Abstract
The explosive usage in recent years of the terms “fake news” and “posttruth” reflects worldwide frustration and concern about rampant social problems created by pseudo-information. Our digital networked society and newly emerging media platforms foster public misunderstanding of social affairs, which affects almost all aspects of individual life. The cost of lay citizens’ misunderstandings or crippled lay informatics can be high. Pseudo-information is responsible for deficient social systems and institutional malfunction. We thus ask questions and collect knowledge about the life of pseudo-information and the cognitive and communicative modus operandi of lay publics, as well as how to solve the problem of pseudo-information through understanding the changing media environment in this “truth-be-damned” era of information crisis.
Keywords
The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.
In the story of the Tower of Babel, all people spoke the same language. Their civilization became capable of building a tower to reach heaven. Seeing the tower but also the human arrogance that built it, God cursed the people by splitting their common language into many. He confounded communication, and we were no longer able to understand each other. We fell into incommunicado and were scattered physically as well.
In our digital networked society, information and communications technologies (ICTs) and network technologies connect almost all the dots for communicators in much the same way as the Tower of Babel. This seemingly equalizes all people and levels the playing field for lay publics, as opposed to experts or elites. Like the Tower, these new communication and network technologies elevate our capacity to control and exchange knowledge. But then we came on a curse again: another sort of incommunicado, an indiscernibility of fact and fiction in the sea of information. Information is often obscured and leads us to erroneous conceptions of the world and events (Bimber & Gil de Zúñiga, 2020; Kim, 2018). We are now cognitively lost in an informational paradise and left to virtually scatter.
This special issue is about problems of pseudo-information, media, and publics in a digitalized network society. 1 Oxford Dictionary selected “posttruth” as its word of the year in 2016 (Flood, 2016), and since then, the explosive usage of the terms “fake news” and “posttruth” has reflected worldwide frustration and concerns about social problems caused by misinformation and disinformation. In today’s digital networked society and media environment, it is all too easy to confuse opinion, fiction, and incomplete or inaccurate ideas with established historical or scientific canonical facts. The costs of pseudo-information and public confusion are high. Pseudo-information in particular is responsible for deficient social systems and institutional malfunction due to distrust. We thus aim to ask questions and collect knowledge about pseudo-information and the crippled lay informatics of its users in order to understand the information crisis that we live in.
Information and Pseudo-Information
We refer to information as bits of evaluated knowledge and data available and shared among communicative actors in a problematic situation (Kim & Grunig, 2011). “Misinformation” (2020) is defined by Merriam-Webster as “incorrect or misleading information,” whereas “disinformation” (2020) is defined as “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.” The term misinformation has been used in a more generic and inclusive sense to describe all false and inaccurate information at its origin. However, in the recent information crisis, the usage of misinformation has become taxonomically narrower to distinguish between incorrect information which is accidentally or unintentionally false.
Misinformation and disinformation are similar in that both refer to information lacking in veracity. But they are different in terms of the purposefulness of their development and sharing. Misinformation refers to an accidental lack of veracity; disinformation is deliberately false or inaccurate to serve its creator’s interest. The evolving usage of the term misinformation reflects the changes to communicative environments and the frequent problems created by false information over emerging media and communication networks. In this special issue, we suggest an umbrella term, pseudo-information, to include all types false or inaccurate information, as well as the trafficking of it in various ways and fields. We acknowledge that pseudo-information is still a kind of “information,” despite the likely harm or problematic consequences to its bearers (Figure 1).
Information classification.
Pseudo-information is not as a counterconcept to information. Rather, it is still under the umbrella of “information,” but discerns information causing harmful consequences or social externalities on information subscribers (Table 1). Information in itself can vary from accurate to inaccurate, beneficial to depriving, factual to fictional, and realistic to illusory. The interaction between information and its subscribers generates unique interpretations and utility in a given individual’s life situation. Thus, information and its related phenomena should be understood in terms of the individuality and subjectivity of its creators, traffickers, and users—the information actors—and their contextual environments and life situations. Therefore, the meaning, value, utility, and benefit or harm of given information are subject to intersubjectivity and constructed contextually with that information’s presence in information actors’ personal and social time-space. In fact, information is the joint product of interactions among people, environments, and situations.
