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Post-truth, Fake News: Viral Modernity and Higher Education
Abstract
Editors’ introduction and presentation of the essays.
... Humans do not have access to truth in the world of metaphysics. Hans Valhingers developed a whole set of "fietionalion" ideas based on Kant's theory (Rider et al., 2018). It stands for post-truth sensibility and argues that philosophy seems to be the most post-truthful of all these fields, where 'reality' is a movement between the poles of fiction and hypothesis and never has a strong sense of truth (Rider et al., 2018). ...
... Hans Valhingers developed a whole set of "fietionalion" ideas based on Kant's theory (Rider et al., 2018). It stands for post-truth sensibility and argues that philosophy seems to be the most post-truthful of all these fields, where 'reality' is a movement between the poles of fiction and hypothesis and never has a strong sense of truth (Rider et al., 2018). ...
... Then when we get the sensation, we sum up and analyze the information through a rational and logical pathway with elements of personal bias and positioning. Post-truth implies subjectivity guided by human thought rather than objectivity as the basis of perception (Rider et al., 2018). And the values of human subjectivity can easily be consensual, owing to modern technology. ...
... However, the PISA study shows that there is room for improvement (Schleicher 2019). While the internet offers access to invaluable information, the propagation of "fake news" has become a worrying issue (Brossard and Scheufele 2013;Rider and Peters 2018;Vosoughi et al. 2018). Additionally, Bavel and Pereira (2018) argue that our increased access to information has isolated us in ideological bubbles where we mostly encounter information that reflects our own opinions and values. ...
... It does not appear realistic to expect this of 19-year-old students, and we will discuss below how ignoring emotions in opinion building processes might in fact increase their influence. Rider and Peters (2018) discuss free thinking, and Legg (2018) stresses how social media could lead users to avoid encountering any viewpoints or arguments that contradict their own, discussing how professional thinkers and writers seek better opinions by confronting others' opinions. In her final line, she encourages readers to "[listen] well to those with contrary opinions-even those who promote them most aggressively-since, in the epistemic as opposed to the political space, as ever, 'the [only] solution to poor opinions is more opinions'" (p. ...
Bioscientific advances raise numerous new ethical dilemmas. Neuroscience research opens possibilities of tracing and even modifying human brain processes, such as decision-making, revenge, or pain control. Social media and science popularization challenge the boundaries between truth, fiction, and deliberate misinformation, calling for critical thinking (CT). Biology teachers often feel ill-equipped to organize student debates that address sensitive issues, opinions, and emotions in classrooms. Recent brain research confirms that opinions cannot be understood as solely objective and logical and are strongly influenced by the form of empathy. Emotional empathy engages strongly with salient aspects but blinds to others’ reactions while cognitive empathy allows perspective and independent CT. In order to address the complex socioscientific issues (SSIs) that recent neuroscience raises, cognitive empathy is a significant skill rarely developed in schools. We will focus on the processes of opinion building and argue that learners first need a good understanding of methods and techniques to discuss potential uses and other people’s possible emotional reactions. Subsequently, in order to develop cognitive empathy, students are asked to describe opposed emotional reactions as di- lemmas by considering alternative viewpoints and values. Using a design-based-research paradigm, we propose a new learning design method for independent critical opinion building based on the development of cognitive empathy. We discuss an example design to illustrate the generativity of the method. The collected data suggest that students developed decentering competency and scientific methods literacy. Generalizability of the design principles to enhance other CT designs is discussed.
Article is openaccess
http://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-020-00154-2
... With increasing influence of illiberalism, freedom should not be considered or interpreted lightly. Post-truth contexts provide grounds for altright movements to capture and pervert notions of freedom of speech, making universities battlefields of politicised emotions and expressions (Peters et al., 2019). In societies facing these pressures around the world, academic freedom has never been challenged as much as it is today (Gibbs, 2019). ...
... With increasing influence of illiberalism, freedom should not be considered or interpreted lightly. Post-truth contexts provide grounds for alt-right movements to capture and pervert notions of freedom of speech, making universities battlefields of politicised emotions and expressions (Peters et al., 2019). In societies facing these pressures around the world, academic freedom has never been challenged as much as it is today (Gibbs, 2019). ...
