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Bad News: Why We Fall for Fake News and Alternative Facts
Psychologist Rob Brotherton asks how can we all be smarter consumers of news?
Today we carry the news with us, getting instant alerts about events around the globe. And yet despite this unprecedented abundance of information, it seems increasingly difficult to know what's true and what's not. In Bad News, Rob Brotherton delves into the psychology of news, reviewing how psychological research can help navigate this post-truth world. Which buzzwords describe psychological reality, and which are empty sound bites? How much of this news is unprecedented, and how much is business as usual? Are we doomed to fall for fake news, or is fake news ... fake news?
Much psychological research attempts to answer the fundamental questions lurking behind fake news. How do we form our beliefs, and why do we end up believing things that are wrong? How much information can we possibly process, and what is the internet doing to our attention spans? This brilliant book presents psychological research pertaining to one of the great concerns of the age: how can we all be smarter consumers of news?
Today we carry the news with us, getting instant alerts about events around the globe. And yet despite this unprecedented abundance of information, it seems increasingly difficult to know what's true and what's not. In Bad News, Rob Brotherton delves into the psychology of news, reviewing how psychological research can help navigate this post-truth world. Which buzzwords describe psychological reality, and which are empty sound bites? How much of this news is unprecedented, and how much is business as usual? Are we doomed to fall for fake news, or is fake news ... fake news?
Much psychological research attempts to answer the fundamental questions lurking behind fake news. How do we form our beliefs, and why do we end up believing things that are wrong? How much information can we possibly process, and what is the internet doing to our attention spans? This brilliant book presents psychological research pertaining to one of the great concerns of the age: how can we all be smarter consumers of news?
288 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2020
17 people are currently reading
304 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 13, 2020
Brilliant only in bits and pieces. Chapters are written in an anti-climatic fashion as the book suddenly switches gears when it's about to become interesting. While the author tries to touch upon the psychology of news, he commits the same flaw that is pointed in the book ie. rather than his authentic voice he tries to capture the essence of the issue by a mixed bag of others' opinions. Not to say that our inherent biases are not talked about, however overall the interpretation felt more fuzzy than concrete.
Short Summary : Fake News is not a new phenomenon and hence over-rated. Most news is bad news. When it bleeds it leads. Big news houses are nothing but businesses, hence they want you to think everything is breaking news and everything is as important as the the previous/next news. However there is nothing like too much news. We all have the required filters. Echo Chambers & Post-Truth are over-rated as we always tend to lean towards what we believe in but we also expose ourselves to reality from time to time. Partisan bias is present on both sides, although both believe the 'other' is more likely to fall for fake news. Threat of deep fakes is overrated, as was the perceived threat from photoshopped images in the past. Speed of news has reduced accuracy which inturn is damaging the perception of authencity.
Short Summary : Fake News is not a new phenomenon and hence over-rated. Most news is bad news. When it bleeds it leads. Big news houses are nothing but businesses, hence they want you to think everything is breaking news and everything is as important as the the previous/next news. However there is nothing like too much news. We all have the required filters. Echo Chambers & Post-Truth are over-rated as we always tend to lean towards what we believe in but we also expose ourselves to reality from time to time. Partisan bias is present on both sides, although both believe the 'other' is more likely to fall for fake news. Threat of deep fakes is overrated, as was the perceived threat from photoshopped images in the past. Speed of news has reduced accuracy which inturn is damaging the perception of authencity.
August 22, 2023
I'm not sure what I expected but this wasn't quite whatever I wasn't sure about. We learn here that there's nothing new under the sun. Bad news has been around since there first was news. Photo manipulation has been around since photos. People aren’t as gullible as we think, so who are the “we” that are falling for it? A little D-K, “Stories about the problem are usually about how someone else is falling for it.”, without mentioning Dunning or Kruger. And “But, to paraphrase Mark Twain commenting on his own alleged demise, rumors of the death of truth appear to be greatly exaggerated. People don’t generally believe things they don’t think are true.” But… they can and do believe things that aren’t true that they think are true. He doesn't make that distinction.
Mr. Brotherton say “Our negativity bias affects the stories we seek out and tell one another”, and in his conclusion,
“Fake news is one small niche within the much broader news ecosystem. Deliberately putting out misinformation dressed up as news is emphatically not the same as reputable news outlets making mistakes. Yet every perceived misstep puts a dent in the credibility of the media. Facts are relatively easy to correct. The perception of a media that fails to acknowledge routine sensationalism, negativity, oversimplification and the wide penumbra of uncertainty that surrounds every seemingly incontestable fact is more difficult to fix.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that we don’t have to navigate these waters blind. Long before fake news, alternative facts, and post-truth became buzzwords, researchers in the fields of psychology, journalism, communications, political science, economics, sociology, and beyond were probing our complicated relationship with the news. Moreover, history provides a too-often-overlooked guide to the successes and failures of the news industry, its problems and its promise.”
