Propaganda

In her recent paper ‘The Epistemology of Propaganda’ Rachel McKinnon discusses what she refers to as ‘TERF propaganda’. We take issue with three points in her paper. The first is her rejection of the claim that ‘TERF’ is a misogynistic slur. The second is the examples she presents as commitments of so-called ‘TERFs’, in order to establish that radical (and gender critical) feminists rely on a flawed ideology. The third is her claim that standpoint epistemology can be used to establish (...) that such feminists are wrong to worry about a threat of male violence in relation to trans women. In Section 1 we argue that ‘TERF’ is not a merely descriptive term; that to the extent that McKinnon offers considerations in support of the claim that ‘TERF’ is not a slur, these considerations fail; and that ‘TERF’ is a slur according to several prominent accounts in the contemporary literature. In Section 2, we argue that McKinnon misrepresents the position of gender critical feminists, and in doing so fails to establish the claim that the ideology behind these positions is flawed. In Section 3 we argue that McKinnon’s criticism of Stanley fails, and one implication of this is that those she characterizes as ‘positively privileged’ cannot rely on the standpoint-relative knowledge of those she characterizes as ‘negatively privileged’. We also emphasize in this section McKinnon’s failure to understand and account for multiple axes of oppression, of which the cis/trans axis is only one. (shrink)

Coordinated inauthentic behaviours online are becoming a more serious problem throughout the world. One common type of manipulative behaviour is astroturfing. It happens when an entity artificially...

In *How Propaganda Works* Jason Stanley argues that democratic societies require substantial material equality because inequality causes ideologically flawed belief, which, in turn, make demagogic propaganda more effective. And that is problematic for the quality of democracy. In this brief paper I unpack that argument, in order to make two points: (a) the non-moral argument for equality is promising, but weakened by its reliance on a heavily moralised conception of democracy; (b) that problem may be remedied by whole-heartedly embracing a (...) more realistic conception of democracy. That conception is at least compatible with Stanley’s argument, if not implicit in parts of it. (shrink)

A group is lying when it makes a statement that it believes to be untrue but wants the addressee(s) to believe. But how can we distinguish statements that the group believes to be untrue from honest group statements based on mistaken beliefs or confusion within the group? I will suggest a narrative constraint for honest group statements, made up of two components. Narrative coherence requires that a new group statement should not conflict with group knowledge on the matter, or beliefs (...) of relevant operative subgroups, unless a coherent rationale is given. Narrative intention looks at the process of gathering new evidence on the area of expertise of the group and requires that the group position behind the statement is formed in good faith. The narrative constraint will help to distinguish group lies from more innocent erroneous statements of group beliefs when there is an internal disagreement within the group, including in cases involving spokespersons. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers increasingly make reference to the concept of ideology to think about how representational structures can lead to oppression, and argue that the distinctively pernicious functioning of things like propaganda and generic generalizations need to be explained in terms of ideology. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it aims to serve as an introduction to (some of) the best contemporary work on ideology in the analytic tradition. Second, it proposes a novel challenge for any such theory. The (...) challenge turns on the nature of intersectionality: it is hard to see how to render consistent the claims that ideology creates or sustains oppression with the claim that oppression is intersectional, without making substantial modifications to extant theories. The conclusion will be that certain projects in contemporary philosophy of language need to further develop their theories of ideology. (shrink)

