poli 421 midterm

misinformation

false or misleading information shared without harmful intent

disinformation

-false information deliberately created and spread to deceive or manipulate, intention to cause harm
-focus of foreign interference, electoral manipulation, etc

Malinformation

accurate, truthful information used out of context or maliciously leaked to cause harm

Agent

-the thing that is spreading disinformation
-ex. bots, cyborgs, cybertroops, trolls, fake tanks
-can have professionalized industries driving online political operations

interpreter

-receiver who actively decodes message
-hegemonic, negotiated, oppositional
-audiences interpret political claims through prior worldview

message

-the content and format being spread, characterized by emotional resonance, visual appeal, or strong narrative structure
-explains why false claims go viral when they fit these characteristics

social transmission

all human communication (word-of-mouth, private messaging)

social sharing

refers only to public social media posting

Propaganda (Jowett)

Deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to achieve a response furthering the propagandist’s intent

white propaganda

mostly truthful, comes from an identified source

grey propaganda

from an ambiguous source with uncertain accuracy

black propaganda

concealed source relying on deceit and fabrications

integrative propaganda

seeks to calm an audience, render then passive and compliant with the status quo

agitative propaganda

rouses an audience into immediate action or mobilization

persuasion (Jowett)

-transactional and mutually satisfying process to change beliefs
-persuader must fulfill needs of the persuadee

soft propaganda

uses framing to convince citizens of leader competence

hard propaganda

signals regime strength and dominance, enforces compliance, shows people that regime can supress

enthymeme

a rhetorical process where the audience mentally fills in missing parts of an argument

resonance

-where an imported message is perceived by the audience not as something imposed from the outside, but as an idea originating from within themselves

filter bubbles

intellectual isolation as a result of algorithms only presenting personalized content based on past behaviour

randomization

-randomly splitting a large group of people into groups, this way through should be on average equal in every way
-this can help to adjust for confounding variables, guarantees they are controlled and causal relationships can be estimated

random sampling

randomly selecting participants from a larger population to create a representative sample

random assignment

randomly assigning existing participants to different groups

spillover

when effects from one treatment spread to another group, making it harder to isolate effect

attrition

-where certain groups drop out more than others, leaving you with only a specific population represented

non-compliance

when participants don’t follow the assigned treatment protocol, affecting study validity

scaleability

-the challenge of making a study’s results applicable on a wider scale
-small study groups results can be hard to apply, local conditions not reflective of other levels

pilot

small-scale, preliminary trial designed to test research methods, logistics, and data collection tools before doing the complete study

data mining

looking through a dataset without a hypothesis until you find correlations that work

p-hacking

misuse of data analysis to force a statistically significant result even when there is no actual effect

cherry-picking

selectively choosing data, results that support a specific hypothesis

Public Broadcasting Services

-radio, tv, digital media funded and operated to serve public interest instead of commercial profit, goals to inform and educate
-publicly financed, supported by govt, public funds
-can have many causal effects: increased editorial standards, perceived political influence, educational programming, credibility halo

inoculation

-giving someone the critical skills, information hygeine skills to critically assess misinformation
-giving someone weak exposure to misinformation to then create resistant mind

dosage

-how much media literacy/training is needed for someone to be resistant to misinformation

saturation/overexposure

too much disinformation introduced will backfire

information hygiene

-ability to keep information true and verified
-ability to filter, verify, manage disinformation you consume

pre-bunking

-telling people what disinformation will look like before they are exposed, what techniques will be used
-based on the idea that prevention is more effective than correction
-strategies: expose manipulation techniques, build critical thinking, inoculate against appeals to emotion, pre-emptive warnings

debunking

a reactive correction to disinformation, corrects it after it has already emerged

discernment

-the ability to differentiate between true and false news stories
-discernment = proportion of true stories rated as true - false stories rates as true

illusory truth effect

-psychological tendency to judge a statement as more truthful after repeated exposure regardless of whether it is factually correct
-repeating false political headlines makes them feel more credible over time

accuracy nudges

-subtle psychological prompts that focus user attention on accuracy before reading or sharing content
-focused on the idea that some people share false stories due to inattention rather than belief, they just need to be reminded

