Fake News

Fact-checking

promoting belief correction without fueling so-called "backfire effects, monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases" with a goal of "applying the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding"

refutation

proving a theory wrong or false

Baseline bluff

purposely misleading the public to believe opponents are trying to "cut" funding/programs while understanding their plan can only be called a "cut" in relation to projected future spending or the baseline

sufficient conditions

one that, if met, does guarantee the truth of something

Opinion

personal judgements based on facts, no reasoning

inductive reasoning

premises strongly support the conclusion, but we can't be absolutely certain, we ask what is most likely to be true

Affective polarization

process of steady growth of the mutual dislike between parties

conspiracy theory

explanation that involves an illegal or harmful act supposedly carried out by government or other powerful actors—without credible evidence, contradict the prevailing understanding of history or simple facts

Debunking

exposing falseness of something, refuting misinformation

belief echoes

exposure to negative political information continues to shape attitudes even after it has been discredited. People will acknowledge the new information, but the wrong one still will be there

Fake news

fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent

counterargumentation

facts presented through humor reduce counterargumentation, it's an objection to an objection, rebuttal, it's giving an argument against an aspect of someone's reasoning

Disinformation

false information purposely spread to deceive people

False news

favorable term by some, because of using "fake news" as a political weapon; more objectively verifiable. Fake news has lost its veracity

measurement bias

favoring a particular result - either overstating or understating the true value of a measurement; they produce unreliable results

Rumour

form of misinformation, acceptance of information that lacks evidence, it's powerful thanks to social transmission

implicit qualifications

general statement is not literal, and we need to assume implicit questions indicating the frequency with which it applies

margin of error

greatest expected difference between obtained results and results from all of the population, confidence level indicates frequency. Chance that the result from the survey is the same as the overall population

Prejudice

holding a belief without consideration of the evidence for or against it/deciding in advance of reading an argument what you believe to be the case

Cyborg

human users who automatically share news from different sources, not necessarily reading them

Motivated reasoning

inability to control our preconceptions, we're either motivated by accuracy (seek and consider relevant evidence to reach the best conclusion) or by partisan goals (motivation to apply reasoning in defense of a prior conclusion). We cannot process info objectively

cogent

inductive argument that has a good structure, but we don't really accept its conclusion as true

inductively forceful

inductive argument with true premise and structure, whose conclusion we accept as true

News diffusion

it deals with how news is circulated among publics. It's when news spread through a population and forms a basic of public opinion.

falsification

looking for an counter-example to prove an inductive line of reasoning false

Political Knowledge

low levels among Americans, but stable. Helps with evaluating political parties. The more informed citizens, the more they will participate in politics and be able to choose candidates consistent with their own attitudes

belief persistence

maintaining a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it

Framing

might have a positive or negative ring to it so people automatically think of a certain issue in a given way (pro-life/pro-choice). Tricking people through employing words that the public automatically accepts/rejects

Misnomers

misleading terms (tall Starbucks coffee being the smallest one) intended to purposely fool the public into supporting/boycotting a specific product or candidate

Necessary conditions

must be met if something is to be true, but cannot by itself guarantee the truth of that thing

false beliefs

contrary to ignorance, they are held strongly. Misconception resulting from incorrect reasoning (like a link between vaccinations and autism)

backfire effect

corrective information can reinforce false information debunked by factual information, stems from motivated reasoning

sound argument

deductive argument that is both valid and has true premises, so the conclusion is also true

message discounting

a scale used to assess the extent to which people discounted the corrective stimuli as "just a joke", doesn't play a role in the study

Fluency

a state of mind that characterizes the ease of information processing

Strawman

absurd simplification of someone else's position that is obviously wrong, it's only expressed so it can be easily defeated

debiasing

accepting corrective information; correcting misinformation. It involves warning people about the potentially misleading nature of the information, repeating corrections, give corrections with alternative explanation of the issue

Critical thinking

actively setting out to understand what is really going on by carefully evaluating information, it's skeptical and objective. helps us search for the best account we can find of the way things are.

Denying the antecedent

an invalid argument which mistakenly assumes that, when one thing always follows from another, the fact that the first isn't true also guarantees the second isn't true

Affirming the consequent

an invalid argument which mistakenly assumes that, when one thing always follows from another, the truth of the second also guarantees the first

Rhetoric

attempt to persuade by making an emotional appeal rather than by using reasoning

Argument

attempt to persuade someone through reasoning that they should agree with a particular conclusion

novelty

attracts human attention, encourages information sharing, it is usually surprising and more valuable

Bots

automated accounts that impersonate humans

Uncritical thinking

automatically believing what you read or are told without pausing to think if it's accurate or true

Summary

brief outline of key information, setting out the main points

Automatic belief echoes

byproduct of online processing, initial misinformation has a larger effect on a person than its correction

misinformation

can originate from rumors but also from works of fiction, governments and politicians, can be unintentional

memory updating

changing how one thinks about an issue

Heuristic

cognitive shortcut or "rule of thumb" allowing for quick decision-making and judgement

Unwarranted

conclusion, that is not supported by an argument

Deliberative belief echoes

conscious reasoning learning about a false claim leads someone to reason that other negative information about the candidate or policy is more likely to be true

reliability

consistency of a measure - high reliability when it produces similar results under consistent conditions. It means the information is accurate, reproducible and consistent

Description

reporting information without evaluation or comment

representative samples

resembles a larger group about which we make claims

Rumor cascade

rumor diffusion on social media (like retweeting a tweet) - if something was tweeted 10 times, but none of the tweets were retweeted, it would be 10 cascades of size one

Conscious bias

someone deliberately presents a one-sided view of sth, or holds a one-sided opinion

Assumption

something relevant to an argument that has been taken for granted by the person presenting it, rather than spelled out

Deductive reasoning

spelling out whatever conclusion follows logically from your premises, without reference to any external information

probability

study of how likely sth is to happen or be true

Selective exposure

tendency to favor information which reinforces their pre-existing views while avoiding contradictory information, in other words - confirmation bias

Alternative facts

there can be multiple alternative facts, based on the criteria we use to filter data

Implied Falsehood

trickery that tries to imply what advertisers can't legally say

Veracity

truthfulness, accuracy - it determines the truth of the argument, not the validity

Objectivity

trying to identify the facts of a situation as seen from the outside rather than relying only on your own feelings/point of view

Weasel words

up to, seem, most; for example instead of giving the exact number. Hollow sentences that cannot be backed up, they suck the meaning out of a phrase

Confirmation bias

using information only to confirm existing preconceptions

denying the consequent

valid argument, one thing is said to always follow from another, so if the second isn't true, the first one also isn't

affirming the antecedent

valid form of an argument, one thing is said to always follow from another, so the truth of the first guarantees the truth of the second

Desirability bias

we are biased towards a belief we want to be true

rational expectation

whatever is most reasonable to expect in a situation, can be different to personal expectations

Unconscious bias

when opinions are distorted by factors people are not aware of

Eye candy

when words say one thing and pictures another, people will concentrate on the pictures (drug tv ads when they list all the symptoms but show happy people)