Fake News

This chapter explores how online communication, particularly on social media, reshapes the reputational incentives that motivate speakers to communicate truthfully. Drawing on costly signalling theory (CST), it examines how online contexts alter the social mechanisms that sustain honest communication. Key characteristics of online spaces are identified and discussed, namely (i) the presence of novel speech acts like reposting, (ii) the gamification of communication, (iii) information overload, (iv) the presence of anonymous and unaccountable sources and (v) the increased reach and persistence (...) of online communication. Both epistemic pitfalls and potential benefits of these features are discussed, identifying promising avenues for further empirical investigation, and underscoring CST's value for understanding and tackling online misinformation. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a conceptual analysis of fake news. In essence, I suggest analysing this notion as a species of Frankfurtian bullshit. This construal, I argue, allows us to distinguish it from similar phenomena like bad or biased journalism and satire. First, I introduce four test cases. The first three are, intuitively, not cases of fake news, while the fourth one is. A correct conceptual analysis should, hence, exclude the first three while including the fourth. Next, I go (...) through some factors that could explain the difference between the first three cases and the fourth one before I offer my explanation. After that, I propose an analysis of fake news and show that it matches our intuitions about the four test cases. Finally, I consider a possible objection to my proposal. (shrink)

Disinformation is a growing epistemic threat, yet its connection to understanding remains underexplored. In this paper, I argue that understanding – specifically, understanding how things work and why they work the way they do – can, all else being equal, shield individuals from disinformation campaigns. Conversely, a lack of such understanding makes one particularly vulnerable. Drawing on Simion’s (2023) characterization of disinformation as content that has a disposition to generate or increase ignorance, I propose that disinformation frequently exploits a preexisting (...) lack of understanding. I consider an important objection – that since understanding is typically difficult to acquire, we might rely on deferring to experts. However, I argue that in epistemically polluted environments, where expertise is systematically mimicked, deference alone provides no reliable safeguard. I conclude by briefly reflecting on strategies for addressing these challenges, emphasizing both the need for promoting understanding and for cleaning up the epistemic environment. (shrink)

The problem of fake news and the spread of misinformation has garnered a lot of attention in recent years. The incentives and norms that give rise to the problem, however, are not unique to journalism. Insofar as academics and journalists are working towards the same goal, i.e., publication, they are both under pressures that pervert. This chapter has two aims. First, to integrate conversations in philosophy of science, epistemology, and metaphilosophy to draw out the publishing incentives that promote analogous problems (...) of fake news and misinformation in academic research communities more broadly. Second, to argue for a (partial) solution. This chapter argues that research communities benefit when authors believe what they argue for in print and it warns against attempts to loosen our publication norms to permit publishing without belief. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is increasingly criticised as out of touch with the realities of partisan politics. This paper considers the rise of fake and hyperpartisan news as one source of this scepticism. While popular accounts often blame such content on citizens’ political biases and motivated reasoning, I survey the empirical evidence and argue that it does not support strong claims about the inability of citizens to live up to deliberative ideals. Instead, much of this research is shown to support the deliberative (...) capacities of citizens and points to their potential in helping to reduce the spread of false and misleading content. (shrink)

In an important new Article, titled A Matter of Facts: The Evolution of the Copyright Fact-Exclusion and Its Implications for Disinformation and Democracy, Professor Jessica Silbey argues provocatively that we “‘only” know that facts are excluded from copyright protection because Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service “says so.” She argues that both the nature and importance of facts has been underdefined and is in flux, nonetheless tracing it to the foundational cases of United States (U.S.) copyright law, and argues for (...) a stronger exclusion of facts, which are publici juris, and belong in the public domain. This central thesis is most agreeable, as is her analysis of doctrine and legislative history. The Article’s rich study of American pragmatism, legal realism, the Cambridge school of analytic philosophy, and the “new social scientists,” which Professor Silbey uses to support a strong fact-exclusion, is a tour de force. The Article ends with a list of proposals for a strong Feist application to evaluations, catalogs, manuals, and legal documents. It also includes a call not to allow for industrial dilution of copyright’s framework, including the facts and ideas exclusion. Both are laudable and timely in the era of generative artificial intelligence (AI), where proposals to protect non-authorial quasi-expression or to prevent copying of non-expressive subject matter abound. -/- While I agree with a call for a robust public domain and strong fact-exclusion, and devote Part II of this Response to explore further doctrinal grounds for them, in Part III I explore Silbey’s argument that “pragmatist philosophy’s challenge to universal truths combined with legal realist challenges to formalist jurisprudence eventually shape what is (or should be) copyright law’s broad public domain in ‘facts.’” It is not immediately clear if pragmatism and realism are a solid ground for justifying strong legal principles and axioms. Engaging with this provocative argument allows us to uncover what realism means to Professor Silbey and the much more radical consequences of her arguments. Part IV concludes. (shrink)

The persistence of scientific misconceptions is often attributed to a decline in trust in experts. Against this simplistic picture, we emphasize that misplaced trust in expertise plays a crucial role in sustaining such misconceptions: even laypeople actively seeking expert guidance may nonetheless place their trust in unreliable sources. The paper identifies two main kinds of ’epistemic traps’ that are relevant to this phenomenon. In addition to fake experts who flaunt competence they lack (like pseudoexperts and pseudo-scientists), we emphasise the importance (...) of unreliable experts, who possess relevant credentials but systematically offer unreliable testimony. The resulting picture clashes with the commonplace idea that laypeople bear significant epistemic blame for endorsing misconceptions. Even responsible agents can be misled by unreliable experts who display legitimate credentials: the less evident the source’s unreliability, the less responsible is the agent for being misled. (shrink)

This paper takes up the question of how videographic public announcements (VPAs)---i.e. videos that a wide swath of the public sees and knows that everyone else can see too--- have functioned to mobilize people politically, and how the presence of deepfakes in our information environment stands to change the dynamics of this mobilization. Existing work by Regina Rini, Don Fallis and others has focused on the ways that deepfakes might interrupt our acquisition of first-order knowledge through videos. But I point (...) out that even where every audience member takes a video to be veridical, where first-order knowledge acquisition is secure, an audience aware of deepfakes in their environment will not acquire higher order knowledge in the way that has erstwhile been characteristic for audiences of VPAs. Engaging with ideas from the literatures on public announcement logic, common knowledge, and convention, I enumerate a variety of ways in which we should expect this absence of higher order knowledge to throw up barriers to political mobilization. I go on to apply my analysis of VPAs to the mechanisms by which an uptick in publicly available videos of police brutality over the last decade, mediated by camera phones and social media, was responsible for the largest mass protests in US history in summer 2020. This makes vivid the stakes of the transformation in our mobilizing environment that I've claimed deepfakes effect: where we lose the common-knowledge-generating effects of VPAs, there are fresh obstacles to this sort of mass mobilization. (shrink)

