Summary of the lectures of the course Data and Misinformation
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Course
Data And Misinformation
Institution
Tilburg University (UVT)
This summary contains all lecture notes + further explanations about complex concepts and references to the reading materials. In addition, all the lectures topics are presented under questions to make it easier to learn the material. This summary contains the following topics:
1. Introduction to...
This summary contains the following topics:
1. Introduction to the course (Lecture 1+2)
2. Framing
3. Misleading data
4. Misleading data visualizations (Graphs + Deepfakes)
5. Conspiracy theories
6. Dealing with misleading information
Lecture 1+2 Data and Misinformation
Facts vs beliefs = what you believe to be a fact
What are the different types of truth?
Objective truth = truth verified by abundant evidence universally expected.
Subjective truth = beliefs backed up by some evidence, e.g., theories, hypotheses, often competing with other
beliefs à there is some evidence if you are lucky, but people are opposed through each other.
Emotional truth = the information feels true, people try to navigate through life, not based on facts, but on their
feelings.
Examples of truth types:
• The world is not flat: backed up by arguments à objective truth.
• The climate changes due to human interference: enough evidenceà objective truth.
• More than two hours of gaming is bad for your health: can be found in a study and people can believe in it, but
there is as much evidence otherwise and people have other opinions about it, and à subjective truth.
Feelings over facts?
Most people are more convinced by feelings and emotions; we must make decisions based on facts and not on
feelings.
Post-truth = relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public
opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief
What is hyperconnectivity= Everything is connected to everything (when you post something in twitter where you
believe in, it goes viral, and the damage is done.
What are digital wildfires? =The online network poses a lot of additional problems: you just post something out
there and it goes viral, you cannot undo the posting, nothing to be done anymore. We have a hyperconnected
network in which a (false) fact/feelings/conspiracy theories can easily travel.
What are consequences of digital wildfires?
• Massive digital misleading information (child abuse was not true)
• Impact amplified by hyperconnectivity.
• Rapid viral spread of information, which potential serious consequences.
à Interesting study: “Lies spread faster than the truth” (Vosoughi, Ray, & Aral (2018)
Outcomes:
• About 126,000 rumors spread by 3 million people.
• False news reached more people than the truth.
• The top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people.
• The truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people.
What is meant by Artificial amplification? =The artificial amplification of online traffic to create the illusion of
popularity and support (false followers, false likes, etc.).
,Important distinction between spread of information:
1. Misleading information= False incorrect information, spread because of a mistake. Resulting from honest
mistakes
o Example: science communication: people tried to make sense of science reports and do not understand it.
2. Disinformation= The senders are delivered intent to mislead.
o Examples: information about the coronavirus (so conspiracy theories). Satire Speld of the Union) is merely
for entertainment
Is clickbait also disinformation? = It depends on whether it is truth full and whether the receiver knows it is
disinformation
What is media literacy? =The ability to identify different types of media and understand the messages they're
sending
How can the label of misinformation/disinformation change? = It depends on the one who is sharing it at the
moment. For example, with information about the coronavirus: sometimes the first spreader wants to mislead you
consciously, and therefore, it is disinformation; however, when a second person thinks it is true and shares it, at that
moment, it is misinformation.
Lecture 3: Framing
The example of how Hugo de Jonge framed the message about anti-vaxxers is a classic example of framing. He
framed the information differently and said, ‘I want to protect the people who are not vaccinated’ to take a particular
perspective (that sounds positive).
Framing versus agenda setting
à they are related, but not the same
à In the perfect world, you can easily make sense of all the information that comes and distinguish facts. However,
in the real world, many things can go wrong in collecting data.
What is agenda setting? = Specific topics get more attention than other topics with agenda-setting. In many cases,
we find some topics important, but that media write something about it, and then people think it is important. So, the
other way around, news story determines what we find important.
Examples of agenda setting:
O.J. Simpson (an American football player) was accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend and her new partner. There
was a trial: in the first trial, he wasn’t punished (the jury thought he was not guilty), in the second trial, he paid a lot of
money that the case was dropped, in 2007 he was convicted and had to go in jail. à This story got a lot of attention
in the media. The media started covering this case because it was a big issue. The media puts two covers of
magazines together: one is more about he is guilty (trail of blood), and the other is more about how this fault can
happen in the USA (An American tragedy). The one of the TIME is darker, they wanted to frame it as a case of
racism, and the only reason he was accused was that he was black. However, the other perspective was that he was
guilty, and it is a fact that he murdered the people.
à this is an example of both framing and agenda setting.
- Another (classic) example: Chapel Hill Study (1968), a study in the small-town Chapel Hill, asked people what
topics they found important. They selected media topics that were presented a lot in the media, and afterward, they
asked people why they found a certain topic more important for the elections. The study found that People think the
topics that are more covered in the media were more important for the elections à This would mean that the media
can decide what people find important, which is problematic!
What are the three Basic assumptions of agenda setting?