People seem more divided than ever before over social and political issues, entrenched in their existing beliefs and unwilling to change them. Empirical research on mechanisms driving this resistance to belief change has focused on a limited set of well-known, charged, contentious issues and has not accounted for deliberation over reasons and arguments in belief formation prior to experimental sessions. With a large, heterogeneous sample (N = 3,001), we attempt to overcome these existing problems, and we investigate the causes and (...) consequences of resistance to belief change for five diverse and less contentious socio-political issues. After participants chose initially to support or oppose a given socio-political position, they were provided with reasons favoring their chosen position (affirming reasons), reasons favoring the other, unchosen position (conflicting reasons), or all reasons for both positions (reasons for both sides). Our results indicate that participants are more likely to stick with their initial decisions than to change them no matter which reasons are considered, and that this resistance to belief change is likely due to a motivated, biased evaluation of the reasons to support their initial beliefs (prior-belief bias). More specifically, they rated affirming reasons more favorably than conflicting reasons—even after accounting for reported prior knowledge about the issue, the novelty of the reasons presented, and the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. In many cases, participants who did not change their positions tended to become more confident in the superiority of their positions after considering many reasons for both sides. (shrink)

Drawing on work from Marina Sbisà’s “Ideology and the Persuasive Use of Presupposition” (1999), Rae Langton has developed a powerful account of the subtle mechanisms through which hate speech and propaganda spread. However, this model has a serious limitation: it focuses too strongly on individual speech acts isolated from their wider context, rendering its applicability to a broader range of cases suspect. In this chapter, I consider the limits of presupposition accommodation to clarify the audience’s role in helping hate speakers, (...) and claim the necessary mechanisms are much more active and social than Langton suggests, with effects not capturable in the analysis of isolated speech acts. I revisit Sbisà’s work on presupposition and develop an alternative model that (1) improves upon the Langtonian model for explaining the power of hate propaganda, and (2) is more in line with Sbisà’s original approach to ideology and the normative aspects of presupposition. (shrink)

In this chapter, we start by spelling out three important features that distinguish expressives—utterances that express emotions and other affects—from descriptives, including those that describe emotions (Section 1). Drawing on recent insights from the philosophy of emotion and value (2), we show how these three features derive from the nature of affects, concentrating on emotions (3). We then spell out how theories of non-natural meaning and communication in the philosophy of language allow claims that expressives inherit their meaning from specificities (...) of emotions—namely, from being felt, evaluative attitudes toward propositional or non-propositional contents (4). (shrink)

We often say one thing and mean another. This kind of indirection (concerning the content conveyed) is both ubiquitous and widely recognized. Other forms of indirection, however, are less common and less discussed. For example, we can sometimes address one person with the primary intention of being overheard by someone else. And, sometimes speakers say something simply in order to make it possible for someone else to say that they said it. Politicians generating sounds bites for the media are an (...) example of this kind of indirection. In this paper, I will explore—via a series of fictionalized examples—these less discussed forms of indirection and consider how such forms of indirection can be duplicitous and misleading. (shrink)

This paper has 3 main goals: (1) to clarify the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI)—along with algorithms more broadly—in online radicalization that results in ‘real world violence’; (2) to argue that technological solutions (like better AI) are inadequate proposals for this problem given both technical and social reasons; and (3) to demonstrate that platform companies’ (e.g., Meta, Google) statements of preference for technological solutions functions as a type of propaganda that serves to erase the work of the thousands of human (...) content moderators and conceal the harms they experience. I argue that the proper assessment of these important, related issues must be free of the obfuscation that the ‘better AI’ proposal generates. For this reason, I describe the AI-centric solutions favoured by major platform companies as a type of obfuscating and dehumanizing propaganda. (shrink)

Although religious ethicists commonly assess the content of public communication to determine its merits, this article argues that the style and techniques of communication deserve similar analysis. Propaganda often employs rhetorical techniques that impress the recipient through persuasive sleight-of-hand or emotional appeal. Drawing on the church fathers’ suspicion of classical rhetoric, as well as Augustine's guarded defense of a specific type of rhetoric, the author formulates two principles of ethical propaganda that may assist public communicators in persuading ethically. These two (...) principles are the procedural movement of beauty from truth, and the use of caritas as a primary motivator in persuasion. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