Pseudo-Information: Types and Its Consequences to Information Subscribers.
This notion is revealed in many examples. For instance, a lie intended to comfort an anxious person is false. As it is delivered to the person, however, the bits of evaluated knowledge or data could generate a utility, such as calming down. For an ill patient and their family, wishful conversation about the outcome of treatment is illusory, but could generate a substantial coping effect for the patient. Wartime disinformation tactics by Russia generated gains for its crafters and losses among Nazi commanders. More dangerously, rumormongering of conspiracy theories related to Corona virus or linking 5G network towers with the spread of COVID-19 sparked arson attacks (Cerulus, 2020) and bolster stigma and violence against Asian neighbors (Do, 2020). Such troubling states result from the interactions of information actors (creator, trafficker, or subscriber) and their situated conditions.
A Failing Digital Marketplace of Ideas and Lay Informatics
In organizing our collection, we refer to the information environment using the analogic term “marketplace.” Our conception inherits the analogy of the “marketplace of ideas” in trading information. Originally coined John Stewart Mill’s 1869 book On Liberty, this famous analogy to the economic marketplace has provided the foundation of legal philosophy regarding freedom of speech. It is Mill’s analogy around which First Amendment jurisprudence spins (van Mill, 2018). It and its underlying assumptions have helped society secure and advocate for the human right of uncensored and almost unlimited freedom of expression for individuals.
In a digital society, our conception of the marketplace of ideas has evolved and expanded into virtual space. Accordingly, the social nature of expressing and trading ideas has quantitatively and qualitatively changed (Gil de Zúñiga, 2015; Grunig, 2009). There are too many traders of information, and they are hyper-lively when it comes to social problems and world affairs. The explosive rise and fall of local marketplaces have increased participants’ choices and control on market behaviors, and the participating traders crisscross many marketplaces concurrently using multiple identities. With anonymity and the burying effect of identity due to innumerable participants, people are less afraid to express their ideas.
This so-called fourth industrial revolution fused the physical, biological, and digital worlds. All things are connected, and those connections enable participants to increase their communicative behaviors in digital information markets (Kim et al., 2010; Kim et al., 2018). Much of this revolution is indebted to the explosion of the digital marketplace of ideas which, enabled the era of big data. Lay people and the contents created and exchanged by their communicative actions generated an independent media economy and the blooming byproduct industries of data analytics (Gagliardone, 2018).
In the predigital marketplace of ideas, the traditional traders of information, such as social institutions (e.g., politicians or mass media) and intellectual authorities (e.g., scientists), commanded louder voices and exercised greater influence on the general populace (Kim, 2014). Hence, there was a need for protective intervention for lay individuals to preserve their freedom to speak out. The marketplace of ideas evolved on the rationale of harnessing control from the elite and eliminating pressure on lay citizens and publics, such as censorship from formal and powerful social institutions.
Yet in the digital society, the sheer number of expressive lay individuals, as opposed to social elites or experts, and the amount of their ideas has created an overtrading problem of pseudo-information. Frequently, Mill’s assumption of the economic market—that superior products will survive over inferior ones by competition—fails (Stanley, 2018). Truth prevails less often than expected. Various alternative ideas challenge and compete with the traditional authority of institutional participants such as governments, universities, or scientists. A significant number of lay participants in the digital information markets adhere to troubling claims and fragmented facts. In some extreme cases, traditional actors with endowed source credibility are ousted or overwhelmed.
The failure of the digital marketplace of ideas could be defined as the ability of invalid or uncertain ideas—pseudo-information—to spread. Still the failure is partial and local. In marketplaces sustained with scientific epistemology, such as research fora or governmental institutions, the exchange of information is relatively secure and advanced by the evaluative process of competing merits. There, open debates take place and scientific epistemology guides knowledge creation through systematic procedures for scrutinizing evidence and claims for collective interpretation. What really distinguish scientific epistemics from lay epistemics or lay informatics are metacognition and metacommunication (Kim & Grunig, 2021).