information autocracy

-a modern regime, sometimes referred to as a “spin dictatorship” that maintains political control primarily by manipulating information, public opinion, and state media rather than relying on violent repression

ecological validity

-how well your study represents the way a treatment is found in the real world, you want to replicate the environment in the best way that you can
-how the research environment is reflective of the real world
-ex. if studying deepfakes, want to setup the study so people encounter them how they would in real life

external validity

how well the findings from a sample extrapolate to the broader population

incidental exposure

-when people get information without looking for it
-gateway effect is an example of this — not directing intending to get access to other info, but finding it anyway through exposure on media platforms

absurd propaganda

-domination, so extreme that it defies logic
-but, everyone repeats it, which reflects acquiescence to regime’s power, isolates citizens
-why does it work: shock value, tribal signaling, overwhelm logic

external signaling

-govts use disinfo to show other govts what they think
-not just directed at citizens, but serving geopolitical grand strategy

prevalence

-the presence of something among a population, how widespread something is within a specific group
-numerator and denominator, defines the specific population
-prevents overestimating fake news prevalence by accurately measuring both the numerator and the denominator

cybertroops

-government, military, or political party teams committed to manipulating public opinion over social media
-formal organizations, often funded with public money, that use computational propaganda to shape political discourse and public perceptions

flooding/information jamming

-deluging the digital sphere with massive quantities of pro-regime content + unverified claims to drown out opposition messages
-censorship through distraction, raises cost of finding critical news

filtering

-curated information enables focus
-want to avoid info that could hurt regime
-more costly and time consuming

preference falsification

-act of publicly expressing support for a regime while privately opposing it, driven by social climate
-explains why state media may create an illusion of social harmony that deters collective protest

streisand effect

a phenomenon where an explicit attempt to censor or suppress information backfires by drawing greater public attention and outrage to it

gateway effect

-when a sudden platform block forces habit-driven, apolitical users to acquire evasion tools for non-political reasons
-this incidentally exposes them to uncensored political news and triggers long-term politicization
-ex. China instagram block

scope conditions

-the specific boundary rules that define the environment in which a theoretical model or empirical finding apply
-helps us avoid over-generalizing findings across different political regimes or platforms
-ex. Chinese insta block and scope conditions of the gateway effect: only applies when there is a lack of alternatives, low penalty for evasion, sudden block

national information environment

-macro-level political and media structures of a country that dictate how information spreads
-ex strength of PSB
-features that can explain why fake news manifests differently in different countries

disnews

deliberately false assertions adopting legitimate news formats, contributes to erosion of trust in traditional media

deepfakes

synthetic videos generated using advanced deep learning algorithms

cheapfakes

low-tech video edits created using conventional tools: speeding up/slowing down footage, cropping out of context

Liar’s dividend

phenomenon where the existence of realistic AI and deepfake technology allow people to dismiss authentic evidence as disinformation to avoid accountability for the sake of partisan reasoning

pro-kremlin propaganda

-false, distorted, or strategically crafted claims deployed by Russian government, media outlets, or troll operations (IRA) to manipulate public opinion and influence political outcomes abroad and domestically
-pro-Russian, seeks to undermine West
-effective for partisans, ethnic connections to Russia
-at home and abroad

motivated reasoning

-processing of information in a defensive/directional manner to arrive at conclusions that confirm pro-existing worldviews, protect political identity
-involves an active mental effort - spending cognitive energy counter-arguing dissonant facts
-this means that misperceptions are genuinely held

partisan cheerleading/expressive reasoning

-phenomenon where survey respondents deliberately provide insincere, party-corresponding answers to signal political loyalty even when they know it’s not true
-under this theory, partisan factual divides are illusory, not genuinely held

backfire effect

-where providing factual corrections, counter-evidence, or verification training causes individuals to double down on their original misperceptions
-individuals process corrections defensively
-this shows limits of fact-checking

analytic thinking

-when a person engages in deliberative, reflective mental processing to evaluate accuracy of information
-Pennycook: those who do this are better at detecting false stories across all partisans

