Alternative Facts Research Articles

Crumbling Walls, Peeling Paint, and High Achievement Orientation: Alternative Facts or Truth?

This article examines historical context shaping the achievement gap while considering school choice. Students in low performing districts are often labeled as unmotivated or not achievement oriented. These assertions are upheld by citing attendance rates, graduation rates, and achievement data. This research article demonstrates that a sample of students in a low performing district has similarly aligned attitudes and self-reported behaviors related to achievement and success as a neighboring affluent district. Differences appear when students reflect upon safety and resources. This article demonstrates that public education works when the right resources are in place; so why push minorities out of their neighborhood schools toward charters and magnets rather than bolster and make equitable the existing system?

Trump's Lies: The Unconstitutionality of Government Propaganda

Government propaganda—the government’s deliberate dissemination of false claims on matters of public interest—has increasingly become a source of concern in the United States. Not only does the current presidential administration disseminate propaganda at a rate unprecedented in the modern era, so that Americans now live in an age of government-created “alternative facts,” but the internet and social media have made it possible to find receptive audiences with alarming speed and accuracy. This surge of government propaganda poses troubling questions for the health of our democracy, which requires political accountability and the valid consent of the governed to thrive. Although the crucial role that speech plays in our democratic self-rule is a major reason it merits First Amendment protection, the Free Speech Clause as currently interpreted has no part to play in combating government propaganda. Under the government speech doctrine, the Free Speech Clause does not apply to government speech, including government propaganda. It is time to revisit that conclusion. This Article argues that government propaganda, although government speech, ought to be regarded as covered by, and in violation of, the Free Speech Clause. Admittedly, this proposal is radical for two reasons. First, with few exceptions, the free speech tradition in the United States is averse to regulating harmful speech. Such regulations are believed to invite government abuse and to chill private speech. However, neither of these concerns are triggered when the government is the object rather than the enforcer of speech regulations. The second radical aspect of this proposal is bringing government speech into the purview of the Free Speech Clause. Nevertheless, government propaganda sufficiently undermines the core goals of free speech such that the Free Speech Clause ought to address it.

The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies

In this essay, I discuss how the alt-right has brought back into fashion traditional tenets of the reactionary, xenophobic, and often racist far-right, as demonstrated by George Hawley, and how it has managed to make these tenets appear as novel, provocative, and updated to the 21st century U.S. society and digital environment. I argue that to do so, alt-righters relied heavily on the creation, and sometimes reappropriation, of enemy images, with the ultimate goals of provoking outrage, instilling fear and/or hatred towards specific groups, reinforcing a sense of belonging within their own community, or more broadly manipulating collective perceptions and representations, first online then in real life. Indeed, the election of Donald Trump was hailed by the online alt-right as one of their major successes. With the help of irony, subversion, and often carefully engineered propaganda-like messages and images, the alt-right, it boasts, “meme’d into office” the Republican candidate. This paper consequently leads to an analysis of real-life repercussions of such adversarial rhetoric, notably through examples of recent far-right domestic terrorism in the US, and to a reflection on their place in an age of post-truth, fake news, and alternative facts. This contribution focuses on several enemy images. The first is that of the civilizational enemy from the outside, which uses the traditional process of othering. This theme is linked to Trump’s campaign and to his attacks against two major “enemies” of the U.S., namely Hispanics and Muslims. With the alt-right, refugees for example become “rapefugees,” which easily appeals to rampant islamophobia. The second enemy image created by the alt-right consists in its ideological opponents. Here, the function of the enemy image is to discredit opponents and their views (“cuckservative,” “feminazi,” or the sarcastic “Social Justice Warrior”). The third enemy image establishes a link between the first two. It depicts what I would call the “enemy within,” a common thread (or threat) in far-right ideologies. Indeed, cultural Marxism, a widespread conspiracy theory among the alt-right, is what its proponents believe to be the hidden reason for the perceived decline of the Western civilization. According to this worldview, the ideological opponents push a conspiracy against the West and its values. The recurring claims of a liberal bias among the media and academia also belong to this conspiracy theory. It also embraces elements of anti-Semitism, as well as traditional aspects of anti-communism, reminiscent of the historical Red Scares. Such a theory thus provides its believers with a broader narrative, as well as with a common enemy to rally against, and therefore builds a form of intersectionality among various online fringe groups.

Is Truth Truth?

