Building Back Truth In An Age Of Misinformation

Author : Leslie F. Stebbins
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 207 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2023-03-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781538163153

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Building Back Truth in an Age of Misinformation by Leslie F. Stebbins Pdf

How can we build back truth online? Here’s how. How can we build back truth online? In this book, researcher Leslie F. Stebbins provides solutions for repairing our existing social media platforms and building better ones that prioritize value over profit, strengthen community ties, and promote access to trustworthy information. Stebbins provides a road map with six paths forward to understand how platforms are designed to exploit us, how we can learn to embrace agency in our interactions with digital spaces, how to build tools to reduce harmful practices, how platform companies can prioritize the public good, how we can repair journalism, and how to strengthen curation to promote trusted content and create new, healthier digital public squares. New, experimental models that are ethically designed to build community and promote trustworthy content are having some early successes. We know that human social networks—online and off—magnify whatever they are seeded with. They are not neutral. We also know that to repair our systems we need to repair their design. We are being joined in the fight by some of the best and brightest minds of our current generation as they flee big tech companies in search of vocations that value integrity and public values. The problem of misinformation is not insurmountable. We can fix this.

Author : Marcus Gilroy-Ware
Publisher : Watkins Media Limited
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2020-11-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781912248742

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After the Fact? by Marcus Gilroy-Ware Pdf

Why do we no longer trust facts, experts and statistics? In this essential guide to the turbulent times in which we live, Marcus Gilroy-Ware investigates our era of post-truths and fake news and answers the question of where we can go from here. We are supposed to have more information at our disposal now than at any time in history. So why, in a world of rising sea levels, populist leaders, resurgent fascism and a global pandemic, do so many people believe bizarre and untrue things about the world we live in? In After the Fact?, Marcus Gilroy-Ware shows us what really created the conditions for mis- and disinformation, from fake news and conspiracy theories, to bullshit journalism and the resurgence of the far-right, and why liberal newspaper columnists and centrist politicians are unable to turn back this tide. Spanning politics, culture, psychology, journalism, and much more, After the Fact? is a timely wake-up call for those who believe we can simply go "back to normal", and instead argues that, if we are to put an end to "fake news" we must deal with the broader social crises that are responsible for it.

Author : Cailin O'Connor,James Owen Weatherall
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2019-01-08
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780300241006

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The Misinformation Age by Cailin O'Connor,James Owen Weatherall Pdf

“Empowering and thoroughly researched, this book offers useful contemporary analysis and possible solutions to one of the greatest threats to democracy.” —Kirkus Reviews Editors’ choice, The New York Times Book Review Recommended reading, Scientific American Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not? The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, shows convincingly that what you believe depends on who you know. If social forces explain the persistence of false belief, we must understand how those forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively. “[The authors] deftly apply sociological models to examine how misinformation spreads among people and how scientific results get misrepresented in the public sphere.” —Andrea Gawrylewski, Scientific American “A notable new volume . . . The Misinformation Age explains systematically how facts are determined and changed—whether it is concerning the effects of vaccination on children or the Russian attack on the integrity of the electoral process.” —Roger I. Abrams, New York Journal of Books

Author : Loren Collins
Publisher : Prometheus Books
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2012-10-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781616146351

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Bullspotting by Loren Collins Pdf

This entertaining and educational book applies the tools of critical thinking to identify the common features and trends among misinformation campaigns. With illustrations drawn from conspiracy theorists and deniers of every stripe, the author teaches readers how rumors are started, and the rhetorical techniques and logical fallacies often found in misleading or outright false claims. What distinguishes real conspiracies from conspiracy theories, real science from pseudoscience, and actual history from bogus accounts purporting to be history? How does one evaluate the credibility of rumors and quotes or judge the soundness of legal arguments advanced by tax deniers? Readers will learn how to make these critical distinctions and also how to spot "evidence" that has been manufactured or manipulated in some way to create a false impression. At a time when average citizens are bombarded with false information every day, this entertaining book will prove to be not only a great read but also an indispensable resource.