With increasing influence of illiberalism, freedom should not be considered or interpreted lightly. Post-truth contexts provide grounds for alt-right movements to capture and pervert notions of freedom of speech, making universities battlefields of politicised emotions and expressions (Peters et al., Citation2019). In societies facing these pressures around the world, academic freedom has never been challenged as much as it is today (Gibbs, Citation2019). As Peters and colleagues note (2019), conceptualisations of ‘facts’ and ‘evidences’ are politically, socially, and epistemically reconstructed in post-truth contexts. At the same time, with intelligence commodified, reified or marginalised, freedom of speech and of mobility can entail fights for entitlements, or escapes from local responsibilities (Calitz, Citation2018; Lo, Citation2019). The decline and corruptions of democratic free speech and academic freedom, or the absence of forces to defend them, are thus serious challenges. These challenges grow as the competition of ideas, sometimes under the rubric of academic freedom, often implies the power struggle and questioning of statuses in the so-called ‘marketplace of ideas’. Competition as a value invoked in some conceptualisations of freedom, becomes more important than human dignity, which was originally supposed to expand and strengthen under democratic conceptions of freedom in higher education (Macfarlane, Citation2016). What had been happening to freedoms, of speech, teaching, and learning, across different subject positions and cultures of higher education, remains largely underexplored, as alt-right movements, neoliberalism and illiberalism, and post-truthism values and orientations expand.
... (Webb, 2012, p. 597). In this paper we explore what happens to critical utopia as a system situated within the current postdigital , globally networked (Castells, 2001), post-truth (Peters et al., 2018), proto-fascist (Giroux, 2019b) society. We then move to utopia as process and examine potential directions for reinvention of critical pedagogy in and for the contemporary postdigital context. ...
... Webb warns that such a formulation "is the kind of 'bad' utopianism (the educator leading the masses to redemption with his or her prophetic utopian vision) that contemporary educational theorists warn against" (Webb, 2012, p. 602). While it is easy to agree that the notion of a prophet-educator is probably not the best idea, our age of anti-intellectualism and post-truth does require certain 'blueprints' and 'prescriptions' (see Peters et al., 2018). Blueprint one: scientists know what they are talking about. ...
Critical pedagogy is in crisis. To address this crisis, this paper reinvents Paulo Freire’s concept of utopia in and for our age of the Anthropocene. Understood as a system, postdigital critical utopia provides us with normative foundations and returns agency from invisible data and algorithms to human beings. Understood as a process, postdigital critical utopia unmasks the myth of neutrality and adds an important element of myth, religion, ritual, and faith. Understood as an orientation, postdigital critical utopia needs to be balanced by dystopia, integrate environmental considerations, and act with a combination of epistemical curiosity and hope. Theoretical and practical attempts at introducing advanced technology to reimagine new utopias now take place in media theory, hacking, activism, and small pockets of the academia. To transcend its own crisis and remain relevant, contemporary critical pedagogy movement must urgently join these attempts. However, catching up with technological development is only the tip of a much larger iceberg. In order to take the lead in processes of modernization, critical pedagogy movement needs to actively develop utopian visions and techno-administrative systems which may support these visions.
... Post-truth society arises as a new setting and a new challenge with a global effect (P. J. Lor, 2018;Peters et al., 2018;Cosentino, 2020). As a consequence of information disorder, mainly the social media information environment, new consuming behaviors are the grounds of post-truth: "The overconsumption of information fuelled by the internet has produced a so-called 'post-truth' society in which people consume information that reaffirms their pre-existing beliefs and ideologies rather than attempting the difficult task of identifying the truth" (De Paor & Heravi, 2020, p. 1). ...
This study's purpose is to systematically review the literature to identify the most recent library practices against fake news. Previous findings showed most studies emphasize academic libraries practices and are mainly focused on information literacy instruction. This article updates prior research aiming to acknowledge the tangible practices of libraries, discuss their efficiency, and continue a categorization of those practices. It was performed a systematic literature review of the last 12 months (October 2020-September 2021) to retrieve the most recent library practices. After the extraction, with a final set of 17 documents, a multi-step qualitative analysis, and a categorization were developed. The current debate is still around information literacy strategies that intend to reiterate an authority-based source evaluation versus the challenge to recognize an emotional-based reaction to
... However, the fact that philosophers are wrestling today with the concept of 'post-truth' (Peters et al., 2018) -and the operation of conspiracy-thinking as a truth-procedure, in particular -means that what counts as truth, or more importantly, by what procedure or procedures we can and should arrive at truth, has become a problem. This is a good thing. ...