Philosophers and social scientists largely agree that fake news is not just necessarily untruthful, but necessarily insincere: it’s produced either with the intention to deceive or an indifference toward its truth. Against this, I argue insincerity is neither a necessary nor obviously typical feature of fake news. The main argument proceeds in two stages. The first, methodological step develops classification criteria for identifying instances of fake news. By attending to expressed theoretical and practical interests, I observe how our classification practices (...) turn on worries about fake news’s unique political-epistemic risks. From this, I argue (i) theories of fake news should capture independent mechanisms that realise these risks and (ii) the manifestation of them suffices for classifying a news story as fake news. The second step applies the classification criteria to bad science journalism. I argue the systematic epistemic faults in bad science journalism manifest the same political-epistemic risks we see in fake news, which suffices to justify classifying it as fake news. But since such faults aren’t plausibly attributed to its propagators being insincere, insincerity doesn’t function independently as a mechanism for realising fake news’s political-epistemic risks. Thus, I conclude, we should exclude insincerity from our accounts of the phenomenon. (shrink)

Deepfakes are AI-generated media. When produced competently, they are near-indistinguishable from genuine recordings and so may mislead viewers about the actions of the individuals they depict. For this reason, it is thought to be only a matter of time before deepfakes have deleterious consequences for democratic procedures, elections in particular. But this pessimistic view about deepfakes and their relation to democracy is flawed, whether it means to pick out current deepfakes or future ones. Rather than advocating for an optimistic view (...) in its place, I outline the opposite: a nihilistic account of deepfakes and their relation to democracy. On the nihilistic view, the harms that deepfakes pose for democracy are significantly more serious than those implied by the pessimistic view. Nihilism says that the real threat that deepfakes pose for democracy is that their existence counts against reforming current politics to be more truth-oriented. (shrink)

It is frequently argued that false and misleading claims, spread primarily on social media, are a serious problem in need of urgent response. Current strategies to address the problem – relying on fact-checks, source labeling, limits on the visibility of certain claims, and, ultimately, content removals – face two serious shortcomings: they are ineffective and biased. Consequently, it is reasonable to want to seek alternatives. This paper provides one: to address the problems with misinformation, social media platforms should abandon third-party (...) fact-checks and rely instead on user-driven prediction markets. This solution is likely less biased and more effective than currently implemented alternatives and, therefore, constitutes a superior way of tackling misinformation. (shrink)

A number of scholars and policy-makers have raised serious concerns about the impact of chatbots and generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the spread of political disinformation. An increasingly popular proposal to address this concern is to pass laws that, by requiring that artificially generated and artificially disseminated content be labeled as such, aim to ensure a degree of transparency in this rapidly transforming environment. This article argues that such laws are misguided, for two reasons. We first aim to show that (...) legally requiring the disclosure of the automated nature of bot accounts and AI-generated content is unlikely to succeed in improving the quality of political discussion on social media. This is because information that an account spreading or creating political information is a bot or a language model is itself politically relevant information, and people reason very poorly about such information. Second, we aim to show that the main motivation for these laws – the threat of coordinated disinformation campaigns (automated or not) – appears overstated. (shrink)

The term disinformation is generally used to refer to information that is false and harmful, by contrast with misinformation (false but harmless) and malinformation (harmful but true); disinformation is also generally understood to involve coordination and to be intentionally false and/or harmful. However, particular studies rarely apply all these criteria when discussing cases. Doing so would involve applying at least three distinct problem framings: an epistemic framing to detect that a proposition in circulation is false, a behavioural framing to detect (...) the coordinated efforts at communicating that proposition, and a security framing to identify threats or risks of harm attendant on widespread belief in the proposition. As for the question of intentionality, different kinds of clues can be picked up within each framing, although none alone is likely to be conclusive. Yet particular studies tend to centre on or prioritise a single framing. Many today aim to make policy recommendations about combatting disinformation, and they prioritise security concerns over the demands of epistemic diligence. This carries a real risk of disinformation research being ‘weaponised’ against inconvenient truths. Against combative approaches, this article argues for a critical approach which recognizes the importance of epistemic diligence and transparency about normative assumptions. (shrink)

In 2017, terms such as “post-truth,” “fake news,” or “alternative facts” suddenly became part of public discourse, and almost immediately scholars began to argue about their meaning. In particular, various definitions of the concept of fake news have been put forward and critically discussed in the literature (Rini 2017; Dentith 2017; Gelfert 2018; Jaster and Lanius 2018; Mukerji 2018; Zimmermann and Kohring 2018; Fallis and Mathiesen 2019). Yet, so far, there has been little explicit reflection on the methodological underpinnings of (...) this conceptual work. Most proponents of definitional proposals appear to operate on a traditional conceptual analysis approach: The assumption seems to be that we have a firm intuitive grasp on the concept of fake news and that this puts us in a position to directly evaluate the merits of a proposed definition by evaluating its suitability in capturing this very concept. There is a striking lack of any previous problematization of methodology, as most proposals are based on this assumption by starting out to capture a set of allegedly uncontroversial cases of fake news. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories have mainly been of interest to social epistemologists in terms of whether one can be warranted in believing them. In this literature, believing a conspiracy theory is often understood to mean endorsing some conspiratorial explanation of events. I argue that, in some cases, conspiracy belief is better understood as (dis)trusting sources of claims. To demonstrate this, I show that disputes over conspiracy theories possess a distinctive tendency (but not a necessity) to generate deep disagreement arising specifically from divergent (...) attributions of trust in others. I explain this tendency in terms of agents’ desires to maintain consistency among their beliefs and avoid inquiring into their attributions of trust. Individuals who believe conspiracy theories often do not remain committed to the same conspiratorial explanations but do nonetheless remain firmly committed to attitudes of trust and distrust. By arguing that conspiracy belief often manifests as (dis)trust, I challenge a common assumption in the philosophy of conspiracy theories that conspiracy belief, understood as taking conspiracy explanations to be true, can always serve as an appropriate basis for asking when believing conspiracy theories is warranted. (shrink)

