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Information
Diana Daly
Key points
Social media transforms truth, information, and knowledge into tangible, actively debated entities online, tracked by metrics like page views and shares.
The chapter explores the prevalence of “fake news” and “post-truth” in the social media era, contrasting traditional newspaper reliance with the instant dissemination through platforms.
Objectivity, presenting universally valid truths, is contrasted with subjectivity, where individual perspectives shape event presentations, including subjective interpretations of historical events.
Traditional views of knowledge as elitist are challenged by platforms like Wikipedia, emphasizing collective intelligence and negotiating multiple truths, leading to accurate knowledge production.
The chapter delves into motivations for creating and spreading “fake news,” examining influences like profit, truth, and the democratization of content creation on the internet.
Psychological factors like belief perseverance and confirmation bias contribute to the acceptance of misinformation, exacerbated by social media filter bubbles reinforcing existing beliefs.
In the age of social media, the notions of truth, information, and knowledge are all changing. These notions were once amorphous and invisible – the kinds of airy, invisible topics only philosophers and a few scientists studied. But today truth, information, and knowledge are all represented, constructed, and battled about online. Page views, shares, and reactions clue individuals and companies in to what spreads from machine to machine and mind to mind. Content editable by users online is negotiated and changed in real time. In this chapter, we’ll look at the problems and opportunities afforded by social media in relationship with truths and knowledge.
Section 1: “Fake news” and “post-truth”
Much has been made in recent years of “fake news.” This is a term, favored by the President of the United States among others, that circulates ubiquitously through social as well as traditional media. In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries presented “post-truth” as its “word of the year.” But what do these terms mean, and what do they have to do with social media?
To understand these terms, we have to look closely at what we expect with the word “news” and notions of truth and “fake”-ness. These conversations start with the concepts of objectivity and subjectivity.
Student Insights: From Horse Travel to Human Touch – Speedy News (writing by Jenna Wing, Spring 2021)
Objectivity and subjectivity
To be objective is to present a truth in a way that would also be true for anyone anywhere; so that truth exists regardless of anyone’s perspective. The popular notion of what is true is often based on this expectation of objective truth.
The expectation of objective truth makes sense in some situations – related to physics and mathematics, for example. Ho