Jowett

-defining propaganda and the different types
-persuasion v. propaganda

Wardle

-dis/mis/mal information
-elements of information disorder

Zimmerman + Kohrig: German elections and misinfo

-lower trust in traditional news media and political system increased believability of disinfo
-disinformation belief drove former mainline voters towards the AfD

Humprecht: four democracies

Fake news not the same everywhere

In polarized, low-trust countries (US +UK), fake news is a weapon used by political elites in partisan conflicts

In high-trust countries with strong public broadcasting, fake news manifests as sensationalist online rumours targeting vulnerable groups

Badrinathan: India intervention

-media literacy training did not significantly improve rspondents’ overall ability to identify misinfo
-partisan backfire effect: BJP partisans became less able to identify false stories that favoured their party

Erlich + Garner: Pro-kremlin disinfo

-most Ukrainians have baseline ability to distinguish true stories from pro-Kremlin disinfo
-economic stories were the main vulnerability
-identity and partisanship drive belief in disinfo: supproting pro-Russian political party, ethnic Russian identity etc
-high political knowledge, education, improved ability to spot lies

Rosenfeld + Wallace: Information Politics and Propaganda in Authoritarian societies

-types of propaganda (soft, hard, flooding, absurd)
-when is it effective, why do they consume
-when do people break out of propaganda bubble

Carter + Carter: propaganda and protest occurrence in autocracies

-pro-regime propaganda before a protest reduces immediate likelihood
-effects of propaganda are durable but short-lived
-why? — persuasion of positive regime performance, social coordination, repressive signalling

Shirikov: Russian discernment of disinfo

-Russians were able to identify false headlines comparable to people in west
-state media consumers were less accurate
-political biases drive susceptibility: Putin supporters highly vulnerable, opposition supporters better, but still falling for false stories aligned with their views

King et al: China’s theory of censorship

-China’s censors allowing criticism of the govt and policy debates to pass, but real target is to silence discussions that have collective action potential: events, topics, that could spur mobilization
-doesn’t matter the political lean of the comments

Hobbs + Roberts: gateway effect in China’s instagram block

-focused on the gateway effect, politicizing users incidentally
-half of instagram users went on to access VPNs to keep using, then more access of blocked Wiki pages and engagement with political discussions
-conditions of the effect: sudden block, lack of substitutes, low penalty for evasion

Guess et al: fake news dissemination on FB

-wanted to measure individual characteristics of sharing behaviour
-overall sharing was rare
-age was strongest predictor, then conservative alignment
-this could be due to lacking digital skills or cognitive decline with age

global organization of disinfo campaigns

-cyber troops: a state-sponsored organization that conducts disinformation campaigns on the internet using computational propaganda, publicly-funded and highly coordinated
-democracies have high capacity + but more temporary organization, while autocracies less capacity but high organization

Barari et al: Deepfakes credibility

-found that deepfakes not uniquely deceptive, no more credible than reading the same fake scandals as text or audio
-standard interventions had little to no effect on detection accuracy
-real danger is false skepticism towards real videos engendered by deepfakes presence

Trauthig et al: Messaging apps in autocracies

-relative secrecy and privacy offered by enrypted apps benefit state propagandists more than civil society
-information flooding in context of lacking content moderation
-human driven strategies, closed environments restrict fact-checkers’ accesses
-neither completely liberating nor oppressive, in some places they are good tools to organize against state, but others have overwhelming fear of state surveillance even on these apps

Eady: exposure to Russian disinfo campaign in 2016 election

-exposure was highly concentrated, had no meaningful effect on chaning attitudes, voting behaviour
-exposure was concentrated among those with already aligned views
-issue is second-order effects and broader instability brought by the phenomenon

Pennycook + Rand:

-citizens fall for fake news bc they fail to engage in analytical reasoning — lazy thinking
-those that had better CRT scores were better at discernment across all types of partisan sources, less likely to wrongly identify misinfo

Nyhan: backfire effect misperceptions

corrective information is helpful, but the problem is that they effects do not last — they decay and become overwhelmed by political cues

Peterson + Iyengar: Motivated reasoning vs partisan cheerleading

-found that partisan divides are sincere: 60-70% persist under incentives given for correct identification
-this means that partisans are genuinely believing the wrong information — motivated reasoning
-this is harder to correct