But he doesn’t mention confirmation bias, or search engine algorithm feedback loops.
Lots of history, lots of psychology, not so much on the subtitled "why" part.
The text has a few Notes at the end of each chapter, and the annoying surprise-at-the-end-of-the-book list of references by page number and sentence fragment from the body. (Peeve of mine - I would so much rather have a superscript to ignore or not that leads me to a reference than having to go back and reread the book to see where the references cited are referring to.)
Curated highlights and notes:
A "1625 poem about falsehoods appearing in the newspapers of the day read, in part" (no reference to an actual paper, though:
“These shamefull lies, would make a man, in spight
Of Nature, turne Satyrist and write,
Revenging lines, against these shameless men,
Who thus torment both Paper, Presse, and Pen.”
{So, railing against fake news four hundred years ago. Cool}
“As for “the most trusted man in America,” that’s kind of fake news, too. The moniker was based on a 1972 poll that gauged the public’s trust in a handful of politicians including senators, governors, President Richard Nixon, and his vice president Spiro Agnew. “For reasons not entirely clear,” the political commentator Martin Plissner wrote later, the pollster had “added Cronkite’s name to the list.” Cronkite led the pack by a few percentage points, scoring 73 percent on the trust index compared to 67 percent for the average senator.
So “most trusted man in America” feels like a stretch, given that Cronkite was basically found more trustworthy than some politicians.”
{Nice to know the framing.}
“And when we’re presented with a string of anecdotes, we can’t help extrapolating, turning a handful of extreme and exceptional stories into an assumed reality.”
“It seems our interest is piqued most by ideas that are simultaneously intuitive and surprising. Specifically, the most appealing ideas are “minimally counterintuitive.” The term is a mouthful, but it basically means that we respond best to ideas that are neither too surprising, nor entirely unsurprising.
The idea was pioneered by Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist who specializes in the study of religion. ”
{Go for the anti-Occam. Right.}
“She found that the counterintuitive stories had stuck in people’s minds. The odds of someone remembering the gist of a story were boosted by 80 percent — a substantial increase — by the minimally counterintuitive content.
Interestingly, while the counterintuitive stories were better remembered, it wasn’t because people believed the stories. ”
{Now that is interesting.}
“Eli Pariser, a tech entrepreneur and author, coined a related term in his 2011 book, The Filter Bubble. Whereas echo chambers are ideological enclaves of our own choosing, filter bubbles are the result of technology imposing sameness upon us.”
{Okay, a tangential mention of search engine feedback.}
“Surely, if technology offers to filter information according to our beliefs and preferences, we’d be only too happy to settle into its bubble. The technical term here is selective exposure, or the only slightly catchier congeniality bias, meaning we pick information based on how compatible it is with our existing beliefs.”
{No. Not “too happy” to be manipulated. I takes effort to filter the filtered content of searches. The price we pay to have near-immediate access to exabytes of information.}
“If we tend to pick and choose information that fits our existing worldview, of course we’d be happy to let algorithmic filter bubbles present us only with what we want to see.”
{Okay, … "if". And yes, many are quite happy to.}
{I like this British slang}: “boffins”
“More broadly, Newman argues, looking at a picture just makes it feel easier to process a claim.
[...]
So a real photograph accompanying a real news article can lead to false memories of what it reported. Another of Garry’s studies demonstrated that real photos can help make people believe fake news.”
{This was interesting to me. A photo anchors, even if the photo and the "news" aren't directly related.}
[on publishing clarification/corrections after the original article]
“One story, for example, concerned allegations that Iraq had been harboring weapons of mass destruction in the early 2000s. The correction pointed out, “The Central Intelligence Agency released a report that concludes that Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, nor was any program to produce them under way at the time.” A pretty definitive correction, you would think. After reading the article and the accompanying correction, however, some people, particularly conservatives, became more confident that Saddam Hussein had been hiding WMDs than people who hadn’t read the correction. About a third of the conservatives who read the story without the correction agreed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion. That almost doubled, to just under two-thirds, among conservatives who saw the correction. Agreement among liberals fell from around a fifth without correction to a tenth after correction.
Likewise, conservatives presented with evidence that President George W. Bush’s tax cuts did not increase government revenues ended up more convinced about the benefits of Bush’s tax plan than people who read the article without correction. On the other side of the aisle, liberals who read a story claiming that Bush had banned research on stem cells accompanied by a correction clarifying that no such ban existed believed the claim no more and no less than people who didn't read a correction. The correction didn't backfire, but it might as well not have been there at all.”
{Well, well, well... "cons" double down (so-called librul media is lying? that's not address by the way) while "libs" revise to the correction. Huh.