Scientists or those delegates for policy and decisions are in the habit of thinking about their thinking and communicating their methods of information use. In contrast, the greater number of lay information traders rely on lay informatics—subjective or arbitrary processes of ideation and evaluation (Kim, 2014; Kim & Krishna, 2014)—and enjoy self-exemption from metacognition and metacommunication in the use of information regarding their claims (Kim & Grunig, 2021). Thus, pseudo-information prevails, and incomplete or inadequate interpretations become predominant.
First and Secondary Information Markets in Digital Society and the Problems
Given the evolution of media and ICT and the devolving nature of lay publics’ use of information, we distinguish two layers in the digital marketplace of ideas: the first and secondary information markets. The first information market refers to the physical and virtual time-spaces wherein the traders of ideas crafted by formal social institutions such as governments, media, and science organizations or organized social interests (e.g., corporations or interest groups). The market selection of ideas in the first information market is guided by scientific epistemics, despite occasional imperfections, and subject to the systematic procedures of counterevidence-based, refutation-focused, entirety-focused, and collective interpretation of merits, as well as tentativeness of superiority. It is imperfect, yet vying for Mill’s ideal state of market competition.
In contrast, the secondary information market refers to those physical and virtual places wherein individuals come together to trade ideas (contents) crafted by nonexpert lay citizens, either individually or collectively. Market selection of ideas in the secondary information market is frequently informal and relatively evidence-based, confirmatory-focused, individualistic or factional in its interpretation of merits, and conclusiveness of its superiority. Here, in the secondary marketplace of ideas, the process of competition is vibrant, with a lack of censorship, but blurs the merits and flaws of each claimed idea. This different interpretation of the merits of claims and the subsequent selection of ideas could be multifarious through lay individuality, and often reflects fractions of the general populace and their subjective preferences.
The failure of the first market is in the rapid takeover of traditional information institutions by ICT and networking (Figure 2), and in the market’s subsumption (cf. capitalist subsumption of labor and economic process, Karl Marx, 1867) to the emerging secondary marketplace. There, individual citizens can participate in trades across networked digital marketplaces. Traditional information producers and traders (e.g., legacy media) are drowned out by the billions of information traffickers and millions of local clusters crowded by nonexpert lay people. Social systems of delegation to experts are sometimes dethroned, and the source credibility of traditional information traders can be overthrown by the networked myriad of individual information traders.
Marketplace of ideas and changes: Market subsumption to market failure.
In contrast, the secondary information market fails due to crippled lay informatics. Newly endowed with the power of communication and connection, people could not match cognitively or communicatively. The amount of available knowledge or data only becomes information through evaluative tasks by the communicator (Kim & Krishna, 2014). The quality and quantity of evaluative products—that is, information—is largely defined by one’s cognitive and communicative actions (e.g., justificatory information forefending; Kim et al., 2018). The modus operandum of the lay individual is obfuscated easily, unless extraordinary care is taken to conduct thoughtful judging (cognitive retrogression in problem solving; Kim & Grunig, 2021).
Defining Questions for the Information Crisis
Two Types of Knowledge on Pseudo-Information, Publics, and Media
To understand and work for an eventual resolution of those market failures, we aim to begin scholarly discussions and assemble theoretical bases to describe the state of and sources of the problems surrounding this information crisis. In particular, in this introductory theoretical piece of the special issue, we seek to elaborate on two types of knowledge: “descriptive knowledge,” to acquire understanding of the “process” of the phenomenon, and “prescriptive knowledge,” to acquire understanding of and guidance for what “procedures” we would take for problem resolution (Carter, 1972; Grunig, 2003). Furthermore, we examine the two responsible actors—both media and publics who traffic and enact pseudo-information in their daily life and social actions (Stearns, 2016).