... Moreover, if we search for silver linings, COVID-19 could burst the post truth bubble (Wendy 2020). It is an ideal medium for hype, exaggeration, falsehood, lies and gossip that are characteristic of the age of post-truth (Peters et al., 2018). Therefore, the clusters bubble, era and pandemic signals towards the same type of hype, exaggeration and falsehood hinted by Peters in his study. ...
In the backdrop of the emergence of CT during the critical days of the pandemic, the discourse of online CT goes unchallenged and becoming the part of mundane beliefs. The present study investigates the language/discourse of selected CT online newspaper stories related to the COVID 19 pandemic and compare it with truth based covid-19 stories. I have used corpus linguistics tool AntConc 3.5.8 (Anthony, 2019) to extract the keywords of the selected newspaper stories-as they are lexically signposts to reveal the most characteristics themes or ‘aboutness’ of the text. A keywords list generated by AntConc of the conspiracy corpus include , , , , , , >claims>, , and . While the truth based corpus generated , , , , , and as keyword. A keyword list is a handy tool for directing investigators to identify significant lexical differences between both texts and these keywords were further investigated through cluster/N-Grams, concordance and finally for collocates in order to get a more realistic perspective of the keywords generated. Further results showed conspiracy, claims and psychological has co-occurred in the conspiracy corpus and truth and post truth co-occurred in truth based corpus.
... The lines between truth and lies are blurred. This condition is called the post-truth era (Peters et al., 2018). ...
This research was based on the reality of the use of Indonesian language on social media that was vulgar, destructive, full of blasphemy, scorn, sarcasm, and tended to be provocative. This condition has destructive power because it spreads very quickly and is capable of arousing very strong emotions. This article aimed at presenting the results of research on the analysis model of impolite Indonesian language use. This model was developed from tracing status on social media which included language impoliteness in 2019. The novelty of this analysis model was that it involved a factor of power that allowed the appearance of such impolite speech. Therefore, this model is composed of several stages. First, presenting text in the form of spoken, written, and visual texts. Second, transcribing texts. Third, interpreting language impoliteness. At the interpreting stage, the impoliteness of the speeches was carried out by: (1) analyzing the contexts, (2) analyzing the power, (3) analyzing the dictions and language styles that contained impoliteness, (4) analyzing ethical speech acts, and (5) manipulating language politeness. From these language manipulation efforts, they were made to habituate language discipline to create a polite language society.
... Since then, the Editors' Collective has published many experimental articles on diverse themes from the philosophy of academic publishing (Peters, Rider, Hyvönen, & Besley, 2018) to collective writing , and the format of the collective article has spread into different research communities (see Cormier et al., 2019; together with associated intellectual challenges . Yet, by now, no one in these communities has yet tried to develop a collective article with graduate students, and Michael Peters has again taken the lead in opening research directions new and unexplored. ...
... Since then, the Editors' Collective has published many experimental articles on diverse themes from the philosophy of academic publishing (Peters, Rider, Hyvönen, & Besley, 2018) to collective writing , and the format of the collective article has spread into different research communities (see Cormier et al., 2019; together with associated intellectual challenges . Yet, by now, no one in these communities has yet tried to develop a collective article with graduate students, and Michael Peters has again taken the lead in opening research directions new and unexplored. ...
... Above all, fake news is a serious threat to information ecosystems, as truth is no longer related to authority, expertise or real facts, but to interpretation, perception, emotions and sentiments (Cooke, 2018). Post-truth arises as a new setting and a new challenge with a global effect (Cosentino, 2020;Lor, 2018;Peters et al., 2018). Are librarians' ready to intervene in patrons' cognitive sphere? ...
This study's purpose is to systematically review the literature to identify the most recent library practices against fake news. Libraries are perceived as an important player against the fake news phenomenon. However, this role is often cornered in a positive self-perception of the work of librarians. This article investigates the tangible practices of libraries, discusses their efficiency, and provides a categorization of those practices. It was performed a systematic literature review of the last three years to retrieve the most recent library practices. After the extraction, with a final set of 27 documents, a multi-step qualitative analysis and a categorization were developed. Findings show most studies emphasize academic libraries practices and are mainly focused on information literacy instruction. The current debate is around strategies that intend to reiterate an authority-based source evaluation versus the challenge to recognize an emotional-based reaction to fake news in a post-truth world, and the need to scout libraries' new routes.