But he says a few pages after that different, later research found}
“Conservatives were just as open to correction as liberals, in general - though moderates were generally the most responsive.”
{With the conclusion that corrections are good. Shouldn't that be obvious? I guess not.}
Mr. Brotherton say “Our negativity bias affects the stories we seek out and tell one another”, and in his conclusion,
“Fake news is one small niche within the much broader news ecosystem. Deliberately putting out misinformation dressed up as news is emphatically not the same as reputable news outlets making mistakes. Yet every perceived misstep puts a dent in the credibility of the media. Facts are relatively easy to correct. The perception of a media that fails to acknowledge routine sensationalism, negativity, oversimplification and the wide penumbra of uncertainty that surrounds every seemingly incontestable fact is more difficult to fix.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that we don’t have to navigate these waters blind. Long before fake news, alternative facts, and post-truth became buzzwords, researchers in the fields of psychology, journalism, communications, political science, economics, sociology, and beyond were probing our complicated relationship with the news. Moreover, history provides a too-often-overlooked guide to the successes and failures of the news industry, its problems and its promise.”
But he doesn’t mention confirmation bias, or search engine algorithm feedback loops.
Lots of history, lots of psychology, not so much on the subtitled "why" part.
The text has a few Notes at the end of each chapter, and the annoying surprise-at-the-end-of-the-book list of references by page number and sentence fragment from the body. (Peeve of mine - I would so much rather have a superscript to ignore or not that leads me to a reference than having to go back and reread the book to see where the references cited are referring to.)
Curated highlights and notes:
A "1625 poem about falsehoods appearing in the newspapers of the day read, in part" (no reference to an actual paper, though:
“These shamefull lies, would make a man, in spight
Of Nature, turne Satyrist and write,
Revenging lines, against these shameless men,
Who thus torment both Paper, Presse, and Pen.”
{So, railing against fake news four hundred years ago. Cool}
“As for “the most trusted man in America,” that’s kind of fake news, too. The moniker was based on a 1972 poll that gauged the public’s trust in a handful of politicians including senators, governors, President Richard Nixon, and his vice president Spiro Agnew. “For reasons not entirely clear,” the political commentator Martin Plissner wrote later, the pollster had “added Cronkite’s name to the list.” Cronkite led the pack by a few percentage points, scoring 73 percent on the trust index compared to 67 percent for the average senator.
So “most trusted man in America” feels like a stretch, given that Cronkite was basically found more trustworthy than some politicians.”
{Nice to know the framing.}
“And when we’re presented with a string of anecdotes, we can’t help extrapolating, turning a handful of extreme and exceptional stories into an assumed reality.”
“It seems our interest is piqued most by ideas that are simultaneously intuitive and surprising. Specifically, the most appealing ideas are “minimally counterintuitive.” The term is a mouthful, but it basically means that we respond best to ideas that are neither too surprising, nor entirely unsurprising.
The idea was pioneered by Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist who specializes in the study of religion. ”
{Go for the anti-Occam. Right.}
“She found that the counterintuitive stories had stuck in people’s minds. The odds of someone remembering the gist of a story were boosted by 80 percent — a substantial increase — by the minimally counterintuitive content.
Interestingly, while the counterintuitive stories were better remembered, it wasn’t because people believed the stories. ”
{Now that is interesting.}
“Eli Pariser, a tech entrepreneur and author, coined a related term in his 2011 book, The Filter Bubble. Whereas echo chambers are ideological enclaves of our own choosing, filter bubbles are the result of technology imposing sameness upon us.”
{Okay, a tangential mention of search engine feedback.}
“Surely, if technology offers to filter information according to our beliefs and preferences, we’d be only too happy to settle into its bubble. The technical term here is selective exposure, or the only slightly catchier congeniality bias, meaning we pick information based on how compatible it is with our existing beliefs.”
{No. Not “too happy” to be manipulated. I takes effort to filter the filtered content of searches. The price we pay to have near-immediate access to exabytes of information.}
“If we tend to pick and choose information that fits our existing worldview, of course we’d be happy to let algorithmic filter bubbles present us only with what we want to see.”
{Okay, … "if". And yes, many are quite happy to.}
{I like this British slang}: “boffins”
“More broadly, Newman argues, looking at a picture just makes it feel easier to process a claim.
[...]
So a real photograph accompanying a real news article can lead to false memories of what it reported. Another of Garry’s studies demonstrated that real photos can help make people believe fake news.”
{This was interesting to me. A photo anchors, even if the photo and the "news" aren't directly related.}
[on publishing clarification/corrections after the original article]
“One story, for example, concerned allegations that Iraq had been harboring weapons of mass destruction in the early 2000s. The correction pointed out, “The Central Intelligence Agency released a report that concludes that Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, nor was any program to produce them under way at the time.” A pretty definitive correction, you would think. After reading the article and the accompanying correction, however, some people, particularly conservatives, became more confident that Saddam Hussein had been hiding WMDs than people who hadn’t read the correction. About a third of the conservatives who read the story without the correction agreed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion. That almost doubled, to just under two-thirds, among conservatives who saw the correction. Agreement among liberals fell from around a fifth without correction to a tenth after correction.
