Drawing from philosophy, information theory, and network science, Organized Skepticism in the Age of Misinformation: Surviving the Kingdom of Gossip offers a novel conceptual framework that views information as a form of gossip.
This book challenges the idea that truthfulness is a necessary, or even a relevant condition, of information. Instead, this book develops a conceptual framework in which information is understood as gossip, which fits within a more general account of information and knowledge as constrained but contingent social practices. Using this framework, this book provides a nuanced understanding of the “grammar” of gossip that permeates both online and real‑orld environments and sheds light on the often overused and confused terms of our time: information, misinformation and knowledge.
This book offers a fundamental reconfiguration of the evolving virtual interdependence of humans and information technology. It is a key resource for students and scholars in areas relating to social media, information diffusion, human/computer interface, and computational social science.
◾ Introduction
Part I A Crisis of Knowledge and Everyday Epistemology
Chapter 1 ◾ Problems with the Concept of Knowledge
Chapter 2 ◾ Knowledge Is Necessarily Contingent and Normative
Chapter 3 ◾ The Practices of Redescription (Paradiastole)
Part II Information and Misinformation
Chapter 4 ◾ What Is Information?
Chapter 5 ◾ Shannon’s Theory of Information
Chapter 6 ◾ Data, Counting, and Writing
Chapter 7 ◾ Is Information Subjective or Objective? Or Neither?
Chapter 8 ◾ Is Misinformation a Kind of Information? (Or Must Information Be True?)
Chapter 9 ◾ Truth Is Seldom the Motive : The Complexity of Human Motives
Part III Gossip and Rumor
Chapter 10 ◾ A Critique of Current Models of Information Diffusion
Chapter 11 ◾ Gossip and Rumor
Chapter 12 ◾ A Discursive Grammar of Traditional Gossip
Part IV Online Interfaces
Chapter 13 ◾ Online Information Diffusion as Gossip and Dreamscape
Chapter 14 ◾ The Grammar of Online Self‑Gossip
Chapter 15 ◾ The ‘Information Ecosystem’ and Gossiping AIs
Part V Conclusion
Chapter 16 ◾ The Dynamo and the Internet
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