While online disinformation practices have grown exponentially over the past decade, the COVID-19 pandemic provides arguably the best opportunity to date to study such communications at a cross-national level. Using the data provided by the International Fact-Checking Network, we examine the strategic uses of non-verbal and verbal arguments to push disinformation through social media and websites during the first wave of lockdowns in 2020 across 16 European countries. Our paper extends the work by Brennen et al. on the use of (...) visuals in COVID-19 misinformation claims by investigating the use of facial emotional expressions and body pose depictions in conjunction with framing elements such as problems identified and attribution of responsibility in the construction of disinformation messages. Our European-wide comparative analysis of 174 messages indexed by the IFCN during the months of April and May 2020 helps provide a rounder understanding of the use of non-verbal devices in advancing COVID-19 disinformation across the continent, and can provide the basis for a framework for further study of the strategic use of non-verbal devices in COVID-19 disinformation world-wide. (shrink)

The issue of fake news and disinformation remains widespread in Bangladesh. The author produced a video documentary “Making OR Faking” that focuses on how this issue affects journalism practices in the mainstream media in Bangladesh. In this piece, the author reflects on how the making of the documentary shaped his understanding of the issue. Undertaking a qualitative approach, the author used semi-structured interviews to explore the insights and perspectives of key informants. Critical reflections on the methodological aspects of the filmmaking (...) process highlight the challenges in processing the construction of meaning through moving images. The analyses of the findings underscore the conceptual issues in understanding fake news and disinformation, the emergence of fake news in Bangladesh, and the impacts on the mainstream media. The article also explores potential ways to tackle this issue. (shrink)

This essay develops an account of Martin Luther King Jr.’s justification for and use of what I will call “democratic propaganda”—truthful propaganda that is aimed at promoting and fostering democratic political action by stirring readers’ emotions. I interpret King’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in the broader context of his work and argue that it is a piece of democratic propaganda. I give an account of what led King to support the use of democratic propaganda and why he hoped it (...) would help to overcome a central problem in the civil rights movement: the political inaction of the white moderates. King emphasizes shame in the Letter, and I argue that this concept offers us a new way of thinking about the efficacy of democratic propaganda. I close by considering the relevance of King’s approach for today’s Black Lives Matter movement. Despite the innovativeness of King’s use of shame, I suggest it may be time for a new approach to Black politics and activism. (shrink)

One way to silence the powerless, Langton has taught us, is to pre-emptively disable their ability to do things with words. In this paper I argue that speakers can be silenced in a different way. You can let them speak, and obscure the meaning of their words afterwards. My aim is to investigate this form of silencing, that I call retroactive distortion. In a retroactive distortion, the meaning of the words of a speaker is distorted by the effect of a (...) subsequent speech act by a different speaker. After introducing this notion, I explore some reasons why retroactive distortions can be difficult to challenge and argue that, besides constituting a communicative injustice, they can eliminate topics from public consideration and therefore erode public debate. (shrink)

I argue that that an influential strategy for understanding conspiracy theories stands in need of radical revision. According to this approach, called ‘generalism’, conspiracy theories are epistemically defective by their very nature. Generalists are typically opposed by particularists, who argue that conspiracy theories should be judged case-by-case, rather than definitionally indicted. Here I take a novel approach to criticizing generalism. I introduce a distinction between ‘Dominant Institution Conspiracy Theories and Theorists’ and ‘Non-Dominant Institution Conspiracy Theories and Theorists’. Generalists uncritically center (...) the latter in their analysis, but I show why the former must be centered by generalists’ own lights: they are the clearest representatives of their views, and they are by far the most harmful. Once we make this change in paradigm cases, however, various typical generalist theses turn out to be false or in need of radical revision. Conspiracy theories are not primarily produced by extremist ideologies, as generalists typically claim, since mainstream, purportedly non-extremist political ideologies turn out to be just as, if not more responsible for such theories. Conspiracy theories are also, we find, not the province of amateurs: they are often created and pushed by individuals widely viewed as experts, who have the backing of our most prestigious intellectual institutions. While generalists may be able to take this novel distinction and shift in paradigm cases on board, this remains to be seen. Subsequent generalist accounts that do absorb this distinction and shift will look radically different from previous incarnations of the view. (shrink)

This conceptual paper represents my first attempt to tackle a difficult research problem (at least for me), employing the mindsponge concept facilitated by the BMF analytical approach. These ‘weapons’–as we at AISDL usually call them–have shown usefulness and capabilities to shed light on numerous challenging research problems in social sciences and humanities.