Likewise, conservatives presented with evidence that President George W. Bush’s tax cuts did not increase government revenues ended up more convinced about the benefits of Bush’s tax plan than people who read the article without correction. On the other side of the aisle, liberals who read a story claiming that Bush had banned research on stem cells accompanied by a correction clarifying that no such ban existed believed the claim no more and no less than people who didn't read a correction. The correction didn't backfire, but it might as well not have been there at all.”
{Well, well, well... "cons" double down (so-called librul media is lying? that's not address by the way) while "libs" revise to the correction. Huh.
But he says a few pages after that different, later research found}
“Conservatives were just as open to correction as liberals, in general - though moderates were generally the most responsive.”
{With the conclusion that corrections are good. Shouldn't that be obvious? I guess not.}
May 19, 2020
Not what I expected, but outstanding nevertheless. I thought it would be a critique of today's news reporting and how it manipulates us, but it was more a history of news reporting and how it has changed over the years. I learned that impartiality has not always been a goal of those reporting the news; in fact, striving for impartiality is a fairly recent development and is very unlikely to be achieved, no matter how hard we try. Our own biases affect what we see and hear as well, so people viewing the same event will perceive it differently, even if no commentary at all is given.
August 8, 2021
A fair examination of the history of news and the various ways that humans consume and shape the news they hear into the facts and opinions they hold as true. It’s surprisingly refreshing to read that news has had a difficult struggle with getting it right, and that the news now is not much better or worse (although on the whole more balanced) than in the past.
Where this book falls down is in not exploring the “fake news” cudgel wielded by Trump and his ilk. The disparaging of the media through the false cries of “fake news” is quite different than run-of-the-mill times where Nixon didn’t like something the Washington Post said, but certainly wouldn’t have said that their facts were false. We are in a territory tread, in my opinion, by Orwellian and autocratic societies of the past, where basic facts, scientific and historical, are now being straight up denied. This is much worse than the book’s contention that it’s just partisan shading. For example, the attack on the US Capitol building in January is now being whole sale rewritten and basic facts of that day as reported in media now denied. This is staggeringly dangerous for democracy. While this book was written before that event, there was more than enough information in 2019 (when the book was presumably written) to conclude that something much worse is afoot. Considering that the same author wrote an excellent book on conspiracy thinking, and that this angle is not explored, is, in my opinion, a major oversight.
I still recommend reading it, as I feel what is presented is presented using the best psychological, historical, and factual evidence on pre-2016 fake news, but I recommend newer takes that account for the Trump effect to provide readers with a fuller examination of the fake news issue.
Where this book falls down is in not exploring the “fake news” cudgel wielded by Trump and his ilk. The disparaging of the media through the false cries of “fake news” is quite different than run-of-the-mill times where Nixon didn’t like something the Washington Post said, but certainly wouldn’t have said that their facts were false. We are in a territory tread, in my opinion, by Orwellian and autocratic societies of the past, where basic facts, scientific and historical, are now being straight up denied. This is much worse than the book’s contention that it’s just partisan shading. For example, the attack on the US Capitol building in January is now being whole sale rewritten and basic facts of that day as reported in media now denied. This is staggeringly dangerous for democracy. While this book was written before that event, there was more than enough information in 2019 (when the book was presumably written) to conclude that something much worse is afoot. Considering that the same author wrote an excellent book on conspiracy thinking, and that this angle is not explored, is, in my opinion, a major oversight.
I still recommend reading it, as I feel what is presented is presented using the best psychological, historical, and factual evidence on pre-2016 fake news, but I recommend newer takes that account for the Trump effect to provide readers with a fuller examination of the fake news issue.
March 28, 2021
The good news is that this book isn't really about the "bad news" the title implies. In fact, much of the book consists of the author giving research-based evidence for why things aren't as dire as they may appear. Written by a PhD psychologist, the book explores the history and psychology of news from print to digital format.
One of the main themes of this book is that, while we rail about how drastically the internet and social media have changed news, many of the concerns are similar to those raised before when radio, television, or even newsprint represented the latest technological earthquake. Social commentators once complained about the short attention spans of people flipping radio dials and the ubiquity of newspaper boys shouting out the headlines to sell papers. This is somewhat reassuring because maybe the sky isn't falling as quickly as we think it is.
