like them as a person” and then they may cut out the “I like them as a person” and replace it with “I don’t want them to suffer in hell” and it will continue until before you know it you are protesting against queer rights and standing by as they are being attacked)
