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Public Discourse

Discourse-tionary



A technical dictionary for public discourse.
Jun 13, 02020⸺Jul 29, 02020
Statedraft

The aims of this dictionary are fourfold:

  • to provide a set of consistent, precise, standard definitions to faciliate research;
  • to enrich the vocabulary in common use when talking about public discourse;
  • to collate in one place relevant concepts from multiple fields; and
  • to help others with an interest in public discourse familiarise themselves with the literature more quickly.

Definitions are important to the extent that having a rich, common language is important, but arguments about the scope or use of particular terms are usually not productive. Where possible, I have modelled the definitions closely on those currently used by researchers, or written them to a corresponding level of formality. If there is disagreement in the literature about a definition, I have taken a pragmatic (and inherently somewhat opinionated) approach to resolving them. If needed, explanation of the origin of a term and its definition are included under the heading 'Origin + Context'. Links to relevant literature (including, if available, the original appearance of the term in its given form) are listed under 'Key References'.

The dictionary is currently a work-in-progress. Immediately below this paragraph is an tentative list of the terms I intend to include, followed by the entries that have been written already.

a active measures active open-mindedness adversarial collaboration advertising affirmation agitprop agnoiology agnotology agonism agonistic pluralism ainigmology aletheia alternative facts apodictic argument argument mining Arnstein ladder assumption astroturfing Aumann agreement theorem aver b balkanisation belief bias Big Tsintsum bot brigading bullshit burden of proof c canard chumbox civil civil discourse civility click farm cognitive miser cognitive security cognitronics collaboratorium communicative capitalism comprehensive coercion conductor social networks context collapse controversy-industrial complex corrigible counterknowledge counterspeech courtesy bias credibility cascade crisis informatics culture jamming d dark ad data data void deep canvassing deep fake deliberation deliberative democracy deliberatorium depoliticisation dezinformatsiya dialectic dialectician dialogue discourse disinformation dogwhistle doublethink doxastic e echo chamber epistemic akrasia epistemic modesty erisology esoteric essay evidence exoteric f fact fact-checking factiness fait divers fake news false amplifiers false flag operation false news fiat narrative fiction filter bubble firehosing / firehose of falsehood freedom of expression freedom of speech g gaslight generalisability crisis glasnost group attribution error groupthink Gutenburg parenthesis h heteropolitics Historovox hoax homophily horse race journalism humanitas hypocognition hypothesis i implied truth effect influence equilibrium influence operation infodemic infodemiology information information campaign information cascade information disorder information hazard information operation information warfare infox intellectual empathy intellectual humility intransigence isegoria k kleroterion knowledge l lapidation load-bearing myth localism lottocracy Lügenpresse m malinformation Manichaeism media literacy memetic warfare metacognition metadiscourse minimal group paradigm misinformation motive attribution assymetry n news literacy non-fiction normative o objective oikos Okrent's law onus probandi opinion Overton window p parasocial relationship parody parrhesia pasquil pasquinade phetasy pluralistic ignorance poisoning the well polis political technologist political technology politicisation positive post-fact post-modernism post-truth pragma-dialectics propaganda pseudo-profound bullshit public affairs public diplomacy public discourse public relations publicity r reality apathy reasoning rhetoric rhetorical arena rhetorician Rogerian argument Russell conjugation s satire scientific curiosity scientific literacy sectarian selective exposure self-scandalise Semmelweis reflex silos sine ira et studio sock puppet sortition source-checking specious spin strategic news coverage subjective t The Inversion theory thoughtcrime three men make a tiger tribalism trivialism troll factory trolling truth truth decay truthiness truthiness v videotox infox w whataboutism wishful thinking x xuanchuan

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bullshit

verb To communicate information without concern for whether or not it is true.

noun Information that is communicated without concern for whether or not it is true.

ORIGIN + CONTEXT SHOW +

This definition is based on the discussion in ‘On bullshit’, a 1986 essay by philospher Harry Frankfurt. Frankfurt proposes that the essence of bullshit is a disregard for the truth.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Gerald Cohen (2012) has since argued that bullshit should be bullshit, regardless of the process by which it was created.

Bullshit as insincere talk or writing is indeed what it is because it is the product of something like bluffing, but talking nonsense is what it is because of the character of its output, and nonsense is not nonsense because of features of the nonsense-talker’s mental state.

If the goal is to find a definition of bullshit that fits with its everyday use, then this is a valid criticism. But for our purposes, we have stuck to the Frankfurtian definition, because there are other terms available to describe plain falsehoods and nonsense (eg. ‘falsehood’ and ‘nonsense’).

pseudo-profound bullshit
  • Frankfurt, Harry (1986) ‘On bullshit’.
  • Cohen, Gerald (2012) ‘Deeper into bullshit’.
canard

noun Information that was initially formulated with the intent to deceive or harm.

ORIGIN + CONTEXT SHOW +

This definition focuses on original intent rather than truth status: the information could be false, or true but misleading.

‘Canard’ originally comes from French, in which it is also the word for ‘duck’. Etymologies vary for the meaning defined here. Perhaps the most likely is that it originates with the French idiom ‘vendre un canard à moitié’, which translates literally as ‘to half-sell a duck’ but means to trick people with information that is technically true but misleading. Wiktionary speculates that this idiom originates in a folk story.