Specifically, we seek systematic inquiries and answers for the descriptive (“what is”) questions, to capture and diagnose the troubling phenomena of pseudo-information. In doing so, we pursue a better understanding of causes, processes, and consequences of misinformation and disinformation, as well as the roles, mechanisms, and motives of agents and actors who craft and traffic it. Following this rational, we also seek prescriptive knowledge (“what should be done”) relating to solutions to improve the social problems arising from pseudo-information. Better procedures can only be constructed when we first know “what is” as well as how and why it happens. Laying the ground for a better understanding of these two sets of knowledge is one of the aims sought from researchers in this special issue.
This special issue will not provide answers to all possible theoretical lingering issues and questions with regards to pseudo-information. Yet it will prove useful at identifying key questions to open fora for theoretical and practical solutions. To that end, here we propose some central research questions:
Descriptive Knowledge of Pseudo-Information, Media, and Publics
What are the nature and impacts of pseudo-information in the digital networked social environment?
What actors and factors contribute to the troubling consequences of pseudo-information?
What are the underlying processes or mechanisms associated with the accepting and sharing of misinformation and disinformation with others? How and why do lay publics become receptive to pseudo-information, both in terms of subscribing to it and spreading it among their social networks?
What are the functions or values of pseudo-information for its crafters, traffickers, and adopters? What are the incentives for carrying and spreading pseudo-information for different actors (e.g., campaigners, rivals, opinion leaders, neighbors)?
What public and media factors increase and decrease gullibility toward pseudo-information among lay citizens?
What are the hardware aspects (e.g., ICT systems, network policy, mass media, online platforms) and software aspects, such as social conditions (e.g., network traits, sociodemographic attributes), political conditions (e.g., political climates, ideological dominance, trust), personal psychological conditions (e.g., lay epistemics, sociocognitive traits), conducive to the crafting, trafficking, and subscribing to of pseudo-information?
Prescriptive Knowledge of Pseudo-information, Media, and Publics
What are the preventive and promotive factors of improved use of information (e.g., news literacy, digital information literacy)?
How can we equip individual citizens to depreciate pseudo-information such as lies and fake news? What can we do to increase immunity to pseudo-information among lay audiences (e.g., inoculation strategy)? What countermeasures can we employ to enhance information literacy among individual opinion leaders and influential social media users (e.g., power bloggers)?
What are the roles and boundaries of government intervention to resolve the problems of information crises?
What will be the role of marketers of information such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, or traditional media, and how should ‘information patrolling’ be approached in the marketplace of ideas?
What are the ethical considerations and limits of “information policing” in the marketplace of ideas?
What strategies should traditional and social media use to restore credibility in the fight against pseudo-information?
Theoretical Essays in the Current Volume
In the pursuit of cutting-edge theoretical accounts that would move pseudo-information research forward, we purposively edited a handful of novel, thought-provoking theoretical pieces. These essays encapsulated many of the pressing issues revolving misinformation and disinformation today, with a cross-disciplinarity angle.
Molina et al. (2019) kick off the special issue, underscoring how difficult it is for computer-aided and automated machine learning mechanisms to detect pseudo-information online. Drawing on a concept explication paradigm (Chaffee, 1991), their goal is to provide scholars and policy makers alike with a theoretical foundation of what may be considered fake news. In doing so, the article introduces an eight-dimension typology to single out fake news content (i.e., false news, polarized content, satire, etc.) by contrasting them with factual, legitimate news at four levels: message, source, structure, and network.
For instance, for real news to be detected at the message and linguistic level, readers should pay attention to proofed, fact-checked, and impartial reporting that will attribute sources with names. The content may also include evidence or scientific grounded content and reports about research-based information and statistical data. Source and information (message) intention also matters. Are the sources of information verified? Do they include heterogeneous, balanced and fair information sources and quotations? Factual professional news should also include a certain degree of “source pedigree,” of the organization behind the information, and transparency regarding from whom specifically the reporting or “news” is coming from may also be helpful.
