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News/Media Literacy and Fact-Checking: Additional Readings and Resources
"Prebunking"
- A guide to prebunking: a promising way to inoculate against misinformationPrevention, not cure, may be a more effective way to combat misinformation.
- Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media"Online misinformation continues to have adverse consequences for society. Inoculation theory has been put forward as a way to reduce susceptibility to misinformation by informing people about how they might be misinformed, but its scalability has been elusive both at a theoretical level and a practical level."
- Inoculation ScienceThis website brings together research and resources on inoculation theory applied to misinformation
AI and Information Literacy
Additional Readings on Media Literacy, "Fake News", Social Media, and the Attention Economy
- Asking people to “do the research” on fake news stories makes them seem more believable, not less"A new study asked thousands to evaluate the accuracy of news articles — both real and fake — by doing some research online. But for many, heading to Google led them farther from the truth, not closer."
- People share misinformation because of social media’s incentives — but those can be changed“After a few tweaks to the reward structure of social media platforms, users begin to share information that is accurate and fact-based.” (Though the tweaks involved paying people to do so.)
- Information Futures Lab"Responding to the urgent need to address the information crisis that threatens to undo major achievements in public health and erode the foundations of democracies, the Brown University School of Public Health is announcing the creation of its Information Futures Lab. The Lab will investigate the harms of misinformation, data deficits, outdated communications practices and other barriers to meeting the information needs of communities. It will bring together researchers and practitioners across fields to co-design, implement and evaluate solutions, one pilot at a time."
- Center for an Informed Public - University of WashingtonThe Center for an Informed Public is an interdisciplinary research initiative at the University of Washington dedicated to resisting strategic misinformation, promoting an informed society and strengthening democratic discourse.
- HKS Misinformation Review"The HKS Misinformation Review is a new format of peer-reviewed, scholarly publication. Content is produced and “fast-reviewed” by misinformation scientists and scholars, released under open access licensing, and geared towards emphasizing real-world implications. All content is targeted towards a specialized audience of researchers, journalists, fact-checkers, educators, policy makers, and other practitioners working in the information, media, and platform landscape."
- Lizard People in the Library"As “research it yourself” becomes a rallying cry for promoters of outlandish conspiracy theories with real-world consequences, educators need to think hard about what’s missing from their information literacy efforts." - From Barbara Fister, Project Information Literacy Provocation Series (Feb. 3, 2021)
- The Coup We Are Not Talking About"We can have democracy, or we can have a surveillance society, but we cannot have both." - From Shoshana Zuboff, New York Times (Jan. 29, 2021)
- Twitter users can now report voter suppression, misinformation"Twitter will allow U.S. users to report tweets with misleading information about how to participate in the forthcoming U.S. election starting today" - From Steven Overly, Politico.com
- Information Literacy in the Age of Algorithms: Student Experiences with News and Information, and the Need for Change"This report presents findings about how college students conceptualize the ever-changing online information landscape, and navigate volatile and popular platforms that increasingly employ algorithms to shape and filter content." - From the Study's Abstract
- Fact-checking the network: The most interesting digital and social media research of early 2018"Journalist’s Resource sifts through the academic journals so you don’t have to. Here’s their latest roundup, including research into fake news, audience analytics, populism, VR, and fact-checking." - From Denise-Marie Ordway, NiemanLab
- Fake News. It's Complicated."To understand the misinformation ecosystem, here's a break down of the types of fake content, content creators motivations and how it's being disseminated." - From Claire Wardle, First Draft
- Making Media Literacy Great Again"A basic understanding of where news comes from is back on the syllabus as students navigate an increasingly bewildering media environment" - From Michael Rosenwald, Columbia Journalism Review
- Information Disorder: Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy Making"Commissioned by the Council of Europe, our new report lays out a new definitional framework for thinking about information disorder, provides an overview of current responses, and summarizes key academic studies on how people consume information. It ends with thirty-four recommendations, targeted at technology companies, national governments, media organizations, civil society, education ministries and funding bodies." - From Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan, First Draft/Council of Europe