A [seller of live ducks] is successful and content as the only duck seller on a street, selling his ducks for eight francs each. A new duck seller moves in across the street who steals all the business by offering his ducks for seven francs each. Then a price war ensues, back and forth, until the new duck seller is down to three francs for a duck. The original duck seller is beside himself with worry and frustration, but finally he puts up a big sign that says, ‘Two francs’ and then in small print at the bottom ‘for half a duck.’

disinformation; malinformation
disinformation

noun Information that is both

  • false, and
  • communicated with the intent to deceive or harm.
misinformation; malinformation
  • Wardle, Claire + Derakhshan, Hossein (2017) ‘Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making’.
echo chamber

Deprecated. Use selective exposure or homophily instead.

ORIGIN + CONTEXT SHOW +

The echo chamber metaphor was popularised in 2001 by Cass Sunstein, who further developed it in a series of books, the latest iteration of which is ‘#Republic’. It is intended to describe the tendency of people to preferentially connect with like-minded information sources on social media, and hence be deliteriously insulated from the diversity of views present in society.

In ‘Are filter bubbles real?’ (2019), Axel Bruns points out that the term is not clearly defined, suggests a degree of online segregation rarely observed, and exaggerates the role of technology as a driver in the formation of insular online communities.

filter bubble
  • Sunstein, Cass (2017) ‘#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media’.
  • Bruns, Axel (2019) ‘It’s Not the Technology, Stupid: How the ‘Echo Chamber’ and ‘Filter Bubble’ Metaphors Have Failed Us’.
  • Bruns, Axel (2019) ‘Are filter bubbles real?’.
filter bubble

Deprecated. Use selective exposure or homophily instead.

ORIGIN + CONTEXT SHOW +

The filter bubble metaphor was popularised by Eli Pariser in his 2009 book ‘The Filter Bubble’. It was intended to describe the tendency of people to preferentially communicate with like-minded others on social media, and hence be deliteriously insulated from the diversity of views present in society.

In ‘Are filter bubbles real?’ (2019), Axel Bruns points out that the term is not clearly defined, suggests an impermeability of online information spaces rarely observed, and exaggerates the extent to which algorithmic filters are to blame for non-representative information exposure.

echo chamber
  • Pariser, Eli (2009) ‘The Filter Bubble: How the new personalized web is changing what we read and how we think’.
  • Bruns, Axel (2019) ‘It’s Not the Technology, Stupid: How the ‘Echo Chamber’ and ‘Filter Bubble’ Metaphors Have Failed Us’.
  • Bruns, Axel (2019) ‘Are filter bubbles real?’.
groupthink

noun A failure mode of group decision-making characterised by the following symptoms:

  1. Invulnerabilityan illusion of invulnerability, shared by most or all the members, which creates excessive optimism and encourages taking extreme risks;
  2. Rationalecollective efforts to rationalize in order to discount warnings which might lead the members to reconsider their assumptions before they recommit themselves to their past policy decisions;
  3. Moralityan unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions;
  4. Stereotypesstereotyped views of enemy leaders as too evil to warrant genuine attempts to negotiate, or as too weak and stupid to counter whatever risky attempts are made to defeat their purposes;
  5. Pressuredirect pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes, illusions, or commitments, making clear that this type of dissent is contrary to what is expected of all loyal members;
  6. Self-censorshipself-censorship of deviations from the apparent group consensus, reflecting each member’s inclination to minimize to himself the importance of his doubts and counterarguments;
  7. Unanimitya shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view (partly reulting from self-censorship of deviations, augmented by the false assumption that silence means consent);
  8. Mindguardsthe emergence of self-appointed mindguards—members who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.
ORIGIN + CONTEXT SHOW +

The eight symptoms listed above are taken verbatim from Irving Janis’ 1971 book, ‘Victims of groupthink’.

  • Janis, Irving (1971) ‘Groupthink’.
  • Janis, Irving (1972) ‘Victims of groupthink’.
homophily

noun The tendency for contact between similar people to occur at a higher rate than among dissimilar people.

ORIGIN + CONTEXT SHOW +

The definition above is a slightly modified version of that given by Miller et al. in their 2001 review paper, ‘Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks’.

selective exposure
  • McPherson, Miller et al. (2001) ‘Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks’.
information disorder

noun An umbrella term for misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.

  • Wardle, Claire + Derakhshan, Hossein (2017) ‘Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making’.
information hazard

noun A risk that arises from the dissemination or the potential dissemination of true information that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm.

  • Bostrom, Nick (2011) ‘Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge’.
malinformation

noun Information that is both

  • true, and
  • communicated with the intent to deceive or harm.
misinformation; disinformation
  • Wardle, Claire + Derakhshan, Hossein (2017) ‘Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making’.
misinformation

noun Information that is both

  • false, and
  • not communicated with the intent to deceive or harm.
disinformation; malinformation
  • Wardle, Claire + Derakhshan, Hossein (2017) ‘Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making’.
pasquil

noun A pasquinade.

pasquinade

noun A short section of prose or verse that is

  • satirical,
  • public, and
  • usually anonymous.
ORIGIN + CONTEXT SHOW +

The term comes from the ‘Pasquino’, a statue in Rome that was used in the sixteenth century as a public noticeboard for such commentary.

pasquil
  • Spaeth, John (1939) ‘Martial and the Pasquinade’.
pseudo-profound bullshit

noun Bullshit that is meaningless but presented as if it is meaningful and true.

  • Pennycook, Gordon et al. (2015) ‘On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit’.
selective exposure

noun The tendency of people to, when faced with a diversity of potential information sources, preferentially expose themselves to information sources that reinforce their existing beliefs.

homophily
  • Stroud, Natalie Jomini (2018) ‘Selective Exposure Theories’.
Luke Thorburn