Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational
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"The author discusses how we should think about conspiracy theories, who believes them and why, which conspiracy theories are likely to be true or false and what criteria we can use to assess them, and what we should do to combat dangerous conspiracism and reestablish trust in our democratic institutions, in the media, and in one another"-- Provided by publisher.
The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web is Changing What We Read and How We Think
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An eye-opening account of how the hidden rise of personalization on the Internet is controlling-and limiting-the information we consume. In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google's change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years-the rise of personalization. In this groundbreaking investigation of the new hidden Web, Pariser uncovers how this growing trend threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society-and reveals what we can do about it. Though the phenomenon has gone largely undetected until now, personalized filters are sweeping the Web, creating individual universes of information for each of us. Facebook-the primary news source for an increasing number of Americans-prioritizes the links it believes will appeal to you so that if you are a liberal, you can expect to see only progressive links. Even an old-media bastion like The Washington Post devotes the top of its home page to a news feed with the links your Facebook friends are sharing. Behind the scenes a burgeoning industry of data companies is tracking your personal information to sell to advertisers, from your political leanings to the color you painted your living room to the hiking boots you just browsed on Zappos. In a personalized world, we will increasingly be typed and fed only news that is pleasant, familiar, and confirms our beliefs-and because these filters are invisible, we won't know what is being hidden from us. Our past interests will determine what we are exposed to in the future, leaving less room for the unexpected encounters that spark creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas. While we all worry that the Internet is eroding privacy or shrinking our attention spans, Pariser uncovers a more pernicious and far- reaching trend on the Internet and shows how we can- and must-change course. With vivid detail and remarkable scope, The Filter Bubble reveals how personalization undermines the Internet's original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas and could leave us all in an isolated, echoing world.
Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity
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From fake news to conspiracy theories, from inflammatory memes to misleading headlines, misinformation has swiftly become the defining problem of our era. The crisis threatens the integrity of our democracies, our ability to cultivate trusting relationships, even our physical and psychological well-being--yet most attempts to combat it have proven insufficient. In Foolproof, one of the world's leading experts on misinformation lays out a crucial new paradigm for understanding and defending ourselves against the worldwide infodemic. With remarkable clarity, Sander van der Linden explains why our brains are so vulnerable to misinformation, how it spreads across social networks, and what we can do to protect ourselves and others. Like a virus, misinformation infects our minds, exploiting shortcuts in how we see and process information to alter our beliefs, modify our memories, and replicate at astonishing rates. Once the virus takes hold, it's very hard to cure. Strategies like fact-checking and debunking can leave a falsehood still festering or, at worst, even strengthen its hold. But we aren't helpless. As van der Linden shows based on award-winning original research, we can cultivate immunity through the innovative science of "prebunking": inoculating people against false information by preemptively exposing them to a weakened dose, thus empowering them to identify and fend off its manipulative tactics. Deconstructing the characteristic techniques of conspiracies and misinformation, van der Linden gives readers practical tools to defend themselves and others against nefarious persuasion--whether at scale or around their own dinner table.
Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons
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Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons delves into the complex issue of misinformation in our daily lives. The book synthesizes three scholarly traditions - everyday life, misinformation, and governing knowledge commons - to present 10 case studies of online and offline communities tackling diverse dilemmas regarding truth and information quality. The book highlights how communities manage issues of credibility, trust, and information quality continuously, to mitigate the impact of misinformation when possible. It also explores how social norms and intentional governance evolve to distinguish between problematic disinformation and little white lies. Through a coproduction of governance and (mis-)information, the book raises a set of ethical, economic, political, social, and technological questions that require systematic study and careful deliberation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Information Disorder: Algorithms and Society
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This book focuses on the recent rise of "infodemics" as forms of disinformation, misinformation and mal-information saturate contemporary media platforms, shaping public opinion to advance agendas. The internet in general and social media in particular have relativized, through their global, complex and instantaneous information flows, assumptions about truth and authority in fact-based content. This has created new opportunities for state actors to use information beyond traditional conceptions of propaganda to directly assault a public's conception of reality. Additionally, almost anyone has the capability to challenge evidential claims through narratives and imagery alone as there is a wide appetite online for alternative realities. This requires new approaches to media literacy in education, the creative arts and our acts of media consumption and dissemination. The volume covers the ways that social media platforms amplify and catalyze the messages of politicians and influencers, the ambivalence of algorithms that can both generate and detect problematic information, how fake news imitates the style of memes to gain widespread social traction and virality, and how artists have intentionally created "sicko AIs" in new media performances to highlight the ethical risks of increasingly "intelligent" technologies. Scholars and students from many backgrounds, as well as policy makers, journalists and the general reading public, will find a multidisciplinary approach to questions posed by information disorder research from the fields of communication, social psychology, human-computer interaction, journalism, media, semiotics and new media art.
The Psychology of Misinformation
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King Charles III is Dracula's distant cousin. Governments are hiding information about UFOs. COVID-19 came from outer space. These sound like absurd statements, but some are true, and others are misinformation. But what exactly is misinformation? Who believes and spreads things that aren't true, and why? What solutions do we have available, and how well do they work? This book answers all these questions and more. Tackling the science of misinformation from its evolutionary origins to its role in the internet era, this book translates rigorous research on misleading information into a comprehensive and jargon-free explanation. Whether you are a student, researcher, policymaker, or changemaker, you will discover an easy-to-read analysis on human belief in today's world and expert advice on how to prevent deception.