Author : Leslie Stebbins
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2005-12-30
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780897899376

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Student Guide to Research in the Digital Age by Leslie Stebbins Pdf

One of the most perplexing aspects of research today is what to do when there's too much information on a topic. What then of the librarian, charged with teaching new generations to appreciate the search for intellectual wheat, especially when the chaff has greater appeal? The key, suggests Leslie Stebbins, is to impress upon students the importance of good filtering instincts and careful management of search results. At the same time, it is equally essential to impress upon them the particular challenges and controversies that accompany research in a digital environment. Chapter one provides a step-by-step introduction to both research and critical evaluation that can be followed for any assignment. Chapters two through seven focus on specific types of information resources: when to use them, where to find them, and how to evaluate them. Chapter eight offers guidance on how to develop a note-taking system, cite sources, avoid plagiarism, and organize references. Students and librarians alike will benefit from Stebbin's suggestions, strategies and straightforward examples.

Author : Ireton, Cherilyn,Posetti, Julie
Publisher : UNESCO Publishing
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2018-09-17
Category : Fake news
ISBN : 9789231002816

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Journalism, fake news & disinformation by Ireton, Cherilyn,Posetti, Julie Pdf

Author : James E. Katz,Kate K. Mays
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2019-08-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780190900250

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Journalism and Truth in an Age of Social Media by James E. Katz,Kate K. Mays Pdf

Truth qualities of journalism are under intense scrutiny in today's world. Journalistic scandals have eroded public confidence in mainstream media while pioneering news media compete to satisfy the public's appetite for news. Still worse is the specter of "fake news" that looms over media and political systems that underpin everything from social stability to global governance. This volume aims to illuminate the contentious media landscape to help journalism students, scholars, and professionals understand contemporary conditions and arm them to deal with a spectrum of new developments ranging from technology and politics to best practices. Fake news is among the greatest of these concerns, and can encompass everything from sarcastic or ironic humor to bot-generated, made-up stories. It can also include the pernicious transmission of selected, biased facts, the use of incomplete or misleadingly selective framing of stories, and photographs that editorially convey certain characteristics. This edited volume contextualizes the current "fake news problem." Yet it also offers a larger perspective on what seems to be uniquely modern, computer-driven problems. We must remember that we have lived with the problem of people having to identify, characterize, and communicate the truth about the world around them for millennia. Rather than identify a single culprit for disseminating misinformation, this volume examines how news is perceived and identified, how news is presented to the public, and how the public responds to news. It considers social media's effect on the craft of journalism, as well as the growing role of algorithms, big data, and automatic content-production regimes. As an edited collection, this volume gathers leading scholars in the fields of journalism and communication studies, philosophy, and the social sciences to address critical questions of how we should understand journalism's changing landscape as it relates to fundamental questions about the role of truth and information in society.

Author : Melissa Zimdars,Kembrew Mcleod
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2020-02-18
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780262538367

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Fake News by Melissa Zimdars,Kembrew Mcleod Pdf

