scholarly journals Introduction to Series: Informing Science Perspectives on Fake News

10.28945/4485 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 091-094
Author(s):  
Eli Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Small Step ◽  
The West ◽  
Special Series ◽  
News Bias

Aim/Purpose: This series of papers on Fake News: Bias, Misinformation, and Disinformation examines fake news from an Informing Science perspective. As such, the papers in this special series make novel con-tributions to the field by viewing the issues through the transdisciplinary lens of informing science. This series makes no claim to summarize or review all that has been written on this topic. Rather it provides a glimpse into this immense literature from the perspective of informing science. Background: It is one small step on the 20+ year quest by the editor to explore better ways to inform from an approach that transcends academic disciplines (Cohen, 1998, 1999) and a 20 year quest to under-stand the issues of how we become misinformed and disinformed (Cohen, 2000). The series pro-vided here gains thrust for two reasons. One reason is that the study has become more popular with academicians due to the blathering of politicians and the attacks by national powers on de-mocracy. The second reason is more mundane; without the deadline that the end-of-year affords, the papers would become richer, fuller, and more detailed. Recommendation for Researchers: Taken together, the results brought forth across these papers is truly scary. Due to their biases, when presented with information, people can and do generate their own misinformation. People tend to communicate such misinformation that they self-generated with others in groups sharing their beliefs, strengthening the misinformation by some and silencing those do not share these thoughts. This process creates divisions in society. How can humanity seek wise decisions when we cannot agree even upon the facts. We see the results of this syndrome in Operation SIG and cur-rent divisions within politics in the West.

scholarly journals Past as the Other – The Other as Past

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-268
Author(s):  
Staša Babić
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
The Times ◽  
Modern Identity ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Written Sources

Modern academic disciplines of anthropology, history and archaeology are founded in the cultural, social, political context of the 18th and 19th centuries, at the times of the colonial expansion of the West European countries. Although demarcated by the objects of their study ("primitive societies", the past according to written sources, or material evidence), all these disciplines are grounded in the need to distinguish and strengthen the modern identity of the Europeans as opposed to the Others in space and time.

scholarly journals Social Bots and Fake News as (not) seen from the Viewpoint of Digital Education Frameworks

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (Occasional Papers) ◽  
pp. 61-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietmar Janetzko
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Digital Competence ◽  
Digital Education ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Eu

Over recent years, international organisations like the EU and UNESCO have set up a number of proposals, models and frameworks that seek (i) to map and to conceptualize digital literacy and related concepts, e. g. information, digital or media literacy, digital competence, digital skills and (ii) to formulate policies and recommendations based on the conceptualizations developed. The resulting frameworks, such as Digital Competence (DigComp) developed by the EU, or Media and Information Literacy (MIL) developed by UNESCO, have a strong formative power on a global scale. Affected are policies, laws, regulations, research activities, and academic disciplines like media pedagogy and mindsets. Do these frameworks consider the effects of disruptive attempts by digital media to intervene in public debates e. g. social bots, fake news and other manifestations of biased or false information online? Do they offer avenues for reflection and action to address them? Guided by these questions, this paper studies the flagship frameworks on digital education of the EU and UNESCO, DigComp and MIL. It finds biases in both frameworks. To different degrees, both tend to overemphasize the practical and instrumental use of digital literacy.

Conclusion: Legacies

2018 ◽  
pp. 238-242
Author(s):  
Deirdre Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
West African ◽  
Small Step ◽  
Commercial Agriculture ◽  
The West ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Black Poor ◽  
The Relationship

Smeathman dies in London from a ‘putrid fever’ in July 1786. The Committee for the Black Poor sully his posthumous reputation, possibly because of his support for a mixed-race constitution in Sierra Leone. They fail to see that Smeathman’s scheme for commercial agriculture, powered by the labour of redeemed slaves, presented a small step forward in recasting the relationship between forced labour and empire. Smeathman’s essay on the West African termite has many afterlives, especially in terms of its engravings, but the big book on Africa and the West Indies—his ‘Voyages and Travels’—is never published.

Political Science in the USSR: ‘To Be, Or Not To Be” Some Reflections on the Implications of a Recent Soviet Critique of American Political Science

1971 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 684-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf H. W. Theen
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The West ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Official Recognition ◽  
Soviet Study

The emergence or reemergence of academic disciplines in the Soviet Union has frequently been signalled or accompanied by the publication of comprehensive critical studies of their “bourgeois” counterparts in the West. Thus, for example, Soviet empirical research in sociology and the subsequent tentative and limited official recognition of sociology as an academic discipline were preceded by the appearance of a number of monographs devoted to a critique of Western sociology. Perhaps it is against this background and from this perspective that one must interpret the publication, in 1969, of the first major Soviet study and critique of American political science.