... Not only the belief in societal progress driven by science and rationality but also the belief that professions play a leading role therein may seem somewhat naive from today's point of view. One could argue that the general decline of the normative power of truth and rationality in public discourses and the corresponding rise of mistrust in science and academia we have been witnessing might indicate a final turning away from basic ideas of modernity (Peters et al., 2018). In the case of the professions, a substantial change in their societal role and importance has been discussed for some time now, and there are theoretically conclusive positions that even see the professions as a purely transitional phenome-non (Kurtz, 2002;Stichweh, 2006). ...
This volume gives theoretical and practical insights in international and comparative research in the field of adult and continuing education. The 16 contributions of this volume give three perspectives on international and comparative adult education. The first perspective focuses on the question how internationalisation and comparative adult and continuing education can be taught. The second perspective gives insights into the results of comparative research that has been conducted throughout a two-week Winter School that took place in February 2019 in Würzburg. The third perspective complements the two perspectives with insights into international projects and practices in adult and continuing education. The authors of this volume are contributing to the transnational Winter School International and comparative studies in adult and continuing education in Würzburg, Germany since 2014.
... In social digital networks, viral media does not discriminate between information and knowledge: it can generate and circulate information irrespective of its truth value. It is an ideal medium for hype, exaggeration, falsehood, lies and gossip that are characteristic of the age of post-truth (Peters et al., 2018). Where knowledge on the standard account requires conditions of belief, truth and justification, information requires none of these conditions and misinformation and disinformation are fundamental categories of information. ...
... Postojem umožňujícím rozlišit pravdu a fake news, dezinformace od informací, které jsou pravdivé, kvalitní a relevantní. (Richardson, 2017, Ireton & Posetti, 2018Peters et al., 2018) Dalším průběžným závěrem našich úvah tedy může být následující tvrzení: Digitálně kompetentní člověk je schopen kritického myšlení, s nímž přistupuje ke každé své činnosti. Je schopen se systematicky vzdělávat a příležitosti pro vzdělávání sám aktivně vyhledávat. ...
... In social digital networks, viral media does not discriminate between information and knowledge: it can generate and circulate information irrespective of its truth value. It is an ideal medium for hype, exaggeration, falsehood, lies and gossip that are characteristic of the age of post-truth (Peters et al., 2018). Where knowledge on the standard account requires conditions of belief, truth and justification, information requires none of these conditions and misinformation and disinformation are fundamental categories of information. ...
... While knowledge production and dissemination outside the classroom rapidly evolves and radically transforms, professors rarely encourage their students to make genuine contributions to the development and production of knowledge, outside of thesis writing. It is no wonder as the knowledge economy transforms that education in this context appears oldfashioned, and increasingly irrelevant in many parts of the world in light of late-stage capitalism, post-truth, and their values (Jackson, 2020;Peters et al., 2018, Peters, Besley, Jandri c, & Zhu, 2020. ...
This paper is an experiment in collective writing conducted in Autumn 2019 at the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University. The experiment involves 12 international masters' students reading the course based on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), their professor Michael Peters, visiting professor Petar Jandrić, and a mix of senior Chinese and Western scholars. To successfully complete the course, the students were required to produce a 3000-word paper of publishable quality. As part of this writing process we decided to engage in the experiment of collective writing where we aimed to produce a single paper consisting of the abstracts. This collective paper was developed in 7 steps. (1) Students submitted their 250-word abstracts. (2) Students were introduced into the methodology of collective writing, and 2 student-editors – Ogunniran Moses Oladele and Benjamin Green – volunteered to work on the paper. (3) Michael Peters wrote the introduction. (4) Abstracts were expanded to 500 words and integrated into a single document. (5) Petar Jandrić began to edit the paper and write a conclusion. (6) Students presented their abstracts in the class, where Michael Peters and Petar Jandrić provided direct feedback. (6) Revised abstracts were again integrated into a single document by student editors, and proofread / copy-edited in several exchanges with the instructors (7) The paper was subject to the process of open review, and the reviewer's comments were included in the paper. Resulting from months of collective work, the final paper provides a wide range of views ad perspectives to the question of education as a part of the BRI initiative.
