[Air-L] Fake News

Fabio Giglietto fabio.giglietto at uniurb.it
Wed Dec 14 05:37:42 PST 2016


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
> >
> >
> > UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F
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