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Author: Adam J. Berinsky
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691247579
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Why debunked political rumors persist and how to combat them Political rumors and misinformation pollute the political landscape. This is not a recent phenomenon; before the currently rampant and unfounded rumors about a stolen election and vote-rigging, there were other rumors that continued to spread even after they were thoroughly debunked, including doubts about 9/11 (an “inside job”) and the furor over President Obama’s birthplace and birth certificate. If misinformation crowds out the truth, how can Americans communicate with one another about important issues? In this book, Adam Berinsky examines why political rumors exist and persist despite their unsubstantiated and refuted claims, who is most likely to believe them, and how to combat them. Drawing on original survey and experimental data, Berinsky shows that a tendency toward conspiratorial thinking and vehement partisan attachment fuel belief in rumors. Yet the reach of rumors is wide, and Berinsky argues that in fighting misinformation, it is as important to target the undecided and the uncertain as it is the true believers. We’re all vulnerable to misinformation, and public skepticism about the veracity of political facts is damaging to democracy. Moreover, in a world where most people simply don’t pay attention to politics, political leaders are often guilty of disseminating false information—and failing to correct it when it is proven wrong. Berinsky suggests that we should focus on the messenger as much as the message of rumors. Just as important as how misinformation is debunked is who does the debunking.
Author: Adam J. Berinsky
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691247579
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why debunked political rumors persist and how to combat them Political rumors and misinformation pollute the political landscape. This is not a recent phenomenon; before the currently rampant and unfounded rumors about a stolen election and vote-rigging, there were other rumors that continued to spread even after they were thoroughly debunked, including doubts about 9/11 (an “inside job”) and the furor over President Obama’s birthplace and birth certificate. If misinformation crowds out the truth, how can Americans communicate with one another about important issues? In this book, Adam Berinsky examines why political rumors exist and persist despite their unsubstantiated and refuted claims, who is most likely to believe them, and how to combat them. Drawing on original survey and experimental data, Berinsky shows that a tendency toward conspiratorial thinking and vehement partisan attachment fuel belief in rumors. Yet the reach of rumors is wide, and Berinsky argues that in fighting misinformation, it is as important to target the undecided and the uncertain as it is the true believers. We’re all vulnerable to misinformation, and public skepticism about the veracity of political facts is damaging to democracy. Moreover, in a world where most people simply don’t pay attention to politics, political leaders are often guilty of disseminating false information—and failing to correct it when it is proven wrong. Berinsky suggests that we should focus on the messenger as much as the message of rumors. Just as important as how misinformation is debunked is who does the debunking.
Author: George Derek Musgrove
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820341215
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
"While historians have devoted an enormous amount of attention to documenting how African Americans gained access to formal politics in the mid-1960s, very few have scrutinized what happened next, and the small body of work that does consider the aftermath of the civil rights movement is almost entirely limited to the Black Power era. In Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, Derek Musgrove pushes much further, presenting a powerful new historical framework for understanding race and politics between 1965 and 1996. He argues that in order to make sense of this recent period, we need to examine the harassment of black elected officials - the ways black politicians were denied access to seats they'd won in elections or, after taking office, were targeted in corruption probes. Musgrove's aim is not to evaluate whether individual allegations of corruption had merit, but to establish what the pervasive harassment of black politicians has meant, politically and culturally, over the course of recent American history. It's a story that takes him from California to Michigan to Alabama, and along the way covers a fascinating range of topics: Watergate, the surveillance state, the power of conspiracy theories, the plunge in voter turnout, and even the strange political campaigns of Lyndon LaRouche"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Jean-Noel Kapferer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351492489
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Rumors may be the oldest medium of mass communication of information or ideas. Even before there were newspapers, radio, or television, rumors communicated by word-of-mouth made and shattered reputations, and set off riots and wars. Yet contrary to predictions, rumors continue to thrive, in spite of and parallel to mass media. What accounts for the puzzling persistence and continuing significance of this little-studied social phenomenon? Jean-No;el Kapferer examines the theory and practice of rumors, focusing on specific areas such as entertainment, criminal behavior, business and finance, and politics. He describes the kinds of conditions that give birth to rumors, why we believe them, and the hidden messages they convey. Kapferer points out that rumors frequently serve useful social purposes and present rich examples. He speculates about how rumors can be controlled, changed, and prevented. Drawing upon contributions of disciplines ranging from psychology to history, and integrating the insights of Europeans with the latest work of American researchers, this is the most comprehensive examination of rumors, gossip, and urban legends yet published. Translated into nine languages, this edition was updated with advances in theory and research since the book's original French publication in 1987. Its brisk, accessible style makes the book of interest to psychologists, economists, political scientists, sociologists, and folklore analysts, as well as the general reader who is curious about the origins of this fascinating social phenomenon.
Author: Danny Hayes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108892515
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
In recent decades, turnout in US presidential elections has soared, education levels have hit historic highs, and the internet has made information more accessible than ever. Yet over that same period, Americans have grown less engaged with local politics and elections. Drawing on detailed analysis of fifteen years of reporting in over 200 local newspapers, along with election returns, surveys, and interviews with journalists, this study shows that the demise of local journalism has played a key role in the decline of civic engagement. As struggling newspapers have slashed staff, they have dramatically cut their coverage of mayors, city halls, school boards, county commissions, and virtually every aspect of local government. In turn, fewer Americans now know who their local elected officials are, and turnout in local elections has plummeted. To reverse this trend and preserve democratic accountability in our communities, the local news industry must be reinvigorated – and soon.