... A recent and quickly growing literature explores how this post-truth era has emerged, and makes explicit its potential consequences (see Lewandowsky, Ecker, & Cook, 2017;McIntyre, 2018;Neimark et al., 2019;Rider & Peters, 2018). Some have highlighted the need for scientific research into misinformation itself and its consequences (Lewandowsky et al., 2017). ...
In what seems to be a “post-truth” era this paper argues that management theory development is necessary to provide insights into how to manage the academic research, or discovery system, itself, as it no longer seems clear that its explicit purpose, as per Lakatos’s argument, is the development of theory that predicts “novel facts.” This logic questions the extent to which the social science research system is inherently innovative. To explore these issues, the topic of pseudoscience is used as a heuristic, in order to derive an understanding of how the purpose of the discovery system seems to be understood by different stakeholders. In doing so, this paper explores how researchers may need to manage their research fields to negotiate contested academic terrain and develop what Lakatos refers to as progressive research programmes. It is argued that hypervigilance and overly conservative gatekeeping in response to threats of pseudoscience can run deep in the structure of academic engagement, contributing to a paradigm of constrained innovation. Drawing from post-normal science theory, a conceptual framework is identified for how these problems might be addressed by a focus on the development of scalability in the research process itself, without compromising rigor.
... For example, the political success of leaders such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro are often explained by their ability to manipulate social media (e.g. Peters et al. 2018), while the same argument is not used in relation to more established political figures, such as Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel, despite the fact that they have large resources to put their message across over a multitude of platforms. ...
... These instances of cognitive dissonance further raise the likelihood of Russian influence operators being present. Several scholars (Rider and Peters, 2018;Fuchs, 2017;Kaminska, et al., 2017) have shown how Russian influence operators exploit precisely this type of cognitive dissonance to persuade individual social media users that their values are under attack, cultivating and advancing polarization and disparity. This breakdown of American's sense of community was and continues to be the purpose of the Russian social media influence campaign targeting the West (Giles, 2016;Nissen, 2015). ...
Political discourse on social media is seen by many as polarized, vitriolic and permeated by falsehoods and misinformation. Political operators have exploited all of these aspects of the discourse for strategic purposes, most famously during the Russian social media influence campaign during the 2016 presidential election in the United States and current, similar efforts targeting the U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020. The results of the social media study presented in this paper presents evidence that political influence through manipulation of social media discussions is no longer exclusive to political debate but can now also be found in pop culture. Specifically, this study examines a collection of tweets relating to a much-publicized fan dispute over the Star Wars franchise film Episode VII: The Last Jedi. This study finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments. The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation. The results of this study show that among those who address The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson directly on Twitter to express their dissatisfaction, more than half are bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists using the debate to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality. A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls. The paper concludes that while it is only a minority of Twitter accounts that tweet negatively about The Last Jedi, organized attempts at politicizing the pop culture discourse on social media for strategic purposes are significant enough that users should be made aware of these measures, so they can act accordingly.
... These instances of cognitive dissonance further raise the likelihood of Russian influence operators being present. Several scholars (Rider and Peters, 2018;Fuchs, 2017;Kaminska et al., 2017) have shown how Russian influence operators exploit precisely this type of cognitive dissonance to persuade individual social media users that their values are under attack, cultivating and advancing polarization and disparity. This breakdown of American's sense of community was and continues to be the purpose of the Russian social media influence campaign targeting the West (Giles, 2016;Nissen, 2015). ...
Political discourse on social media is seen by many as polarized, vitriolic and permeated by falsehoods and misinformation. Political operators have exploited all of these aspects of the discourse for strategic purposes, most famously during the Russian social media influence campaign during the 2016 Presidential election in the United States and current, similar efforts targeting the U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020. The results of the social media study presented in this paper presents evidence that political influence through manipulation of social media discussions is no longer exclusive to political debate but can now also be found in pop culture. Specifically, this study examines a collection of tweets relating to a much-publicized fan dispute over the Star Wars franchise film Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. The study finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments. The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation. The results of the study show that among those who address The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson directly on Twitter to express their dissatisfaction, more than half are bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists using the debate to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality. A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls. The paper concludes that while it is only a minority of Twitter accounts that tweet negatively about The Last Jedi, organized attempts at politicizing the pop culture discourse on social media for strategic purposes are significant enough that users should be made aware of these measures, so they can act accordingly.
