The relevance of misinformation on social media : a study on the "fake news" phenomenon within relevance theory framework

Orientadora: Profa. Dra. Elena GodoiDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Humanas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras. Defesa : Curitiba, 11/02/2022Inclui referênciasÁrea de concentração: Estudos LinguísticosResumo: Como seres altamente sociais, os seres humanos dependem da comunicação, contribuindo para o nosso sucesso evolutivo enquanto espécie. Contudo, a comunicação implica risco de receber informações falsas, de manipulação, ou de enganação. Consequentemente e dado o quão hiper conectados estamos atualmente, as desordens informacionais desafiam a sociedade. A utilização generalizada das plataformas de mídia social mudou o ecossistema da informação no mundo. Qualquer pessoa com acesso à Internet e a um dispositivo pode produzir e divulgar conteúdo. Esse contexto leva a desordens informacionais variadas, frequentemente denominadas "fake news". Entretanto, essa expressão não contempla a complexidade do problema e os pesquisadores têm adotado terminologias como mesinformação (informação falsa partilhada sem intenção de enganar), desinformação (informação falsa partilhada para causar danos ou obter lucros) e malinformação (informação falsa, baseada na realidade, para causar danos) (WARDLE, 2020). A principal pergunta que motiva esta dissertação é: Como a mesinformação, a desinformação e a malinformação alcançam relevância no contexto das redes sociais? De acordo com a Teoria da Relevância (1986/1995), uma desordem da informação é relevante quando interage de alguma forma com os pressupostos do indivíduo sobre o mundo, produzindo efeitos cognitivos positivos que emergem do processo de interpretação, ou seja, da combinação de novos inputs com suposições pré-existentes. Assim, se uma desinformação contribui para novas informações ou facilita a atualização de informações antigas ou falsas dentro do sistema, produz efeitos cognitivos positivos - independentemente de o conteúdo (proposição) ser verdadeiro ou falso. Assim, as desordens informacionais são relevantes para um indivíduo quando se ligam ao conhecimento prévio produzindo conclusões que interessam a ele. As redes sociais são oportunas, fáceis de acessar, compartilhar, comentar e interagir; contudo, essa comodidade favorece a proliferação de desinformação. As plataformas de mídia social são impulsionadas pelo compartilhamento de assuntos emocionalmente envolventes e as reações das pessoas sustentam estas plataformas. As peças de desinformação distorcem, manipulam e falsificam fatos para tornar o assunto mais surreal, bizarro, surpreendente e controverso - motivando o compartilhamento. Todavia, a desinformação não é facilmente detectável sem deliberação crítica, podendo influenciar profundamente as atitudes e decisões das pessoas. Essa dissertação contribui para a conceitualização e o conhecimento geral sobre as desordens informacionais nas mídias sociais numa perspectiva pragmáticacognitiva, demonstrando como a pragmática, particularmente a Teoria da Relevância (TR) (1986/1995), oferece um arcabouço capaz de avançar os estudos na área, abrindo caminho para uma inovadora linha de pesquisa. Desenvolvimentos posteriores, que ampliam a TR, incluindo Vigilância Epistêmica (2010) e a Teoria Argumentativa da Razão (2011), são utilizados por avaliarem a forma como os falantes produzem argumentos para convencer os ouvintes e como os ouvintes filtram esses argumentos para avaliá-los e aceitá-los, caso sejam consistentes. Ademais, esta pesquisa contextualiza e demonstra o impacto e importância da investigação das desordens informacionais, identifica abordagens e teorias empregadas atualmente para compreender e enfrentar o problema e propõe uma base introdutória para conceber as razões de sua aderência.Abstract: As highly social beings, humans rely on communication, contributing to our developmental success as a species. However, communication comes with the risk of receiving false information, being manipulated, or being deceived. Consequently, given how hyper-connected humans are nowadays, information disorders challenge all societies. Additionally, the extensive use of social media platforms has changed the information ecosystem worldwide. Anyone with internet access and a device can produce and disseminate content. This context leads to information disorders of distinct types, often called "fake news". Nevertheless, this expression does not cover the problem's complexity. Researchers have been adopting terminologies such as misinformation (false information shared with no intention to deceive), disinformation (false information shared to cause harm or for-profit), and malinformation (false information based on reality, used to inflict harm) (WARDLE, 2020). The main question that drives this dissertation is: How do misinformation, disinformation and malinformation achieve relevance in the context of social media? According to Relevance Theory (1986/1995), a piece of information disorder is relevant when it somehow interacts with the individual's existing assumptions about the world, producing positive cognitive effects that emerge from the interpretation process, i.e., from combining new inputs with existing suppositions. Thus, if a piece of information disorder contributes to new information or facilitates updating old or false information within the system, it provides positive cognitive effects - regardless of the content (proposition) being true or false. Hence, information disorders are relevant to an individual when they connect with background knowledge to produce conclusions that matter to such an individual. Social media are timely, easy to access, share, comment on and interact with; however, this convenience enables the spreading of information disorders. Social media platforms are driven by emotionally involving content sharing, and people's reactions propel these platforms. Information disorders distort, manipulate, and falsify facts to make the topic more surreal, bizarre, surprising, and controversial, and these aspects motivate sharing. Still, this type of material is not easily detectable without critical deliberation, and it can profoundly influence people's attitudes and decisions. This dissertation advances the conceptualisation and general knowledge of information disorders within social media from a cognitive-pragmatics perspective, demonstrating how pragmatics, particularly Relevance Theory (RT) (1986/1995), presents a framework capable of advancing the studies in the area, opening the way to a novel line of research. Later developments that broaden RT, including Epistemic Vigilance (2010) and The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning (2011), are employed since they evaluate how speakers produce arguments to convince listeners and how listeners filter such arguments to evaluate and accept them - if they are sound. Furthermore, this study contextualises and demonstrates the impact and importance of investigating information disorders, identifies recent approaches to their study, and some theories currently applied to understand and tackle the subject matter, and proposes a preliminary foundation for understanding its adherence