This chapter examines what protest is from the point of view of pragmatics, and how it relates to propaganda—specifically what Jason Stanley calls ‘positive propaganda.’ It analyzes the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” taking it to be a political speech act that offers a unique route to understanding of the pragmatics of protest. From this, it considers the moral-epistemological function of protest, and develops an account of the authority that protest, as a speech act, both calls upon and makes explicit. It (...) then argues that, rather than simply its effects, it is protest’s distinct pragmatic features—that is, its entitlement conditions, and the uptake it aim at—that best capture its important moral, political, and epistemic elements. It therefore rejects the idea that protests are paradigmatic examples of ‘positive propaganda,’ because the propaganda model cannot capture protests’ function of foregrounding the socially located moral authority of the protestor. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to understand how social knowledge affects human economic decision making. The paper discusses the nature of social knowledge in today’s context with special reference to how social knowledge influences consumers’ sentiments and their economic decisions. Social networks are being continuously flooded with various kinds of information and disinformation. Some of the information becomes knowledge for social network users who browse various kinds of content that are either entertaining or related to products and marketing. Although reliability (...) remains a critical issue regarding online information from social networks, it, however, provides some knowledge about diverse things, goods, and products being in use in different societies around the world. Some products advertised on social networks like Facebook may affect consumer decisions or provide information about new products. This paper presents a formal discussion on what social knowledge is and how it is originated, and what use it might have for such consumers. The paper designs a simplistic mathematical model for a theoretical understanding of the assumption that has practical implications regarding its utility in society. It is found that social networks generate enough social information that can influence user choice and preferences. The study has implications for both the users and the developers of social networking sites. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine how the availability of massive quantities of data i.e., the “Big Data” phenomenon, contributes to the creation, spread, and harms of online misinformation. Specifically, we argue that a factor in the problem of online misinformation is the evolved human instinct to recognize patterns. While the pattern-recognition instinct is a crucial evolutionary adaptation, we argue that in the age of Big Data, these capacities have, unfortunately, rendered us vulnerable. Given the ways in which online media outlets (...) profit from the spread of misinformation by preying on this pattern-finding instinct, we conceptualize the problem that we identify as a morally objectionable form of “epistemic exploitation.” As we argue, the consumer of digital misinformation is often exploited by having her pattern-recognition instinct used against her. This exploitation is morally objectionable because it deprives her of an epistemic good to which she has a right. This epistemic good is the integrity of the pattern-recognition instinct itself which, we argue, is a capacity that allows us to participate in uniquely human goods. While our primary goal is to bring attention to this form of epistemic exploitation, we conclude by briefly evaluating some general solutions to the growing problem of online misinformation. (shrink)

This paper considers W.E.B. Du Bois’s short story, “Jesus Christ in Texas,” in the perspective of his analysis of the concept of beauty in Darkwater (1920); his exposition of the idea that “all art is propaganda” in “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926); and his moral psychology of white supremacy. On my account, Du Bois holds that beautiful art can help to undermine white supremacy by using representations of moral goodness to expand the white supremacist’s ethical horizons. To defend this thesis, (...) he relies on an image of “the cross and the lynching tree” to revise imagery that he draws from Albrecht Dürer’s 1504 painting, “The Adoration of Kings.”. (shrink)