Background
Artificial intelligence (AI) applications have been implemented across all levels of education, with the rapid developments of chatbots and AI language models, like ChatGPT, demonstrating the urgent need to conceptualize the key debates and their implications for a new era of learning and assessment. This adoption occurs in a context where AI is dramatically remapping “the human,” the purposes of schooling, and pedagogy.
Focus of Study
The paper examines how different formulations of “human” became interwoven with the sliding signifier of “intelligence” through a series of violent exclusions, and how the shifting contour of “intelligence” produces uneven and unjust ontological scales undergirding both education and AI fields. Its purpose is to engage the education research community in dialogue about biases, the nature of ethics, and decision-making concerning AI in education.
Research Design
This paper adapts a historical-philosophical method. It traces the effects of colonialism and racialization within humanism’s emergence through Sylvia Wynter’s historiography of “figure of Man,” especially via the invention of “intelligence,” which has linked education and computer science. It also investigates themes central to modern education such as justice, equity, and in/exclusion through a philosophical examination of the ontological scales of “human.”
Conclusions
After outlining how “intelligence” has shifted from reason-as-morality to concepts of natural intelligence, we argue that current examples of AI in Education (AIEd), like classroom chatbots and social agents, constitute an intermediary point in the arc toward a new computational superintelligence—the emergence of man3—illustrating the opportunities, risks, and ethical issues in pedagogical applications based on emotion. We outline three differing visions of AIEd’s future, concluding with a series of provocations (onto-epistemological, practice-based, and purposes of schooling) that exceed such models and that, given rapid innovations in machine learning, require urgent consideration from multiple stakeholders.
This paper aims at providing a comprehensive report on the conference titled The Impact of Digital Platforms and Social Media on the Freedom of Expression and Pluralism held on 23 November 2021 in Budapest and organized by the Ferenc Mádl Institute of Comparative Law. This conference report addresses one plenary and two sessions of the event in separate chapters. The symposium was part of a conference series organized within the framework of the Central European Professors’ Network. This network operates with an active contribution of thirty-four professors from seven Central European countries: Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The Central European Professors’ Network divided comprehensive international scientific research into four groups. The conference presented the outcomes of one of these research groups, simply referred to as the social media research group.
This paper tackles some of the arguments Steve Fuller – arguably the best advocate of post-truth currently on the scene – put forward to show that, correctly understood, post-truth is the best conceptual tool to get a clear picture not only of what is happening in our societies today, but also of what has happened throughout the secular history of Western culture. The implicit assumption is that post-truth represents a reliable ‘epistemological compass’ – that is, a notion (or a set of notions) for proper orientation in both cultural and physical environments. The aim of the paper is to show that Fuller’s arguments do not work, because an epistemological compass can only be centered on a plausible notion of objectivity, and – it will be contended – this is exactly what Fuller lacks. Accordingly, it will be stressed how the upshot of his theses is the opposite of what he presumes it to be and, moreover, that his theses prove lethal to his own position.
In this work we propose a novel and alternative interpretation of the SEIR model, typically used in epidemiology to describe the spread of a disease in a given population, to describe the diffusion of fake information on the web and the consequent truth re-affirmation. We describe the corresponding system of ordinary differential equations, giving a proper definition of the involved parameters and, through a local linearization of the system, we calculate the so-called stiffness ratio, i.e. the ratio between the real parts of the largest and smallest eigenvalues of the Jacobian matrix of the linearized problem. A large gap in the spectrum of such a Jacobian matrix (i.e., a large stiffness ratio) makes the underlying differential problem stiff. So, we study and analyze the stiffness index of the SEIR model and, through selected numerical examples on real datasets, we show that the more the model is stiff, the faster is the transit of fake information in a given population.KeywordsSEIR modelFake newsStiffness index
This paper draws attention to key conundrums facing researchers of comparative and international higher education in the age of post-truth and resurgent authoritarianism. The analysis focuses on three salient concerns: world class-universities and academic freedom; power brokerage in the internationalisation of higher education; and challenges of intellectual leadership – that dominated research agendas in the field. Situated at the crossroads of major arguments in the literature and observations derived from academic praxis in the three areas, the critique sets out to explain how politics have been gaining more weight in the construct of comparative and international higher education at a time when corporate elitism is on the rise and the freedoms of inquiry and communication are declining. The study warns about the failures of integrity in this context, and manifests imperatives for safeguarding academic freedom and critical research in the field.
