Chapter 2 Terms
Belief Perseverance:
: Belief perseverance names a human tendency to resist changing one's belief or modifying the confidence that one assigns to a belief once that belief has been formed. Belief perseverance works to render one increasingly resistant to new information—even highly reliable and predictive evidence
Fecundity
A news source exhibits fecundity if it provides more than just the bare facts. A fecund information source provides unbiased context and/or analysis along with the bare facts. Such sources a very likely to report significant news in a timely fashion; they call one's attention to breaking news or trends and report news that other sources may not even notice. Fecund information sources prove highly valuable in that they help one to assess the significance of events, to differentiate isolated events from trends, and anticipate potential future developments.
Accuracy
Accurate news sources exhibit the twin virtues of reliable reporting and integrity. In other words, accurate information sources regularly offer veridical, highly evinced reports, and on those occasions when these sources misreport, they identify and acknowledge their mistakes. Thus, one ought to understand accuracy in terms of two dispositional properties; reliability (the tendency to deliver true and/or highly evinced information) and integrity (the commitment to reliability).
Censorship (or Information Suppression)
Information suppression or censorship has long been a staple of repressive governments and societal institutions. Information suppressors intend to deprive people of information in order to repress, control, or otherwise manipulate them. The typical tools of information suppression include; a dominant state-run media, prohibiting independent media, imprisoning journalists, murdering or allowing the murder of journalists, restricting internet access, monitoring and censoring the internet, and government harassment.
Information Suppression (or Censorship)
Information suppression or censorship has long been a staple of repressive governments and societal institutions. Information suppressors intend to deprive people of information in order to repress, control, or otherwise manipulate them. The typical tools of information suppression include; a dominant state-run media, prohibiting independent media, imprisoning journalists, murdering or allowing the murder of journalists, restricting internet access, monitoring and censoring the internet, and government harassment.
Information Superabundance
Most humans now have access to so much information that one of their primary cognitive challenges has become finding relevant information in a horizonless and largely uncharted repository. Sometimes people need information that simply has not been generated or disseminated, but increasingly people struggle to find reliable information that exists somewhere in a vast sea of existent data.
Personalized Search and News Feeds
Personalization algorithms filter search and news feeds by using information about your location, preferences, internet habits, search and buying history to predict what items best suit you personally. Skeptics worry that personalization's combination excessive customization with little to no user oversight effectively isolates and shields people from other perspectives and experiences—turning each of us into unwitting cyber-rubes lost within the biases and idiosyncrasies of our ever more parochial filter bubbles
Comedic News Satire
Comedic news satirists produce one variety of "fake news." Satirists usually make no pretense of providing objective, serious news. Though often written by very well-informed people and extensively fact-checked, satirists intend to produce comedic entertainment rather than news. Even conscientious news satire comedians often have no training in journalism. Such comedians need not adhere to any journalistic practices, they have no codified professional ethical standards, and they do not even have to believe their own material. Likewise, news satirists generally lack the resources to conduct independent investigative research on the topics they cover. They must rely upon primary news sources for the vast majority of their information.
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is an innate disposition shaping human thought. Conformation bias works to shape how humans gather, remember, and utilize information. Specifically, human beings exhibit confirmation bias when they preferentially seek out (or interpret) information to confirm their existing or potential attitudes or beliefs. One can think of confirmation bias as serving a useful purpose insofar as it leads someone to look for information that will provide additional evidence for their beliefs. Nevertheless, confirmation bias also acts to reinforce one's beliefs--even in the face of strong disconfirming evidence.
Disinformation
Practitioners of disinformation seek to undermine trust in standard information sources and institutions with the goal of supplanting objective, independent information sources, intimidating rivals, and manipulating public opinion. Practitioners of disinformation seek to infect information ecosystems with ideologically biased information as well as false and contradictory information. Practitioners of disinformation are disruptors. They do not wish to convince so much as to confuse. The practitioner of disinformation seeks always to muddy the informational waters, undermine trust in independent information sources, and ultimately to force either a state of general disbelief or a state of dogmatic confirmation bias among individuals.
Product Placement
Product placement occurs when advertisers work with content creators so that their products appear in films, television, music, music videos, sporting events, magazines, video games, and even books. Product placement can range from showing or mentioning the product (as in the video above) to integrating the product into the story itself (often called "brand integration").
Propaganda
Propaganda consists of intentionally biased persuasive rhetoric that often evokes fears, biases, and falsehoods to manipulate emotions, opinions, and actions. Propaganda proves most effective in the absence of institutions and contexts that reveal its cynical, excessive, one-sided, and/or false nature.
