Digital Fever : Taming the Big Business of Disinformation

"Each person is now consumer, producer and distributor of stories - chosen for excitement rather than veracity. Bernhard Poerksen tells us that there is a way forward but only if schools utterly transform learning and prepare students to dissect and understand this brave new world of endless digital flow." - Jerry Brown, governor of California (1975-83; 2011-2019) "Bernhard Poerksenś heady description of the communications world we are moving toward is unlike any I have read. It made me rebuild my understanding of what is going on. Try it against yours." - Jay Rosen, writer and professor of journalism at New York University Terror warnings, fake news, spectacles and scandals in real time - the networked world has wound itself up into a nervous frenzy, where everything has become visible: the banal and the terrible, the uninhibited abuse and the anonymous attack. Translated for the first time into English, Digital Fever analyses the patterns of outrage and agitation that have come to define social media and the Internet, exposing their devastating impact on our notions of truth, debate, authority and power. In this endless cycle of outrage, Poerksen argues that the intelligent use of information must become part of the general education provided by schools: the digital society must be transformed into an editorial one. In order for democracy to survive, we must as a society achieve media maturity. A blazing tour of the contemporary landscape of fake-news, echo chambers, disinformation, manipulation, and the turbulence that democracy is undergoing, this book not only analyses this digital economy of outrage, but serves as a guiding light to overcome it Contents The New Priesthood: A Preliminary Remark by Computer Visionary Lee Felsenstein The End of Gatekeeper Complacency: a Note on this Edition 1 Clash of Codes: Or the Age of Indiscreet Media 2 The Crisis of Truth: Or the Suspicion of Manipulation The Modern Turing Test Principles of Information Laundering Fear of the Post-Factual Age The Catastrophe, the Terror and the Laws of the Digital Media The Unleashing of Confirmatory Thinking 3 The Crisis of Discourse: Or the Diminishing of the Gatekeepers From Media Democracy to Outrage Democracy Deterioration of the Communication Climate The Many Faces of the Fifth Power The Power of Connectives 4 The Crisis of Authority: Or the Pains of Visibility Expansion of the Observation Zone Collateral Damage of Transparency Heroes and Anti-Heroes in the Internet Age 5 The Crisis of Complacency: Or the Collapse of Contexts Filter Bubble and Filter Clash Simultaneity of the Disparate Digital Butterfly Effects On the Rise of an Industry Managing Emotion and Agitation The Misguided Praise of Ignorance 6 The Crisis of Reputation: Or the Omnipresence of Scandals The Digital Pillory The Experience of the Loss of Control The Balancing Act of Enlightenment 7 The Tangible Utopia of an Editorial Society Principles of an Editorial Society The First Principle: Orientation by Truth The Second Principle: Scepticism The Third Principle: Understanding- and Discourse-Orientation The Fourth Principle: Relevance and Proportionality The Fifth Principle: Criticism and Control The Sixth Principle: Ethical-Moral Assessment The Seventh Principle: Transparency Some Objections to the Idea of an Editorial Society Expansion of the Zone of Publicist Responsibility The First Proposal: A Special School Subject as a Laboratory of the Editorial Society The Second Proposal: Dialogical Journalism The Third Proposal: The Discourse and Transparency Duties of the Platform Monopolists Acknowledgements Notes Author Biography