This is a full summary of all the information covered both in the readings and lectures. I used it myself to study for the final exam, and it covered every question asked there.
PoD Endterm Notes
Lecture 1
Politics of difference- how power and political institutions categorize
people into groups and how this, as a consequence, generates inequality.
Describing differences is also political.
The Public Sphere, Difference and Advantages
A communicative realm where:
People leave their status and identities behind to discuss and debate
the common interest and government;
The force of the better argument wins;
It is often connected with the veil of ignorance:
A hypothetical state, in which decisions about social justice and the
allocation of resources would be made fairly, as if it is done by a person
who must decide society’s rules and economic structure without
knowing what position they will occupy in that society.
Instead of encouraging pure objectivity, it invites participants to reflect on
their positionality;
Instead of privileging the good of the public, it admits that the good of
certain groups may require unique solutions that go against the public
interest.
In the debate on the public sphere, we take differences as given and we are
interested in developing principles about who can play a part in the political
community.
In debates on the state system, we are interested in a particular type of
political institutions, and how they create differences.
Lecture 2
Livingston et al.- The Disinformation Age
PoD Endterm Notes 1
, Disinformation- intentional falsehoods or distortions, often spread as news,
to advance political goals such as:
Discrediting opponents;
Disrupting policy debates;
Influencing voters;
Inflaming existing social conflicts;
Creating a general backdrop of confusion and informational paralysis.
It is caused by:
Personal (confirmation bias);
The emergence of social media;
State interference;
Erosion of institutions;
Social Media and Confirmation Bias
Putting the spotlight on social media alone misses deeper erosions of
institutional authority which involve elected officials – traditionally
among the most prominent sources of authoritative information –
themselves becoming increasingly involved in the spread of disruptive
communication.
Some people are understood to be particularly susceptible to the
disinformation: there appears to be a demand for emotionally
soothing, if factually unsound narratives.
Confirmation bias: the human tendency to privilege information
aligned with prior beliefs.
To protect existing beliefs, individuals tend to seek out reasons
to dismiss or avoid engagement with information that is
disconfirming of prior beliefs, while seeking out emotionally
soothing truths that confirm convictions.
State Interference
Caused by the post-war desire to re-organize societies around the free,
competitive markets;
PoD Endterm Notes 2
, Disinformation became diffused by politicians whose election funding
came from sponsoring interests of neo-liberal thought and thus
entered the journalistic mainstream, echoed by the growing supply of
“experts” from aligned think tanks and political organizations.
This belief ended up being the most successfully spread by the
politicians who promoted the belief that the federal government
gave unearned advantages to domestic racial minorities, and
later, to immigrants.
Its volume was later ramped up by right-wing populist media, who
were aligned with the libertarian anti-government agenda.
A Deeper Institutional Explanation
The current disinformation disorder has at its heart a crisis of the
legitimacy of authoritative institutions.
Institutions once able to vet truth claims, institutions that once defined a
more cohesive public sphere, have fractured, leaving an epistemological
vacuum filled by citizens who feel lost in a world spinning – and being spun
– out of control.
Typically, information credibility in democracies depends on:
Authoritative sources that offer a resonant mix of value positions,
which are supported with varying degrees of evidence and reason
about why those positions make sense and how they could actually
happen.
When public confidence erodes due to lying, deception and a steady diet
of spin and banal rhetoric from once credible authorities, the result is a
decline in public trust in the information produced by those official sources,
and in the press that carries their messages.
Young’s Critique of Interest-based Models of Democracy
Models of interest-based democracy tend to restrict democratic
discussion to arguments and carries implicit cultural biases that can lead
to exclusions in practice.
Democratic decisions are the outcome of the successful completion of
ideas and coalitions for self-interested votes.
Speech that is typically valued:
PoD Endterm Notes 3
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