“Truth isn’t truth,” Rudy Giuliani infamously asserted. Though critiqued as a manifestation of the “alternative facts” mindset in a “post-truth” era, Giuliani’s words, taken in context, embody a practitioner’s insight into several compelling theoretical questions concerning the nature of legal truth and the construction of facts by legal institutions. Does “truth” in the legal context exist only in the mind of the factfinder? Is there a conception of legal truth to which the straightforward assertion of Giuliani’s interlocutor that “truth is truth” can apply? How, if at all, do the idiosyncrasies of legal procedural factfinding require adaptation of conventional theories of truth? This Article examines the relationship of legal facts—adjudicative facts found by trial courts—to truth. It offers a revised model of legal truth: legal facts are collective propositional constructs capable of bearing a relationship of correspondence to external objects or events they purport to describe. In developing the revised model, the Article emphasizes the distinctions between the collective epistemic system of the court and the “single-mind” model of individual belief formation. Legal facts constitute collective knowledge insofar as their construction involves necessary contributions from multiple individual minds. Moreover, the formalized processes of the legal epistemic system theoretically mitigate some of the anti-veridical tendencies to which single-mind cognition is susceptible, while creating new obstacles unique to legal factfinding. The Article then identifies three incompatible conceptions of legal truth, distinguished along the axes of construction and correspondence, which it terms the “naive positivist,” “radical constructivist,” and “qualified constructivist” conceptions. The Article identifies the qualified constructivist conception as both the most descriptively accurate and theoretically fecund conception of legal truth. The article then suggests two applications of the revised model’s insights. First, the revised model’s compatibility with correspondence theories of truth permits fine-tuned trading of veridicality of factfinding against other normative objectives. Second, the revised model suggests incorporating a measure of factfinder confidence in legal facts into legal judgments to better account for legal facts’ intrinsic uncertainty.

Journeying toward Transformative Teaching in the Age of Alternative Facts and Re-Ascendant Ethnic and Racial Prejudice

Background We are at a historical juncture that is punctuated by the rise of white nationalism, an exacerbation of racial divisions and tensions, an uptick in hate crimes, and bullying increasingly targeting immigrant youth, all of which, in the current political and cultural climate, have often been legitimized through a recourse to “alternative facts.” However, the current historical moment in the United States is also marked by a postmodern ethos, which is often taken up by the public in a fragmentary manner, highlighted by a general sense of incredulity regarding any form of knowledge. At the same time, the fuller, ethical context of postmodernism complicates how educators may pedagogically address and respond to the tensions and conflict that filter over into the university classroom from the social strife and injustices evident in the society at large. The ethical context of postmodernism warns against changing hearts and minds with a proliferation of the “right” facts assumed to be devoid of attachments of value. It also warns us to be vigilant against the foreclosures, reductions, and exclusions that occur when one draws on metanarratives and universals to mobilize against injustice. Purpose We explore what it means pedagogically, for teacher educators in predominantly white institutions, to be situated at a historical juncture that calls out for some form of social advocacy on their part to combat the rise in the politicization of truth and xenophobic and racist sentiment, but are simultaneously compelled to keep in mind the ethical lessons of postmodernism. Research Design We utilize critical phenomenological analysis intertwined with a narrative accounting of both authors’ classroom experiences as they attempt to engage college students at a predominantly white university with issues of racism, white privilege, and marginalization. We analyze and reflect on the mixed reactions of our students to a presentation on teaching in a diverse world, given by one of the authors to the other author's class of pre-service teachers. Conclusions/Recommendations For teaching that may facilitate white students’ ability to become reflective of their positionality as structured through whiteness and its attendant privileges, it is important to envision pedagogical work taking place within environments that can address not only students’ cognitive capacities but also the white body schema, which operates at a pre-reflective level. Educators may refrain from reducing white students to reified categories of whiteness by cultivating a disposition of wonder that may allow them to understand whiteness through the lens of emergent realities rather than substantive, ontological forces.

Introduction to Special Issue: Trust in Doubt: Consuming in a Post-Truth World

Introduction to Special Issue: Trust in Doubt: Consuming in a Post-Truth World

The Epistemics of Populism and the Politics of Uncertainty

This paper discusses epistemic aspects of populism – especially its link with radical uncertainty and the tribal construction of facts – that have so far received relatively little attention. We argue that populism is less a backward-looking phenomenon feeding off existing grievances than a narrative-based reaction to an increasingly unsettled future. Many economic factors isolated as causes of populism – especially rapid technological innovation, deregulation, and the globalisation of networks – entail a high degree of indeterminacy in social systems; and the corresponding uncertainty facing voters is a catalyst for many of the pathologies of populism isolated in the literature. In particular, uncertainty undermines the credibility of experts, while the disorientation and anxiety it induces increase reliance on simple narratives to structure expectations. The paper explores the role of narrative entrepreneurs, the relationship between narratives and power, and the dynamics of narrative coups designed to create alternative facts and perform a new reality.

