Abstract
Information and communication technologies form, in different ways, the modern person’s world picture. Despite huge educational possibilities of the Internet, the information flowing to the person through most commonly used channels, like social networks, can not be described as completely representing real facts. This problem is well considered in terms of policy, but the reliability or inaccuracy of the scientific information in social networks is studied little. This paper analyzes the degree of reliability of scientific facts contained in Russian social network VKontakte. The results show that more than half of messages (57 %) in publics called scientific do not contain scientific information, and 32.4 % of the others contain not completely true information. The inaccuracy degree can vary considerably. It is possible to distinguish its following types: Inaccuracies, Exaggerations, Incomplete information, False attribution, Representing creative works as real, Gross errors in actual understanding. The analysis of false facts in scientific public shows that more often the facts are misrepresented to surprise, for the sake of this, numerical indicators are exaggerated, information partially disappears or misrepresented to look exclusive. There is an interesting trend of using "photoproofs" mismatching the text in time, place or general understanding, or just shots from films or works of art (in particular, digital art).
Highlights
The modern person does not think of himself or herself without information and communication technologies
The rational reasons of these fake news’ occurrence can be found, for example, in the field of economic or political manipulations, e.g. to influence the outcomes of public events [14, 15], the consumer behavior strategy [16], etc., and are studied well enough today, but the distortion of vision of the world can hardly bring any obvious advantage to the author, except those cases when the scientific information is connected with important political and commercial interests
In this research the interdisciplinary approach is used. It allows to estimate the conformity of the messages available in scientific groups of the Russian social network to the modern scientific knowledge, to distinguish principal views of errors and to reveal trends in communication sociology and science sociology
Summary
The modern person does not think of himself or herself without information and communication technologies. They facilitate human life in various aspects. The rational reasons of these fake news’ occurrence can be found, for example, in the field of economic or political manipulations, e.g. to influence the outcomes of public events [14, 15], the consumer behavior strategy [16], etc., and are studied well enough today, but the distortion of vision of the world can hardly bring any obvious advantage to the author, except those cases when the scientific information is connected with important political and commercial interests. Scheufele and Krause note that citizens are misinformed because they are unable to sift through and critically evaluate information in emerging (social) media environments [20]
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