4.0 Learning Outcomes

“Social media [-] allows us to construct and prune our social networks, to surround ourselves with others who share our views and biases, and to refuse to interact with those who do not. This, in turn, filters the ways in which the world can push back, by limiting the facts to which we are exposed. Propagandistic tools are especially effective in this environment.” (O’Connor & Weatherall, 2019, p. 16).

 

Analyze how humans share and create information online by:

  • Explaining how false information is created on different types of social media.
  • Recognizing people’s role in sharing and creating information on social media platforms and how it is adding to the spread of false information.

So far, we have examined information and various related concepts. We have discussed how the Internet has impacted the creation, sharing and distribution of information, with an emphasis on the news industry and an examination of the algorithms that underlie and impact all online search behavior. In this chapter, we will discuss social media platforms and how people interact with them. Social networks often blur the lines between trustworthy information and false content. Newsfeeds have become environments in which disinformation thrives. This chapter examines the consequences of human interaction with online information, we call this information manipulation. In this chapter we will cover:

  • Disinformation on social media
  • Online social communities
  • Influencers

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Disinformation: Dealing with the Disaster Copyright © 2023 by Saskatchewan Polytechnic is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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