Reality Lost: Markets of Attention, Misinformation and Manipulation by Vincent F. Hendricks (PDF)

Description

This open access book looks at how a democracy can devolve into a post-factual state.The media is being flooded by populist narratives, fake news, conspiracy theories and make-believe. Misinformation is turning into a challenge for all of us, whether politicians, journalists, or citizens. In the age of information, attention is a prime asset and may be converted into money, power, and influence – sometimes at the cost of facts. The point is to obtain exposure on the air and in print media, and to generate traffic on social media platforms. With information in abundance and attention scarce, the competition is ever fiercer with truth all too often becoming the first victim.Reality Lost: Markets of Attention, Misinformation and Manipulation is an analysis by philosophers Vincent F. Hendricks and Mads Vestergaard of the nuts and bolts of the information market, the attention economy and media eco-system which may pave way to postfactual democracy. Here misleading narratives become the basis for political opinion formation, debate, and legislation. To curb this development and the threat it poses to democratic deliberation, political self-determination and freedom, it is necessary that we first grasp the mechanisms and structural conditions that cause it.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book had a lot of potential: the concepts it describes are important for people to recognize, sort of like warning city folk about bears the first time they venture out in the woods. Our curious nature is leading us into danger but we don’t realize it because it’s all new to us.Unfortunately I found the presentation so grating that I deleted the book entirely. Please note that since I don’t have it anymore, my references to the book will only be approximate.First, the authors have Trump Derangement Syndrome. For professional people, this should be irrelevant. Many professional people use profanity in private conversations but they know profanity has its place and that place does not include serious books meant for a wide audience. Roughly half the voting population voted for Trump and a good number of those voters were Obama voters (at least the first Obama election). Many Obama voters were very upset with Obama’s actual record.The Trump / Obama presidencies are still current events and they invoke extremely strong emotions. So why would you continually invoke them as illustrations, and do so in a Leftist partisan way, when so many people in your audience are going to be put off by it, and there’s absolutely no reason to do so?Let me give two quick examples of this rather weird problem (weird in that the book is a warning about manipulation and propaganda while being manipulative and normalizing Leftist partisan political ideas).One of the chapters refers to Breitbart as extremely far-right. Breitbart is only extremely far-right if you center yourself on the academic Left’s world view (i.e., critical race theory, everything in life is only about power, race and sex are ‘social constructs,’ etc.). There’s nothing wrong with presuming this position as the center if you’re submitting articles likeGlaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change researchto specialized journals. But if you’re trying to reach a general audience, what’s the purpose of making references that sound completely ridiculous to half the country? Breitbart is click-baity for sure, and fairly called center right, but presenting Breitbart as ‘scary’ makes the author(s) look hysterical. Hysterical is not a good look for logical persuasion.The book devotes several paragraphs to Obama’s birth certificate, unambiguously stating that all concerns/ questions relating to it were debunked, and using Donald Trump’s dropping of the issue as somehow illustrative of what a conspiracy theory it was.If Donald Trump is a lying liar Hitler, why would his opinion, either way, have any value in determining the truth? And why would a book that purports to be warning us about how the media is creating a false reality, then use a reality TV star as a guide to what is real or true?The Obama birth certificate was investigated for five years and evaluated by document experts. It was determined by them to be a forgery. There is a video presentation showing the evidence that led to that conclusion. It was an excellent presentation, methodical and focused on the document. I found it convincing, but others may have felt that certain elements needed more investigation or they may have quibbled with certain conclusions.Accepting that the birth certificate is a forgery does not prove that Obama was not technically an American citizen. It is just one piece of circumstantial evidence. But it is still perfectly reasonable to believe that is probably the case. It is also quite reasonable to want to know who forged the document and why.What was not reasonable was the utterly irrational, hyper-emotional response to a straightforward, objective question. Reality was simply a document being evaluated by experts and the presentation of their findings. It became the frenzied response of a cult to an attack on their sacred leader; somehow we had turned into North Korea.So what is my point with all this extraneous birth certificate talk? The best illustration is an analogy—you know how shocking it is to see old advertisements of medical doctors telling you to smoke cigarettes? Well, it’s just as shocking for a book about how the media manipulates our emotions and creates a false reality in order to control our attention to deliberately present a false narrative under the guise of dispassionate analysis.How very ironic (and disturbing) that a book should propagandize us under the guise of warning us about how the media uses propaganda to present a fake reality. This book isn’t really aimed at helping us see true reality; this book’s purpose is to make it harder for people who have been indoctrinated into a Leftist false reality to break out. You see, if you question the official narrative because of something you see on the internet you need to realize that you’re being manipulated.A minor complaint is that the writing style is overly simplistic. It reads like something converted for grade schoolers.Overall, I am giving this book two stars because it still has some value, both in its warnings and also as an example of the subtle propaganda employed by the Left to discourage anyone from getting off the main highway to take a look around.

⭐Found to be an interesting read. Learn a few things too 🙂 disagreed with some proposed explanations. however overall is a must read.Recommend

⭐A probing analysis you cannot put down. Chapters that nail down the subject like a hammer striking an anvil at the end each chapter. Very scary stuff!

⭐While most of this was not new information to me, I appreciated the constant use of sources. One of the things I find fascinating about people as a whole is how we are manipulated by others, and how surprisingly easy it is to play to others emotions often in spite of having solid facts.

⭐Buen libro tema interesanteThe book has a vital message. The search algorithms used by search engines automatically distort the news we read. The search engine collect data to “sell” to advertisers. This helps both you and the advertiser because you can be sent advertisement that interest you. (or that is the idea). But this data about you helps “misinformers” to select the kind of “misinformation” that you are likely to believe.The authors explore how this can destroy democracy because democracy depends on well informed voters.It’s quite long and seems repetitive (it is a series of essays). Well worth the effort to eatso that is easy for “advertisers” to provide misinformation that

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