Experimenting with institutions in a 21st century age of “post‐truth”

AbstractThis paper contributes to experimental geographies in the context of scientific, research‐based institutions. This focus is under‐explored but increasingly under siege in a “post‐truth”, “alternative facts” and “fake news” era in the US and UK. I respond to the current cultural, political and social challenges presented to institutions against this backdrop, arguing for a solution to these challenges: experimenting with institutions. The paper first outlines how experiments have recently become used in experimental geographies. The paper then applies these understandings of experiments to the context of institutions, arguing for engaging with new, key situations rather than necessarily with key “experts”. The paper lastly explores one example of such experiments, termed “artist‐led institutions”, and their merits for addressing the challenges outlined. I argue these artist‐led institutions demonstrate potential solutions to current institutional difficulties through expanding engagements to include more practitioners and groups rather than just “experts”, as part of a turn towards recognising more forms of expertise, and their value for wider conversations. By engaging with wider groups assembled around key situations rather than “experts”, artist‐led institutions open up the value of conversations as part of the process of knowledge‐making, rather than solely focusing on the production of outputs in pursuit of certified expertise characteristic of scientific, research‐based institutions. In doing so, the paper contributes to a discussion involving experimental geographies and institutions which may yet become increasingly audible in an age of uncertainty, as 21st Century challenges unfold.

Fact-Checking and Truth-Telling in an Age of Alternative Facts

In an age of alternative facts, fact-checking has become almost second nature to critical thinkers who are concerned with the consequences of post-truth for the future of democracy. Drawing primarily on the work of Hannah Arendt and secondarily on that of Michel Foucault, this essay questions fact-checking as a democratic world-building practice and argues for forms of truth-telling that do not fall prey to Western philosophical conceptions of absolute truth and its hostility to plurality, opinion, and contingency.

Truthiness, Alternative Facts, and Experiential Learning

AbstractThis article provides a critical analysis of adult educators’ cherished notion of “experiential learning” and of the ways in which our assumptions limit our ability to respond effectively to a world of “truthiness” and “alternative facts.”

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction Arien Mack the papers in this special issue of social research were first presented on April 4 and 5, 2019, at the thirty-eighth Social Research conference at the New School, "Unknowability: How Do We Know What Cannot Be Known?" From the earliest moments of humanity's search for answers and explanations, we have grappled with the unknowable—that which we are unable, or not permitted, to know. In this issue, our authors explore how we decide that something is unknowable rather than merely not yet known, and what criteria we use in determining that some knowledge is beyond our reach, and whether these criteria differ across fields and disciplines. What does the history of the unknowable look like? What are the now-answered questions that we once thought unanswerable? Are there enduring unknowables? Are there modes of understanding that are different from the ones used by scientists, and what is the status of knowledge gained in these alternate ways? These and other questions were the subject of our conference and are addressed in this issue. The question of what we cannot know is not only important in its own right but has also taken on additional importance in light of the rise of misinformation and "alternative facts." A better understanding of whether or not something can possibly be known has the capacity to shape inquiry, scholarly research, and public education. Furthermore, identifying what kinds of questions are unanswerable is of great intellectual and perhaps even political significance—to wit, Donald Rumsfeld's now-famous statement that "there are known knowns … there are known unknowns … and there are also unknown unknowns," to which Fintan O'Toole added "unknown knowns." [End Page xxxi] The "Unknowability" conference afforded a rare opportunity for scholars from different fields to engage with these questions during this seemingly post-truth moment in which we all are living. We hope the conference papers collected in this special issue will encourage our readers to explore these questions themselves. We are grateful to the National Science Foundation for providing the funding that made the "Unknowability" conference possible. [End Page xxxii] Copyright © 2020 The New School

Truth in a Post-Truth World: Transcendence and the Essence of Mattering

The possibility of transcendent, objective, perdurant truth seems to have fallen on hard times lately, the very concept increasingly being called into question – if not simply dismissed outright. Indeed, some authors argue that we have entered a “post-truth world, where ‘alternative facts’ replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence.” Unfortunately, transcendence itself is seldom seriously or directly addressed in contemporary psychology, despite the fact that transcendence as a construct, or, perhaps better, as an ontological presupposition, is at the heart of every account, approach, model, or explanation in psychology. This paper introduces one explicit analytical project aimed at examining transcendence itself and its role in theory and philosophy in psychology. The paper will (1) briefly address the definitional task; that is, specifying what might be meant by transcendence as it is most often understood within the scholarly literature, particularly in contrast to immanence, (2) analyze some attempts to reduce transcendence to immanence and suggest that all such are unsuccessful, and (3) present a schematic framework for locating various theories and explanatory approaches in psychology within a conceptual “topology” that runs between weak and strong transcendence on one axis, and weak and strong evaluation on the other.