Author: Markus Prior
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108420672
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
Political interest is the strongest predictor of 'good citizenship', yet little is known about it. This book explains why some people find politics interesting while others don't.
Author: Adam J. Berinsky
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069115838X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
"Rumors and the misinformation they spread play an important role in American politics-and a dangerous one with direct consequences, such as wrecking trust in government, promoting hostility toward truth-finding, and swaying public opinion on otherwise popular policies. One only has to look at the rate of vaccination in the United States or peruse internet forums discussing the 2020 election to see lasting effects. How can democracy work if there is a persistence of widely held misinformation? In Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It, Adam Berinsky explains why incredulous and discredited stories about politicians and policies grab the public's attention and who is most likely to believe these stories and act on them. For instance, he shows that rather than a small set of people believing a lot of conspiracies, a lot of people believe some conspiracies; he also demonstrates that partisans are more likely to believe false rumors about the opposing party. Pulling from a wealth of social science work, and from his own original data, the author shows who believes political rumors, and why-and establishes how democracy is threatened when citizens base their political decision-making on the content of political rumors. While acknowledging that there is no one magical solution to the problem of misinformation, Berinsky explores strategies that can work to combat false information, such as targeting uncertain citizens rather than "true believers," and focusing on who is delivering the message ("neutral" third parties are often ineffective). Ultimately, though, the only long-term solution is for misinformation tactics to be disincentivized from the political elites and opinion leaders who dominate political discussion"--
Author: Timothy E. Cook
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226115009
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
From the opening decades of the republic when political parties sponsored newspapers to current governmental practices that actively subsidize the collection and dissemination of the news, the press and the government have been far from independent. Unlike those earlier days, however, the news is no longer produced by a diverse range of individual outlets but is instead the result of a collective institution that exercises collective power. In explaining how the news media of today operate as an intermediary political institution, akin to the party system and interest group system, Cook demonstrates how the differing media strategies used by governmental agencies and branches respond to the constitutional and structural weaknesses inherent in a separation-of-powers system. Cook examines the news media's capacity to perform the political tasks that they have inherited and points the way to a debate on policy solutions in order to hold the news media accountable without treading upon the freedom of the press.
Author: Christopher M. Elias
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226823938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, and Roy Cohn were titanic figures in midcentury America, wielding national power in government and the legal system through intimidation and insinuation. Hoover’s FBI thrived on secrecy, threats, and illegal surveillance, while McCarthy and Cohn will forever be associated with the infamous anticommunist smear campaign of the early 1950s, which culminated in McCarthy’s public disgrace during televised Senate hearings. In Gossip Men, Christopher M. Elias takes a probing look at these tarnished figures to reveal a host of startling new connections among gender, sexuality, and national security in twentieth-century American politics. Elias illustrates how these three men solidified their power through the skillful use of deliberately misleading techniques like implication, hyperbole, and photographic manipulation. Just as provocatively, he shows that the American people of the 1950s were particularly primed to accept these coded threats because they were already familiar with such tactics from widely popular gossip magazines. By using gossip as a lens to examine profound issues of state security and institutional power, Elias thoroughly transforms our understanding of the development of modern American political culture.
Author: Dan Cassino
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317479998
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
In recent years, scholars have argued that the ability of people to choose which channel they want to watch means that television news is just preaching to the choir, and doesn’t change any minds. However, this book shows that the media still has an enormous direct impact on American society and politics. While past research has emphasized the indirect effects of media content on attitudes – through priming or framing, for instance – Dan Cassino argues that past data on both the public opinion and the media side wasn’t detailed enough to uncover it. Using a combination of original national surveys, large scale content analysis of news coverage along with data sets as disparate as FBI gun background checks and campaign contribution records, Cassino discusses why it’s important to treat different media sources separately, estimating levels of ideological bias for television media sources as well as the differences in the topics that the various media sources cover. Taking this into account proves that exposure to some media sources can serve to actually make Americans less knowledgeable about current affairs, and more likely to buy into conspiracy theories. Even in an era of declining viewership, the media – especially Fox News – are shaping our society and our politics. This book documents how this is happening, and shows the consequences for Americans. The quality of journalism is more than an academic question: when coverage focuses on questionable topics, or political bias, there are consequences.
Author: Johan Farkas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000507289
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
Western societies are under siege, as fake news, post-truth and alternative facts are undermining the very core of democracy. This dystopian narrative is currently circulated by intellectuals, journalists and policy makers worldwide. In this book, Johan Farkas and Jannick Schou deliver a comprehensive study of post-truth discourses. They critically map the normative ideas contained in these and present a forceful call for deepening democracy. The dominant narrative of our time is that democracy is in a state of emergency caused by social media, changes to journalism and misinformed masses. This crisis needs to be resolved by reinstating truth at the heart of democracy, even if this means curtailing civic participation and popular sovereignty. Engaging with critical political philosophy, Farkas and Schou argue that these solutions neglect the fact that democracy has never been about truth alone: it is equally about the voice of the democratic people. Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy delivers a sobering diagnosis of our times. It maps contemporary discourses on truth and democracy, foregrounds their normative foundations and connects these to historical changes within liberal democracies. The book will be of interest to students and scholars studying the current state and future of democracy, as well as to a politically informed readership.