Likewise, the article argues that structural and network characteristics could potentially give away symptoms of what the authors refer to as features of real news. Data such as whether the information derives from a reputed URL, includes metadata with authentic indicators, has clear contact or about sections, and shares active credible e-mail addresses where content creators may be reached, are all valuable and practical mechanisms to more accurately spot factual news. All in all, the essay provides a very useful route log for academics, policy makers, and citizens to better detect misinformation in today’s digital world.
Kim and Grunig’s (2021) essay takes a much broader scope when dealing with information behavior and human problem solving. Based on the situational theory of problem solving (Kim & Grunig, 2011; Kim & Krishna, 2014), the authors explicate which information is distinct from data and knowledge, and how cognitive problem solving occurs in problematic life situations. Kim and Grunig conceptualize “cognitive retrogression in problem solving” to account for lay individual’s crippled informatics—the less-than-ideal communicative and cognitive modus operandi that lay individuals use in everyday life.
Initially, the essay clarifies why and how information is indeed beneficial to society at large, particularly when accurate and factual information serves as a sine qua non condition for citizens and lay publics to understand complex issues and solve their daily problems. Under this condition, the more information, the better. Paradoxically, in today’s world where ordinary citizens encounter practically unlimited amounts of information at their disposal, the axiom that more information is better may be at odds with the most efficient way to interpret complex issues and solve problems. To accommodate and examine this disparity, the authors introduce two cognitive processes that shed light on individuals’ means of dealing with vast amounts of information to unravel complex issues and solve daily informational quandaries. On the one hand, cognitive retrogression takes place when individuals attempt to solve problems swiftly, reach a rapid conclusion, and engage after the fact in a cognitive effort only once a conclusion is already grasped. On the other hand, cognitive progression represents a reasoning strategy that encompasses greater mental involvement and processing before a conclusion is reached. The former strategy helps individuals optimize problem-solving situations for a decision based on limited or sufficient evidence. Conversely, the mental processes of cognitive progression contribute to solving any daily problem or quandary in the most optimal informational context.
Kim and Grunig then explain cognitive arrest in problem solving: an epistemic endeavor made retrogressively by a problem solver which only heaps self-warranting evidence and lead to growing epistemic inertia. This theorization accounts for how and why lay publics are entrapped and paralyzed by justificatory information and become susceptible to pseudo-information. At the end, they apply a theoretical account to conspiratorial thinking as an exemplary case of public close-mindedness.
Further building on the characteristics of misinformation and fake news, Chiu and Oh (2021) propose a creative theoretical distinction between what may constitute fake news and what could be identified as a personal lie. This distinction is not trivial. As the authors argue, social media moguls can easily spot fake news based on this characteristic distinction, and thus seamlessly eliminate fake information from their platforms. Although both personal lies and fake news in social media contexts seek to deceive the audience or the public, they do so in different ways. The key element lies in the ultimate goal or purpose. Fake news craves attention and seeks to overwhelmingly capture and spark action on the part of the audience. On the contrary, personal lies pursue unnoticeable means of misinformation dissemination to maintain social ties and primarily elicit audience inaction.
More specifically, drawing on many distinct theories, the article reveals six dimensions on which fake news and personal lies differ: speaker–audience relationship, goal, emotion, information, number of participants, and citation of sources. Usually, when it comes to personal lies, the personal relationship between the speaker and the audience is a close one, whereas in the case of fake news, this personal connection is more distant. The main purpose of a personal lie is a defensive one, to achieve audience inaction. Yet when fake news is generated, the main goal is the opposite. The more impact and greater audience engagement with the content, the more successful the fake news will be. Based on appraisal theory, the level of emotional involvement in the context of personal lies is low, as the speaker seeks somewhat to achieve emotional distraction from the audience. For fake news, emotions play a much more relevant role, where information usually includes massive doses of emotional manipulation and arousal.
In terms of the information dimension, the authors explain that personal lies tend to be quite mundane and include vague or little information. Fake news, on the other hand, will contain vivid and detailed information to persuade the audience. Finally, personal lies will typically make use of fewer sources and a lower number of participants, while fake news will attempt to capture the largest number of participants possible and will embrace the use of more sources.
