Misinformation Research - Public Bibliography

Recently, the notion of alternative facts rose to popularity due to its usage by U.S. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway after American President Donald Trump’s inauguration last January 2017. The terminology spread not just in America but in the world’s stream of consciousness through the limitless reach of the Internet, as it delves not just on the idea of facts but on the very essence of knowledge and truth, something which that will always matter to the human mind. Upon observing this, the researcher questioned the existence of alternative facts, something which happens to be of relevance in the Philippines as unsolicited and supposedly news sources have started to exist and spread out unreliable news on the streams of the cyberspace, that which were easily shared through the social media site Facebook. One of which that is always related to these labels of alternative facts and fake news are the Facebook pages of Mocha Uson and Sass Sasot, of which are two proud and known DDS or Duterte Die-hard Supporters, or what the supporters of Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte call themselves. Thus, the researcher aims to debunk the notion of alternative facts and discover how it spreads, and understand how the medium helps in propagating it and in shaping the communication processes of today’s world, with Sass Sasot’s Facebook page’s For the Motherland – Sass Rogando Sasot selected posts as the case study, with the use of rhetorical and content analysis, seen through the concepts of Aristotle’s Rhetorical Theory, Marshall McLuhan’s Theory of Technological Determinism, and David Jolliffe’s Rhetorical Framework –in analyzing the posts selected through constructed random one week sampling.

In the research and commentary around ‘fake news’, there has been growing attention to the way the phrase evidences a growing field of technology industry critique, operating as a shorthand for understanding the nature of social media companies’ power over the public sphere. This article interrogates elite and popular discourses surrounding ‘fake news’, using the tools of critical discourse analysis to show how public commentary constitutes a discursive field that renders tech industry power intelligible by first defining the issue of fake news as a sociotechnical problem, then debating the infrastructural nature of platform companies’ social power. This article concludes that, as commentary moves beyond a focus on fake news and critiques of technology industries grow more complex, strains of elite discourse reveal productive constraints on tech power, articulating the conditions under which limits on that power are understood as legitimate.

Thanks to Donald Trump, fake news has become a buzzword that allows for the dismissal of facts which are inconvenient to a person's worldview. When used to characterize media sources, this rhetorical maneuver becomes an essentially irrefutable argumentative technique-a "trump" card that ends a discussion because the opposition's premise is depicted as false. Since deploying the concept of fake news reinforces ideology and systems of power, this paper explores the phenomenon from the perspective of Gramscian hegemony. More specifically, Gramsci's notion of common sense helps us understand the fallacious appeal of fake news. As a result, the paper discusses the implications of fake news in the context of hegemony and provides suggestions for potential ways to articulate good sense as a means to challenge the common sense of fake news. In the movie, Anon, 1 we witness first-hand how a fabricated sense of reality threatens society. While investigating a series of murders, detective Sal Frieland (played by Clive Owens) realizes his world of automated eye-scanning reveals a glitch in the system that highly-skilled hackers (known as "fixers") can manipulate. These fixers can hijack people's memories and visions of sight to concoct different realities. For a person trying to solve a crime, detective Frieland is extremely frustrated by these events. But what is noticeable in this film is how fixers use un-truths (i.e., manipulated data) to control the conception of the world of their identified viewer-victims. Although this fictional-and somewhat dystopian-reality portrays the imagination of writer/di-rector Andrew Niccol, the film also suggests the power of dis/mis-information. In a sense, the movie explains the power behind what we now call "fake news." Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, most Americans-and probably most viewers around the world-had never heard the words "fake news." Despite historical events premised on  Joseph P. Zompetti is Professor of Communication at Illinois State University where he teaches courses in communication and social issues, classical rhetoric, and political communication. He has taught argument, critical thinking, political rhetoric, and similar subjects in nearly 30 countries, facilitated, in part, by three Fulbright grants. Dr. Zom-petti's research interests include the rhetoric of critical cultural studies and the rhetoric of civic engagement. His work has appeared in Theory

