96 research outputs found
Postdigital dupery and its epistemic vices
Full text linkThis is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer on 21/09/2022, available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00340-1 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version. For re-use please see Springer's accepted manuscript terms of use.In early 2020, Alison MacKenzie and Ibrar Bhatt guest edited the Special Issue of Postdigital Science and Education, ‘Lies, Bullshit and Fake News Online: Should We Be Worried?’ (MacKenzie and Bhatt 2020), and in early 2021, Alison MacKenzie, Jennifer Rose, and Ibrar Bhatt published their edited book, The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era: Dupery by Design (MacKenzie et al. 2021b), in Postdigital Science and Education book series.Footnote 1 To continue this important work, Sarah Hayes emailed Alison, Jennifer, and Ibrar to arrange this conversation. Alison and Ibrar met with Sarah online in May 2021 and talked for two hours, with Jennifer providing her insights via email, to be blended into the dialogue.Published onlin
Bad Faith, Bad Politics, Bad Consequences: The Epistemic Harms of Online Deceit
No full textIn this chapter, we take our cue from Machiavelli to explore whether deceit by those who govern us is good for the polity. We argue that it is not: all forms of deception carry great risks that infect social and political relations. It is particularly harmful when these deceits are conducted in online platforms, given the speed at which lies, fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and other such epistemic vices spread. Bad faith and bad politics lead to bad consequences: polarisation, mis/distrust, and anger, which opportunistic politicians ruthlessly exploit in social and mass media. To help us argue why the suspension of ethical conduct in politics and online media can rarely be justified, and why deceit is corrosive of trust, we draw on a number of analyses: strategic disinformation campaigns; the consumption of mass and social media driven by dis/mistrust; Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism and Bok’s examination of lies; and the ‘polariser’s toolkit’. We suggest that an alternative to the tactics of the polariser is the humanist toolkit: humanising propaganda based on empathy, and, naturally enough, an education that critically and extensively engages in digital epistemologies
Introduction: The Genesis of Dupery by Design
No full textOnline fake news, misinformation, disinformation campaigns, and computational propaganda are all problematic, posing threats to democracy, undermining trust, and increasing polarisation. In the introduction to this edited collection, Dupery by Design: The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era, we discuss the genesis of the book. The scale, speed, amplification and quality of ‘information’ that spreads across social media, particularly the harms of deceit on individuals and the polity drew our attention. Technologies and social media platforms in particular create both new norms for discourse, radically alter a priori notions of ‘public sphere’, and enable new forms of power and inequality to exist. The reasons why and how people deceive are complex, lacking unified understanding, and this collection offers some insight into these processes. The contributors to this collection demonstrate in highly diverse ways that deception is a pervasive feature of human interactions, and takes diverse forms, ranging from the cynical to the artistic and humorous. The collection contributes the growing field of postdigital scholarship
Conclusion: Some Resolutions to Dupery and the Power of Online Platforms
No full textIn this conclusion to Dupery by Design: The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era we reprise the themes of the book. We record that dupery is now being exercised on an industrial scale worldwide by liberal democratic and authoritarian governments to manipulate public opinion using ‘cyber troop’ tactics - and the number is growing. Social media are excellent environments for civic participation and public discourse; they are also phenomenally effective at reaching large numbers of people quickly, micro-targeting with tailored messages, and harvesting personal data. This power and capacity make social media very attractive to, for example, governments, political parties and conspiracy theorists whose aims are, often, to exploit social media to spread disinformation, and undermine public trust in government and institutions. The chapters in this edited collection addressed the many approaches to detecting, understanding, and combating dupery, ranging from the philosophical and pedagogical, the performative and fictional, to media and information literacy. In addition, we discuss what is required to combat the adverse effects on human welfare and health: transparency, social media literacy, procedural accountability, humane technology and human rights
Assignments as controversies:A study of digital literacy and writing in classroom practice
No full textAbout the Book:Approaching academic assignments as practical controversies, this book offers a novel approach to the study of digital literacy. Through in-depth accounts of assignment writing in college classrooms, Bhatt examines ways of understanding how students engage with digital media in curricular activities and how these give rise to new practices of information management and knowledge creation. He further considers what these new practices portend for a stronger theory of digital literacy in an age of informational abundance and ubiquitous connectivity.Looking also at how institutional digital learning policies and strategies are applied in classrooms, and how students may embrace or avoid imposed technologies, this book offers an in-depth study of learner practices. It is through the comprehensive study of such practices that we can better understand the efficacy of technological investments in education, and the dynamic nature of digital literacy on the part of students charged with using those technologies
A semiotics of Muslimness in China
No full textThis Element examines the semiotics of Sino-Muslim heritage literacy in a way that integrates its Perso-Arabic textual qualities with broader cultural semiotic forms. Using data from images of the linguistic landscape of Sino-Muslim life alongside interviews with Sino-Muslims about their heritage, the author examines how signs of ‘Muslimness’ are displayed and manipulated in both covert and overt means in different contexts. In so doing the author offers a ‘semiotics of Muslimness’ in China and considers how forms of language and materiality have the power to inspire meanings and identifications for Sino-Muslims and understanding of their heritage literacy. The author employs theoretical tools from linguistic anthropology and an understanding of semiotic assemblage to demonstrate how signifiers of Chinese Muslimness are invoked to substantiate heritage and Sino-Muslim identity constructions even when its expression must be covert, liminal, and unconventional.<br/
‘Choice is yours’: anatomy of a lesson plan from university V
Full text linkThis chapter aims to explore education as posthuman practice via the anatomy of a lesson plan. The lesson is narrated through the methodological device of speculative fiction. It is a fabulation set in the future but with roots that tangle with the past. Dark histories and futures are set to flicker here. Deception, de-identification and datafication lurk everywhere. If you are squeamish, you may wish to read no further. The datafication of people, their reduction to numbers, bytes and, most fatally of all, words, is laid out here in gory detail. If you do wish to read on, however, then you need nothing: just come as you are, and be assured as always that as the reader, choice is yours
Sexual Migration and the ESOL Classroom
No full textPosting from: Ibrar Bhatt, School of Education, University of Leeds In November 2012 there was an interesting and lively debate on an ESOL Research mailing list about LGBT issues in ESOL classrooms. It seems that recent legislative changes, such as the 2010 Equality Act and subsequent revisions to the OFTSED framework, have brought to the fore issues such as sexual orientation, civil partnerships and gender reassignment and how they impact on ESOL provision. In order to undertake more researc..
Duperation: deliberate lying in postdigital , postmodern political rhetoric
No full textIn this chapter I will begin with some definitions of keywords such as ‘dupery’, postdigital, post-truth, and postmodern. I will then proceed to consider how political ‘duperation’ manifests itself, considering, for example, how dupery has borrowed the techniques of advertising; how dupers, gravitating towards a medium which suits their purposes – social media, have reduced and degraded language; and, consequently, the very process of democracy. I will consider also the paradoxes and duplicities of the various tropes deployed by dupers including the authentic, anti-elite avatar, the resenting and revengeful avatar, and the surveilling avatar. I will examine how the emotional and the visceral have become the rhetorical levers in duperation. The chapter will conclude with some recommendations about how we might begin to resist duperation
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