[Air-L] Fake News

Joshua Braun jabraun at journ.umass.edu
Wed Dec 21 10:58:29 PST 2016 

A belated reply! I'd also check out the Tow Center's report by Craig
Silverman, who did a sizeable mixed-methods study in 2015 on how fake
news, rumors, and misinformation spread online:

http://towcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/LiesDamnLies_Silverman_TowCenter.pdf

I'm not sure why I didn't think about this before. I'm was three
quarters of the way through grading a stack of reading responses to this
report for my media technologies class when it slowly emerged from my
subconscious that this would've been highly relevant to the conversation.

All the Best,
Josh


On 12/17/2016 09:22 AM, Christopher J. Richter wrote:
> Good thread.
>
> Just thinking aloud (atext?), especially but not exclusively about earlier posts on social construction/relativism/"truth". I have just skimmed, so at the risk of restating, or stating the obvious. . . 
>
> Keeping in mind an analytical/methodological typology derived from old school media studies 101 could be useful for clarity on the topic, i.e. moments of: production/producer; the text itself;  audience/consumption/use; plus the medium. 
>
> Thus for producer/production: intent to deceive, intent to persuade, intent to make money, intent to inform, plus political-economic processes and contexts (who gets to create the texts?), etc. 
>
> For text: verifiability, ambiguity, visual, aural, textual characteristics, context of other texts, etc. 
>
> Audience: belief (as distinct from truth), other reactions/effects, cultural/social characteristics and context of audience members etc.
>
> Medium: immediacy, access, constraints and enablements of different platforms, etc. As a category this one might be collapsable variously into text and production, but there are arguments for keeping it distinct, too.
>
> In reality the relation between all these is dynamic, but could be a useful set of analytical distinctions.
>
> Chris Richter
> Hollins University
>
>> On Dec 15, 2016, at 2:51 PM, Nathaniel Poor <natpoor at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I saw Tim Wu present about his new book, “The Attention Merchants”, last night and although the recent US election is not in the book he did discuss attention, fake news, and the election, so I’d bet the book has some nice gems.
>>
>>
>>> On Dec 15, 2016, at 1:49 PM, JEWELL Matthew <M.Jewell at ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> A video which surfaced a few hours ago, relevant to this very interesting thread:
>>> https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/5ihyvu/reddit_for_sale_how_we_bought_the_top_spot_for_200/
>>>
>>> Matt
>>>
>>> --
>>> Matthew Jewell
>>> PhD candidate
>>> School of Law
>>> University of Edinburgh
>>> http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/research/students/viewstudent?ref=330
>>> https://twitter.com/matthew_jewell
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 14/12/2016, 13:37, "Air-L on behalf of Fabio Giglietto" <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org on behalf of fabio.giglietto at uniurb.it> wrote:
>>>
>>>   Wow, this is indeed a great discussion, so inspiring!
>>>
>>>   During the panel on misinformation organized at #AoIR16 we presented a
>>>   first attempt to systematize the literature on the topic (not an easy task
>>>   because it's broad, interdisciplinary and sometimes contradictory). The
>>>   results of this effort are now available in a working paper that we made
>>>   public a couple of weeks ago in the attempt to collect feedback and further
>>>   stimulate an informed debate.
>>>
>>>   ===
>>>   Fakes, News and the Election: A New Taxonomy for the Study of Misleading
>>>   Information within the Hybrid Media System
>>>
>>>   Abstract:
>>>   The widely unexpected outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election prompted
>>>   a broad debate on the role played by “fake-news” circulating on social
>>>   media during political campaigns. Despite a relatively vast amount of
>>>   existing literature on the topic, a general lack of conceptual coherence
>>>   and a rapidly changing news eco-system hinder the development of effective
>>>   strategies to tackle the issue. Leveraging on four strands of research in
>>>   the existing scholarship, the paper introduces a radically new model aimed
>>>   at describing the process through which misleading information spreads
>>>   within the hybrid media system in the post-truth era. The application of
>>>   the model results in four different typologies of propagations. These
>>>   typologies are used to describe real cases of misleading information from
>>>   the 2016 US Presidential election. The paper discusses the contribution and
>>>   implication of the model in tackling the issue of misleading information on
>>>   a theoretical, empirical, and practical level.
>>>
>>>   Keywords: misinformation, disinformation, hybrid news system, news-making,
>>>   elections
>>>
>>>   Giglietto, Fabio and Iannelli, Laura and Rossi, Luca and Valeriani,
>>>   Augusto, Fakes, News and the Election: A New Taxonomy for the Study of
>>>   Misleading Information within the Hybrid Media System (November 30, 2016).
>>>   Convegno AssoComPol 2016 (Urbino, 15-17 Dicembre 2016), Forthcoming.
>>>   Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2878774
>>>   ===
>>>
>>>   While we invested in this work an incredible amount of time and effort, we
>>>   are fully aware of the enormity of the issue at stake and that we only
>>>   scratched the surface of it. We are also aware that the implications goes