Infodemia em tempos de pandemia: batalhas invisíveis com baixas imensuráveis

: Este artigo trata do fenômeno mundial da desinformação que inspirou a expressão “infodemia” durante a pandemia mundial de COVID-19; enquanto um contamina o corpo, o outro contamina as ideias. A ascensão da internet e a popularização das plataformas de mídia social mudaram o ecossistema da informação. O acesso direto a um volume exponencial de conteúdo torna difícil distinguir informações precisas de conteúdos de baixa qualidade, falsos, editoriais e sátiras. Analisamos a aderência à desinformação levando em conta a Teoria da Relevância (SPERBER e WILSON, 1986/1995), Vigilância Epistêmica (SPERBER et al., 2010), estudos sobre Racionalidade (MERCIER, 2020), conceitos de Base Comum (CLARK, 1996, 1998), estudos em economia e psicologia comportamental de Tversky (1973) e Kahneman (2002/2011), bem como estudos sobre desinformação de McIntyre (2018), Rand (2020) e Wardle (2018, 2019)

Glutathione S-transferase mu 1 (GSTM1) and theta 1 (GSTT1) genetic polymorphisms and atopic asthma in children from Southeastern Brazil

Xenobiotics can trigger degranulation of eosinophils and mast cells. In this process, the cells release several substances leading to bronchial hyperactivity, the main feature of atopic asthma (AA). GSTM1 and GSTT1 genes encode enzymes involved in the inactivation of these compounds. Both genes are polymorphic in humans and have a null variant genotype in which both the gene and corresponding enzyme are absent. An increased risk for disease in individuals with the null GST genotypes is therefore, but this issue is controversial. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the GSTM1 and GSTT1 genotypes on the occurrence of AA, as well as on its clinical manifestations. Genomic DNA from 86 patients and 258 controls was analyzed by polymerase chain reaction. The frequency of the GSTM1 null genotype in patients was higher than that found in controls (60.5% versus 40.3%, p = 0.002). In individuals with the GSTM1 null genotype the risk of manifested AA was 2.3-fold higher (95%CI: 1.4-3.7) than for others. In contrast, similar frequencies of GSTT1 null and combined GSTM1 plus GSTT1 null genotypes were seen in both groups. No differences in genotype frequencies were perceived in patients stratified by age, gender, ethnic origin, and severity of the disease. These results suggest that the inherited absence of the GSTM1 metabolic pathway may alter the risk of AA in southeastern Brazilian children, although this must be confirmed by further studies with a larger cohort of patients and age-matched controls from the distinct regions of the country

