Academic Writing Group Projects

No detailed description available for "Political Rumors".

The Encyclopedia of Fakery is a compendium of misinformation, deception, and self-delusion throughout history. The lens is wide--fakery is examined in the context of science and advertising, humor and law, sports and video games. Entries span eclectic topics: Artificial Intelligence, Auto-Tune, Chilean Sea Bass, Clickbait, Cognitive Dissonance, Cryptids, False Flag Operations, Gaslighting, Gerrymandering, Kayfabe, Laugh Tracks, Milli Vanilli, P.T. Barnum, Photoshopping, Potemkin Villages, Rachel Dolezal, Strategery, Truthiness, and the Uncanny Valley. From A to Z, this is the definitive guide to how we are tricked, and how we trick ourselves.

In Stories Are Weapons, best-selling author Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats-the essential tool kit for psychological warfare-have evolved from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars. Newitz delves into America's deep-rooted history with psychological operations, beginning with Benjamin Franklin's Revolutionary War-era fake newspaper and reaching its apotheosis with misinformation during twenty-first-century elections. The nation's secret weapon has long been coercive storytelling, fashioned by operatives who drew on their experiences in the ad industry and as science fiction writers. Now, through a weapons-transfer program long unacknowledged, it has found its way into the hands of culture warriors, in conflicts from school board fights over LGBT students to campaigns against feminist viewpoints. Stories Are Weapons delivers a powerful counter-narrative, as Newitz highlights the process of psychological disarmament, speaking with Indigenous archivists preserving their histories in new ways, activist storytellers, and technology experts transforming social media.

"This book explores the pervasive and globalized trajectory of domestic disinformation. It describes specific operations and general apparatuses of disinformation that are sponsored by the State institutions in several countries around the world, such as governments, political parties, and politicians. With an international team of expert authors, this volume meticulously scrutinizes instances of State-sponsored disinformation across a diverse spectrum of 14 countries encompassing Western and Eastern Europe, North and Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. It examines how political landscapes amplify or constrain disinformation, advancing a comprehensive understanding of its dynamics in the contemporary global milieu. The book is organized in three sections that gather case studies from democratic, non-democratic and transitional regimes. Advancing the field of misinformation and disinformation studies by specializing in Statesponsored operations and their consequences, this book will be an essential volume for scholars and upper-level students of media and communication studies, journalism, political communication, disinformation and misinformation, social media, sociology and international politics"--

Misinformation has had dramatic and dangerous effects, as evidenced by numerous events of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Reading a steady stream of misinformation leads to distrust, potentially leading to conflict in one's family and workplace, and even to civil unrest. At the heart of many such matters is scientific illiteracy. Many people enjoy a life of ease and convenience because of science--and since science also crosses courtrooms, classrooms and cultures, it has great potential to debunk misinformation and untangle the confusion on such issues as vaccines, sexual identity, race and evolution, alternative medicine, and human reproduction. This book addresses those issues and the popular stories, conspiracies, and misleading headlines that circulate across media platforms. Bringing accurate knowledge into people's agendas is challenging, and this book uses science and facts as a basis of every deliberation over laws and policies. The chapters weave together history, politics, human biology, and law, and demonstrate how our lives are dependent on understanding the nature of things.