PY1103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Fake News, Clientelism, Confirmation Bias
14 Jun 2018
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Podcast 5
Fake news
Propaganda
- Information that is not objective
- Used to influence an audience and advance an agenda
o Presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception
o Using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a ration
response to the information that is presented
Media Bias
- Bias or perceived bias of journalist and news producers within the mass media in the
selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered
- The ter edia ias iplies a persvasive or widespread bias contravening the
standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or
article
- The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed
- Argued to be more systematic when you are actually talking about what people see,
- Presenting bias story is risky – people who do’t agree, whereas if you are
controlling what people see – there is no other source of info
Media Integrity
- The ability of an outlet to serve the public interest and democratic process, making it
resilient to institutional corruption within the media system
- Endangered when a small number of companies and individuals control the media
market
- Especially endangered in the case where there are clientelist relations between the
owners of the media and political centres of power
o Clientelist – a political or social system based on the relation of the client to
the patron with the client giving political or financial support to a patron (as
in the form of votes) in exchange for some special prevalence or benefit
- For the democratic role of the media
Cognitive Biases
- A systematic pattern of deviation from norm of rationality in judgement
o Cognitive biases sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate
judgement, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality
Confirmation Bias
- The tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that
confirms ones pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses.
In group bias
- Is a pattern of favouring members of ones in-group over out-group members
- We are tactful, they are seaky
- We failed because of the circumstances we could not control: they failed because
they’re stupid ad iopetet
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Document Summary
Used to influence an audience and advance an agenda: presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a ration response to the information that is presented. Bias or perceived bias of journalist and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The ter(cid:373) (cid:862)(cid:373)edia (cid:271)ias(cid:863) i(cid:373)plies a persvasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed. Argued to be more systematic when you are actually talking about what people see, Presenting bias story is risky people who do(cid:374)"t agree, whereas if you are controlling what people see there is no other source of info.