Some vaccine-hesitant people lack epistemic trust in the COVID-19 vaccine recommendation that because vaccines have been shown to be medically safe and effective, one ought to get vaccinated. Citing what I call exception information, they claim that whatever the general safety and efficacy of vaccines, the vaccines may not be safe and effective for them. Examples include parents citing information about their children's health, pregnant women's concerns about the potential adverse effects of treatment on pregnant women, young people citing their (...) relative invulnerability to extreme COVID-19 symptoms, or members of vulnerable racial groups citing epistemic injustice, such as a lack of representation in COVID-19 vaccine trials. This paper examines the extent to which a lack of epistemic trust in vaccine recommendations, based on such exemption information, is rational. (shrink)

Synthetic media generators, such as DALL-E, and synthetic media artifacts, such as deepfakes, undermine our fundamental epistemic standards and practices. Yet, the nature of their epistemic threat remains elusive. After all, fictional or distorted representations of reality are as old as photography. We argue that the novel epistemic threat of synthetic media is that, for the first time, synthetic media tools afford ordinary computer users the practicable possibility to cheaply and effortlessly create and widely share fictional worlds indistinguishable from the (...) real world or credible representations of it. We further argue that a synthetic media artifact is epistemically malignant in a given media context for a person acquainted with the context when the person is misled to confuse the version of the world depicted in it with the real world in an epistemically or morally significant way. (shrink)

A second-order conspiracy (SOC) is a conspiracy that aims to create (and typically also disseminate) a conspiracy theory. Second-order conspiracy theories (SOCT) are theories that explain the occurrence of a given conspiracy theory by appeal to a conspiracy. In this paper I argue that SOC and SOCT are useful and coherent concepts, while also having numerous philosophically interesting upshots (in terms of epistemology, explanation, and prediction). Secondly, I appeal to the nature of two specific kinds of second-order conspiracies to make (...) the case for what has been called ‘local generalism’ (Stamatiadis-Bréhier 2023a). Specifically, I focus on so-called ‘denial industries’ to argue that the structure of these second-order conspiracies allows us to infer non-accidental generalisations about the domain of conspiracy theories. Even though it is true that there is nothing epistemically problematic with the general class of conspiracy theories, there are specific subsets of conspiracy theories that warrant immediate strong suspicion (cf. Dentith 2022). By looking at the intricate mechanisms by which these denial industries operate, we can infer that the conspiracy theories that are produced by them are epistemically unwarranted. I conclude by making some exploratory remarks about what the metaphysics of second-order conspiracies would look like. (shrink)

Medical populism, a performance-based political style that orchestrates antagonistic relations between the people and medical establishments, has served as a concept for analyzing the politicization of healthcare. With its four fundamental features, that is, invoking knowledge claims contrary to medical experts’ advice, simplifying discourse, dramatizing responses to public health crises, and forging divisions, medical populism compromises our access to accurate medical or public health information. Populist leaders abuse their epistemic authority and betray public trust when they propagate false information, medical (...) or otherwise. And insofar as accurate medical or public health information is an epistemic good that we have the right to access, and not having so harms us precisely as knowers, we claim that medical populism violates our epistemic rights. (shrink)

Deepfakes are extremely realistic audio/video media. They are produced via a complex machine-learning process, one that centrally involves training an algorithm on hundreds or thousands of audio/video recordings of an object or person, S, with the aim of either creating entirely new audio/video media of S or else altering existing audio/video media of S. Deepfakes are widely predicted to have deleterious consequences (principally, moral and epistemic ones) for both individuals and various of our social practices and institutions. In this introduction (...) to the Topical Collection, I first survey existing philosophical research on deepfakes (Sects. 2 and 3). I then give an overview of the papers that comprise the Collection (Sect. 4). Finally, I conclude with remarks on a line of argument made in a number of papers in the Topical Collection: that deepfakes may cause their own demise (Sect. 5). (shrink)

In this article, we try to argue, against McIntyre’s proposal in How to talk to a science denier, that there is a relevant difference between various forms of science denialism. Specifically, we contend that there is a significant distinction to be made between those forms of denialism which deny the existence of an expert consensus (the model of which is the strategy of the tobacco companies in the 1950s) and those which deny the probatory value of such expert consensus (on (...) the basis, e.g., of conspiracy theories involving scientists). While McIntyre and others advocate for the value of communicating consensus as an effective and perfectly rational strategy against those forms of denialism which deceivingly deny the existence of scientific agreement, we argue that this approach becomes question-begging against those which deny its probatory value. Accordingly, then, we object to McIntyre’s characterization that “all science denial is basically the same” and suggest a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon. (shrink)

Deepfakes raise various concerns: risks of political destabilization, depictions of persons without consent and causing them harms, erosion of trust in video and audio as reliable sources of evidence, and more. These concerns have been the focus of recent work in the philosophical literature on deepfakes. However, there has been almost no sustained philosophical analysis of deepfakes from the perspective of concerns about honesty and dishonesty. That deepfakes are potentially deceptive is unsurprising and has been noted. But under what conditions (...) does the use of deepfakes fail to be honest? And which human agents, involved in one way or another in a deepfake, fail to be honest, and in what ways? If we are to understand better the morality of deepfakes, these questions need answering. Our first goal in this paper, therefore, is to offer an analysis of paradigmatic cases of deepfakes in light of the philosophy of honesty. While it is clear that many deepfakes are morally problematic, there has been a rising counter-chorus claiming that deepfakes are not essentially morally bad, since there might be uses of deepfakes that are not morally wrong, or even that are morally salutary, for instance, in education, entertainment, activism, and other areas. However, while there are reasons to think that deepfakes can supply or support moral goods, it is nevertheless possible that even these uses of deepfakes are dishonest. Our second goal in this paper, therefore, is to apply our analysis of deepfakes and honesty to the sorts of deepfakes hoped to be morally good or at least neutral. We conclude that, perhaps surprisingly, in many of these cases the use of deepfakes will be dishonest in some respects. Of course, there will be cases of deepfakes for which verdicts about honesty and moral permissibility do not line up. While we will sometimes suggest reasons why moral permissibility verdicts might diverge from honesty verdicts, we will not aim to settle matters of moral permissibility. (shrink)