One of the interesting terms I learned from this book is "third person effect" (which the author borrowed from Columbia professor of journalism W. Phillips Davidson). We tend to consider ourselves more savvy than others, so when we worry about the effects of communications we tend to worry about the effect on others rather than ourselves. As the author puts it: "About fake news, perhaps we could say, with little exaggeration, 'I know it when I see it; YOU better be careful; THEY are getting brainwashed.'"
In a similar vein, the author starts the book by explaining how the story of "The War of Worlds" radio broadcast in 1938 causing mass panic by people who believed there really was an alien attack on earth- was in itself an example of fake news. There really wasn't much in the way of mass panic, more like a lot of questions being called in to media stations and police stations. Part of the appeal of the "mass panic" story is in people feeling superior to those who freaked out. In reality there were quite a few reasons why people may have been legitimately concerned (there was a war brewing, and many people heard only bits and pieces of the broadcast and assumed there may have been an enemy attack on US soil, not exactly aliens).
Another reassuring fact - the "backlash effect" found in one study and much-repeated as an example of "post-truthism" was later not replicated in larger studies. So we may be reasonably amenable to fact-checking after all. However, on the other hand, many studies have shown that we are biased to see what we want to see, even in something as seemingly straightforward as a football game. So realizing our own tendency towards biased is essential. We all have it, as humans.
Overall, a good look at the history of news reporting that puts some of our controversies into context.
One of the main themes of this book is that, while we rail about how drastically the internet and social media have changed news, many of the concerns are similar to those raised before when radio, television, or even newsprint represented the latest technological earthquake. Social commentators once complained about the short attention spans of people flipping radio dials and the ubiquity of newspaper boys shouting out the headlines to sell papers. This is somewhat reassuring because maybe the sky isn't falling as quickly as we think it is.
One of the interesting terms I learned from this book is "third person effect" (which the author borrowed from Columbia professor of journalism W. Phillips Davidson). We tend to consider ourselves more savvy than others, so when we worry about the effects of communications we tend to worry about the effect on others rather than ourselves. As the author puts it: "About fake news, perhaps we could say, with little exaggeration, 'I know it when I see it; YOU better be careful; THEY are getting brainwashed.'"
In a similar vein, the author starts the book by explaining how the story of "The War of Worlds" radio broadcast in 1938 causing mass panic by people who believed there really was an alien attack on earth- was in itself an example of fake news. There really wasn't much in the way of mass panic, more like a lot of questions being called in to media stations and police stations. Part of the appeal of the "mass panic" story is in people feeling superior to those who freaked out. In reality there were quite a few reasons why people may have been legitimately concerned (there was a war brewing, and many people heard only bits and pieces of the broadcast and assumed there may have been an enemy attack on US soil, not exactly aliens).
Another reassuring fact - the "backlash effect" found in one study and much-repeated as an example of "post-truthism" was later not replicated in larger studies. So we may be reasonably amenable to fact-checking after all. However, on the other hand, many studies have shown that we are biased to see what we want to see, even in something as seemingly straightforward as a football game. So realizing our own tendency towards biased is essential. We all have it, as humans.
Overall, a good look at the history of news reporting that puts some of our controversies into context.
October 14, 2023
(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)
Эту книгу я решил прочитать по той причине, что предыдущая книга этого автора (Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories) мне понравилась. В принципе, по стилю, эти две книги очень схожи, но вот по содержанию они явно разнятся.
Если в предыдущей книге автор рассматривал тему конспирологий и их влияние на общество, то в данной книге автор решил сделать то же самое, но взять такую тему как Новости. Наверно изначально было трудно написать серьёзную работу на эту тему, поэтому мы получили сборник интересных наблюдений автора, которые практически никак между собой не связаны. Автор предлагает несколько интересных наблюдений связанных с понятием «новости в современном обществе» и как люди взаимодействуют с ними. Я хочу сказать, что книга больше всего напоминает сборник статей из какого-нибудь интеллектуального журнала типа The New Yorker или что-то типа этого.
Итак, автор начинает с развенчания мифа о том, что во время знаменитой радиопостановки «Война миров» в США произошла настоящая паника. Как пишет автор, ничего подобного в американских СМИ того времени зафиксировано не было. Действительно, для того чтобы паника была, люди должны были слушать радио не переставая, плюс прерывания на рекламу могло разрушить иллюзию реальности происходящего. Автор достаточно убедительно объясняет, почему «паника» являлась плодом воображения СМИ. И именно из этого примера автор выводит главную мысль книги: СМИ призваны стимулировать людей покупать эти самые СМИ, а не (в полной мере) отражать действительность. Это вовсе не значит, что СМИ изначально порочны и занимаются откровенным преувеличением. Это означает, что СМИ фокусируются на том, что интересно людям, а не на том, что происходит в мире и в стране в целом. Чтобы понять, что я имею в виду, я процитирую знаменитое высказывание, которое часто используют, чтобы продемонстрировать всю суть СМИ: Если собака кусает человека, это не новость. Новость — если человек кусает собаку (When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.).
