Plumbers' role in the fight
against misinformation
Seldom has there been more misinformation and ‘fake news’ than
has been seen in the scramble to curb the spread of Covid-19.
Actually, there has been another – in the case of climate change.
Plumbing is seen as being at the forefront of the battle against
these two global crises in which fake news is particularly prevalent.
FITTING THOUGHT
1
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has, for good
reason, declared plumbers the most important frontline
health workers around the globe. Consequently,
plumbers may be confronted with fake news and will
need mechanisms and tools to curb the potentially
dangerous spread of misinformation and fake news.
For instance – hoping his confession might be lost in all
the new fake news on the Covid-19 global crisis – Michael
Shellenberger, a self-confessed ‘climate activist’, recently
published a book and issued a ‘formal apology’ for the
‘climate scare’ that environmentalists had ‘created over the
last 30 years’.
His book is Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism
Hurts Us All. Climate change is happening, he says, but
it is not the end of the world nor even its most serious
environmental problem.
In the formal apology he issued ‘for how badly we
environmentalists have misled the public’, Shellenberger
presented a list of ‘facts that few people know’. They include:
• humans are not causing a ‘sixth mass extinction’
• climate change is not making disasters worse
• fires have declined around the world since 2003,
while the build-up of wood fuel and more houses near
forests, not climate change, explains why there are
more fires in Australia and California
• the amount of land used for meat has declined by an
area as large as Alaska
• air pollution and carbon emissions have been declining
in rich countries for 50 years
• habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are
bigger threats to species than climate change, and
• using wood fuel is far worse for people than fossil fuels
In the same context Daily Maverick in July hosted a seminar
on how to navigate information in the age of misinformation
and fake news. Today, 49% of South Africans use WhatsApp
as their primary network for sharing information. So how
does one verify that information and discuss with the source
that what they shared is fake? The seminar offered the
following tips:
• Be ‘positively suspicious’ and practice scepticism.
• Check the URL – some websites manipulate URLs
because they want to fool you. Use tools like Whois.
com which allows you to trace the ownership and
tenure of a domain name and website.
• Fakeskiller is a browser extension that you can install if
you use Google Chrome.
• Image verification – sometimes, checking something as
simple as an image in an article that was sent to you
can help determine if the information is fake or fact.
Tools like Google reverse image search engine return
similar images, websites that use that image, and the
origins of that image.
• Video verification – if a piece of content or a video
seems too good to believe, or creates a particularly
emotive response, one needs to create a mental
firebreak to check if it’s true before passing it on.
Watchframebyframe.com allows one to break down a
video into frames and mark if anything seems to have
been manipulated.
When it comes to ‘information disorder’, the seminar
presenters explain that there are three types: misinformation,
disinformation and mal-information.
• Misinformation is false and inaccurate information,
without the intention to cause harm. This is seen with
captions on photographs which can sometimes be
incorrect.
• Disinformation is a subset of misinformation where
fabricated and deliberately manipulated content
is distributed. It includes conspiracy theorists and
rumours, and with Covid-19 we have seen this escalate
to a flood of information.
• Mal-information is designed to inflict harm
intentionally, and to deceive the viewer or reader.
No matter the reason behind misinformation (it could be
poking fun at politicians, or for commercial or personal
gain), it is important that people are able to verify whether
information is true or false.
Increasing population and urbanisation amplify the
healthcare risks due to the expanded use of alternate
non-potable water sources, increased system complexity
and the need for more frequent maintenance and repair.
The plumber’s role as the most important frontline health
and environmental worker around the globe becomes even
more critical, and he/she needs to filter through the false
information and know the true facts. PA
Eamonn
Eamonn Ryan, Editor
[email protected]
Twitter:
@plumbingonline
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@plumbingonline
Linked-In:
@PlumbingAfricaOnline
September 2020 Volume 26 I Number 07
www.plumbingafrica.co.za