An epistemic agent A is a false epistemic authority for others iff they falsely believe A to be in a position to help them accomplish their epistemic ends. A major divide exists between what I call "epistemic quacks", who falsely believe themselves to be relevantly competent, and "epistemic charlatans", i.e., false authorities who believe or even know that they are incompetent. Both types of false authority do not cover what Lackey (2021) calls "predatory experts": experts who systematically misuse their social-epistemic (...) status as a cover for predatory behavior. Qua experts, predatory experts are competent and thus could (and maybe sometimes do) help their clients. But should we count them as genuine epistemic authorities? No, I argue, they are false epistemic authorities because, in addition to their practical and moral misconduct, such experts systematically deceive their clients, thereby thwarting the clients’ epistemic ends. (shrink)

I. Einleitung -/- II. Das ontologische Kriterium: Meinungen und Tatsachen fallen in distinkte ontologische Kategorien. -/- III. Auf die Klassifikation der Äußerungstypen abstellende Kriterien 1. Meinungsäußerungen sind nicht wahrheitsfähig. 2. Meinungsäußerungen sind keinem Beweis zugänglich. 3. Meinungsäußerungen sind Aussagen mit abgeschwächtem Geltungsanspruch. 4. Meinungsäußerungen sind Werturteile. 5. Meinungsäußerungen zeichnen sich durch das Element des Dafürhaltens und der eigenen Stellungnahme des Sprechers aus. 6. Meinungsäußerungen messen etwas an einem vom Äußernden selbst gewählten Maßstab. 7. Meinungsäußerungen werden anders rezipiert und kognitiv prozessiert (...) als Tatsachenbehauptungen. -/- IV. Auf den Schutzzweck des Grundrechts abstellende Kriterien 1. Für eine Meinungsäußerung muss der Sprecher keine Begründung angeben (können). 2. Geschützt ist der Prozess der autonomen Meinungsbildung, der bei Tatsachenbehauptungen nicht aktiviert wird. 3. Meinungsäußerungen zielen darauf ab, andere zu beeinflussen und damit einen Beitrag zur Meinungsbildung zu leisten. 4. Nicht als Meinungsäußerungen geschützt sind erwiesen unwahre Tatsachenbehauptungen. 5. Nicht als Meinungsäußerungen geschützt sind bewusst unwahre Tatsachenbehauptungen. -/- V. Fazit . (shrink)

Why are mistaken beliefs about COVID-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only part of the differences between people in their susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more (...) susceptible to believing COVID-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US adult sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale that captures features of the current competing analyses of epistemic vice in the literature. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about COVID-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

Resumen: Una parte de la legitimación de los medios de comunicación reposa en el crédito que la ciudadanía les concede en calidad de fuentes confiables de conocimiento. En el caso de las noticias y los informativos opera la presunción de veracidad y, en menor medida, la prudencia escéptica. Palabras clave: confiabilidad, presunción de veracidad, testimonio, incredulidad crédula. Abstract: Part of the legitimacy of the media rests on the credit that citizens give them as reliable sources of knowledge. In the case (...) of news and informative programs, the presumption of veracity operates and, to a lesser extent, skeptical prudence. Keywords: reliability, presumption of veracity, testimony, credulous incredulity. (shrink)

This paper focuses on extant approaches to counteract the consumption of fake news online. Proponents of structural approaches suggest that our proneness to consuming fake news could only be reduced by reshaping the architecture of online environments. Proponents of educational approaches suggest that fake news consumers should be empowered to improve their epistemic agency. In this paper, we address a question that is relevant to this debate: namely, whether fake news consumers commit mistakes for which they can be criticized and (...) that they could easily avoid by reforming their doxastic conduct. Proponents of structural approaches, like R. Rini and B. Millar, have defended in different ways a negative answer to this question. In this paper, we criticize their views and suggest that individual users could improve on their epistemic practice by widening their information diet. (shrink)

From social media to search engines to Wikipedia, the internet is thoroughly embedded in how we produce, locate, and share knowledge around the world. Who Should We Be Online? provides an account of online knowledge that takes seriously the role of sexist, racist, transphobic, colonial, and capitalist forms of oppression. Frost-Arnold argues against analyzing internet users as a collection of identical generic people with smartphones. The novel epistemology developed in this book recognizes that we are differently embodied beings interacting within (...) systems of dominance. Our social identities and global inequalities shape who we are, who we can be online, and what we know. Tackling problems of online content moderation, fake news, and hoaxes, Frost-Arnold shows that oppressive online structures and practices help fuel ignorance. But she also reveals how the internet provides opportunities for marginalized people and activists to share knowledge online. Drawing on feminist accounts of objectivity, veritistic social epistemology, epistemologies of ignorance, virtue epistemology, and the epistemic injustice literature, this book argues for a social epistemology that values truth and objectivity, while recognizing that inequalities shape our collective ability to attain these goals. Timely and interdisciplinary, Who Should We Be Online? weaves together internet studies scholarship from across the humanities, social sciences, and computer science. Presenting case studies of moderators, imposters, tricksters, fakers, and lurkers, this book both explains the problems with our current internet ecosystem and imagines liberatory online futures. (shrink)

Our current understanding of ‘fake news’ is not in good shape. On the one hand, this category seems to be urgently needed for an adequate understanding of the epistemology in the age of the internet. On the other hand, the term has an unstable ordinary meaning and the prevalent accounts which all relate fake news to epistemically bad attitudes of the producer lack theoretical unity, sufficient extensional adequacy, and epistemic fruitfulness. I will therefore suggest an alternative account of fake news (...) that is meant as an explication rather than a traditional conceptual analysis of the term and that understands fake news solely from the consumer’s perspective. I will argue that this new account has the required theoretical unity, that it is epistemically highly fruitful, and that it is still very close to the ordinary usage. I conclude with addressing some of the main objections to this view. (shrink)

La posverdad es un fenómeno mediático referido a la tergiversación de la verdad en los medios de comunicación, especialmente por la proliferación de noticias falsas. En este artículo definiré los principales elementos de este fenómeno, los hechos que han generado su aparición, y un marco filosófico para su análisis ético profundo. Explico además por qué la simple asociación de la posverdad con la mentira es insuficiente, y planteo que la ampliación del marco conceptual para su análisis, con la introducción de (...) la idea de charlatanería desarrollada por el filósofo Harry Frankfurt, junto con la noción de emotivismo de Alasdair MacIntyre, nos pueden ayudar a entender mejor sus efectos perjudiciales. Afirmo que sin estos conceptos no es posible entender la intrínseca complejidad de la posverdad, y sus repercusiones más nocivas en la sociedad. Finalmente, muestro los principales peligros de la posverdad en la era poscovid debidos, especialmente, a la desconfianza generada por la evidente manipulación de la verdad, y la fragilidad ética y antropológica en la que se encuentra el ser humano en la actualidad. (shrink)

Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain the collective irrationality of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, such as partisanship and ideology, exposure to misinformation and conspiracy theories or the effectiveness of public messaging. This paper presents a complementary explanation to epistemic accounts of collective irrationality, focusing on the moral reasons underlying people’s decisions regarding vaccination. We argue that the moralization of COVID-19 risk mitigation measures contributed to the polarization of groups along moral values, which ultimately led to the emergence of collective irrational (...) behaviors. Collective irrationality arises from groups explicitly or implicitly endorsing values that ultimately harm both themselves and those around. The role of social media platforms in amplifying this polarization and contributing to the emergence of collective irrationality is also examined. Finally, potential strategies for addressing the moral sources of collective irrationality are discussed. (shrink)

The topic of fake news has received increased attention from philosophers since the term became a favorite of politicians (Habgood-Coote 2016; Dentith 2016). Notably missing from the conversation, however, is a discussion of fake news and conspiracy theory media as a market. This paper will take as its starting point the account of noxious markets put forward by Debra Satz (2010), and will argue that there is a pro tanto moral reason to restrict the market for fake news. Specifically, we (...) begin with Satz’s argument that restricting a market may be required when i) that market inhibits citizens from being able to stand in an equal relationship with one another, and ii) this problem cannot be solved without such direct restrictions. Our own argument then proceeds in three parts: first, we argue that the market for fake news fits Satz’s description of a noxious market; second, we argue against explanations of the proliferation of fake news that are couched in terms of “epistemic vice”, and likewise argue against prescribing critical thinking education as a solution to the problem; finally, we conclude that, in the absence of other solutions to mitigate the noxious effects of the fake news market, we have a pro tanto moral reason to impose restrictions on this market. At the end of the paper, we consider one proposal to regulate the fake news market, which involves making social media outlets potentially liable in civil court for damages caused by the fake news hosted on their websites. (shrink)

In addition to ordinary conversations among relatively small numbers of individuals, human societies have public conversations. These are diffuse, ongoing discussions about various topics, which are largely sustained by journalistic activities. They are conversations about news – what is happening now – that members of various groups (such as the residents of a certain country, a certain town, or practitioners of a certain profession) need to know about in their capacity as members of those groups, and about how to react (...) to the news. Our topic in this chapter is a type of resistance to evidence that can arise at the level of these public conversations, rather than at the level of individual agents. We call it “relevance-based resistance to evidence”. A public conversation exhibits this kind of evidence resistance when it becomes overly focused on topics that members of the group that the conversation concerns do not in fact need to know about qua members of the group – topics which are, in a word, irrelevant. We argue that the risks of such relevance-based knowledge resistance are significantly amplified by certain structural features of online discourse. (shrink)

Leading prescriptions for addressing the spread of fake news, misinformation, and other forms of epistemically toxic content online target either the platform or platform users as a single site for intervention. Neither approach attends to the intense feedback between people, posts, and platforms. Leading prescriptions boil down to the suggestion that we make social media more like traditional media, whether by making platforms take active roles as gatekeepers, or by exhorting individuals to behave more like media professionals. Both approaches are (...) impracticable and wrong. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories are currently all the rage in philosophy and broader intellectual culture. One of the most common background assumptions in the discourse on conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists exhibit certain epistemic vices in the sense of cognitive misconduct. This epistemic vice is mostly seen as a form of irrationality; the corresponding “remedy”, as suggested by some commentators, is a return to the ideals of the Enlightenment. This article argues that this idea is wrongheaded. Upon closer inspection, it becomes (...) clear that conspiracy theorists are actually motivated by the rational Enlightenment ideal of self-thinking in the first place. In contrast to the standard discourse, the article posits that conspiracism is based on a certain form of social scepticism, according to which conspiracy theorists radically mistrust a certain form of expert testimony, namely “official” statements. This form of social scepticism in turn facilitates a naive appropriation of the Enlightenment ideal of self-thinking. The article closes by drawing connections to the ethical and epistemological debate on trust and offers the pessimistic assessment that there are no easy solutions based on individual epistemic virtues. (shrink)

Fake news detection involves predicting the likelihood that a particular news article is intentionally deceptive. Arabic FND started to receive more attention in the last decade, and many detection approaches demonstrated some ability to detect fake news on multiple datasets. However, most existing approaches do not consider recent advances in natural language processing, i.e., the use of neural networks and transformers. This paper presents a comprehensive comparative study of neural network and transformer-based language models used for Arabic FND. We examine (...) the use of neural networks and transformer-based language models for Arabic FND and show their performance compared to each other. We also conduct an extensive analysis of the possible reasons for the difference in performance results obtained by different approaches. The results demonstrate that transformer-based models outperform the neural network-based solutions, which led to an increase in the F1 score from 0.83 to 0.95, and it boosted the accuracy by 16% compared to the best in neural network-based solutions. Finally, we highlight the main gaps in Arabic FND research and suggest future research directions. (shrink)

This book is the first sustained inquiry into the new epistemology of fake news. The chapters, authored by established and emerging names in the field, pursue three goals. First, to analyse the meaning and novelty of 'fake news' and related notions, such as 'conspiracy theory.' Second, to discuss the mechanics of fake news, exploring various practices that generate or promote fake news. Third, to investigate potential therapies for fake news.

