Interdisciplinary Lessons Learned While Researching Fake News

The misleading and propagandistic tendencies in American news reporting have been a part of public discussion from its earliest days as a republic (Innis, 2007; Sheppard, 2007). “Fake news” is hardly new (McKernon, 1925), and the term has been applied to a variety of distinct phenomenon ranging from satire to news, which one may find disagreeable (Jankowski, 2018; Tandoc et al., 2018). However, this problem has become increasingly acute in recent years with the Macquarie Dictionary declaring “fake news” the word of the year in 2016 (Lavoipierre, 2017). The international recognition of fake news as a problem (Pomerantsev and Weiss, 2014; Applebaum and Lucas, 2016) has led to a number of initiatives to mitigate perceived causes, with varying levels of success (Flanagin and Metzger, 2014; Horne and Adali, 2017; Sample et al., 2018). The inability to create a holistic solution continues to stymie researchers and vested parties. A significant contributor to the problem is the interdisciplinary nature of digital deception. While technology enables the rapid and wide dissemination of digitally deceptive data, the design and consumption of data rely on a mixture of psychology, sociology, political science, economics, linguistics, marketing, and fine arts. The authors for this effort discuss deception’s history, both old and new, from an interdisciplinary viewpoint and then proceed to discuss how various disciplines contribute to aiding in the detection and countering of fake news narratives. A discussion of various fake news types (printed, staged events, altered photographs, and deep fakes) ensues with the various technologies being used to identify these; the shortcomings of those technologies and finally the insights offered by the other disciplines can be incorporated to improve outcomes. A three-point evaluation model that focuses on contextual data evaluation, pattern spread, and archival analysis of both the author and publication archives is introduced. While the model put forth cannot determine fact from fiction, the ability to measure distance from fact across various domains provides a starting point for evaluating the veracity of a new story. “If it is not true, it is very well invented.” —Giordano Brun

Consumer-Product and Sociopolitical Messages for Use in Studies of Persuasion

The purpose of this report is to make available two sets of persuasive messages one for fictitious brands of 12 types of consumer products and the other for 20 sociopolitical issues. These communications were developed as part of a research program directed at obtaining reliable persuasion effects.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68394/2/10.1177_0146167286124016.pd

Under what conditions does theory obstruct research progress

Researchers display confirmation bias when they persevere by revising procedures until obtaining a theory-predicted result. This strategy produces findings that are overgeneralized in avoidable ways, and this in turn hinders successful applications. (The 40-year history of an attitude-change phenomenon, the sleeper effect, stands as a case in point.) Confirmation bias is an expectable product of theorycentered research strategies, including both the puzzle-solving activity of T. S. Kuhn's "normal science" and, more surprisingly, K. R. Popper's recommended method of falsification seeking. The alternative strategies of condition seeking (identifying limiting conditions for a known finding) and design (discovering conditions that can produce a previously unobtained result) are result centered; they are directed at producing specified patterns of data rather than at the logically impossible goals of establishing either the truth or falsity of a theory. Result-centered methods are by no means atheoretical. Rather, they oblige resourcefulness in using existing theory and can stimulate novel development of theory. Imagine looking at a projected photographic image that is so badly focused that identification is impossible. The picture is gradually focused until it is just slightly blurred, at which poin

Decision Structuring with Phantom Alternatives

A phantom alternative is an illusory choice option---it looks real but for some reason is unavailable at the time a decision is made. Phantoms can both help and hinder successful decision making. On the one hand, phantoms can provide useful information on the boundaries of a decision problem and thus help generate new options through a restructuring of the problem. But phantoms can also produce biases, deception, and suboptimal decisions. We argue that phantoms should be considered explicitly in decision structuring rather than being allowed to work their effects surreptitiously. We offer guidelines on recognizing unavailable alternatives, utilizing the information provided by phantoms, counteracting phantom biases, avoiding deception in decision structuring, and guarding against suboptimal decisions.decision analysis, problem structuring, unavailability

The Self.

Sclf as a Memory System 13