- Real News About Fake News"The growing stream of reporting on and data about fake news, misinformation, partisan content, and news literacy is hard to keep up with. This weekly roundup offers the highlights of what you might have missed." - From Nieman Lab
- [M|D]isinformation Reading List"A list of non-academic readings related to different aspects of the "fake news" debate, covering the impact of advertising, its role in the US election, the growing awareness of disinformation campaigns aimed at upcoming European elections, and some of the psychological theories that help explain why our brains can be so easily fooled." - From Claire Wardle, First Draft
- Facebook’s 2016 Election Team Gave Advertisers A Blueprint To A Divided US"The company offered advertisers a breakdown of the US electorate's interests, religions, races, and dislikes during a fraught election season compromised by bad actors." - From Alex Kantrowitz, Buzzfeed
- We're Building a Dystopia Just to Make People Click on Ads"We're building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information. And the machines aren't even the real threat. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use AI to control us -- and what we can do in response." - From Zeynep Tufekci, TED Talk
- The Challenge That's Bigger Than Fake News"Civic Reasoning in a Social Media Environment" - From Sarah McGrew, Teresa Ortega, Joel Breakstone, and Sam Wineburg, American Federation of Teachers
- The Science Behind why Fake News is so Hard to Wipe Out"It’s time for Facebook and Google to pay attention to the psychology of the illusory truth effect." - From Brian Resnick, Vox
- Tech Titans And The Information ComplexNPR series on social media and the spread of misinformation.
- 'Way Too Little, Way Too Late': Facebook's Factcheckers Say Effort is Failing"Journalists fighting spread of fake news raise concerns over possible conflicts of interest and say site has refused to disclose needed data." - From Sam Levin, The Guardian
- Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online"Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online is a new report from Data &
Society which offers comprehensive insight into why the media was vulnerable to manipulation from radicalized groups that emerged from a variety of internet subcultures in 2016." - The Era of Whatsapp Propaganda Is Upon Us"The future of fake news is messaging apps, not social media. And it’s going to be even worse." - From Nic Dias, Foreign Policy
Additional Videos
Your Brain and Misinformation: Why People Believe Lies and Conspiracy Theories
The Rise of Social Bots
We're Building a Dystopia Just to Make People Click on Ads
Books Available in the OSU Library
Foolproof by
A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read * A Financial Times Best Book of the Week * One of Nature's best science picks Informed by decades of research and on-the-ground experience advising governments and tech companies, Foolproof is the definitive guide to navigating the misinformation age. 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.
Call Number: 302.3 V235fISBN: 9780393881448Publication Date: 2023-03-21
Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts that Will Save Us by
Why do some parents refuse to vaccinate their children? Why do some keep guns at home, despite scientific evidence of risk to their family members? And why do people use antibiotics for illnesses they can't possibly alleviate? When it comes to health, many people insist that science is wrong,that the evidence is incomplete or inconclusive, and that unidentified hazards lurk everywhere to harm us.In Denying to the Grave, authors Sara and Jack Gorman explore the psychology of health science denial. Using several examples of such denial as test cases, they propose six key principles that may lead individuals to reject "accepted" health-related wisdom: the charismatic leader; fear ofcomplexity; confirmation bias and the internet; fear of corporate and government conspiracies; filling the ignorance gap; and the nature of risk prediction. The authors argue that the health sciences are especially vulnerable to our innate resistance to integrate new concepts with pre-existingbeliefs. This psychological difficulty of incorporating new information is on the cutting edge of neuroscience research; scientists have identified brain responses to new information.Denying to the Grave explores risk theory and how people make decisions about what is best for them and their loved ones, in an effort to better understand how people think when faced with significant health decisions. This book points the way to a new and important understanding of how science should be conveyed to the public in order to save lives with existing knowledge and technology.