This chapter introduces a novel account of fake news and explains how it differs from other definitions on the market. The account locates the fakeness of an alleged news report in two main aspects related to its production, namely that its creators do not think to have sufficient evidence in favor of what they divulge and they fail to display the appropriate attitude towards the truth of the information they share. A key feature of our analysis is that it does (...) not require that fake news must be circulated with the intention to deceive one’s audience. In this way, our account overcomes a potential limitation of the current philosophical discussion about fake news, which appears to individuate the main problem with this phenomenon in the fact that fake news consumers are misled and misinformed. In contrast, the proposed analysis shows that an additional (and perhaps equally fundamental) problem uncovered by the spread of fake news is a widespread pathological relationship with information, one on which we consume information not to satisfy our interest in the truth but to strengthen our social identities and quench our hunger for social recognition. (shrink)

Fake news can originate from an ordinary person carelessly posting what turns out to be false information or from the intentional actions of fake news factory workers, but broadly speaking it can also originate from scientific fraud. In the latter case, the article can be retracted upon discovery of the fraud. A case study shows, however, that such fake science can be visible in Google even after the article was retracted, in fact more visible than the retraction notice. We hypothesize (...) that the reason for this lies in the popularity-based logic governing Google, in particular its foundational PageRank algorithm, in conjunction with a psychological law which we refer to as the “law of retraction”: a retraction notice is typically taken to be less interesting and therefore less popular with internet users than the original content retracted. We conduct an empirical study drawing on records of articles retracted due to fraud in the Retraction Watch public database. The study tests the extent to which such retracted scientific articles are still highly ranked in Google –and more so than information about the retraction. We find, among other things, that both Google Search and Google Scholar more often than not ranked a link to the original article higher than a link indicating that the article has been retracted. Surprisingly, Google Scholar did not perform better in this regard than Google Search.We also found cases in which Google did not track the retraction of an article on the first result page at all. We conclude that both Google Search and Google Scholar run the risk of disseminating fake science through their ranking algorithms. (shrink)

This paper shows why defining „fake news“ is worthwhile and what a suitable definition of “fake news” might look like. We begin by introducing our definition of “fake news” (§2) and employ it to set fake news apart from related phenomena that are often conflated with it (§3). We then extract seven potential dimensions of the concept of fake news from the literature (§4) and compare the most representative definitions that have been proposed so far along those dimensions (§5). In (...) particular, we discuss the definitions by Rini, Gelfert, Dentith, Mukerji, and Zimmermann & Kohring, show up their merits and debits and put them in relation to ours. Although we take our definition as the starting point and argue for it on the side-lines, our primary aims are (i) to enable a systematic evaluation of prevalent definitions with respect to their extensional scope, practical utility, and conceptual transparency, (ii) to demonstrate that there is more widespread agreement than one would think on the outset, and (iii) to show (in §6) that defining “fake news” is not only far from futile, but of vital importance to confront the epistemic threats posed by fake news. (shrink)

This paper analyses the communicative and epistemic value of retweeting (and more generally of reposting content on social media). Against a naïve view, it argues that retweets are not acts of endorsement, motivating this diagnosis with linguistic data. Retweeting is instead modelled as a peculiar form of quotation, in which the reported content is indicated rather than reproduced. A relevance-theoretic account of the communicative import of retweeting is then developed, to spell out the complex mechanisms by which retweets achieve their (...) communicative goals. The last section outlines the epistemic threats posed by the increasing prevalence of retweeting on social media, linking them to the low reputational, cognitive and practical costs linked to this emerging form of communication. (shrink)

A mendacious conspiracy theorist posts a staged interview with a bogus researcher on YouTube claiming COVID-19 was intentionally released to sell vaccines. Some people believe this immediately and post to others, who believe the story immediately and pass it on. It goes viral. Posting such a fake report is unethical, of course. But is it stupid and irrational that people believed the fake report? How can we minimise the spread of false or misleading information? Is it by entrusting to a (...) supervisory ministry or organisation the task of adjudicating on what content in the public sphere is true and educating people to willfully refrain from believing the first thing they hear? Currently, such a task is attempted by Facebook, Google and Twitter by ostracising people from social media platforms that have for most people become their community. But is there a possibility that this could be genuinely systematic? (shrink)

The claim that we live in a post-truth era has led to a significant body of work across different disciplines exploring the phenomenon. Many have sought to investigate the role of fake news in bringing about the post-truth era. While this work is important, the narrow focus on this issue runs the risk of giving the impression that it is mainly new forms of media that are to blame for the post-truth phenomenon. In this paper, we call attention to the (...) ways in which journalistic practices in traditional forms of media also play an important role in contributing to a post-truth environment. We will do so by focusing on one particular practice common in news journalism. False balance involves presenting two sides of a debate as more equal than is justified by the evidence. We will argue that although false balance does not constitute fake news, it does contribute to an environment in which truth is devalued. By obscuring what counts as evidence and who qualifies as an authority, false balance legitimizes post-truth attitudes. We finish by outlining the virtues that journalists should develop in order to guard against false balance. While fake news is made more likely when journalists possess the vices of dishonesty, prejudice or corruption, we argue that focusing too much on guarding against these vices may actually make false balance more likely. In order to be responsible gatekeepers and to avoid false balance, journalists must also develop the virtues of wisdom, vigilance, courage, care and justice. (shrink)

It is often assumed that trolling is an intentional action. The aim of the paper is to argue for a form of unintentional trolling. Firstly, we outline minimal conditions for intentional actions. Secondly, an unintentional trolling example is introduced. Thirdly, we will show that in some cases, an utterance can be expressive, while it is perceived as descriptive. On the basis of the justification-suppression model, we argue that the introduced trolling example is such a case. In order to bypass social (...) sanctions for expressing prejudices, agents unintentionally express their prejudices through stories that appear to be descriptive. Thereby, the characterized behavior does not fulfill the minimal conditions for intentional action. Fourthly, we give criteria that can be used to identify unintentional trolls. Finally, after unintentional trolling is analyzed, the trolls’ behavioral goals are considered. In conclusion, an analysis of unintentional trolling is given, which has explanatory benefits in contrast to the classic intentional trolling concepts. (shrink)