This study aims to investigate the effect of different formats of emotionally designed educational animations in terms of the emotional worthiness of the material, retention and transfer, intrinsic motivation, subject interest and cognitive load. In this direction, an experimental research approach was adopted. Five emotionally diverged animations were developed for the study, one of which was designed without adding any appealing illustrations. Animations were about the life cycle of low mass stars and was developed by researchers under the supervision of an animation expert. With one control and four treatment groups, experiment was carried out with the participation of 256 students at a state university in Turkey. Data were gathered using Turkish adaptation of Subject Interest Scale, Intrinsic Motivation Scale, one-item Subjective Cognitive Load Scale, and a retention test, a transfer tests and an emotional experience survey which were developed by the researchers. Turkish adaptation process of Subject Interest Scale and Intrinsic Motivation Scale were also conducted by the researchers. Findings showed that two of the animations, both of which included character animations and one of which was enhanced by an introduction music and emotionally complementary sound effects, were emotionally effective. According to the results, emotionally effective animations had positive effects on transfer, intrinsic motivation and subject interest while no effect was found in terms of retention and cognitive load.
This article sets out to offer an overview and a review of the latest linguistic research into fake news. To this end, the authors put forward a critical discussion of the paradigms and instruments deployed over the past decade to analyze and identify this textual (micro)genre, from natural language processing techniques to critical discourse analysis. The conclusion of our study is that a proper understanding of the fake news phenomenon can only be achieved by bringing together qualitative and quantitative methods.
Esse artigo é uma reflexão que discute o papel da educação científica na crise da verdade. No alicerce da teoria freireana, a partir do conceito de educação bancária, são discutidas as implicações de uma postura pedagógica antidialógica e de um discurso científico autoritário na educação popular. O texto argumenta que essas posturas estão no cerne do insucesso da ciência em incluir seus discursos na disputa dos regimes de verdade que se estabelecem na vida comum. Partindo desse diagnóstico, argumenta-se pela necessária desmonumentalização da Ciência na educação em ciências. Nessa tarefa são mobilizados alguns conceitos dos estudos sociais da ciência e das epistemologias do Sul. Por fim, o artigo sustenta algumas alternativas para enfrentar a crise da verdade e da desinformação a partir da educação problematizadora dialógica de Freire, da Ecologia dos Saberes e da Tradução Intercultural, de Boaventura de Souza Santos, e da busca da construção de um Mundo Comum como preconizado por Bruno Latour.
Today, people are exposed to vast information flows while online or on social media. This abundance has led some people to believe that they no longer have to actively seek the news to be well informed about public affairs and that important news will find them through social media or other online channels. Recently, academics have offered a first theoretical account, capturing this belief as the “news finds me” perception (NFM). Initial studies have been conducted in the U.S. and Austria, indicating deleterious effects between NFM and both traditional news use and political predispositions and behaviors. This study seeks to expand this line of research, exploring the proliferation of NFM in 10 societies around the world. Findings give further insights into the degree of NFM proliferation in diverse contexts. Across societies, NFM is associated with age, social media news use, and other meaningful democratic variables such as political interest, political knowledge, and voting behavior.
This article introduces a new method to support critical media literacy, learning and research in higher education. It acts as a response to an unprecedented profusion of visual information across digital media that contributes to the contemporary post-truth era, marked by fake news and uncritical consumption of the media. Whereas much has been written about the reasons behind and the character of the post-truth, less space has been dedicated to how educators could counteract the uncritical consumption of images from the perspective of semiotics. This article adopts a unique semiotic approach to address the stated gap. It discusses in depth the meaning making of pictures, digital photographs and material objects that photographs can embody. It does so by focusing on three aspects of a pictorial sign: (1) the materiality of its representation and representational elements, (2) its object (what the sign refers to) and (3) its descriptive interpretations. These three aspects inform the signification analysis within the proposed production-signification-consumption (PSC) method, exemplified with digital photographs. Understanding and analysing images via the PSC method draw attention to how humans create, interpret, (re)use, consume and respond to online and offline communication signs. The method can contribute to the development of critical media literacy as an engagement with postdigital semiotics, much needed in an age of global ecological and social crises, uncertainty and fast consumption of digital content.