Lee and Shin (2019) delve into some of the most germane factors to understand why misinformation is disseminated online. Borrowing from strands of political persuasion literature, as well as from works on the credibility of online information and digital deception, the article focuses on pragmatic factors that cause ordinary citizens to take the information they are exposed to through social and digital media as truthful. They highlight some traits and attributes about the sources of information, the message, the channel, and about the receiver. For instance, the number of sources used, the perceived expertise of the sources, and how similar the source appears to be with respect to the information receiver, are all important persuasive instruments for fake news to thrive. Similarly, when a message is congruent with the receiver’s views, is presented in a repetitive and easy-to-understand manner, and is based on information that may be perceived as factual, the audience will be more likely to take the message as believable. Finally, some features about the channel through which the misinformation is spread are also observed.
Building on prior theoretical accounts included in this volume, Weeks and Gil de Zúñiga (2019) offer six major areas for scholars to hone their efforts when dealing with pseudo-information. According to the authors, this list will not be exhaustive, and many other observations may be equally worth pursuing. However, in order to foster and encourage an interdisciplinary literature on pseudo-information, academics should also focus on discovering how misleading pseudo-information permeates through society, whether it matters for society, and what its level of influence is over regular citizens. In other words, where and how do people get exposed to pseudo-information, and when people are exposed to misleading or bad information, what kind of effects does it have? For instance, it stands to reason that today, a large portion of this information and the extent to which individuals believe it, greatly depends on individuals’ social media networks. Having a deeper understanding of the composition of these networks and how they work would be helpful to better understand this phenomenon. Another area of improvement revolves around pseudo-information distribution. Politicians, political elites, opinion leaders, and government officials are all part of an information conglomerate prone to creating or disseminating falsehoods. Studies seldom pay attention to these influential figures and their relationships with misinformation. The essay concludes with suggestions geared toward improving today’s modern informational ecosystem, and toward better engraining citizens with healthier democratic habits. On the one hand, understanding people’s emotions and how these characteristics may influence levels of false information acceptance should also be analyzed. Furthermore, studies need to help identify more efficient tools and mechanisms to confront false information, because solely providing corrective messages that simply highlight factual or contextual information may not be enough to facilitate accurate beliefs.
Ha et al. (2021) seek to integrate and describe the growing importance of an academic body of research on fake news and misinformation. Relying on articles published on Google Scholar in the past 10 years with the keywords “fake news” and “misinformation,” the authors construct a pragmatic explorative coding scheme to showcase the current research state across disciplines. Most of the studies come from Communication or Psychology journals, with Journal of Communication and Memory & Cognition leading the trend. Furthermore, the studies published tend to be either quantitative or conceptual, with a marginal proportion of studies (a little over 20%) using either qualitative or mixed-method approaches. The article also provides many other benchmarks to better understand how research around these issues continues to evolve.
With a similar goal in mind, Krishna and Thompson (2021) attempt to capture how salient misinformation research has become with regards to health-related topics. Within this framework, the authors specifically review studies dealing with this subject in Health Communication and the Journal of Health Communication. From this work, we learn that one of the earliest strands of the literature dealt with misinformation and medication issues, particularly, the disconnect between what some studies find and how the media report or frame the main results (e.g., the misuse of aspirin among heart disease patients). Other topics of interest underscored in the study include food and nutrition as a battleground where misleading information thrived; misinformation about an array of cancer types, treatments, and pseudo-cures; dissemination of information on wrongfully attributed or exaggerated epidemics such as Ebola; and false information revolving vaccines and autism or vaping e-cigarettes. All in all, the authors depict a realistic if somewhat gloomy vision of the pervasive pseudo-information epidemic in which health science is currently embroiled.
Drawing on an innovative strategic amplification paradigm, Donovan and Boyd (2021) establish a suggestive guideline to better address what, to their eyes, is an endemic journalistic problem: strategic silence. According to the authors, the specific gatekeeping rules and reporting strategies enacted by media corporations and journalists when reporting certain issues may encapsulate an evolution in disinformation and misinformation. Specifically, the authors visibly expand this notion with regards to the ways in which news on violence and suicide have historically been reported in the United States. The essay sustains and clarifies strategies for professionals and the media in general to abide to greater levels of deontological responsibility, which in turn may facilitate and cultivate a stronger, healthier, and egalitarian informed public opinion.