Yellow Journalism
Yellow journalism involves sensationalism—usually scandals or fear mongering—lavish imagery, and poorly documented, often false or misleading journalism. The term originally came into use to describe the journalism practiced by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Yellow journalists tend to be legitimate journalists who present themselves as having high accuracy standards, but who show significant tendencies towards poor accuracy—often to boost revenue. For instance, Hearst and Pulitzer needed high circulation for their papers that often cost a penny.
Contextualized (Contextualization)
A term used to describe how human reasoning and assessment of one's own reasoning and the reasoning of others is strongly shaped by the content of one's inferences or argument as well as the context of those inferences or arguments. For example, people tend to judge arguments as better when they agree with the conclusion of the argument and worse when they disagree with the conclusion. This particular content effect is called the belief bias.
Worldview
A worldview consists of those beliefs, values, and practices that constitute a person's understanding of themselves, society, and the universe as well as that person's significance and role within society and the universe. As such, a worldview provides a vehicle through which an individual conceptualizes and interprets themselves and the world. Worldviews likewise facilitate the prediction and understanding of the behavior of ourselves and others and guides expectations as to how the world will change over time.
Information Environment
All living creatures inhabit an information environment just as they inhabit a biological environment. The types of information available, the manner of that availability, the ease of access, as well as the spatial and temporal horizons define this information environment.
Amateur reporting
Amateur reporting constitutes the second class of "fake news." Unlike news satirists, amateur reporting consists largely of people who post information that they collect or witness. For instance, people will often post videos, pictures, and/or written accounts of events that they research or witness. Amateur reporters generally intend to report facts. However, like comedic satirists, even conscientious amateur reporters often have no training in journalism. Such reporters are often unaware of and need not adhere to any journalistic practices, nor do they have a codified set of professional ethical standards. Amateur reporters tend to lack not just training, but the resources and motivation necessary to investigate and verify their reports.
Information Ecosystem
An information ecosystem consists of a set of senses, artifacts, places and/or people one regularly consults to gather information, evaluate claims, or when pondering the adequacy of one's worldview. Good information ecosystems should include straight news sources, analysis and commentary sources, fact-checking and debunking sources. These sources should provide information on a range of important topics like history, law, science and medicine, politics, economics and finance, as well as current world, national and local events.
Anti-social Restrictions on Information Sharing
Anti-social restrictions attempt to undermine or limit information exchange in order to benefit some members or groups of society at the expense of others. Antisocial efforts to undermine or limit information flow come in a number of forms. The most chilling anti-social measures combine two or more of these three deliberately malicious techniques to undermine information flow in an ecosystem: information suppression, disinformation and propaganda
Filter Bubble
Eli Parser suggests that the widespread and unmonitored use of personalization programs in search engines and news feeds acts to create a self-reinforcing bubble of idiosyncratic information around users, sheltering them from opposing viewpoints as well as denying them access to new ideas and perspectives. Filter bubbles potentially turn each of us into unwitting cyber-rubes lost within the biases and idiosyncrasies of our ever more parochial filter bubbles. For Pariser personalization can combine isolation and ignorance with little to no user oversight or insight regarding how their information gets selected. Parser notes that the new generation of Internet filters looks at the things you seem to like-the actual things you've done, or the things people like you like-and tries to extrapolate. They are prediction engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are and what you'll do and want next. Together, these engines create a unique universe of information for each of us-what I've come to call a filter bubble-which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information. (p.9)
The Information Imperative
Even simple living creatures like plants and bacteria need information to thrive. For instance, plants use information about the direction of light to adapt their growth patterns to maximize exposure. Magnetotactic bacteria use information about the Earth's magnetic field to move towards anaerobic environments and to avoid oxygen rich environments. Indeed, for most animals the ability to secure life-giving materials like water and food from the environment depends upon their ability to gather and process information in their environment. Likewise, for many living things, avoiding predators and other dangers depends upon gathering information. One might call this an information imperative. That is, our very nature as living organisms creates a need for information to promote thriving. As a result, it is an imperative of all living creatures to gather information and utilize in adaptive responses to the environment.
Diversity of Media
Good information ecosystems incorporate a diversity of media. Different media—kinds of information sources--have different strengths and weakness. One ought to include print, audio, video sources. Print sources ought to include books, newspapers, and magazines. One should draw from the internet, conventional mass media (radio, and television), as well as governmental agencies and professional organizations. Within a form of media—like newspapers—one ought to cultivate a diversity of sources from local, national and international outlets. Taken together diverse media sources help to balance one's ecosystem by introducing different modes of presentation, emphases, timelines, ownership, as well as regulative and professional norms.