"Translational thinking" among foreign scholars writing discipline-specific English

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-189
Author(s):  
Patricia M. Raymond ◽  
Donna A. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Future Study ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Cultural Communication ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
Small Step ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication

This article reports on a study which is a small step toward the exploration of translational exchange of ideas and practices among academic disciplines and across languages and cultures. It presents results of an ongoing longitudinal study auditing the cultural performance of resources made available to foreign scholars at universities in Canada and concludes by discussing implications for future study of the intersection between academic self-translation and cross-cultural communication.

Can the West Save Africa?

2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Easterly
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Literature Survey ◽  
Controlled Experiments ◽  
Small Step ◽  
The West ◽  
One Step ◽  
To Come ◽  
Policy Priority ◽  
Dramatic Fall

In the new millennium, the Western aid effort toward Africa has surged due to writings by well-known economists, a celebrity mass advocacy campaign, and decisions by Western leaders to make Africa a major foreign policy priority. This survey contrasts the predominant “transformational” approach (West comprehensively saves Africa) to occasional swings to a “marginal” approach (West takes one small step at a time to help individual Africans). Evaluation of “one step at a time” initiatives is generally easier than that of transformational ones either through controlled experiments (although these have been oversold) or simple case studies where it is easier to attribute outcomes to actions. We see two themes emerge from the literature survey: (1) escalation—as each successive Western transformational effort has yielded disappointing results (as judged at least by stylized facts, since again the econometrics are shaky), the response has been to try an even more ambitious effort and (2) the cycle of ideas—rather than a progressive testing and discarding of failed ideas, we see a cycle in aid ideas in many areas in Africa, with ideas going out of fashion only to come back again later after some lapse long enough to forget the previous disappointing experience. Both escalation and cyclicality of ideas are symptomatic of the lack of learning that seems to be characteristic of the “transformational” approach. In contrast, the “marginal” approach has had some successes in improving the well-being of individual Africans, such as the dramatic fall in mortality.

scholarly journals Beyond Metropolitanism and Nativism: Re-grounding Media Theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 471-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gholam Khiabany ◽  
Sreberny Annabelle
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The West ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Islamic Republic Of Iran ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
True Alternative

AbstractWhile de-Westernisation is an interesting political intervention in media theory, analytically it offers little. We critique this approach through six inter-related arguments. The first point of critique challenges the putative singularity of the West. The second line of enquiry raises questions about the emergence of new academic disciplines and their intellectual offerings. Our third point is that the call to de-Westernise Media Studies is naïve, ignores history and the long patterns of global interconnectedness that have mutually formed the West/Rest. The fourth argument is that “de-Westernisation” suggests that the theory and methods of Media Studies offer nothing of use outside their original birthplaces, while the fifth argument is the conceptual danger of nativism. The sixth critique centres on the problem of essentialising culture as a determinate object. Examining the contemporary media practices of the Islamic Republic of Iran, we suggest that the true alternative to a repressive theocracy is its internal challenge by women, students and other parts of civil society that offers a critical third way beyond the binary divide.

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE CONTENT OF THE FUTURE BIOLOGY TEACHERS’ ENVIRONMENTAL COMPETENCE IN THE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT OF WEST EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
Maryna Khrolenko
Keyword(s):  
Educational Environment ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The West ◽  
Biology Teachers ◽  
The Future ◽  
The University ◽  
West European

The article analyzes the general requirements for the content of future biology teachers’ environmental competence in the West European educational environment. Based on the curricula of the University of Roehampton, the University of Leeds, the University of Glasgow (UK), the University of Namur, and the University of Liege (Belgium), the composition of the academic disciplines, their scope and content are characterized.

MEDIA LITERACY FOR DISSEMINATION ANTICIPATED FAKE NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-289
Author(s):  
Dedeh Fardiah ◽  
Rini Rinawati ◽  
Ferry Darmawan ◽  
Rifqi Abdul ◽  
Kurnia Lucky
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Provincial Government ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The West ◽  
West Java ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Depth Interviews

Information technology nowadays results in spreading information rapidly. Everyone can easily produce information quickly through several social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or mobile phone messages, such as WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. It is alarming if the information conveyed is inaccurate such as a hoax with a highly provocative title, leading the reader and recipient to obtain a negative opinion. For fighting hoaxes and preventing their negative impacts, the government has adequate legal protection named ITE Law. Apart from the legal product, the government also forms the National Cyber Institution. For example, in West Java, the government has formed West Java Clean Sweep Team (Saber) for Hoaxes, in charge of verifying information distribution in public. The team is built as proactive efforts of the West Java Provincial Government to secure the residents of West Java from disseminating fake news. This article examines how the West Java Saber Hoaxes Team carried out a strategy to minimize the dissemination of fake news (hoaxes) on social media. The research used descriptive studies through in-depth interviews on West Java Saber Hoaxes Team. The result of the research showed that strategies conducted by this team are monitoring, receiving complaints, and educating the public.

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