Separating Truth from Alternative Facts: 37 Years of Guns, Murder, and Violence Across the US

Gun violence remains a significant public health problem that is both understudied and underfunded, and plagued by inadequate or inaccessible data sources. Over the years, numerous trauma centers have attempted to use local registries to study single-institutional trends, however, this approach limits generalizability to our national epidemic. In fact, even easily accessible, health-centered data from the CDC lack national relevance because they are limited to those enrolled states only. We sought to examine how publicly available law enforcement data from all 50 states might complement our understanding of circumstances and demographics surrounding national firearm death and help forge the first step in partnering law enforcement with trauma centers. All homicide that occurred in the US during a 37-year period ending in 2016 was analyzed. Primary data files were obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and comprised the database. Data analyzed included homicide type, situation, circumstance, firearm type, and demographic characteristics of victims and offenders. The proportion of firearm-related homicide was stratified by year and compared over time using simple linear regression. There were 485,288 incidents of firearm homicide analyzed (64% of 752,935 total homicides). Most victims were male (85%), black (53%), and a mean age of 33 years; offenders were predominantly male (67%), black (39%), and a mean age of 30 years. Fifty-four percent of all homicide involved a single victim and single offender, followed by a single victim and unknown offender(s) (31%); 4% of firearm homicide had multiple victims. Overall, handguns, shotguns, and rifles accounted for 76%, 7%, and 5% of all firearm homicide, respectively; 11% had no firearm type listed and <1% were other gun or unknown. Linear regression analysis identified a significant increase in the proportion of firearm-related homicide from 61% in 1980 to 71% in 2016 (β= 0.25; p < 0.0001). Gun violence represents an ongoing public health concern, with the proportion of firearm homicide steadily and significantly increasing from 1980 to 2016. Homicide data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation can serve to supplement trauma registry data by helping to define gun violence patterns. However, stronger partnerships between local law enforcement agencies and trauma centers are necessary to better characterize firearm type and resultant injury patterns, direct prevention efforts and firearm policy, and reduce gun-related deaths.

Front and Back Covers, Volume 36, Number 1. February 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 1Front coverALTERNATIVE FACTSIn response to discourses of alternative facts, denials of climate science and the undermining of science in the public sphere, on 22 April 2017, protestors marched for science in cities across the United States. In this image of the San Francisco march, a protestor holds a sign proclaiming ‘science is universal’. While some protestors' slogans assumed the objectivity of science and facts, others asserted the importance of diversity, equality and inclusion in science. Scholars of science and technology studies have long deconstructed claims of universality, but recently some have argued that the authority of science and facts must be reclaimed. Bruno Latour emphasizes that it is untenable to talk about scientific facts as though their rightness alone will be persuasive. Analyses of human rights and political violence disclose how narratives and propaganda shape not just individual attitudes but also the functioning of institutions. Contexts of gaslighting, repetition, distraction and undermining facts require different strategies for understanding how institutions and societies are perpetrating and perpetuating injustices. In this issue, Drexler's article develops a framework of multidimensional and intersectional justice for analyzing the layered, compounded, dynamic forms of power and inequality that contribute to particular injustices. Understanding justice as multidimensional and intersectional is part of a struggle from which new forms of knowledge and truth can emerge.Back cover‘NEW SCHISM’ IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY?A supplicatory prayer service (Moleben) to Saint Emperor Nikolay II in an Orthodox church in the Russian Federation. On the commemoration day of his death, believers line up to venerate large icons of the tsar installed in the church, as in many other churches of the ‘Russian world’. When kissing the holy icons and listening to the words of prayer, they participate in a theopolitical performance of belonging to a community of co‐believers and compatriots, of people who share the same faith and the same nation, an enactment of the model ‘one state, one church’ prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy.What happens, however, when state borders change, when new sovereign states emerge or become stronger? Is it possible for Orthodox Christians to practise their faith outside the national‐territorial logic?Since the summer of 2018, Jeanne Kormina and Vlad Naumescu have been observing a rapidly developing cold war within Orthodox Christianity. This war between different claims for sovereignty and jurisdiction over ‘canonical territories’ has followed clear logics of religious nationalism and imperialism. In this conflict, the less privileged — ordinary believers and local religious communities — have suffered most.In this issue, Kormina and Naumescu analyze the recent ‘schism’ in Eastern Orthodoxy to show how religion and politics are strongly intertwined in disputes over territory and sovereignty. Drawing a parallel between the post‐socialist revival of religion in Ukraine and the current mobilization on the ground, they show how the theopolitics of ‘communion’ and ‘canonical territory’ shape the fate of people, churches and states.

