[Sigifp-l] 2018 Workshop AND/OR Information Access Panel?

[FROEHLICH, THOMAS]

Fake news and pseudo-cognitive authority, its characteristics, and venues.

Proposed by Thomas J. Froehlich, Ph.D.

I would like to follow some themes from a paper I recently published, "A Not-So-Brief Account of Current Information Ethics: The Ethics of Ignorance, Missing Information, Misinformation, Disinformation and Other Forms of Deception or Incompetence"  (http://bid.ub.edu/en/39/froehlich.htm) and from a course that I just created and taught on The Age of Disinformation.  In them, I developed a taxonomy of false informations and forms of deception, looked at the psychological grounds for ignorance adherents, examined the role of cognitive authorities in the (dis)information marketplace, and reviewed various techniques for combating fake news for information professionals, among other related issues. I would like to work through the notion of fake or pseudo- cognitive authority mentioned in the article and somewhat elaborated in my course: what it is, what its characteristics are, how it spreads through social media, specifically discussing a very recent study that found that lies spread faster online than the truth due to people, and not bots like we previously thought (Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, “The spread of true and false news online,” Science, 09 Mar 2018, 359 (6380), 1146-1151.  DOI: 10.1126/science.aap9559; http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146.)  Such a study has alarmed social scientists and legal scholars who articulated concerns in such articles as David M. J. Lazer, Matthew A. Baum, Yochai Benkler, Adam J. Berinsky, Kelly M. Greenhill, Filippo Menczer, Miriam J. Metzger, et al., “The science of fake news,” Science, 09 Mar 2018, 359 (6380), 1094-1096. DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2998; http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1094/tab-article-info).  Through such and related research, we may better understand the role of pseudo-cognitive authority, its characteristics, and venues, manifest in the spread and speed of fake news so that we can combat such phenomena in order to safeguard democracy.

Short Bio:
Thomas J. Froehlich, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, School of Information, Kent State University (27 years). The majority of his published work is concerned with ethical considerations in the information professions, evolving in part from his philosophy background (Ph.D., Duquesne University). Dr. Froehlich taught in the areas of information science, ethics, network and software resources, online searching, and user interface design. He was the chief architect and former Director of the Master of Science Program in Information Architecture and Knowledge Management at Kent State University, which now offers Master’s degrees in Knowledge Management, User Experience Design and Health Informatics.  He has provided workshops, trainings, seminars or presentations in 26 countries, primarily in the areas of online searching and ethical concerns of information professionals.

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