Fake news Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

The Contemporary Art of Lying

February 19, 2020 • by Anna-Karin Selberg

The moment Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, journalists began counting his lies. According to The Washington Post they numbered no less than 4229 by the end of Summer 2018. Paradoxically, however, Trump is a president with high ‘truth-capital’. He is not a liar, according to his voters, but ...

Politics

How Disinformation Became a Winning Strategy

Fomenting political fury is something that concerns us all

January 30, 2020 • by Adam Ramsay

The recent UK election was a quarrel about the character of politics. On the one hand, the Labour Party argued that it can be used for good, ‘for the many’. They promised to transform lives and communities, to take action on climate change and poverty. The Conservative Party, conversely, claimed ...

How Disinformation Became a Winning Strategy

Democracy

Hate Inc.

Why Today’s Media Makes us Despise One Another

October 2, 2019 • by Matt Taibbi

I know this because I was hired to do this work, over and over. My commercial niche, in fact, was the vitriolic essay that got people spitting mad, or poked fun at someone audiences hated. I was the Triumph the Insult Comic Dog of journalism. I actually won the National Magazine ...

Democracy

Lies, Fakes, and Deep Fakes

Deceptions and Scams in the Age of Trump

September 11, 2019 • by Sidney Tarrow

Following the speech three things happened: first, a video was almost immediately made and posted online; a video in which Pelosi’s delivery was slowed down and her tone changed to give the impression that she was either drunk or affected by a health disorder. Second, the next day President Trump tweeted a ...

The Right

How I Knew the #CovingtonBoys Video Was Clickbait

And why you should care that it is

January 24, 2019 • by Claire Potter

I watched it through, aware of the retweet widget turning over rapidly. It was going viral. Because I did not really understand what the video meant to the thousands sharing it, I clicked on the response widget on the far left to look at comments. I learned Sandmann and Phillips’ names; ...

How I Knew the #CovingtonBoys Video Was Clickbait

Feature

It was no President Who Colluded with the Russians, it was Trump

Anniversary Thoughts on Telling it Like It Is

January 20, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Today is the anniversary of that awful day, two years ago, when Donald Trump placed his hand on a bible, took the oath of office, and was officially inaugurated as president of the United States. And so today is a good day to declare that it is no longer appropriate to ...

It was no President Who Colluded with the Russians, it was Trump

Feature

Rethinking Communication in Populist Times

A conversation on Trump and the Media

June 6, 2018 • by Yuval Katz

In the following interview, Yuval Katz speaks to Pablo J. Boczkowski and Zizi Papacharissi, editors of the recently published volume Trump and the Media, about Trump’s engagement with the media and the question of whether it has to be considered as exceptional or not. Pablo J. Boczkowski and Zizi Papacharissi’s introduction to Trump ...

Rethinking Communication in Populist Times

Feature

The Fox News-Fake News-Trump Nexus

On the link between political orientation and the inclination to believe fake news

March 24, 2018 • by Sanford Schram and Richard Fording

In today’s overheated political climate, people are increasingly noting how difficult it is to convince others, who disagree, to alter their beliefs. Public discourse seems ever more compartmentalized in “silos,” where people express themselves in an “echo chamber” or “bubble” that reinforces their pre-existing biases. Contravening facts rarely get in ...

Uncategorized

Philosophers on Fake News

Arendt and Foucault on power and truth in media politics

March 19, 2018 • by Haeun Kim

Despite their irrefutable and continued presence in the world today, for some time the practices of banning and censorship have struck me as antiquated, almost quaint, like a desperate but not wholly effective grasp for control by a declining State. My admission of this admittedly unsubstantiated and impressionistic outlook—although not ...