DATA & MISINFORMATION COMPLETE

Information Deficit Model

People lack knowledge and fill gaps with misinformation. Use it when explaining why people use misinformation.

Continued influence effect

Misinformation keeps shaping reasoning after being retracted. Use it when explaining why corrections fail (fire example).

Confirmation bias

Keeping info that fits our narrative and dismissing the rest. Use it when explaining selective belief.

Selective exposure

Choosing content that fits existing views.

Echo chamber

A social setting where you mostly hear similar views. Use it when explaining selected exposure by users.

Filter bubble

Algorithmic personalization limiting what you see. Use it when explaining pre-selected exposure by platforms.

Selected exposure

You choose the content you see (making fresh guacamole, which costs more effort)

Pre-selected exposure

An algorithm chooses the content you see (buying store-made guacamole, costs less effort)

Source confusion / misattribution

Forgetting or mixing up where information came from. Use when explaining memory-based failures of corrections.

Loss of negation

Remembering a claim but forgetting it was denied. Use when explaining why “X is NOT true” can backfire.

Cognitive dissonance

Discomfort from contradictory information. Use it when explaining why people resist corrections of a statement.

Backfire effect

A correction strengthens the false belief; rarer than first thought.

Dual process theory

Analytical processing needs ability and motivation; otherwise people think intuitive.

Feelings-as-information

Using subjective ease or feeling as a cue for truth. Use it when explaining why fluent messages feel true.

Processing fluency

Subjective ease of processing a message. Fonts, simplicity, repetition.

Five truth criteria

Compatibility, coherence, credibility, consensus, evidence.

Illusory truth effect

Repeated statements feel more true. Repetition of myths or facts.

Familiarity effect

Familiar things feel safer and truer. Use it to explain why repeating facts helps.

Alternative explanation

A replacement account that fills the gap left by a retraction.This helps by filling the mental void.

Source suspicion

Questioning a source’s expertise, motives or trustworthiness. This is triggering analytical thinking.

Prebunking / inoculation

Refuting misinformation before exposure by building resistance. This is a preventive strategy.

Debunking

Correcting after exposure; weaker theoretical basis than prebunking. This is a reactive strategy

Threat

Perceived danger to your beliefs that motivates counter-arguing. This is the first component of a prebunk.

Refutational pre-emption

The counterargument inside the prebunk. This is the second component of a prebunk.

Technique-based inoculation (generic)

You teach people the trick used to mislead, whatever the topic. Examples are fake experts, emotional language, oversimplification and impersonation. This protects against any message that uses the trick.

Fact-based inoculation (specific)

You refute one particular false claim. Example: “The claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism is false, because...” This protects only against that claim.

Transferable

The ability to recognise a technique for spreading misinformation, and being able to apply this to a new context.

Prophylactic inoculation

before exposure, like a normal vaccine. You protect beliefs that haven’t yet been attacked. This is true prebunking.

Therapeutic inoculation

Happens after someone has already been exposed to the misinformation (or already holds the belief). You try to reduce how receptive they still are. This is really a reactive strategy like debunking.

Narrative counters

A debunking strategy that fights a misinformation story with an alternative story. It uses anecdotes, experiences or frames to explain the same event differently, instead of relying on facts and statistics. Use it when misinformation is emotional and story-based (for example “overnight autism” vaccine posts). Link it to “provide an alternative” and note that the evidence is mixed.

External Storage

The function of a visual display to store information outside the human mind, freeing up working memory resources for other cognitive tasks.

Organization of Information

The grouping and spatial indexing of related data points (e.g., via proximity or Gestalt principles) to facilitate search, comparison, and mental integration.

Offloading Cognition onto Perception

Mapping non-visual data onto visual variables so that complex mathematical computations are replaced by automatic visual pattern recognition (e.g., detecting emergent features).

Offloading Cognition onto Action

Using physical interactions with a display (e.g., dragging, rotating, filtering, zooming) to perform work in the external world that would otherwise require effortful internal mental calculations

Iconic Display

A visual-spatial display that represents objects that are themselves visual-spatial entities (e.g., road maps, machinery diagrams).

Relational Display

A visual-spatial display that represents abstract relationships or non-spatial entities using visual variables like location, color, or shape as metaphors (e.g., scatterplots, line graphs).