Can the understory affect the Hymenoptera parasitoids in a Eucalyptus plantation?

The understory in forest plantations can increase richness and diversity of natural enemies due to greater plant species richness. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that the presence of the understory and climatic season in the region (wet or dry) can increase the richness and abundance of Hymenoptera parasitoids in Eucalyptus plantations, in the municipality of Belo Oriente, Minas Gerais State, Brazil. In each eucalyptus cultivation (five areas of cultivation) ten Malaise traps were installed, five with the understory and five without it. A total of 9,639 individuals from 30 families of the Hymenoptera parasitoids were collected, with Mymaridae, Scelionidae, Encyrtidae and Braconidae being the most collected ones with 4,934, 1,212, 619 and 612 individuals, respectively. The eucalyptus stands with and without the understory showed percentage of individuals 45.65% and 54.35% collected, respectively. The understory did not represent a positive effect on the overall abundance of the individuals Hymenoptera in the E. grandis stands, but rather exerted a positive effect on the specific families of the parasitoids of this order

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries(1,2). However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world(3) and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health(4,5). However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol-which is a marker of cardiovascular riskchanged from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95% credible interval 3.7 million-4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world.Peer reviewe

Heterogeneous contributions of change in population distribution of body mass index to change in obesity and underweight NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions

The relevance of misinformation on social media : a study on the "fake news" phenomenon within relevance theory framework

