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Swell Spotlight: Paul Levinson - Professor, Writer, and Musician

So just generally speaking, could you tell us a little bit about your work as a professor, how you got inspired to work in media in particular and ways of navigating journalism. I found it very helpful for myself as a teacher, but also as a human being

Paul Levinson is a professor at Fordham University, award winning author, and singer-songwriter. Paul, thank you for joining us! #TEDspeaker

@paullevinson
Paul Levinson
@paullevinson · 2:42
Anyway, so Professor Franzetti, Jack Franzetti said, Well, hey, if you've had three pieces published in The Village Voice, I think you could work out teaching this course in creative journalism. And so that's how I got my first job. I found out a little later that what had happened is the professor who's supposed to teach the course unexpectedly quit, and the Department had just a day or two to find a replacement. So that worked out really great for me
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Times have sure changed!

And the elective that I chose was basically a class that revolved around media literacy and how to navigate media. So that's what led me to you. I learned about your work at Fordham and about your book Digital McLuhan, and did some reading about McLuhan himself. And I found that your book, when it was published right around the year 2000, right before things were really going to change forever
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Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@paullevinson
Paul Levinson
@paullevinson · 3:40
Maybe the first blogs were up, but clearly it was at least five or six years before Twitter and Facebook and then Instagram, etc. For came along. But my thinking back then was that doing these things online where okay, you invited me to do this a spotlight with you because you knew my work. But anybody can obviously create a swell and anyone can tweet anyone can put up images on Instagram, put up a little video on TikTok. That is assuming that TikTok continues in the United States
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Double edged sword...

And we're seeing a lot of the negatives of media manifesting, especially lately. But what we're also seeing and you mentioned it is the ability for people to create and produce on their own, for individuals to open lines of communication and facilitate dialogue in a way that is ultimately, I think beneficial for everybody. And what I want to know from you now is given what we've seen unfold these last four years
@paullevinson
Paul Levinson
@paullevinson · 4:48
And some of these problems, systems that have come to the surface have indeed been at work in our society for a very long time. It was back in the early 1990s that Rodney King was savagely beaten by police who were taking him into custody
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But especially in the days of reposting on all these other social media sites, we see a lot of stuff being shared that is not true, but is presented in a way that either makes it seem more true or doesn't provide a source. So then you have to go through extra steps of finding the reality
@paullevinson
Paul Levinson
@paullevinson · 4:23
It used to be thought that, well, television and radio are better than reading something in the newspaper, because what you hear on the radio are actual voices. What you see on television are actual images. But of course, now we know about deep fakes, which it might seem that we're seeing someone say something on television, and they're not saying that at all. Someone has just cleverly concocted something to put it together
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The always fallible road to truth!

I'm wondering, as somebody that has pretty extensively studied media and the ways that it can, I guess, dupe the public or rather convince them of one thing that might not be entirely true is there a way that you feel is the best approach to combat this sort of consumption of media?
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