New perspectives on the misinformation ecosystem that is the production and circulation of fake news. What is fake news? Is it an item on Breitbart, an article in The Onion, an outright falsehood disseminated via Russian bot, or a catchphrase used by a politician to discredit a story he doesn't like? This book examines the real fake news: the constant flow of purposefully crafted, sensational, emotionally charged, misleading or totally fabricated information that mimics the form of mainstream news. Rather than viewing fake news through a single lens, the book maps the various kinds of misinformation through several different disciplinary perspectives, taking into account the overlapping contexts of politics, technology, and journalism. The contributors consider topics including fake news as “disorganized” propaganda; folkloric falsehood in the “Pizzagate” conspiracy; native advertising as counterfeit news; the limitations of regulatory reform and technological solutionism; Reddit's enabling of fake news; the psychological mechanisms by which people make sense of information; and the evolution of fake news in America. A section on media hoaxes and satire features an oral history of and an interview with prankster-activists the Yes Men, famous for parodies that reveal hidden truths. Finally, contributors consider possible solutions to the complex problem of fake news—ways to mitigate its spread, to teach students to find factually accurate information, and to go beyond fact-checking. Contributors Mark Andrejevic, Benjamin Burroughs, Nicholas Bowman, Mark Brewin, Elizabeth Cohen, Colin Doty, Dan Faltesek, Johan Farkas, Cherian George, Tarleton Gillespie, Dawn R. Gilpin, Gina Giotta, Theodore Glasser, Amanda Ann Klein, Paul Levinson, Adrienne Massanari, Sophia A. McClennen, Kembrew McLeod, Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, Paul Mihailidis, Benjamin Peters, Whitney Phillips, Victor Pickard, Danielle Polage, Stephanie Ricker Schulte, Leslie-Jean Thornton, Anita Varma, Claire Wardle, Melissa Zimdars, Sheng Zou

Author : Donald A. Barclay
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2018-06-25
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781538108901

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Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies by Donald A. Barclay Pdf

Are you overwhelmed at the amount, contradictions, and craziness of all the information coming at you in this age of social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles? Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies will show you how to identify deceptive information as well as how to seek out the most trustworthy information in order to inform decision making in your personal, academic, professional, and civic lives. • Learn how to identify the alarm bells that signal untrustworthy information. • Understand how to tell when statistics can be trusted and when they are being used to deceive. • Inoculate yourself against the logical fallacies that can mislead even the brightest among us. Donald A. Barclay, a career librarian who has spent decades teaching university students to become information literate scholars and citizens, takes an objective, non-partisan approach to the complex and nuanced topic of sorting deceptive information from trustworthy information.

Author : Leslie F. Stebbins
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1442253932

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Finding Reliable Information Online by Leslie F. Stebbins Pdf

Our information-saturated environment causes us to spend too much time searching, surfing and organizing the information in our lives. But finding reliable high quality information can be a problem. We are often so buried in information-- and strapped for time-- that we grab the search results without bothering to evaluate its quality. Stebbins shows you how to cut out unreliable information and find online information you can rely on.

Author : Lana Parker
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2023-06-23
Category : Education
ISBN : 9783031258718

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Education in the Age of Misinformation by Lana Parker Pdf

This edited volume examines the implications of misinformation and youth digital life in a new information environment. This new information environment is characterized by high levels of user engagement, hidden algorithmic manipulations, and information abundance, including misinformation and disinformation. While misinformation and disinformation in the post-truth era have been previously investigated, this edited volume offers a distinctive educational focus that scholars have not yet addressed. Chapters contribute to the ongoing discussion of the role of education in democracies while uniquely contextualizing the problem of misinformation as a pedagogical opportunity. Contributions from across the globe answer the question of how education might respond to the changing information environment through engagements with educational philosophy, democracy, and everyday practices of teaching and learning. The book adds to a growing body of work exploring what it means to engage in responsive, rather than reactive or stagnant, pedagogy.

Author : Rainer Greifeneder,Mariela Jaffe,Eryn Newman,Norbert Schwarz
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2020-08-13
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781000179057

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The Psychology of Fake News by Rainer Greifeneder,Mariela Jaffe,Eryn Newman,Norbert Schwarz Pdf

This volume examines the phenomenon of fake news by bringing together leading experts from different fields within psychology and related areas, and explores what has become a prominent feature of public discourse since the first Brexit referendum and the 2016 US election campaign. Dealing with misinformation is important in many areas of daily life, including politics, the marketplace, health communication, journalism, education, and science. In a general climate where facts and misinformation blur, and are intentionally blurred, this book asks what determines whether people accept and share (mis)information, and what can be done to counter misinformation? All three of these aspects need to be understood in the context of online social networks, which have fundamentally changed the way information is produced, consumed, and transmitted. The contributions within this volume summarize the most up-to-date empirical findings, theories, and applications and discuss cutting-edge ideas and future directions of interventions to counter fake news. Also providing guidance on how to handle misinformation in an age of “alternative facts”, this is a fascinating and vital reading for students and academics in psychology, communication, and political science and for professionals including policy makers and journalists.