Orientadora: Profa. Dra. Elena GodoiDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Humanas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras. Defesa : Curitiba, 11/02/2022Inclui referênciasÁrea de concentração: Estudos LinguísticosResumo: Como seres altamente sociais, os seres humanos dependem da comunicação, contribuindo para o nosso sucesso evolutivo enquanto espécie. Contudo, a comunicação implica risco de receber informações falsas, de manipulação, ou de enganação. Consequentemente e dado o quão hiper conectados estamos atualmente, as desordens informacionais desafiam a sociedade. A utilização generalizada das plataformas de mídia social mudou o ecossistema da informação no mundo. Qualquer pessoa com acesso à Internet e a um dispositivo pode produzir e divulgar conteúdo. Esse contexto leva a desordens informacionais variadas, frequentemente denominadas "fake news". Entretanto, essa expressão não contempla a complexidade do problema e os pesquisadores têm adotado terminologias como mesinformação (informação falsa partilhada sem intenção de enganar), desinformação (informação falsa partilhada para causar danos ou obter lucros) e malinformação (informação falsa, baseada na realidade, para causar danos) (WARDLE, 2020). A principal pergunta que motiva esta dissertação é: Como a mesinformação, a desinformação e a malinformação alcançam relevância no contexto das redes sociais? De acordo com a Teoria da Relevância (1986/1995), uma desordem da informação é relevante quando interage de alguma forma com os pressupostos do indivíduo sobre o mundo, produzindo efeitos cognitivos positivos que emergem do processo de interpretação, ou seja, da combinação de novos inputs com suposições pré-existentes. Assim, se uma desinformação contribui para novas informações ou facilita a atualização de informações antigas ou falsas dentro do sistema, produz efeitos cognitivos positivos - independentemente de o conteúdo (proposição) ser verdadeiro ou falso. Assim, as desordens informacionais são relevantes para um indivíduo quando se ligam ao conhecimento prévio produzindo conclusões que interessam a ele. As redes sociais são oportunas, fáceis de acessar, compartilhar, comentar e interagir; contudo, essa comodidade favorece a proliferação de desinformação. As plataformas de mídia social são impulsionadas pelo compartilhamento de assuntos emocionalmente envolventes e as reações das pessoas sustentam estas plataformas. As peças de desinformação distorcem, manipulam e falsificam fatos para tornar o assunto mais surreal, bizarro, surpreendente e controverso - motivando o compartilhamento. Todavia, a desinformação não é facilmente detectável sem deliberação crítica, podendo influenciar profundamente as atitudes e decisões das pessoas. Essa dissertação contribui para a conceitualização e o conhecimento geral sobre as desordens informacionais nas mídias sociais numa perspectiva pragmáticacognitiva, demonstrando como a pragmática, particularmente a Teoria da Relevância (TR) (1986/1995), oferece um arcabouço capaz de avançar os estudos na área, abrindo caminho para uma inovadora linha de pesquisa. Desenvolvimentos posteriores, que ampliam a TR, incluindo Vigilância Epistêmica (2010) e a Teoria Argumentativa da Razão (2011), são utilizados por avaliarem a forma como os falantes produzem argumentos para convencer os ouvintes e como os ouvintes filtram esses argumentos para avaliá-los e aceitá-los, caso sejam consistentes. Ademais, esta pesquisa contextualiza e demonstra o impacto e importância da investigação das desordens informacionais, identifica abordagens e teorias empregadas atualmente para compreender e enfrentar o problema e propõe uma base introdutória para conceber as razões de sua aderência.Abstract: As highly social beings, humans rely on communication, contributing to our developmental success as a species. However, communication comes with the risk of receiving false information, being manipulated, or being deceived. Consequently, given how hyper-connected humans are nowadays, information disorders challenge all societies. Additionally, the extensive use of social media platforms has changed the information ecosystem worldwide. Anyone with internet access and a device can produce and disseminate content. This context leads to information disorders of distinct types, often called "fake news". Nevertheless, this expression does not cover the problem's complexity. Researchers have been adopting terminologies such as misinformation (false information shared with no intention to deceive), disinformation (false information shared to cause harm or for-profit), and malinformation (false information based on reality, used to inflict harm) (WARDLE, 2020). The main question that drives this dissertation is: How do misinformation, disinformation and malinformation achieve relevance in the context of social media? According to Relevance Theory (1986/1995), a piece of information disorder is relevant when it somehow interacts with the individual's existing assumptions about the world, producing positive cognitive effects that emerge from the interpretation process, i.e., from combining new inputs with existing suppositions. Thus, if a piece of information disorder contributes to new information or facilitates updating old or false information within the system, it provides positive cognitive effects - regardless of the content (proposition) being true or false. Hence, information disorders are relevant to an individual when they connect with background knowledge to produce conclusions that matter to such an individual. Social media are timely, easy to access, share, comment on and interact with; however, this convenience enables the spreading of information disorders. Social media platforms are driven by emotionally involving content sharing, and people's reactions propel these platforms. Information disorders distort, manipulate, and falsify facts to make the topic more surreal, bizarre, surprising, and controversial, and these aspects motivate sharing. Still, this type of material is not easily detectable without critical deliberation, and it can profoundly influence people's attitudes and decisions. This dissertation advances the conceptualisation and general knowledge of information disorders within social media from a cognitive-pragmatics perspective, demonstrating how pragmatics, particularly Relevance Theory (RT) (1986/1995), presents a framework capable of advancing the studies in the area, opening the way to a novel line of research. Later developments that broaden RT, including Epistemic Vigilance (2010) and The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning (2011), are employed since they evaluate how speakers produce arguments to convince listeners and how listeners filter such arguments to evaluate and accept them - if they are sound. Furthermore, this study contextualises and demonstrates the impact and importance of investigating information disorders, identifies recent approaches to their study, and some theories currently applied to understand and tackle the subject matter, and proposes a preliminary foundation for understanding its adherence