“But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.“
-Socrates, Phaedrus
The above quote is an admonishment on the potential dangers of the written word and while it not might be entirely justified in its fears the quote might still be more relevant in our digital environment. The claim that people will appear omniscient and generally know nothing certainly seems prophetic when viewed through the lens of our connected world. Socrates concern might be universally valid for any age it does present a problem of our information use through digital means and that is the potential for misinformation. If we do not know the meaning of everything we read how do we know that the thing we read is indeed true? To re-frame the question in our information society the problem becomes: when we look for information can we know that the information we found is correct and will we ask that question if our lack of information made us seek it in the first place?
The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential for misinformation through digital means and how they differ from traditional means and the how we might not always recognize that we have been misinformed. What will also be examined is when misinformation is more likely to occur than in other situations. Misinformation will be separated into two categories: purposeful and unintentional. The spreading of purposeful misinformation is always done for a reason whether it is for commercial purposes or for personal reasons. The unintentional spreading of misinformation happens when people assume the information they have is legitimate. The problem of digital misinformation is not just that we might receive it but we might also propagate it by sharing it with others.
However, even if the potential is bigger in a digital world to spread misinformation we should not assume that any information we find is automatically misinformation anymore than we should assume that any information we find is necessarily true. Even though there is huge potential for misinformation in our digital age there is also huge potential in our digital means for spreading correct information as well. Both sides will be examined in the paper.
Vilhelm Lönnberg
I found your idea interesting and it is reasonable that the research question is quite philosophical. I was though sensing some scepticism in your own view and I was just wondering what kind of theories you’ll be using to support your ideas, which of course will become more clear during the actual writing process. Some additional thoughts if you want to use them: is the information (or misinformation) somehow different in digital environments? Or is it just the amount of information available that differs it from the ‘actual world’?
From my point of view you have chosen a very interesting topic for your research. Especially students like ourselves are depending on valid references for our assignments and projects.
Like the previous commenter I admit, that it would have been great, to get a little more insight into the theories you are about to use for your research. Further, I was wondering if you are referring to all digital sources, like websites, e-journals, blogs, etc. and also whether or not you are referring to all digital information? My suggestion would be to focus on one type of information (for example academic information) and on the digital environments of this specific type of information. However, this is just a suggestion and I am looking forward to read more about this topic in your draft.
BR,
Frederik
It is a really interesting topic because in our fast living society is the high risk of misinformation.
I would like to know whether there are on this topic, scientific theories or facts and figures documenting that. Are there any ways to filter false information and how we can grow the dissemination of false information small?
Also, you should be on the motives of spreading false information received. Do you think we should introduce a kind of “court” that punishes the perpetrators of serious cases of disinformation?
I think that will be an interesting point of view for the topic.
I think it is a very relevant topic, because we only use the internet and sometimes we have too much confidence in the internet and the information that we found there.
It is good that you separate between purposeful and unintentional misinformation, but what are the motives of speading misinformation on the internet? Maybe you should only focus on one form of digitalization or information, like on websites or e-books/e-journals. Another point that would be also interesting is whether there are any possibility to divide between misinformation and information on the internet for the user of the internet. Maybe you can discuss proprosals of solution how we can minimize misinformation.
Great. Natascha Karlova has written a short paper on misinformation and disinformation you could find helpful (or you can find that you want to say something about it). Then another question is that what is mis/disinformation for whom and when and how and on what premises the status of information should be defined.