Critical Thinking vs. Outrage

From The News Literacy Project: “Provoking outrage remains a common goal of misinformation purveyors. People are generally better at detecting misinformation when they slow down and engage their logical, critical faculties. But strong emotions quickly circumvent these higher-order abilities and cause people to like and share online content too quickly. Outrage is one of the most effective emotional targets that purveyors of misinformation can use to get their messages to spread widely. Whether it’s claims that wildly exaggerate runaway gas prices or inflation, or posts designed to galvanize antipathy for a particular public figure, outrage continues to prove itself a major vulnerability in people’s information defenses.”