This paper shows why defining „fake news“ is worthwhile and what a suitable definition of “fake news” might look like. We begin by introducing our definition of “fake news” (§2) and employ it to set fake news apart from related phenomena that are often conflated with it (§3). We then extract seven potential dimensions of the concept of fake news from the literature (§4) and compare the most representative definitions that have been proposed so far along those dimensions (§5). In (...) particular, we discuss the definitions by Rini, Gelfert, Dentith, Mukerji, and Zimmermann & Kohring, show up their merits and debits and put them in relation to ours. Although we take our definition as the starting point and argue for it on the side-lines, our primary aims are (i) to enable a systematic evaluation of prevalent definitions with respect to their extensional scope, practical utility, and conceptual transparency, (ii) to demonstrate that there is more widespread agreement than one would think on the outset, and (iii) to show (in §6) that defining “fake news” is not only far from futile, but of vital importance to confront the epistemic threats posed by fake news. (shrink)

Some of Dave Chappelle’s uses of storytelling about seemingly mundane events, like his experiences with his “white friend Chip” and the police, are examples of what W.E.B. Du Bois calls “Positive Propaganda.” This is in contrast to “Demagoguery,” the sort of propaganda described by Jason Stanley that obstructs empathic recognition of others, and undermines reasonable debate among citizens regarding policies that matter: the justice system, welfare, inequality, and race, for example. Some of Chappelle’s humor, especially in his most recent Netflix (...) specials, but also in his earlier standup performances and his series The Chappelle Show, is akin to art that appeals to emotion in the ways suggested by Du Bois in “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926). Beauty is essential to art, but, “I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent” (p. 22). The “one side” is that which appears to extoll American ideals, but in reality undermines them, perpetuating the subordinate status of “the other”--black citizens. Replace “beauty” with “humor” or “funny”, and we see striking parallels between Chappelle’s socio-political performances and Du Bois’ call for positive propaganda, each of which constitute “civic rhetoric” broadly construed. We no longer live in Du Bois’ America of explicit denial of rights. In many ways our situation is worse, as the mechanisms of exclusion are implicit, difficult to dislodge, because they are invisible. Chappelles’ humor draws attention to subtle undermining-propaganda in our liberal democracy, transforming it through his counter-propaganda into the spectacle that it should be; ubiquitous democracy-denying propaganda should be as obvious to whites as it is to minorities. In his words, we should all see that “that shit is fucking incredible” (Killin’ Them Softly). (shrink)

AI-supported methods for identifying and combating disinformation are progressing in their development and application. However, these methods face a litany of epistemic and ethical challenges. These include (1) robustly defining disinformation, (2) reliably classifying data according to this definition, and (3) navigating ethical risks in the deployment of countermeasures, which involve a mixture of harms and benefits. This paper seeks to expose and offer preliminary analysis of these challenges.

Herodotos and Thoukydides report on many occasions that kings, polis leaders, and other politicians speak and behave in ways that unintentionally announce or analyze situations incorrectly (misinformation). Elsewhere, they represent as facts knowingly false constructs or “fake news” (disinformation), or they slant data in ways that advance a cause personal or public (propaganda, true or false). Historians attempt to or claim to acquaint audiences with a truer fact situation and to identify subjects’ motives for distortion such as immediate personal advantage, (...) community advantage, or to encourage posterity’s better (if mistaken) opinion. Such historiographical bifocalism enhances the historian’s authority with readers (as he sees through intentional or unintentional misrepresentations) as well as sets straight distorted historical records. This paper surveys two paradigmatic Hellenic historians’ texts, how they build their investigative and analytic authority, and how they encourage confidence in their truth-determining skills. The material collected confirms and assesses the frequency of persons and governments misleading their own citizens and subjects as well as rival persons and powers. Finally, it demonstrates that these two historians were aware of information loss, information control (dissemination and suppression), and information chaos. (shrink)