Как пишет автор, эволюция повлияла на такой подход к новостям, ибо людям важно, что может причинить им вред, а не какие положительные вещи с ними могут случиться. Т.е. людей привлекают негативные новости по той причине, что их это может коснуться. А если в новостях говорится, что такой-то человек выиграл в лотерею или что в той-то стране «всё хорошо», то это никак не способно повлиять на жизнь и положение человека читающего газету. Война, экономический кризис, катастрофы и пр. моментально приковывают наше внимание, ибо они могут повлиять и на нас, а значит, мы должны (и хотим) быть подготовлены к встрече с этими ужасными событиями. На этом психологическом факторе и строятся все новости в мире, что означает, что нельзя судить о происходящих в мире/стране вещах исключительно по тому, о чём пишут СМИ. В принципе, чтобы знать это, не нужно читать эту книгу. Да и если подумать, много о чём пишет автор, можно вычитать в книгах по социальной психологии в целом и университетском учебнике по социальной психологии – в частности. Поэтому книга не сильно меня увлекла – я знал обо всем, о чём пишет автор. Именно об этом, т.е. описание различных психологических экспериментов из социальной психологии и будет писать автор во второй половине книги.
Некоторые моменты могут заинтересовать читателя, как например истории о том, что аналог фотошопа был уже в XIX или XX веках. Да и в целом, все истории описанные автором довольно интересные, если читатель не знал о них до этой книги. Однако я думаю, что ближе к концу книги автор израсходовал интересные мысли на счёт новостей и поэтому стал добавлять в книгу все, что только может хоть как-то относится к заявленной теме, ибо добавление темы «описки в СМИ», трудно причислить к по-настоящему интересным темам. Ну да, временами забавно, но слишком несерьёзно чтобы быть включенным в книгу. В общем, довольно средняя книга даже для не журналиста (а для журналиста и подавно). Мне кажется, для понимания данной темы лучше будет прочитать учебник по социальной психологии, чтобы понять, как работают Новости и СМИ.
I decided to read this book because I liked the previous book by this author (Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories). In principle, these two books are very similar in style, but in content, they are clearly different.
If in the previous book, the author considered the topic of conspiracies and their impact on society, in this book, the author decided to do the same but take such a topic as News. It was probably difficult to write a serious work on this topic, so we got a collection of observations from the author, which are almost unrelated to each other. The author offers some interesting observations about the concept of news in modern society and how people interact with it. I want to say that the book is more like a collection of articles from some intellectual magazine like The New Yorker or something like that.
So, the author begins by debunking the myth that there was a real panic in the United States during the famous radio broadcast of the radio play "War of the Worlds." As the author writes, nothing of the kind was recorded in the American media of that time. Indeed, in order to panic, people had to listen to the radio without stopping, plus interruptions for advertising could destroy the illusion of the reality of "what was happening." The author explains quite convincingly why the "panic" was a figment of the media's imagination. It is from this example that the author derives the main point of the book: the media is designed to encourage people to buy the media, not to (fully) reflect reality. This does not mean that the media is inherently flawed and engages in outright exaggeration. It means that the media focus on what is interesting to people rather than on what is happening in the world and the country. To understand what I mean, I will quote a famous statement that is often used to demonstrate the essence of the media: When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
As the author writes, evolution has influenced this approach to news because people care about what can harm them, not what positive things can happen to them. That is, people are attracted to negative news for the reason that negative news might touch them. And if the news says that such and such a person won the lottery or that everything is "all right" in that country, it can't affect the life and situation of the person reading the newspaper. War, economic crisis, disasters, etc., instantly grab our attention because they can affect us and therefore, we must (and want to) be prepared to face these terrible events. All news in the world is based on this psychological factor, which means that you can't judge things happening in the world/country solely by what the media writes about. Basically, you don't need to read this book to know that. And if you think about it, much of what the author writes about can be found in books on social psychology in general and university textbooks on social psychology in particular. Therefore, the book did not fascinate me much because I knew everything the author wrote about, and this is what the author will write about in the second half of the book, i.e., the description of various psychological experiments from social psychology.
Some moments (in the second half of the book) may interest the reader, such as stories that the analog of Photoshop was already in XIX or XX centuries. And in general, all the stories described by the author are quite interesting, if the reader did not know about them before this book. However, I think that towards the end of the book, the author used up interesting thoughts about news and therefore started to add everything to the book that could somehow relate to the stated topic because adding the topic of "misprints in the media" is difficult to classify as a really interesting topic. Well, yes, funny at times, but too frivolous to be included in the book. All in all, it's a pretty average book even for a non-journalist (and even more so for a journalist). I think to understand this topic, it would be better to read a social psychology textbook to understand how News and Media work.
