August 2018, Year X, n. 8
Walter Quattrociocchi
The hoax hunter
Telos: What is fake news?
Walter Quattrociocchi: Fake news is a word coined to refer to a process whereby false or inaccurate information is spread through web channels (social media in particular).
It would be more accurate to talk about ‘misinformation’ rather than ‘fake news’, but by now it’s already become a household word. To understand this process well, first we need to provide some background information.
Since 2013 the World Economic Forum has included massive digital misinformation among the global risks. My group began studying this phenomenon at that exact same time and the results of our research are clear, unequivocal, I’d say ...more
Editorial
Post-truth. The conviction that it’s no longer the facts, nor the attempt to represent reality, that count. The only thing that counts is the story that’s most to our liking.
A surrogate of facts that many people believe are true because they match our well-established preconceptions, that good old penchant for hearing what we want to hear because in our eyes it’s plausible.
What’s more, nowadays it seems to go without saying that we only consider credible the information that confirms our idea about the world.
Is this all the Internet’s fault? No, argues Walter Quattrociocchi, it’s something with much deeper roots ...more
SocialTelos