“Spraying chlorine or alcohol on skin kills viruses in the body!” “Hand dryers kill coronavirus.” “Coronavirus kills everyone.”[i] These are just some examples of misleading content that are being spread during the COVID-19 pandemic. With fear around the virus building as the number of cases grows, people are taking advantage of the internet for research. Many posts are drowning out the scientific facts and evidence that others depend on for essential health information, such as prevention methods or symptoms of the (...) disease. Major social media companies have stated that they are working toward limiting the spread of false and deceiving misinformation like fake news because social media platforms are the medium predominantly responsible.[ii] However, this strategy of allowing the corporations to bear the responsibility for taking down misleading content is having limited success. Given that social networking companies can only do so much, the U.S. should consider imposing more stringent regulations and consequences relating to fake news and false information, especially during times of an epidemic or disaster. Health claims should not be restricted unless they would cause imminent harm or have been thoroughly researched and disproven. This article’s firm stance refers to dangerous claims and claims proven to be false. The number of COVID-19 cases has been increasing at a wild pace, especially in the United States.[iii] Unfortunately, the amount of fake news relating to the disease has also been spreading like wildfire. Disconnect between scientific consensus and members of the public is increasingly on the rise in the divided political climate of today.[iv] A study using trending Twitter hashtags found that 24.8 percent of Twitter posts included fake/false information and 17.4 percent included unverifiable information, demonstrating a significant amount of content found on social media platforms is unreliable.[v] Unfortunately, fake news or misinformation on social media is allowed to propagate without constraints, does not entail any curation or peer review, and does not require any professional verifications.[vi] The lack of oversight and government action makes the spread and amplification of misinformation by the “information silos and echo chambers of personally tailored content on social media ideal” for those posting it, particularly during times of public tension like the current COVID-19 epidemic.[vii] As a result, people are starting to follow “unfounded recommendations to prevent infection by taking in excessive amounts of Vitamin C and avoiding spicy foods.”[viii] While suggestions of taking Vitamin C and avoiding spicy foods are relatively harmless and not worthy of censor, some unfounded suggestions, such as snorting cocaine to battle the effects of the virus, are harmful. A prime example of the potential negative impact of misinformation on social media involves mixing sodium chlorite solution with citric acid, generating chlorine dioxide solution. The instructions then state for this powerful bleaching agent to be consumed, promising antimicrobial, antiviral, and antibacterial actions. The US Food and Drug Administration has previously served severe warnings that chlorine dioxide causes severe vomiting, life-threatening low blood pressure, and acute liver failure.[ix] The world's largest social media platforms are said to have been pulling out all the stops to “combat the wave of false reports, hacking attempts, and outright lies about COVID-19.”[x] In an effort to combat fraudulent and harmful content on their platforms, companies signed a joint statement which states that they will “elevate authoritative content on our platforms, as well as share critical updates in coordination with global government health agencies.”[xi] As a result, Facebook and Twitter stated that they will work to ban content about coronavirus that can cause harm. Google is imposing similar actions stating that the company formed a response team that would work to remove misinformation and promote accurate information from health agencies. However, there are doubts as to whether companies are able to handle the so-called “infodemic.”[xii] According to Newsguard, a site that ranks websites by trustworthiness, "health care hoax sites" received more than 142 times as much social-media engagement in the past 90 days as the websites for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization combined.[xiii] In other words, posts from the WHO and the CDC were considerably eclipsed by hoax and conspiracy theory sites: several hundred thousand engagements versus over 52 million.[xiv] Of course, the degree to which the truth is eclipsed might be overstated because people can get access to information from the CDC and WHO through other websites such as online newspapers, university websites, or even good-willed social media posts. However, people visiting the websites that are not trustworthy likely follow links to more of the same and are not in the habit of verifying with legitimate sources putting them at risk. The abundance of online platforms that make use of information from the CDC and WHO to slightly tweak the information can lead people to false content as well. The sheer amount of information makes it impossible to track down all such content, especially since some are in private social media groups which are much harder to track. Simply put, spreading more factual information and taking down other content is not enough to prevent the extant “infodemic.” Currently, other nations such as South Korea are imposing strict guidelines relating to fake news being spread about COVID-19. In South Korea, the cyber unit of a national police agency is “stamping out” false information and is stating those spreading fake news relating to COVID-19 will be prosecuted.[xv] The Korean National Police Agency stated that it planned to conduct investigations including arrests. The prosecutor’s office also stated that it would respond.[xvi] Singapore and Germany have been taking part in investigations relating to fake news and misinformation. Germany passed a law in October 2017 that requires social media to remove fake news promptly.[xvii] Part of the US public health sphere is at a high risk of being misinformed and harmed as a result fake news and misinformation. When we discuss imposing restrictions on any type of information including misleading information, we consider whether our first amendment rights -- freedom of speech and freedom of the press -- are violated. A recent study on fake news under the First Amendment states that “permitting the government to tell society what is and is not true is treacherous, for it vests officials temporarily in charge of the country with the power to twist narratives to serve their own purposes. That is disturbingly akin to the function of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Its purpose was to dictate and protect the government's version of reality.”[xviii] In other words, the First Amendment exists to allow free exchange of opinions and facts whether the government verifies them or not. It also permits the people to have a say about the government and its officials. Government stepping in to force social media to pull content must be narrowly construed to pull only those claims that are dangerous or proven false. One may argue people just need to be more responsible and more cautious about the information they collect from the internet. However, it is important to note that fake news and/or misinformation, especially during times of an epidemic, can cause people with clouded judgment to engage in actions that put them at a great risk. These examples include panic buying that can prevent other people who are in dire need of supplies from retrieving them or a dangerous intake of bleach that can result in poisoning.[xix] As seen by the misleading content on social media, it is simply not enough, and seemingly impossible, to just take down the content. There must be a threat of consequences that will discourage people from posting potentially harmful content. Otherwise, there will be a continuous production leading to an increase in fake news, and even wiggle room for politicians to politicize a pandemic. False harmful publications are actionable if they were made with “knowledge of falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth.”[xx] With the increasing presence of COVID-19, we as a community must take every precaution and step necessary to prevent further damage. A good starting point is to prevent fake news and other misleading content that can inflict harm on individuals’ and the general public’s well-being. The current methods set forth by Google and Facebook are strictly limited, leaving room for malicious internet users to spread fake information. Imagine, for example, the spread of news such as the government giving the ‘OK’ for people to go out in the public. The news would put the public at risk of getting infected, further spreading the disease, and slowing down efforts to contain the pandemic. The US, which currently lacks a specific legal action to prevent the spread of deceiving and potentially dangerous information through social media, needs to take a more rigorous role in protecting its citizens during serious public health disasters. Heraclitus once said, “justice will overtake fabricators of lies.” There seems no better time than now for justice to protect the American public. April 2, 2020 [i] Tim Newman, “Coronavirus myths explored,” Medical News Today, March 23, 2020, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-myths-explored. [ii] Sabrina Tavernise, “As Fake News Spreads Lies, More Readers Shrug at the Truth,” The New York Times, December 6, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/us/fake-news-partisan-republican-democrat.html. [iii] Nicole Chavez, Holly Yan, Madeline Holcombe, “US has more known cases of coronavirus than any other country,” CNN Health, March 27, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/health/coronavirus-thousand-deaths-thursday/index.html. [iv] Areeb Mian, Shujhat Khan, “The Spread of Misinformation,” BMC Medicine 18, no. 89, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12916-020-01556-3. [v] Ramez Kouzy et. al., “Coronavirus Goes Viral: Quantifying the COVID-19 Misinformation Epidemic on Twitter,” Cureus 12, no. 3, https://www.cureus.com/articles/28976-coronavirus-goes-viral-quantifying-the-covid-19-misinformation -epidemic-on-twitter. [vi] Ramez Kouzy et. al., “Coronavirus Goes Viral: Quantifying the COVID-19 Misinformation Epidemic on Twitter,” Cureus 12, no. 3, https://www.cureus.com/articles/28976-coronavirus-goes-viral-quantifying-the-covid-19-misinformation -epidemic-on-twitter. [vii] Ramez Kouzy, et. al., “Coronavirus Goes Viral: Quantifying the COVID-19 Misinformation Epidemic on Twitter,” Cureus 12, no. 3, https://www.cureus.com/articles/28976-coronavirus-goes-viral-quantifying-the-covid-19-misinformation -epidemic-on-twitter. [viii] Robert H. Shmerling, “Be careful where you get your news about coronavirus,” Harvard Health Publishing, February 1, 2020, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/be-careful-where-you-get-your-news-about-coronavirus-20200201188 01. [ix] Areeb Mian, Shujhat Khan, “The Spread of Misinformation,” BMC Medicine 18, no. 89, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12916-020-01556-3. [x] Tyler Sonnemaker, “Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, and Twitter just said they’re working together to fight coronavirus misinformation,” Business Insider, March 16, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-youtube-microsoft-reddit-twitter-fight-coronavirus-c ovid19-misinformation-2020-3. [xi] Tyler Sonnemaker, “Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, and Twitter just said they’re working together to fight coronavirus misinformation,” Business Insider, March 16, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-youtube-microsoft-reddit-twitter-fight-coronavirus-c ovid19-misinformation-2020-3. [xii] Tyler Sonnemaker, “Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, and Twitter just said they’re working together to fight coronavirus misinformation,” Business Insider, March 16, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-youtube-microsoft-reddit-twitter-fight-coronavirus-c ovid19-misinformation-2020-3. [xiii] Areeb Mian, Shujhat Khan, “The Spread of Misinformation,” BMC Medicine 18, no. 89, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12916-020-01556-3. [xiv] Areeb Mian, Shujhat Khan, “The Spread of Misinformation,” BMC Medicine 18, no. 89, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12916-020-01556-3. [xv] Justin McCurry, “South Korea cracks down on fake news about spread of coronavirus,” The Guardian, January 29, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/30/south-korea-cracks-down-on-fake-news-about-spread-of-c oronavirus. [xvi] Ji-Young Lee, “Severe Lung Damage even after Treatment of Coronavirus?,” Jungang Ilbo, February 27, 2020, https://news.joins.com/article/23717147. [xvii] Ahran Park, Kyu Ho Youm, “Fake News from a Legal Perspective: The United States and South Korea Compared,” Southwestern Journal of International Law 25, : 100-119, https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/sjlta25&div=8&id=&page=. [xviii] Clay Calvert et. al., “Fake News and the First Amendment: Reconciling a Disconnect Between Theory and Doctrine,” University of Cincinnati Law Review 86, no. 1, https://scholarship.law.uc.edu/uclr/vol86/iss1/3. [xix] John P. A. Ioannidis, “Coronavirus disease 2019: the harms of exaggerated information and non-evidence-based measure,” European Journal of Clinical Investigation https://doi.org/10.1111/eci.13222. [xx] N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279-80. (shrink)