Calling out refers to the use of social media to publicly criticise behaviour perceived to be oppressive towards marginalised individuals. Call-outs as a social phenomenon are understood to function by appealing to the morality of the online audience to subvert the power dynamics within discourse. A widely discussed controversy exists surrounding the cultural legitimacy of employing calling out, with many describing it as 'toxic' to digital environments. This dissertation focuses on the controversy, aiming to answer the following questions: what positions, discourse narratives, and opinions (considered as forming 'stances') make up the controversy surrounding call-out culture? And what underlying issues generate the perception of this practice as toxic and misused? 103 online articles and thinkpieces discussing calling out were qualitatively coded to identify emerging narratives and themes. Results show that while the most common cultural narrative presents calling out as a powerful but dangerous tool, marginalised communities revendicate the right to determine when oppression is occurring and thus when calling out is appropriate. This conflict is then analysed and understood as an identity-based struggle for cultural legitimacy and control over calling out. The conflict is instantiated in debate surrounding relevant affordances of platforms and technology; in particular, the viral sharing of evidence in the form of images and videos and the ability to record others through cameras. The conflict over calling out is situated within the framework of the attention economy: as all call-outs must receive attention to have impact, it is argued that the presence of an audience becomes a motivator for the misuse of calling out, no longer employed as a tool of protest, but a way to build one's online persona as a socially conscious activist. This generates the perception of misuse, creating further conflict, as call-outs are split into 'authentic' and 'performative'.

The notion of “fake news” has gained great currency in intergovernmental policies and regulation. At the same time no general approach on how to deal with the phenomena behind the notion has been found so far. Some believe “fake news” is the old media practice of disseminating “false information” that was somewhat dealt with by the League of Nations in the 1930s. Others see “fake news” as a new threat and challenge to democracy and international order. This article will differentiate disinformation and fake news notions and link the latter with the current spread of manipulation in the media. Further, this article will summarize the modern response to “fake news.” The most recent provisions of the UN, EU and Council of Europe (including the European Court of Human Rights) acts will be analyzed. The decisions that aim to curtail “fake news” will be reviewed from the perspective of international commitments on freedom of expression and freedom of the media.

This course will cover current research, theory and methodology in the area of social media and politics, with particular emphasis on individual-level effects. We will adopt an international perspective, including research published in English conducted both in the Global North and South. We will discuss research from communication, political science, social psychology and computer science to address questions such as: Do social media influence what people know and think about politics? What are the affordances of different social media that matter for political engagement? How does misinformation and conspiracies spread online and influence our political beliefs? What are the effects of informal political conversations held on Facebook and Twitter? Do social media promote cross-cutting exposure or self-reinforcing echo chambers? In which ways governments are reacting to citizens’ activities on social media? When addressing these questions, we will pay particular attention to new theoretical concepts, the variety of methods employed to study social media and politics, and cross-national differences and similarities in published findings.

This article argues that a Russian analytical paradigm of carnival culture can help explain the successful presidential campaign of President Donald J. Trump. Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin developed the notion of carnival culture while analyzing Francois Rabelais' work and its connection to the popular culture of Renaissance. Carnival ethos stood in opposition to the 'official' and 'serious' church sanctioned and feudal culture, by bringing out folklore and different forms of folk laughter that Bakhtin denoted as carnival. Carnival culture with its opposition to the official buttoned-up discourse is supposed to be polar opposite, distinguished by anti-ideology and anti-authority, in other words, anti-establishment – the foundation of Trump's appeal to his voters. This article examines the core characteristics of carnival culture that defined Trump's presidential campaign from the start.

Today’s digital age is beset by an information crisis that revolves around the five giant evils of confusion, cynicism, fragmentation, irresponsibility and apathy (LSE, 2018). Media system change is an important factor that contributes to the current weakening of democratic institutions and discourse and guardianship of evidence-based, rational policymaking, as well as a crisis of trust in political elites. Such processes undermine the bedrock of liberal democracy and erode societal resilience in turbulent times. While many rightly look towards media reform to solve these problems, for communicators and policymakers to re-engage with a cynical and confused public that now often communicates outside traditional channels, a deeper understanding of how our political beliefs and values are formed and changed is required to accurately analyse the social and psychological underpinnings of the challenges we face. The paper aims to explore and summarise the latest research and literature in a number of disparate fields of potential relevance to the following crucial questions: 1. What factors characterise the weakening of democratic institutions and discourse? What role does media system change play in these? 2. What are the main causes of these factors, and how does today’s digital media environment exacerbate them? 3. What does recent research say about potential solutions to these problems and possible roles for communication and the media?

This study investigates how visual manipulation is employed on the Facebook page of a far-right party; and whether manipulation evokes different forms of engagement from Facebook users. The study takes as a case the Facebook page of the British National Party (BNP), which has recently been censored from the social media platform. It therefore provides a rare insight in the visual practices of the party's online political communication. A manual coding of 342 images into factual , funny, fallacious or fabricated content finds that completely fabricated information in images is rare. However, most images do contain information that is presented in a fallacious or misleading manner. The results show how deliberate manipulated images evoke more engagement in the form of comments and more negative emotional responses than images that present information in a factual or funny manner.