Are we gullible? Can we be easily influenced by what others tell us, even if they do not deserve our trust? Many strands of research, from social psychology to cultural evolution suggest that humans are by nature conformist and eager to follow prestigious leaders. By contrast, an evolutionary perspective suggests that humans should be vigilant towards communicated information, so as not to be misled too often. Work in experimental psychology shows that humans are equipped with sophisticated mechanisms that allow them (...) to carefully evaluate communicated information. These open vigilance mechanisms lead us to reject messages that clash with our prior beliefs, unless the source of the message has earned our trust, or provides good arguments, in which case we can adaptively change our minds. These mechanisms make us largely immune to mass persuasion, explaining why propaganda, political campaigns, advertising, and other attempts at persuading large groups nearly always fall in deaf ears. However, some false beliefs manage to spread through communication. I argue that most popular false beliefs are held reflectively, which means that they have little effect on our thoughts and behaviors, and that many false beliefs can be socially beneficial. Accepting such beliefs thus reflects a much weaker failure in our evaluation of communicated information than might at first appear. (shrink)

According to some, the current political fracture is best described as political polarization – where extremism and political separation infest an entire whole population. Political polarization accounts often point to the psychological phenomenon of belief polarization – where being in a like-minded groups tends to boost confidence. The political polarization story is an essentially symmetrical one, where both sides are subject to the same basic dividing forces and cognitive biases, and are approximately as blame-worthy. On a very different account, what's (...) going on is best described propaganda – where a discrete set of bad actors have manipulated some part of the media environ-ment. The propaganda story is usually told as a highly asymmetrical story, where only some media consumers are under the spell of the propagandists. Which is right? I consider two analyses of the 2016 American election: Robert Talisse's polarization-style account in Overdoing Democracy, and Benkler et. al.'s propaganda-style account in Network Propaganda. I suggest that the propaganda account has better empirical support. I also offer a diagnosis of the appeal of the polarization story. Those who accept a polarization account are often political centrists, who accuse those at the political extremes of motivated reasoning – of believing what they find comfortable. Such centrists also tend to treat political extremism as the product of the irrational belief polarization, arising from living in like-minded groups. But, I argue, these arguments are too quick. First, we can’t dismiss a group as irrational merely be-cause they are likeminded. The existence of like-minded group can be explained in terms of irrational belief polarization, but it can also be explained by rational convergence on the truth. Second, belief polarization is not always irrational, such as when its emotional effects are used to repair impaired self-confidence. Third, political centrists are also subject to similar debunking argument. When we accept a polarization account, we get to feel the comfort of being “above it all”. Political centrists are just as plausibly subject to the irrational effects of living in like-minded groups. Belief polarization isn’t just for extremists. (shrink)

This chapter provides a high-level introduction to the topic of propaganda. We survey a number of the most influential accounts of propaganda, from the earliest institutional studies in the 1920s to contemporary academic work. We propose that these accounts, as well as the various examples of propaganda which we discuss, all converge around a key feature: persuasion which bypasses audiences’ rational faculties. In practice, propaganda can take different forms, serve various interests, and produce a variety of effects. Propaganda can aim (...) to affect not only audiences’ beliefs and attitudes, but also their emotions and moods, and in turn how audiences subsequently reason or act. While propaganda is often thought of as false or misinformation, it can instead involve framing effects (“The war on drugs”), covert messaging (“There are Muslims among us”), emotionally charged slogans (“Make America Great Again”), or myths (“The American dream”). These forms of propaganda mislead audiences, not by introducing false information, but by making some beliefs and values, rather than others, salient. In fact, propaganda can even employ straightforwardly true claims (again, as in “There are Muslims among us”) and seemingly objective bureaucratic reports (“Crime has risen 4.2%”). To understand how these and other mechanisms enable propaganda to persuade by arational means, further study is needed. To that end, throughout the chapter we identify a number of places where the study of meaning and communication can help elucidate propaganda, as well as the places where propaganda issues challenges for the study of meaning. (shrink)