>>>   well beyond the US elections (see
>>>   https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/italys-most-popular-political-party-is-leading-europe-in-fak?utm_term=.ppqdvdzon#.shPJ6Jrjb
>>>   ).
>>>
>>>   We are really looking forward to hear your feedback on our work.
>>>
>>>   Best regards, Fabio Giglietto (on behalf of co-authors Laura Iannelli, Luca
>>>   Rossi and Augusto Valeriani)
>>>
>>>>   On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 9:31 AM Johan Dam Farkas <jjfs at itu.dk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Highly interesting thread.
>>>> I have an upcoming article on cloaked Facebook pages, which discusses fake
>>>> sources on social media and the epistemological difficulties of analysing
>>>> such content.
>>>>
>>>> For related literature to the fake news discussion, I would suggest Jessie
>>>> Daniels' work on cloaked websites (2009, 2014). She draws on Becker (1949)
>>>> and his typology of disguised propaganda, which is also highly relevant in
>>>> this context.
>>>>
>>>> Furthermore, I would recommend the books of Andrejevic (2013), Hendricks
>>>> and Hansen (2014), Berry and Sobieraj (2014), and Floridi (2011) for
>>>> different perspectives on the topic.
>>>>
>>>> References:
>>>>
>>>> *   Andrejevic, M (2013) Infoglut: How too much information is changing
>>>> the way wethink and know. London, New York: Routledge.
>>>> *   Becker, H. (1949). The Nature and Consequences of Black Propaganda.
>>>> American Sociological Association, 14(2), 221–235.
>>>> *   Berry, J. M. & Sobieraj, S. (2014) The Outrage Industry: Political
>>>> Opinion Media and the New Incivility. Oxford: Oxford University Press
>>>> *   Daniels, J. (2009a). Cloaked websites: propaganda, cyber-racism and
>>>> epistemology in the digital era. New Media & Society, 11(5), 659–683.
>>>> http://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809105345
>>>> *   Daniels, J. (2014). From Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Teenbreaks.com:
>>>> Anti-abortion Activism’s Use of Cloaked Websites. In M. McCaughey (Ed.)
>>>> Cyberactivism on the Participatory Web. London: Routledge.
>>>> *   Floridi, L. (2011) The Philosophy of Information. Oxford: Oxford
>>>> University Press.
>>>> *   Hendricks, V., & Hansen, P. G. (2014). How to Take Information
>>>> Punches and Save Democracy. New York: Springer.
>>>>
>>>> Johan Farkas
>>>> IT University of Copenhagen
>>>> Mail: jjfs at itu.dk
>>>> Phone: +4561346209 <+45%2061%2034%2062%2009>
>>>> Twitter: @jdfarkas
>>>>
>>>> --- Latest article ---
>>>> Schou, J. and Farkas, J. (2016). Algorithms, Interfaces, and the
>>>> Circulation of Information: Interrogating the Epistemological Challenges of
>>>> Facebook. KOME - An International Journal of Pure Communication Inquiry
>>>> 4(1): 36-49.
>>>> ________________________________
>>>> Fra: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org> på vegne af Yosem Companys <
>>>> ycompanys at gmail.com>
>>>> Sendt: 13. december 2016 22:38:38
>>>> Til: Jonathan Marshall
>>>> Cc: AIR
>>>> Emne: Re: [Air-L] Fake News
>>>>
>>>> More on fake news:
>>>>
>>>> Google Won't Alter the Holocaust-Denying Results For ‘Did the Holocaust
>>>> Happen’
>>>>
>>>> http://gizmodo.com/google-wont-alter-the-holocaust-denying-results-for-di-1790025043
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 12:30 PM, Jonathan Marshall <
>>>> Jonathan.Marshall at uts.edu.au> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On the 'fake news' issue I'd like to suggest a book I am co-author of, is
>>>>> relevant
>>>>>
>>>>> Disorder and the Disinformation Society: The Social Dynamics of
>>>>> Information, Networks and Software
>>>>>
>>>>> It basically argues that dis and mis information is absolutely and
>>>>> inevitably normal in information society and is generated by patterns of
>>>>> communication, sense making, power and commerce.
>>>>>
>>>>> Disorder of information is produced by the social factors which organize
>>>>> information.
>>>>>
>>>>> The first half of the book expounds the theory, and the second half is
>>>>> largely studies of particular aspects of information such as software,
>>>>> finance, intellectual copyright, academia and activism.
>>>>>
>>>>> The book is absurdly expensive which is a function of the factors it
>>>>> describes, but you can get a good read of the opening section on Amazon.
>>>>>
>>>>> You can also find some blog entries based on some of the approach of the
>>>>> book at
>>>>>
>>>>> Trump and the Magic of Information
>>>>> https://cmandchaos.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/trump-and-the-
>>>>> magic-of-information/
>>>>>
>>>>> Information mess again
>>>>> https://cmandchaos.wordpress.com/2016/12/11/information-mess-again/
>>>>>
>>>>> jon
>>>>>
>>>>>
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>> -------------------------------
>> Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D.
>> https://github.com/natpoor
>> http://natpoor.blogspot.com/
>> https://sites.google.com/site/natpoor/
>> http://www.underwood-institute.org/
>>
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-- 
Josh Braun, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Journalism Studies
Journalism Department
University of Massachusetts Amherst

@josh_braun
Skype: wideaperture
http://wideaperture.net/
new book: http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300197501/program-brought-you

"Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain. An inheritance of wonder and nothing more."
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