Author : Johan Farkas,Jannick Schou
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2023-12-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781003823728

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Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy by Johan Farkas,Jannick Schou Pdf

The new edition of Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy offers an updated overview and critical discussion of contemporary discourses around truth, misinformation, and democracy, while also mapping cutting-edge scholarship. Through in-depth analyses of news articles, commentaries, academic publications, policy briefs, and political speeches, the book engages with the underlying normative ideas that shape how fake news is being addressed across the globe. Doing so, it provides an innovative, critical contribution to contemporary debates on democracy, post-truth, and politics. Three new chapters: Chapter 2 provides an outline of the scholarly field of research into fake news; Chapter 5 examines how issues of fake news and (mis)information have become intertwined with contemporary crisis events; and Chapter 9 presents democratic alternatives to post-truth solutionism. A new foreword by Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser. Fully updated examples and studies from contemporary events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States Capitol attack, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Extended discussions on the causes of democratic decline, currently proposed solutions to fake news, and democratic alternatives to our current predicament. Interesting, informative, and well documented, Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy continues its commitment to understand and engage with the current state and future of democracy.

Author : Richard Stengel
Publisher : Atlantic Monthly Press
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2019-10-08
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780802147998

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Information Wars by Richard Stengel Pdf

A “well-told” insider account of the State Department’s twenty-first-century struggle to defend America against malicious propaganda and disinformation (The Washington Post). Disinformation is nothing new. When Satan told Eve nothing would happen if she bit the apple, that was disinformation. But today, social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious. In a disturbing turn of events, authoritarian governments are increasingly using it to create their own false narratives, and democracies are proving not to be very good at fighting it. During the final three years of the Obama administration, Richard Stengel, former editor of Time, was an Under Secretary of State on the front lines of this new global information war—tasked with unpacking, disproving, and combating both ISIS’s messaging and Russian disinformation. Then, during the 2016 election, Stengel watched as Donald Trump used disinformation himself. In fact, Stengel quickly came to see how all three had used the same playbook: ISIS sought to make Islam great again; Putin tried to make Russia great again; and we know the rest. In Information Wars, Stengel moves through Russia and Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and introduces characters from Putin to Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Mohamed bin Salman, to show how disinformation is impacting our global society. He illustrates how ISIS terrorized the world using social media, and how the Russians launched a tsunami of disinformation around the annexation of Crimea—a scheme that would became a model for future endeavors. An urgent book for our times, now with a new preface from the author, Information Wars challenges us to combat this ever-growing threat to democracy. “[A] refreshingly frank account . . . revealing.” —Kirkus Reviews “This sobering book is indeed needed to help individuals better understand how information can be massaged to produce any sort of message desired.” —Library Journal

Author : Lee McIntyre
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2015-06-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781317497172

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Respecting Truth by Lee McIntyre Pdf

Throughout history, humans have always indulged in certain irrationalities and held some fairly wrong-headed beliefs. But in his newest book, philosopher Lee McIntyre shows how we've now reached a watershed moment for ignorance in the modern era, due to the volume of misinformation, the speed with which it can be digitally disseminated, and the savvy exploitation of our cognitive weaknesses by those who wish to advance their ideological agendas. In Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age, McIntyre issues a call to fight back against this slide into the witless abyss. In the tradition of Galileo, the author champions the importance of using tested scientific methods for arriving at true beliefs, and shows how our future survival is dependent on a more widespread, reasonable world.