This paper investigates civility from an Aristotelian perspective and has two objectives. The first is to offer a novel account of this virtue based on Aristotle’s remarks about civic friendship. The proposed account distinguishes two main components of civility—civic benevolence and civil deliberation—and shows how Aristotle’s insights can speak to the needs of our communities today. The notion of civil deliberation is then unpacked into three main dimensions: motivational, inquiry-related, and ethical. The second objective is to illustrate how the post-truth (...) condition—in particular, the spread of misinformation typical of the digital environments we inhabit—obstructs our capacity to cultivate the virtue of civility by impairing every component of civil deliberation. The paper hopes to direct virtue theorists’ attention to the need to foster civic virtues as a means of counteracting the negative aspects of the post-truth age. (shrink)

The alt-right is an online subculture marked by its devotion to the execution of a racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic politics through trolling, pranking, meme-making, and mass murder. It is this devotion to far-right politics through the discordant conjunction of humor and suicidal violence this article seeks to explain by situating the movement for the first time within its constitutive online relationships. This article adds to the existing literature by viewing the online relationships of the alt-right through the genealogy of propaganda. (...) Through situating the alt-right alongside the genealogy of propaganda, the article offers new insights into the social isolation, increasingly extreme social and political positions, nihilism, and violence that have emerged within the alt-right. The article concludes by applying the lessons of the alt-right for online organizing across the political spectrum and argues that a class-based politics of the left is an important part of countering the rise of the alt-right. (shrink)

In the early 20th century, the most numerous and well-funded institutions in the United States—corporations—used public relations to make a widespread and fundamental change in the way they constitute and regulate their relations of knowledge with the public. Today, we can see this change reflected in a variety of areas such as journalism, political outreach, social media, and in the ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ administration of Donald J. Trump. This article traces practices of corporate truth-telling and knowledge production across three (...) periods I will call the personal, the legal, and public relations, which are roughly coincident with the antebellum period, the Gilded Age, and the 20th century, respectively. In sum, what can be found in public relations and now broadly across society, is that relations of knowledge have come to be refigured as relations of power, subordinating traditional epistemological concerns like justification and belief in favor of government and control. (shrink)

This chapter is about the controversial use of contemporary social media in local and global conflicts. The particular focus is on Russian hybrid warfare against Ukraine, the United States, and the rest of civilized world. The chapter’s aim is to demonstrate how easily social media, which are used as effective drivers of positive change in some states, are becoming an instrument of propaganda, misinformation, and disorientation of the audience. The chapter argues that without significant intellectual and critical development, fake news (...) and post-truth will no longer belong only to state TV channels and mainstream media in Russia, but that multiple audiences in other countries will be vulnerable to manipulation. (shrink)

_"There is no better book on fascism's complex and vexed relationship with truth."––Jason Stanley, author of _How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them__ In this short companion to his book_ From Fascism to Populism in History__, _world-renowned historian Federico Finchelstein explains why fascists regarded simple and often hateful lies as truth, and why so many of their followers believed the falsehoods. Throughout the history of the twentieth century, many supporters of fascist ideologies regarded political lies as truth incarnated (...) in their leader. From Hitler to Mussolini, fascist leaders capitalized on lies as the base of their power and popular sovereignty. This history continues in the present, when lies again seem to increasingly replace empirical truth. Now that actual news is presented as “fake news” and false news becomes government policy, _A Brief History of Fascist Lies_ urges us to remember that the current talk of “post-truth” has a long political and intellectual lineage that we cannot ignore. (shrink)

Words don’t just describe the world; they change the world. We do things with words as John L. Austin (1975) has argued. But words can also change how we think about something. In this piece I wish to examine the everyday usage of words referring to strategic fouling, as it cuts across various languages. In some languages this rule-violation gave rise to figurative language after the practice became widespread. We find euphemisms but also dysphemisms, as well as evaluative language (whose (...) purpose here is to excuse the action). This is important, because ‘if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought’ (as George Orwell observed). I will argue that euphemisms and other evaluative language which refer to strategic fouling are a piece of sporting propaganda, aiming to dull our senses to such rule-violations. (shrink)