Эту книгу я решил прочитать по той причине, что предыдущая книга этого автора (Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories) мне понравилась. В принципе, по стилю, эти две книги очень схожи, но вот по содержанию они явно разнятся.
Если в предыдущей книге автор рассматривал тему конспирологий и их влияние на общество, то в данной книге автор решил сделать то же самое, но взять такую тему как Новости. Наверно изначально было трудно написать серьёзную работу на эту тему, поэтому мы получили сборник интересных наблюдений автора, которые практически никак между собой не связаны. Автор предлагает несколько интересных наблюдений связанных с понятием «новости в современном обществе» и как люди взаимодействуют с ними. Я хочу сказать, что книга больше всего напоминает сборник статей из какого-нибудь интеллектуального журнала типа The New Yorker или что-то типа этого.
Итак, автор начинает с развенчания мифа о том, что во время знаменитой радиопостановки «Война миров» в США произошла настоящая паника. Как пишет автор, ничего подобного в американских СМИ того времени зафиксировано не было. Действительно, для того чтобы паника была, люди должны были слушать радио не переставая, плюс прерывания на рекламу могло разрушить иллюзию реальности происходящего. Автор достаточно убедительно объясняет, почему «паника» являлась плодом воображения СМИ. И именно из этого примера автор выводит главную мысль книги: СМИ призваны стимулировать людей покупать эти самые СМИ, а не (в полной мере) отражать действительность. Это вовсе не значит, что СМИ изначально порочны и занимаются откровенным преувеличением. Это означает, что СМИ фокусируются на том, что интересно людям, а не на том, что происходит в мире и в стране в целом. Чтобы понять, что я имею в виду, я процитирую знаменитое высказывание, которое часто используют, чтобы продемонстрировать всю суть СМИ: Если собака кусает человека, это не новость. Новость — если человек кусает собаку (When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.).
Как пишет автор, эволюция повлияла на такой подход к новостям, ибо людям важно, что может причинить им вред, а не какие положительные вещи с ними могут случиться. Т.е. людей привлекают негативные новости по той причине, что их это может коснуться. А если в новостях говорится, что такой-то человек выиграл в лотерею или что в той-то стране «всё хорошо», то это никак не способно повлиять на жизнь и положение человека читающего газету. Война, экономический кризис, катастрофы и пр. моментально приковывают наше внимание, ибо они могут повлиять и на нас, а значит, мы должны (и хотим) быть подготовлены к встрече с этими ужасными событиями. На этом психологическом факторе и строятся все новости в мире, что означает, что нельзя судить о происходящих в мире/стране вещах исключительно по тому, о чём пишут СМИ. В принципе, чтобы знать это, не нужно читать эту книгу. Да и если подумать, много о чём пишет автор, можно вычитать в книгах по социальной психологии в целом и университетском учебнике по социальной психологии – в частности. Поэтому книга не сильно меня увлекла – я знал обо всем, о чём пишет автор. Именно об этом, т.е. описание различных психологических экспериментов из социальной психологии и будет писать автор во второй половине книги.
Некоторые моменты могут заинтересовать читателя, как например истории о том, что аналог фотошопа был уже в XIX или XX веках. Да и в целом, все истории описанные автором довольно интересные, если читатель не знал о них до этой книги. Однако я думаю, что ближе к концу книги автор израсходовал интересные мысли на счёт новостей и поэтому стал добавлять в книгу все, что только может хоть как-то относится к заявленной теме, ибо добавление темы «описки в СМИ», трудно причислить к по-настоящему интересным темам. Ну да, временами забавно, но слишком несерьёзно чтобы быть включенным в книгу. В общем, довольно средняя книга даже для не журналиста (а для журналиста и подавно). Мне кажется, для понимания данной темы лучше будет прочитать учебник по социальной психологии, чтобы понять, как работают Новости и СМИ.
I decided to read this book because I liked the previous book by this author (Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories). In principle, these two books are very similar in style, but in content, they are clearly different.
If in the previous book, the author considered the topic of conspiracies and their impact on society, in this book, the author decided to do the same but take such a topic as News. It was probably difficult to write a serious work on this topic, so we got a collection of observations from the author, which are almost unrelated to each other. The author offers some interesting observations about the concept of news in modern society and how people interact with it. I want to say that the book is more like a collection of articles from some intellectual magazine like The New Yorker or something like that.
