Social Media And The Value Of Truth

Social media is ubiquitous. From Facebook and Twitter to YouTube, the blogosphere, and Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games, people have plugged into numerous online venues for social, intellectual, and leisure activities. The pervasiveness of social media calls for ethical reflection, and one of the most pertinent values at stake is that of truth. Current figures estimate there are more than 1 billion social media users worldwide with the ability to connect with people who share similar interests, to present themselves as experts on anything and everything no matter their qualifications, and to contribute the types of factual information formerly limited to professional communication outlets such as news agencies. It's this wide-ranging definition of truth that demands evaluation of the myriad ways social media affect society. This volume does just that by collecting insights from leading experts in the communication and philosophy disciplines as they examine a variety of issues related to the value of truth in the realm of social media.

This volume provides a timely and innovative look at the business aspects of social media. Examining social media in both descriptive and analytical ways, the chapters included herein present an overview of the social media industries, considering the history, development, and theoretical orientations used to understand social media. It is intended for scholars, researchers, and students in media and communication, as well as media practitioners.

Truth qualities of journalism are under intense scrutiny in today's world. Journalistic scandals have eroded public confidence in mainstream media while pioneering news media compete to satisfy the public's appetite for news. Still worse is the specter of "fake news" that looms over media and political systems that underpin everything from social stability to global governance. This volume aims to illuminate the contentious media landscape to help journalism students, scholars, and professionals understand contemporary conditions and arm them to deal with a spectrum of new developments ranging from technology and politics to best practices. Fake news is among the greatest of these concerns, and can encompass everything from sarcastic or ironic humor to bot-generated, made-up stories. It can also include the pernicious transmission of selected, biased facts, the use of incomplete or misleadingly selective framing of stories, and photographs that editorially convey certain characteristics. This edited volume contextualizes the current "fake news problem." Yet it also offers a larger perspective on what seems to be uniquely modern, computer-driven problems. We must remember that we have lived with the problem of people having to identify, characterize, and communicate the truth about the world around them for millennia. Rather than identify a single culprit for disseminating misinformation, this volume examines how news is perceived and identified, how news is presented to the public, and how the public responds to news. It considers social media's effect on the craft of journalism, as well as the growing role of algorithms, big data, and automatic content-production regimes. As an edited collection, this volume gathers leading scholars in the fields of journalism and communication studies, philosophy, and the social sciences to address critical questions of how we should understand journalism's changing landscape as it relates to fundamental questions about the role of truth and information in society.

Artificial intelligence. Robot workers. Commercial space travel. These are no longer ideas of science fiction. They are increasingly the headlines in the daily news. From Hollywood to higher education, everyone is racing to figure out how to exploit these new technologies and use them to solve all our problems—especially problems related to another subject dominating headlines: the climate change crisis. Given the existential threat of environmental disaster, we now look to the technologies we once thought impossible to do the impossible, to save us from climate change. Of course, looking to superhuman beings to save us from ourselves is nothing new. This is why turning to Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of nihilism can help us to understand our current predicament, to understand the danger of trying to escape from reality by embracing technological fantasies. This updated edition expands the investigation into the relationship between nihilism and technology to include new topics like why AI doesn’t exist, why ChatGPT shouldn’t exist, and why climate change can’t be solved by nihilism.

This book discusses post-truth not merely as a Western issue, but as a problematic political and cultural condition with global ramifications. By locating the roots of the phenomenon in the trust crisis suffered by liberal democracy and its institutions, the book argues that post-truth serves as a space for ideological conflicts and geopolitical power struggles that are reshaping the world order. The era of post-truth politics is thus here to stay, and its reach is increasingly global: Russian trolls organizing events on social media attended by thousands of unaware American citizens; Turkish pro-government activists amplifying on Twitter conspiracy theories concocted via Internet imageboards by online subcultures in the United States; American and European social media users spreading fictional political narratives in support of the Syrian regime; and Facebook offering a platform for a harassment campaign by Buddhist ultra-nationalists in Myanmar that led to the killing of thousands of Muslims. These are just some of the examples that demonstrate the dangerous effects of the Internet-driven global diffusion of disinformation and misinformation. Grounded on a theoretical framework yet written in an engaging and accessible way, this timely book is a valuable resource for students, researchers, policymakers and citizens concerned with the impact of social media on politics.

This paper attempts to jump out of the original interpretation framework of social science and to explain new communication phenomena in a novel way of philosophy of science. The paper believes that the development of the communication revolution, especially the recent information technology revolution, not only makes human being step into an advanced information society but also fundamentally changes the traditional communication methods. So, when traditional communication science is insufficient to interpret novel media phenomena, using the philosophy of science to explain these new communication phenomena is not only feasible but also necessary. This paper thinks that the so-called philosophy of science is the product of "transforming science knowledge into wisdom", including not only the concept and methodology of natural science, but also the humanistic understanding of modern science.

Has truth become a casualty of America’s increasingly caustic and volatile political culture? Truth in the Public Sphere seeks to understand the significance of truth for the everyday world of human communication. To this end, this book explores the place of truth in several facets of the public sphere: language, ethics, journalism, politics, media, and art. Featuring an international group of contributors from across the humanities and social sciences, this collection is a definitive supplement to theoretical debates about the meaning and status of truth.

As the first volume of a two-volume set on new media users in China, this book approaches the subject from a macro level by regarding users as constructive nodes within networks, thereby giving insights into the interaction between users and new media and among individuals within the ambit of new media. The author revisits the roles of the typical new media user that has changed from that of a passive "audience member" to a basic unit of the network itself, acting as both a node in the communication network, social network, and service network and also a link between the three. In viewing users as nodes functioning in communication networks and social networks, this volume unravels the new landscapes of communication of the new media era and the consequent profound changes in social relationships, interpersonal connection modes and different methods of interaction. In terms of their role in service networks resting upon the network economy, new media users not only are consumers with personalized needs, but also serve as service guides, resource contributors, and even major productive forces. This title will be a must-read for scholars, students and media professionals interested in the topics of internet communication, new media usage, and media and society as a whole.