Acknowledgments
I could not imagine finishing this monograph without the encouragement of
my first editor, Holly Buchanan at Lexington Books. Although I have written
extensively in recent years, I could not imagine finishing up a book project.
So my special thanks go to Ms. Buchanan. After her, Bryndee Ryan continued
to encourage me and here comes the book. Other thanks go to her.
Most of what I have written is a product of long years of teaching and intellectual
development at Istanbul Bilgi University. I am very proud of being a
faculty member at the communication school here and I believe this is one of
the best things ever happened to me. This book was written during my sabbatical
period. My university generously supported me during the period and
I could write with the comfort of staying at Anthropology Department at the
University of California, Irvine and at the Science and Technology Studies
program at MIT. My stays were a result of Rice Anthropology network and
I cannot tell how valuable it was to brainstorm regularly with Prof. George
E. Marcus and Prof. Michael M. J. Fischer. I do not claim that their wisdom
rightfully reflects on this manuscript but that gave me intellectual empowerment
and gave me clues for future research and publications. Having such
academic mentors is a big chance in life.
I have been involved with many digital personas, activists, colleagues,
friends, and beloved ones; that includes my former student and now friend,
Atınç, and my dear brother, Hakan in Turkey. I am lucky to be surrounded
by all these beautiful people. However, I will always miss those civilians who
have fallen during the Gezi Park Protests for which I devote a chapter. Thus,
I would like to dedicate this book to those fallen citizens who are collectively
called “Gezi Martyrs.”
Boston, MA
May 1, 2019
The paper offers a postcolonial critique of comparative and international education (CIE) research in the United States (US) by tracing the Euro‐centrism of its agendas, methodologies and publications to their colonial entanglements in the past and examining the current predicament of CIE in the context of the rising nationalist and anti‐science discourses in the US. Viewed through the prism of actor‐network theory, CIE represents a circulatory network of scholars and students, methods and surveys, national and supranational funding agencies and the public opinion that shapes education policymaking. As they seek to garner public support, create new allies among politicians and donors and infuse their network with international knowledge and scholars, CIE researchers revisit the ontological and epistemological assumptions of their field, address the dominance of Western perspectives in CIE in the context of the White House rhetoric of hostility toward non‐Western nations and justify the veracity of their science to policymakers.
Evidence-informed policy and practice has been a trend as part of an effort to increase the use of research to improve education at all levels. In many countries, knowledge-brokering initiatives were established to stimulate links between research, policy, and practice. Drawing on a mapping of initiatives in seven countries, this article describes different organizational designs, and discusses potential dilemmas these might imply for the realization of these organizations’ roles. Given different interests involved, the article shows that organizational design is crucial for enhancing legitimacy. Findings indicate a trend toward locating the knowledge-brokering function in a combined policy–science logic.
La presente colección de artículos analiza cada uno de los factores de investigación abordados en los dos núcleos temáticos del documento Estado del Arte incluido dentro del trabajo de investigación “Estado del Arte: Posverdad y Fake News”, y tiene en cuenta, además, el documento de Primeras Conclusiones del citado trabajo para ofrecer, de manera sintética, una aportación personal del autor en la construcción del conocimiento sobre la Posverdad y las Fake News. El presente artículo corresponde al núcleo temático “Posverdad” y al factor de investigación “Historia” de los documentos “Estado del Arte” y “Primeras Conclusiones” del mencionado trabajo de investigación.
This paper investigates the concept of aletheia (truth) in ancient philosophy from the pre-Socratics until Aristotle. The meaning of aletheia in archaic Greek is taken as the starting point. It is followed by remarks about the concept of truth in the Seven Sages. The author discusses this concept as it appears in views and works of philosophers and historians. A special section is devoted to the epistemological and ontological understanding of truth. On this occasion, influential views of Heidegger are examined. The paper is concluded by a review of various meanings of truth in Aristotle.
Introduction. Truth (pp. 1-15)
- G Pitcher
Pre-philosophical conceptions of truth in Ancient Greece. Theory and History of Ontology
- R Corazzon
Essentially contested concepts
- W B Gallie
- WB Gallie