Scope
One important property of a good information ecosystem consists in a large scope. Specifically, an information ecosystem with a large scope contains multiple sources providing information on a wide variety of topics. Thus, a good information ecosystem provides one with the resources to gather or check facts regarding topics as diverse as world politics and human anatomy.
Slant
Since one creates an information ecosystem as a tool for oneself, it will naturally contain a certain slant. More conservative individuals will likely develop information ecosystems with a conservative slant. Likewise, more liberal individuals will likely develop information ecosystems with the liberal slant. People who like science will likely have an information ecosystem with more sources about scientific discoveries and theories. People who like technology and gadgets will have more sources about these topics. Sports enthusiasts will have more sources providing them with information about developments in sports. Having a slant proves desirable in an information ecosystem just as modifying one's phone by downloading apps can enhance its usefulness by customizing its capabilities to its user. Nevertheless, students ought to make a conscientious effort include sources in their information ecosystem that provide them with alternative perspectives and worldviews. One reason why one should strive to include information sources with alternative slants in one's information ecosystem consists in the potential of such sources to temper biases in how human beings process information.
Pro-social Restrictions on Information Sharing
Societies often codify some limitations on information transfer, arguing that throttling information flow actually serves the greater social good. One might call these measures pro-social restrictions.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content refers to advertising that appears in internet searches and media in a manner that closely resembles news and search content. These search and media companies make money every time visitors click on these ads. Most, if not all, legitimate companies indicate sponsored content. However, the ease with which one can identify ads varies significantly among search and media outlets.
Minimally Adequate Comprehensiveness
The property of minimally adequate comprehensiveness proves a highly desirable property of belief systems. A minimally adequate belief system contains a sufficient amount and variety of information to adequately guide one in one's typical or intended decisions and actions. For example, people without a basic understanding of the functioning of the Federal Reserve System lack a belief system with minimally adequate comprehensiveness to evaluate the need for reform or abolition of the Federal Reserve System
Counterfeit New
The third class of "fake news" is counterfeit news. Counterfeit news sources generally, but not always, seek to profit from fabricating sensational "news" stories. Thus, counterfeit news sources create false news for the same reasons currency counterfeiters create fake money. Counterfeit news creators deliberately deceive in order to make money from advertising revenue that their articles create. Practitioners of counterfeit news tend to adhere absolutely no journalistic practices, generally do not intend to present true accounts, and rarely engage in any fact-checking procedures.
2.4 Chapter Summary
This chapter and lecture emphasize the important role that information gathering plays in the survival and thriving of almost all forms of life. The chapter explores the development of biological and artificial channels and cooperatives for gathering and verifying information. I call the network of such channels for a given individual an information ecosystem. The chapter continues by discussing the evolution of information ecosystems from simple chemical and mechanical sensory structures through, the advent of sensory systems, the emergence of spoken languages, the creation of written languages and number systems, concluding by outlining the accelerated developments of communication mediums that ultimately culminate in the development of the internet. The chapter and lectures tie each new development to the ways in which it enhances thriving through increased information sharing. The next chapter and lecture turn towards a discussion of personal information ecosystems. Importantly, the chapter begins by discussing the history given above. Early life suffers from and information deficit; if an organism has any information at all, that information proves inadequate to its basic needs. As life evolves more and more organisms begin gathering larger, more determinant, and more complex bits of information. For instance, the emergence of sensory systems allows organisms to gather complex and systematic information about features in their distal environment. Living creatures likewise improve the reliability of their information gathering sources and the range from which they gather information. At some point, organisms begin to enjoy an information surplus; they can reliably gather more information of greater complexity than proves necessary for mere survival. But, as the next chapter suggests, humans have proven so adept at crafting ever more elaborate and sophisticated information ecosystems that they have created an age of information superabundance. As characterized in the next chapter, information superabundance occurs when so much information becomes available that finding information within an information ecosystem becomes as cognitively challenging as collecting information from the environment itself. The next chapter looks at how humans have sought to adapt to information superabundance. After discussing the limitations of internet search and personalized news feeds, the chapter focuses on threats to robust and transparent information sharing. Specifically, the chapter and lecture differentiates five different kinds of so-called "fake news"; comedic news satire, amateur reporting, counterfeit news, disinformation, and propaganda.
Availability Cascade
Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein use the term, "availability cascades," to refer to a selfproliferating process of information exchange. Specifically, the ease of information sharing together with the social pressures to conform combine to fuel a rapidly spreading acceptance of an idea or belief. As, Kuran and Sunstein note, "An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance." (Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein p.683)