Between disinformation tactics and deciphering strategies: towards a semio-political analysis of “fake news” and “alternative facts”

From traditional to digital media, the growth of false information, hoaxes or rumors has recently crystalized in the formulas fake news or alternative facts , which indicate a certain weakening of critical thinking. These formulas reveal that the public sphere experiences complex epistemo-logical processes, an even more complex relationship to truth and a profound modification of ale-thurgies. This paper will analyze the life of false information in a changing media environment, first by defining what the terms fake news and alternative facts mean, before subsequently analyzing a recent case study involving different levels of false information and forgeries during the French election, the macronleaks. We will observe the ambiguous role of social networks and the strategies deployed by some actors to decipher false information. Therefore, our aim is to offer a semio-political analysis of fake news and alternative facts that will help us understand why we are so eager to believe in them, and what to do about them.

Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics

How effective is fact checking in countervailing “alternative facts,” i.e., misleading statements by politicians? In a randomized online experiment during the 2017 French presidential election campaign, we subjected subgroups of 2480 French voters to alternative facts by the extreme-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, and/or corresponding facts about the European refugee crisis from official sources. We find that: (i) alternative facts are highly persuasive; (ii) fact checking improves factual knowledge of voters (iii) but it does not affect policy conclusions or support for the candidate; (iv) exposure to facts alone does not decrease support for the candidate, even though voters update their knowledge. We find evidence consistent with the view that at least part of the effect can be explained by raising salience of the immigration issue.

Linguistic models of social and political communication in the online-space: cognitive and pragmatic aspect

The socio-political context of the «post-truth» era, conditioned by the digitalization of all spheres of life, transforms the network content, which forms the basis of network discourses and is the main source of information for the network society. As a result, network content is not simply determined by the categorical concepts of «fact» – «myth», but is completely transformed into the conceptual-categorical apparatus «fact» – «alternative fact», which is essentially informational speculation and leads to the development of destructive socio-political practices and distribution of fake online content. Based on a comprehensive analysis of network data (a methodology developed by the authors that combines theories and methodologies of several areas of scientific knowledge), linguistic models of social and political communication in the online-space were identified and described («Ali Juppe» in France, «Pizzagate» in the USA, «Migrantskidnappers» in India and Pakistan); the result of consumption of new linguo-pragmatic patterns («Allan Juppe – an accomplice of Islamic extremists»; «Don’t vote for Clinton, Vote for Trump» and the side pattern «Save children from pedophiles»; «Pakistani migrants pose a threat») by users of the online-space in the specified countries was investigated; the results of the models’ actions are given and the offline result of the consumption of these patterns is described. The research develops a new direction of linguistic science – network linguistics; consideration of new network models of communication (cognitive stereotypes and linguopragmatic patterns) in the online-space is the main genuine identifier of the discourse varieties formed offline that determine the further behavior (constructive and / or destructive) of the user both online and offline.

Seeking Clarity in a World Infected by COVID-19 and Fake News

The world has been changed irrevocably by the infectious severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that causes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that was first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. COVID-19 affects everyone everywhere. A separate and significant, though not necessarily as infectious, malady affecting many, though not all, individuals worldwide, is “Fake News”, known alternatively as yellow journalism, junk news, pseudo news, false news, alternative facts, hoaxes, misinformation, disinformation, fabricated news, corrupt news, unfathomable nonsense, or outright lies, which are typically based on provably false statements, and are distributed widely through mainstream news media and social media. The opinion piece presents a brief history of COVID-19 and fake news, and existing international efforts to deal with each of these infections, and to encourage critical comments, concepts and ideas.