Display Schema

A mental framework derived from prior experience that structures how a viewer expects a visual display to look and behave (e.g., expecting a bar chart’s Y-axis to begin at zero).

Internal Representation

The mental reconstruction—not an exact copy—of a visual display constructed in memory, shaped heavily by attention, perceptual encoding, and the viewer’s display schema.

Data-Ink Ratio

Edward Tufte’s core principle stating that graphics should maximize the proportion of ink used to convey actual data relative to the total ink used; any ink that does not convey relevant information is wasted

Chart Junk

Decorative or non-essential visual elements added to a graph that distract the viewer or grab attention without conveying data relevance.

Relevance Principle

The rule that a graphic should present no more and no less information than is required for the specific task at hand.

Apprehension Principle

The rule that a display can only be effective if its visual features can be accurately and easily perceived by the visual system.

Salience Principle

The design requirement to make the most important thematic information visually prominent so that it immediately draws attentional focus.

Capacity Limitation Principle

The mandate to design displays that respect human constraints in working memory and visual attention.

Naïve Realism

The misguided belief or preference that visual displays should be as realistic, detailed, or 3D as possible, despite evidence that realistic displays often degrade user performance due to visual clutter or depth misperception.

Lie Factor

A value far from $1.0$ indicates that the graph visually exaggerates or understates the true change in data.

Y-Axis Truncation

Starting the vertical axis above zero, which visually exaggerates minor relative differences between data points.

Area-as-Quantity Distortion

Representing a one-dimensional linear variable using a two-dimensional shape or area, causing ratios to be visually exaggerated because area grows exponentially relative to linear scale.

Aspect Ratio (X-Axis) Distortion

Stretching or compressing the horizontal axis to artificially steepen or flatten a trendline.

Inverted Axis Distortion

Flipping an axis (e.g., placing $0$ at the top and $1000$ at the bottom) so that upward trends visually appear to go downward, often used for message reversal.

Graphical Liar Tactics

Sender-driven manipulation strategies, including: (1) hiding relevant data, (2) displaying excessive data to obscure the true signal, or (3) using truncated/distorted axes.

Inoculation Effect (Graph Literacy)

The psychological protection achieved when warning viewers in advance about potential graph distortions (e.g., Y-axis truncation), which significantly reduces the distortion effect—though its protection can fade over time

Deepfake

Media (image, video, or audio) that has undergone algorithmic manipulation using deep learning techniques

Cheapfake

A non-AI media manipulation created using simple editing tools, such as splicing, changing playback speeds, or mislabeling contexts.

CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery)

Manually rendered digital imagery that does not rely on deep-learning neural network algorithms.

CNN (Convolutional Neural Network)

A specialized form of artificial neural network used in computer vision to serve as either a detector (recognizing features) or a generator (creating media).

Autoencoder

A deep-learning architecture consisting of an encoder (compressing facial features) and a decoder (reconstructing them); linking an encoder trained on Person A with a decoder trained on Person B allows face-swapping.

GAN (Generative Adversarial Network)

A dual-network deep-learning framework (generator vs. discriminator) capable of generating hyper-realistic synthetic human faces, voices, or images from scratch using limited initial data.

Model Collapse

A degenerative process wherein AI models trained recursively on synthetic AI-generated data gradually lose detail and variance over generations, causing outputs to deteriorate into noise.

Conspiracy

A true secret plot by 2 or more powerful actors. Use when something is proven

Conspiracy Theory

An allegation of a plot by 2 or more powerful actors, which may be true or false. Use for claims.

Epistemic agnosticism

Studying why people believe (In CTs) without judging the truth of such theories. Use for the researcher’s stance.

Conspiracy belief

Belief in one specific CT.

Conspiracy mindset

General cognitive tendency to find CTs plausible; flexible. Characterized by heightened suspicion, hyper-vigilance, and intentional pattern-seeking when interpreting specific events or information.Fluctuates based on situational circumstances, environmental stressors, or psychological needs.

Conspiracy mentality

A stable, domain-general personality trait (disposition) characterized by a generalized belief that the world is governed by secret, powerful, and malevolent groups operating in the shadows.

Monological belief system

A closed, self-reinforcing network of thoughts where new information is evaluated solely by how well it aligns with pre-existing beliefs rather than external evidence. Consequently, one belief serves as the evidence for another, making the system immune to disproof and capable of absorbing contradictory claims.