Call Number: 362.1 G671dISBN: 9780199396603Publication Date: 2016-09-01
You Are Here: a field guide for navigating polarized speech, conspiracy theories, and our polluted media landscape by
How to understand a media environment in crisis, and how to make things better by approaching information ecologically. How to understand a media environment in crisis, and how to make things better by approaching information ecologically. Our media environment is in crisis. Polarization is rampant. Polluted information floods social media. Even our best efforts to help clean up can backfire, sending toxins roaring across the landscape. In You Are Here, Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner offer strategies for navigating increasingly treacherous information flows. Using ecological metaphors, they emphasize how our individual me is entwined within a much larger we, and how everyone fits within an ever-shifting network map.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780262539913Publication Date: 2021-03-02
Calling Bullshit: the art of skepticism in a data-driven world by
"The world is awash in bullshit, and we're drowning in it. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. These days, calling bullshit is a noble act. Based on Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West's popular course at the University of Washington, Calling Bullshit is a modern handbook to the art of skepticism. Bergstrom, a computational biologist, and West, an information scientist, catalogue bullshit in its many forms, explaining and offering readers the tools to see through the obfuscations, deliberate and careless, that dominate every realm of our lives. They instruct readers to ask: Who is saying it? How do they know? What do they have to gain by persuading me? Are the numbers or results too good or too dramatic to be true? Is the claim comparing like with like or apples and oranges? Is it confirming your personal bias? In this lively guide to everything from misleading statistics to "fake news," Bergstrom and West help you recognize bullshit whenever and wherever you encounter it--in data, in conversation, even within yourself--and explain it to your crystal-loving aunt or casually racist uncle. Now more than ever, calling bullshit is crucial to a properly functioning community, whether it be a circle of friends, a network of academics, or the citizenry of a nation"
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780525509189Publication Date: 2020-08-04
Skim, Dive, Surface: teaching digital reading by
Students are reading on screens more than ever--how can we teach them to be better digital readers? Smartphones, laptops, tablets: college students are reading on-screen all the time, and digital devices shape students' understanding of and experiences with reading. In higher education, however, teachers rarely consider how digital reading experiences may have an impact on learning abilities, unless they're lamenting students' attention spans or the distractions available to students when they're learning online. Skim, Dive, Surface offers a corrective to these conversations--an invitation to focus not on losses to student learning but on the spectrum of affordances available within digital learning environments. It is designed to help college instructors across the curriculum teach digital reading in their classes, whether they teach face-to-face, fully online, or somewhere in between. Placing research from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, learning science, and composition in dialogue with insight from the scholarship of teaching and learning, Jenae Cohn shows how teachers can better frame, scaffold, and implement effective digital reading assignments. She positions digital reading as part of a cluster of literacies that students should develop in order to communicate effectively in a digital environment.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781952271038Publication Date: 2021-06-01
A Lot of People Are Saying: the new conspiracism and the assault on democracy by
How the new conspiracists are undermining democracy--and what can be done about it Conspiracy theories are as old as politics. But conspiracists today have introduced something new--conspiracy without theory. And the new conspiracism has moved from the fringes to the heart of government with the election of Donald Trump. In A Lot of People Are Saying, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum show how the new conspiracism differs from classic conspiracy theory, why so few officials speak truth to conspiracy, and what needs to be done to resist it. Classic conspiracy theory insists that things are not what they seem and gathers evidence--especially facts ominously withheld by official sources--to tease out secret machinations. The new conspiracism is different. There is no demand for evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern, no close examination of shadowy plotters. Dispensing with the burden of explanation, the new conspiracism imposes its own reality through repetition (exemplified by the Trump catchphrase "a lot of people are saying") and bare assertion ("rigged!"). The new conspiracism targets democratic foundations--political parties and knowledge-producing institutions. It makes it more difficult to argue, persuade, negotiate, compromise, and even to disagree. Ultimately, it delegitimates democracy. Filled with vivid examples, A Lot of People Are Saying diagnoses a defining and disorienting feature of today's politics and offers a guide to responding to the threat.
Call Number: 320.973 M953L and OnlineISBN: 9780691188836Publication Date: 2019-04-16
Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics by
Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.
ISBN: 9780190923624Publication Date: 2018-10-15
Thinking, Fast and Slow by
Major New York Times bestseller Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012 Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011 A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation--each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives--and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.
Call Number: 153.42 K12tISBN: 9780374275631Publication Date: 2011-10-25