Anti/Vax: Reframing the Vaccination Controversy by Bernice L. Hausman

Reviewed by: Anti/Vax: Reframing the Vaccination Controversy by Bernice L. Hausman José Luis Quintero Ramírez (bio) Bernice L. Hausman. Anti/Vax: Reframing the Vaccination Controversy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. 294 pp. Hardcover, $29.95. At the heart of Bernice Hausman's Anti/Vax is a call to take vaccination skeptics at their word, to take their stories seriously. Drawing from her experience at Virginia Tech's Vaccination Research Group (VRG) interviewing people who do not vaccinate or only partially vaccinate, Hausman argues that while vaccination controversy is understood within popular discourses to be a problem of science denial, it is in fact a problem of social and political disagreement. She proposes that "vaccine skepticism is linked to various beliefs and practices that are actually not unusual in American society, and that such skepticism is sustained by popular suspicions of government, sponsored scientific research, and pharmaceutical companies" (13). This reality, however, is buried under a stalemate in public debates that is only further entrenched by contemporary media and popular literature that groups vaccine skeptics together with climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists. Anti/Vax is Hausman's attempt at moving beyond this impasse, offering a varied history of the particular material conditions that result in the modern vaccine skeptic, alongside a focus on narrative storytelling that highlights the centrality of individual health experience in understanding such subjects. The book's ten chapters are an expansive study that start by summarizing the long history of vaccination controversies in the United States, and then delve into the contemporary media's take on the modern controversy; the role of parental responsibility in understanding vaccine skepticism; science denialism; poststructuralism and alternative facts; biomedicalization and anti-medicine practices; and even cinematic representations of zombie epidemics. Throughout, Hausman is careful to remain neutral in the debate: her intention is not to "proclaim which side is right, but investigate the controversy [End Page 214] itself" (2). She does this tactfully and precisely, wonderfully illustrating how the scientific establishment has failed to address the fears of its skeptics. At the end of Anti/Vax, however, Hausman feels the need to clearly state that she is, despite the book she has written, on the side of vaccination and science. Listening to the stories of health and illness told by those interviewed at the VRG has led her to understand that, when it comes to appeasing vaccination skepticism, "the answer is science and something else" (219; original emphasis). Anti/Vax is a fantastic start in figuring out what that something else might be. The first chapter offers a quick but detailed history of vaccination concerns in the twentieth century, focusing on concerns brought up since the 1980s. From the start, Hausman clarifies that "there was never a golden age of vaccine acceptance," demonstrating that vaccination skepticism is not entirely linked to the contemporary moment (16). What the chapter truly centers around, however, is demonstrating that there is a wide array of reasons vaccination has become a national issue. Vaccine shortages, inaccessible prices, rumors about the spreading of HIV in Africa, and Gulf War syndrome have all previously caused people to raise concerns about the use of vaccines; these concerns are why governmental policy has been put in place to make vaccination a required practice. Parental belief, however, is what characterizes the contemporary vaccination controversy, and Hausman argues that this is only possible because "other concerns about vaccination were stripped of their authority or believability, or simply stopped being reported on" (34). This chapter's conclusion sets the stage for chapters 2 and 3, which explore how news media and nonfiction books on vaccination written for the general public single out parental disregard of scientific discourse as the root of the vaccination controversy. Hausman (and her well-acknowledged team of researchers) survey a vast archive of news media in chapter 2 in order to track how the tone of vaccination reporting has changed in the last decade. She concludes that "the narrowing of vaccination concern to the issue of autism causation does not necessarily reflect the range of vaccination worries in the United States" (47). The governmental mandate to vaccinate children for HPV, for example, was contentious specifically...

Media literacy and fact checking: part two

This is the second part of the author’s study from the Michigan State University, devoted to the problems of identification and description of the disinformation crisis in the media and social media. The modern media field is increasingly filled with false information. The term “fake news” today in- cludes a wide range of manipulative technologies: “computational propaganda”, “puppet networks”, “troll armies”, anonymous source, alternative fact, gossip, deceit, rumors, false context, etc. Problems are exacerbated at a high pace. The development of technological processes and the shift in global com- munication discourse to social networks and the Internet. The purpose of the article is to study the history and evolution of the disinformation crisis, which is a serious threat to open societies around the world. The author proposes to activate critical thinking among young people, to teach the audience to intellectually recognize and process fake news, to understand the need for a critical and independent analysis of incoming news and background information. The author also believes that media literacy helps to understand the role of the media in society, as well as the acquisition of important research and expression skills needed by the audience. Media literacy skills also include the ability to access media, analyze content, evaluate messages, and create media for communication and expression. Learning how to verify facts is an important component of media literacy training, a way to protect against manipulation and fake news.