1. Media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important
than other issues. (The media posts a topic more present; people find it more interesting). (McCombs & Shaw,
1972).
,2. The importance of issues in the news media is the major determinant of the public’s perception of what
matters.
3. The press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter and shape it.
What is the cognitive effect of agenda setting?
• Agenda setting occurs through a cognitive process known as accessibility.
• Accessibility = implies that the more frequently and prominently the news media cover an issue, the more
instances that issue becomes accessible in the audience's memories.
à because it is more accessible, people find it more important. (Same as mere exposure effect). It is really
about frequency: the more frequent, the more it will be accessible in your mind and the more important you
think it is.
How are agenda setting and framing intertwined?
Media put a certain topic on the agenda and then put a frame about it. It is hard to find media that does not use
framing at all.
What is framing?
Narrow definition “Framing defines a dynamic, circumstantially bound process of opinion formation in which the
prevailing modes of presentation in elite rhetoric and news media coverage shape mass opinion.
“Framing effects refer to behavioral or attitudinal outcomes that are not due to differences in what is being
communicated, but rather to variations in how a given piece of information is being presented(or framed) in a public
discourse.”
What is the difference between equivalence versus emphasis framing?
Equivalence framing = same information, different modes of presentation. This
influences the audiences.
• The B/13 experiment is a good example of equivalence framing: you have exactly
the same information, but depending on the frame, you can understand the
information differently.
Emphasis framing = putting emphasis on different information, you no longer show people the exact same
information, but you select a certain kind of information, show this to people and ignore the other part.
• This can be used in communicating context to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation,
moral evaluation for the item described.
o Example of the KKK: the KKK had a meeting, some people were protesting. As a journalist, you must
decide how you will report this process. One journalist emphasizes that everyone has free speech. In
contrast, another journalist chose the public order frame. So, they had a different perspective, which
makes the message different and how people process it. In the “Free Speech Frame,” people had a
more positive attitude towards the KKK, which shows that framing can form people’s attitudes.
Framing occurs through a cognitive process known as applicability, what is applicability?
Applicability = Implies that the effects of frames are strengthened or weakened, depending on how applicable they
are to a particular cognitive schema.
Conclusions about framing:
• Framing does have an influence on the audience’s opinion!
• If we continuously informed by a certain frame, it is hard to avoid for yourself to be influenced by it.
• In general, people seem to follow the direction of the frame that is used by the messenger. (e.g., Sniderman &
Theriault, 2004)
• “Everyday communication environments are complex; attitude formation is likely driven by an interplay of
complementary or competing frames.” (Matthes, 2007, p. 5)
Conclusion by paper Scheufele & Iyengar (2014)
Emphasis framing is not framing according to them: having two very different messages is very difficult to compare.
How can you compare if it has another effect on individuals? You need especially the same information (like in
equivalence framing) then you can see the difference in people’s processing of information.
, à This is only the opinion of Scheufele & Iyengar, we can decide ourselves if we see emphasis framing also as
framing.
The paper of Degeling & Koolen (2021) is more about a positive effect of framing.
They researched whether local framing would make problems more concrete, accessible for you, the distance
towards the problem is smaller and therefore make it more important for you to do anything about it. If you see that
a problem is global, people start thinking they cannot do something about it and thus do nothing because they will
have a very low self-efficacy (helpless feeling). The focus was on climate change. They manipulated two
infographics about sea level rise: one focusing on a general, global scale, and one emphasizing the consequences
for a coastal town.
What is locality framing?
When locality framing is applied, local consequences of ACC (e.g., sea level rise at a nearby coast) are emphasized
over its global consequences (e.g., sea level rise on a global scale).
• Part of emphasis framing: focus on local and global frame. More personal relevance and accessibility. It has
more influence on your personal life.
What is psychological distance? = Is "the subjective experience that something is close or far away from the self,
here, and now” à Local messages lead to lower psychological distance
What is the Cultural preservation response?
People want to preserve their behavior (because it is so ingrained in their culture). So, if people actually have to do
something, they are not really willing to do it. People simply do not feel like adjusting their behavior, because it has
substantial impact on their everyday lives.
• When local frames force people to change their social norms, these frames could then have negative effect (as
is shown in previous research with videos)
Discussion and Limitations of the study:
• The infographic with the local frame had a stronger positive impact on people’s attitude towards ACC
mitigating behaviors than the global frame. Locally framed infographic was more personally relevant to our
participants than the global one. Local frame has probably lowered the (psychological) distance that people felt.
à One of the limitations of the current study: a culture preservation response may be more likely to occur when
actual behavior is concerned since we only measured attitude, we cannot extend our findings directly to other
variables such as behavioral intention or even actual behavior.
• They did not find moderation effects of the demographic variables. Explanation: the impact of the local frame
was stronger than the impact of the demographics, at least in the context of the current study. à This means
that the effect of locality framing is suitable for all type of people. So, this was good news.
• Another potential issue is related to sample size. There is a possibility that they do not find an effect while there
is an effect (type 2 error).
Conclusions article:
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