The world is swimming in misinformation. Conflicting messages bombard us every day with news on everything from politics and world events to investments and alternative health. The daily paper, nightly news, websites, and social media each compete for our attention and each often insist on a different version of the facts. Inevitably, we have questions: Who is telling the truth? How would we know? How did we get here? What can we do? Beyond Fake News answers these and other queries. (...) It offers a technological and market-based explanation for how our informational environment became so polluted. It shows how purveyors of news often have incentives to mislead us, and how consumers of information often have incentives to be misled. And it chronicles how, as technology improves and the regulatory burdens drop, our information-scape becomes ever more littered with misinformation. Beyond Fake News argues that even when we really want the truth, our minds are built in such a way so as to be incapable of grasping many facts, and blind spots mar our view of the world. But we can do better, both as individuals and as a society. As individuals, we can improve the accuracy of our understanding of the world by knowing who to trust and recognizing our limitations. And as a society, we can take important steps to reduce the quantity and effects of misinformation. (shrink)

This study examines the potential of fake news to produce effects on social media engagement as well as the moderating role of education and government approval. We report on a 2x2x2 online experiment conducted in Romania (N=813), in which we manipulated the level of facticity of a news story, its valence, and intention to deceive. Results show that ideologically driven news with a negative valence (rather than fabricated news or other genres, such as satire and parody) have a greater virality (...) potential. However, neither the level of education nor government approval moderate this effect. Additionally, both positive and negative ideologically driven news stories enhance the probability that people will sign a document to support the government (i. e., potential for political engagement on social media). These latter effects are moderated by government approval: Lower levels of government approval lead to less support for the government on social media, as a consequence of fake news exposure. (shrink)

‘Fake news’ has become an increasingly common refrain in public discourse, though the term itself has several uses, at least one of which constitutes Frankfurtian bullshit. After examining what sorts of fake news appeals do and do not count as bullshit, I discuss strategies for overcoming our openness to such bullshit. I do so by drawing a parallel between openness to bullshit and naïve skepticism—one’s willingness to reject the concept of truth on unsupported or ill-considered grounds—and suggest that this parallel (...) indicates three principles for how we ought to combat our openness to fake news and other bullshit. First, the root causes of bullshit openness are not monolithic; we should adopt anti-bullshit strategies in recognition of this fact. Second, our efforts to overcome bullshit openness should be collaborative efforts to create an environment that allows for sustained interrogation of our bullshit openness, rather than a confrontational provision of contrary evidence, despite the fact that such strategies are more time-intensive. Third, social media is unlikely to be a fertile ground on which we will make meaningful progress in the fight against bullshit because of the inherent nature of social media platforms as spaces for short, declarative, confrontational claims. (shrink)