Some of the most problematic human behaviors involve vices of the mind such as arrogance, closed-mindedness, dogmatism, gullibility, and intellectual cowardice, as well as wishful or conspiratorial thinking. What sorts of things are epistemic vices? How do we detect and mitigate them? How and why do these vices prevent us from acquiring knowledge, and what is their role in sustaining patterns of ignorance? What is their relation to implicit or unconscious bias? How do epistemic vices and systems of social oppression (...) relate to one another? Do we unwittingly absorb such traits from the process of socialization and communities around us? Are epistemic vices traits for which we can blamed? Can there be institutional and collective epistemic vices? This book seeks to answer these important questions about the vices of the mind and their roles in our social and epistemic lives, and is the first collection of its kind. Organized into three parts, chapters by outstanding scholars explore the nature of epistemic vices, specific examples of these vices, and case studies in applied vice epistemology, including education and politics. Alongside these foundational questions, the volume offers sophisticated accounts of vices both new and familiar. These include epistemic arrogance and servility, epistemic injustice, epistemic snobbishness, conspiratorial thinking, procrastination, and forms of closed-mindedness. Vice Epistemology is essential reading for students of ethics, epistemology, and virtue theory, and various areas of applied, feminist, and social philosophy. It will also be of interest to practitioners, scholars, and activists in politics, law, and education. (shrink)

What is the relationship between war propaganda and nationalism, and what are the effects of each on support for, or participation in, violent acts? This is an important question for international criminal law and ongoing speech crime trials, where prosecutors and judges continue to assert that there is a clear causal link between war propaganda, nationalism, and mass violence. Although most legal judgments hinge on the criminal intent of propagandists, the question of whether and to what extent propaganda and nationalism (...) interact to cause support for violence or participation remains unanswered. Our goal here is to contribute to research on propaganda and nationalism by bridging international criminal law and the behavioral and brain sciences. We develop an experiment conducted with Serbian participants that examines the effects of propaganda as identified in the latest international speech crime trial as causing mass violence, and thereby test hypotheses of expert witness Anthony Oberschall’s theory of mass manipulation. Using principal components analysis and Bayesian regression, we examine the effects of propaganda exposure and prior levels of nationalism as well as other demographics on support for violence, ingroup empathy, and outgroup empathy. Results show that while exposure to war propaganda does not increase justifications of violence, specific types of war propaganda increase ingroup empathy and decrease outgroup empathy. Further, although nationalism by itself is not significant for justifying violence, the interaction of increased nationalism and exposure to violent media is significant for altering group empathies. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to international criminal law and the cognitive science of nationalism. (shrink)

A major part of research into cyber‐propaganda discusses the following components it uses: disinformation, creating fake news and employing so‐called farm trolls. Actions of this kind do not correspond with the classic division of soft and hard power, since neither can their goals nor the means they utilise be unambiguously defined as coercion, payment, or attraction. In my article, I describe the hidden means of propaganda employed by the Russian Federation that are additionally supported by a process of armament which (...) cannot be classified as an act of disinformation. These actions aim at achieving a specific type of psychological vantage which stems from an atmosphere of fear, lack of trust, and enmity created within European societies as a result of the incoming information about Russia’s increasing military potential as well as new, dangerous means and resources that could be utilised in combat. Such an atmosphere is referred to as a “war in the head”, and it pertains to the personal belief that a military conflict is imminent, expressed by individual citizens including those in key public offices. This phenomenon, while bringing to mind Hobbes’ state of nature which encompasses the distinct readiness to fight, directly afflicts the internal and international security of European states. Such a situation directly afflicts the internal and international security of European states, for the state of fear and distrust leads to the dismantlement of public democratic institutions, and it does not help in the search for effective methods of solving either internal or global problems. (shrink)