How does health misinformation affect the politics of a general election campaign? How are the media dealing with these politically divisive and polarizing topics? Lovari et al. (2020) center their article on the vaccination debate in online media and politics in Italy. Relying on a mixed-method approach that combined social media trace data as well as community experts’ in-depth interviews, the authors shed light on the influence of the “vaccine information crisis” political agenda during the 2018 Italian general elections. Overall, the study represents a persuasive account on the opportunities and interventions to be followed by policy makers to establish better information dissemination patterns among citizens. Their study highlights potential solutions to health communication crises, which ultimately may also contribute to diminishing misinformation waves regarding broader topics of public opinion and interest.
In the pursuit of efficient tools to challenge and contest misinformation in digital and social media, Jang et al. (2021) present a study by which citizens will be well-positioned to face, identify, and confront false information. In their study, different types of media literacy interventions are tested to observe whether participants’ self-reported literacy scales serve to help recognize fake news online. Among all the possible competences that most citizens can develop, information literacy seems to be the one that most efficaciously prevents the assimilation of pseudo-information among individuals. As opposed to media literacy, news readership, or digital skills, information literacy clearly helps individuals understand complex informational dilemmas or quandaries, evaluate information, and then search and find useful and factual evidence and facts, which in turn will also help make more sophisticated and savvier use of the overall information gathered. All in all, helping educate citizens to cultivate their information literacy abilities may become a powerful tool in inoculating public opinion against fake news and falsehoods.
The volume wraps up with a piece by Oh and Park (2019), who develop a machine learning algorithm-based technique to detect misinformation embedded in deceptive comments. The authors identify a plain pervasive problem across society: people are simply not very good at detecting deception. This problem is particularly salient in the distinction between fact-checked information and users’ opinions. Accordingly, the authors develop an algorithm to make the distinction between truthful and deceptive news comments. They do so in the Korean language, which is also largely understudied. Furthermore, their proposed machine learning technique achieves a promising accuracy rate in predicting and classifying untruthful opinions (fake comments) about different social issues.
Coda
This special issue is about the information crisis that we live in today. We have assembled 11 essays as the first volume to develop theoretical ground for building possible solutions. We first look for theory-based propositions, supported by empirical tests when possible beyond anecdotal or episodic snapshots. In doing so, we focus on two main actors, media and publics, and their interplay as it relates to pseudo-information. Media, both traditional mass media and emerging social media platforms, shape information environments for publics and are shaped by publics’ communicative actions. An understanding of these key actors will be necessary to combat the obstinacy of pseudo-information.
In addition, this special issue looks toward a common body of knowledge about the nature of pseudo-information (its birth, growth, and death) in our digital networked society. Descriptive theorizing on the phenomena of misinformation and disinformation and their agents and actors helps devise prescriptive procedures to reduce their prevalence among lay citizens, to make lay informatics more resistant to pseudo-information, and to develop and test policies and institutional countermeasures against social problems that arise from pseudo-information.
Still we need more and better defining theoretical and empirical works about pseudo-information, publics, and media from thought leaders in the areas of communication, public opinion, journalism, and other media, and should address the details of conceptual challenges and unnoticed factors regarding the phenomena (also see Bimber & Gil de Zúñiga, 2020; Kim, 2018).
All in all, in this special issue, we present theoretical bases about the life of pseudo-information—its birth, growth, and death in the marketplace of ideas. We hope this issue sparks deeper thinking among readers and all stakeholders, such as journalists, researchers, and policy makers. Likewise, we hope this collection will elicit these agents to engage into further and more meaningful communication about pseudo-information and a failing digital marketplace of ideas. Finally, the articles in this volume can shed light on the intertwined roles of publics and media, both of which are responsible for the crippling of lay informatics in our digital networked society.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.