Prosumer

Someone who both consumes and produces information. This is what we call active believers of CTs online.

Ontological insecurity

Uncertainty about what is real, especially online. This insecurity is what drives people toward conspiracy theories to restore order.

Illusory pattern perception

Believers of CTs see patterns in data where no patterns exist.

Intuitive Thinking

Fast, automatic, and gut-driven cognitive processing (System 1) that relies on heuristics and pattern-matching, strongly correlating with higher belief in conspiracy theories.

Analytical Thinking

Slow, deliberate, and reflective cognitive processing (System 2) measured by tests like the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), which overrides initial instincts and lowers belief in conspiracy theories.

Magical thinking

The cognitive bias of believing that one's internal thoughts, wishes, or symbolic actions can directly cause external, unrelated real-world events without a plausible causal link.

Collective narcissism

Exaggerated, defensive belief in the in-group’s greatness that others don’t recognize. Predicts CTs (unlike plain identification).

Need for closure

Desire for a firm answer. Raises belief for major events with no official explanation.

Need for uniqueness

The psychological drive to feel distinct and special, which leads individuals to adopt conspiracy theories as a way to gain exclusive, "secret" knowledge that elevates them above the mainstream.

Epistemic Individualism

The philosophical and cognitive principle that an individual should rely strictly on their own autonomous reason and direct observation to determine truth, rejecting reliance on institutional authority, expert consensus, or social trust ("do your own research").

Self-actual gap

Overestimating your own thinking capacities versus actual behavior.

Egocentric Discounting

The cognitive tendency to heavily overweight one's own beliefs, opinions, or judgments while systematically discounting or ignoring advice and evidence from others.

Institutional distrust

Distrust of governments, science and media. Both a correlate and a consequence of belief.

Radicalizing Multiplier

A psychological or ideological element (such as a conspiracy theory) that acts as a force multiplier, accelerating and intensifying an individual's transition from passive belief to violent or extreme action

Misinformation

Unintentionally wrong information, an honest mistake; the speaker believes it's true.

Disinformation

Intentionally wrong/deceptive information — the speaker knows or suspects it's false.

Correspondence theory of truth

A statement is True if and only if it corresponds to the Facts of reality. Problem: requires defining what "the Facts" are.

Coherence theory of truth

A statement is True, relative to a set of statements S, if it is consistent with the statements in S. Implies no essential fact/opinion distinction.

Ontology

The study of being — what exists. Asks whether reality exists independently of the mind. Splits into realism and anti-realism.

Realism (ontological)

Things have mind-independent existence; the world "out there" is objectively knowable in principle. Supports the correspondence theory. This course assumes realism.

Anti-realism / Idealism

Things do not necessarily have mind-independent existence; we only access the world through our senses, so all knowledge is subjective.

Perspectivism (Nietzsche)

"There are no facts, only interpretations" — countless equally valid perspectives on the world exist, none more correct than another

Postmodernism (Rorty)

Scientific descriptions of the world are useful tools, not accurate representations of reality itself — like poets' or politicians' descriptions.

Epistemology

The philosophy of knowledge — how we generate/justify knowledge about the facts; distinguishes Truths from Falsehoods.

Dogma (as epistemology)

A claim is true because a trusted authority says so, with no independent justification (e.g. "everything X says is true").

Positivism

Knowledge is built inductively by observing/verifying facts through objective or formal methods — "justified true belief.

Formal/logical verification

Checking a claim against the rules of logic or mathematics (e.g. 2+3=5). One of two types of verification under positivism.

Empirical verification

Making objective observations that coincide with/confirm a claim. The other type of verification under positivism.

Problem of induction

No number of confirming observations can logically prove a general claim (e.g. 200 white swans don't prove "all swans are white").

Affirming the consequent

Invalid logical fallacy: If A→B, B is true, therefore A is true. Underlies positivism's flawed reasoning and much pseudoscience.

Critical Rationalism / Falsificationism (Popper)

Claims can never be proven True, but can be certainly shown False. Seek counter-evidence, not confirmation.

Modus Tollens

Valid deductive argument: If A→B, and B is NOT true, then A is NOT true. The logical basis of falsification.

Corroboration

A claim surviving repeated, serious attempts at falsification — never say "confirmed" or "proven," only corroborated.

Verisimilitude

The degree of "truth-likeness" of a claim, based on how well it has withstood criticism; always provisional, never certain.