Update from February 21, 2025: This article was originally published in Fall 2021.
Hello friends,
Welcome to the midweek issue of Sift. Shift. Lift. In honour of Global Media and Information Literacy Week (October 24 to 31, 2021), we are taking a stand against the manipulation of media and truth. Ready?
Shift.
Separating fact from fiction.
Earlier this week, Jason Steinhauer, a Global Fellow with the History & Public Policy Program at The Wilson Center, reposted an article he wrote in 2017. In it, he probes the manipulation of media to spread disinformation, guiding readers through his analysis of a photo that allegedly portrayed “Black Confederate soldiers of the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, 1861.”
His analysis is enlightening, providing a framework for how we can look critically at the images we find online instead of mindlessly clicking “like” or “share.”
Speaking of sharing, at the end of the post, Steinhauer offers “6 steps to historical literacy”, an invaluable resource that I plan to share with my 12-year-old twins.
Here’s the link to the article on Steinhauer’s newsletter, The History Club. Read it now, but don’t forget to come back here when you are done.
Fascinating, right? You may want to pre-order Steinhauer’s book, History disrupted: how social media and the World Wide Web have changed the past. (I‘ll wait.)
Deepfake.
Noun: an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said (Merriam-Webster)
Shift.
Changing narratives.
I have been thinking a lot about what media literacy requires. It isn’t enough to look for deep fakes. Sometimes the manipulation goes far beyond altering images. Sometimes deception is baked in from the outset.
The wonderful, horrible life of Leni Riefenstahl is the movie that first got me thinking about the line between propaganda and art.
The movie captures the life and work of Riefenstahl, a German director who spent her later years scuba diving so she could film peaceful sequences below sea level, escaping from the world above, where she was notorious for creating exquisitely beautiful but cold, carefully calculated propaganda for the Nazi Party.
Want to know more?
Lift.
Taking action.
I posted this video last year in the issue about the Holodomor. It is worth sharing again.
Nearly 90 years after Joseph Stalin and his Soviet regime killed millions in Ukraine and subsequently covered it up, we are bringing Stalin back from beyond the grave via controversial Deepfake technology to finally tell the truth about the Holodomor genocide.
Visit Deeptruth to learn how lies about genocides are perpetuated.
Not yet a subscriber? Pull up a chair. There is always room for one more.
Before you go
Would you do me a small favour? If you enjoy reading Sift. Shift. Lift. please take a moment to like, share, or comment below. It is a simple gesture, but it gives new-ish publications like Sift. Shift. Lift.—and creators like me—a much-appreciated boost.
Thank you my friends.
You hooked me!