So, the author begins by debunking the myth that there was a real panic in the United States during the famous radio broadcast of the radio play "War of the Worlds." As the author writes, nothing of the kind was recorded in the American media of that time. Indeed, in order to panic, people had to listen to the radio without stopping, plus interruptions for advertising could destroy the illusion of the reality of "what was happening." The author explains quite convincingly why the "panic" was a figment of the media's imagination. It is from this example that the author derives the main point of the book: the media is designed to encourage people to buy the media, not to (fully) reflect reality. This does not mean that the media is inherently flawed and engages in outright exaggeration. It means that the media focus on what is interesting to people rather than on what is happening in the world and the country. To understand what I mean, I will quote a famous statement that is often used to demonstrate the essence of the media: When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
As the author writes, evolution has influenced this approach to news because people care about what can harm them, not what positive things can happen to them. That is, people are attracted to negative news for the reason that negative news might touch them. And if the news says that such and such a person won the lottery or that everything is "all right" in that country, it can't affect the life and situation of the person reading the newspaper. War, economic crisis, disasters, etc., instantly grab our attention because they can affect us and therefore, we must (and want to) be prepared to face these terrible events. All news in the world is based on this psychological factor, which means that you can't judge things happening in the world/country solely by what the media writes about. Basically, you don't need to read this book to know that. And if you think about it, much of what the author writes about can be found in books on social psychology in general and university textbooks on social psychology in particular. Therefore, the book did not fascinate me much because I knew everything the author wrote about, and this is what the author will write about in the second half of the book, i.e., the description of various psychological experiments from social psychology.
Some moments (in the second half of the book) may interest the reader, such as stories that the analog of Photoshop was already in XIX or XX centuries. And in general, all the stories described by the author are quite interesting, if the reader did not know about them before this book. However, I think that towards the end of the book, the author used up interesting thoughts about news and therefore started to add everything to the book that could somehow relate to the stated topic because adding the topic of "misprints in the media" is difficult to classify as a really interesting topic. Well, yes, funny at times, but too frivolous to be included in the book. All in all, it's a pretty average book even for a non-journalist (and even more so for a journalist). I think to understand this topic, it would be better to read a social psychology textbook to understand how News and Media work.
July 29, 2022
3.5 stars
An examination of the news industry and our relationship to news, perhaps the marketing executives thought the 'fake news' angle would sell the book better. Written by a psychologist, a lot of the contents are results of academic studies regarding consumers perception of news and attitudes and susceptibility to media bias. There is also a lot of history in the book; the author suggesting that all of the recent scares about fake news and news sensationalism and media bias are really nothing new, but have been around pretty much as long as media itself. Looks at, amongst other things, the over-proliferation of news, the sensationalism of news, the bias of news outlets and the effects of correction statements within newspapers.
Psychology, news and history are all interests of mine; I really should have enjoyed this bit more than I did. However, parts of this were a bit of a slog, and perhaps the author's honesty that all the alarm over 'fake news' is really nothing to get overly concerned about detracts from the book's appeal. A closing chapter, perhaps putting everything together, a concluding look at the title of the book may also have been welcome.
An examination of the news industry and our relationship to news, perhaps the marketing executives thought the 'fake news' angle would sell the book better. Written by a psychologist, a lot of the contents are results of academic studies regarding consumers perception of news and attitudes and susceptibility to media bias. There is also a lot of history in the book; the author suggesting that all of the recent scares about fake news and news sensationalism and media bias are really nothing new, but have been around pretty much as long as media itself. Looks at, amongst other things, the over-proliferation of news, the sensationalism of news, the bias of news outlets and the effects of correction statements within newspapers.
Psychology, news and history are all interests of mine; I really should have enjoyed this bit more than I did. However, parts of this were a bit of a slog, and perhaps the author's honesty that all the alarm over 'fake news' is really nothing to get overly concerned about detracts from the book's appeal. A closing chapter, perhaps putting everything together, a concluding look at the title of the book may also have been welcome.
October 15, 2024
An interesting read but not quite what I expected or felt was advertised.
Lots of very interesting looks into the history of news, especially with how modern trends and technological developments which feel like they are changing the credibility of news all have a strong historical precedent, and the world hasn't ended so far.
The psychological aspect which was broadcast before reading, the 'why' we fall for fake news felt underdeveloped and misleading. The author was capable of pointing out where people are often misled, but explaining why was often left out. The author also used the fall back of political biases as the bedrock of why people allow themselves to be swayed when exploring fake news, despite acknowledging it is a much bigger wider issue than just this.
The book presents itself as allowing readers to 'be smarter consumers of news' but altogether I wouldn't classify myself as more confident in identifying falsehoods in what I read now than before
Lots of very interesting looks into the history of news, especially with how modern trends and technological developments which feel like they are changing the credibility of news all have a strong historical precedent, and the world hasn't ended so far.
The psychological aspect which was broadcast before reading, the 'why' we fall for fake news felt underdeveloped and misleading. The author was capable of pointing out where people are often misled, but explaining why was often left out. The author also used the fall back of political biases as the bedrock of why people allow themselves to be swayed when exploring fake news, despite acknowledging it is a much bigger wider issue than just this.
The book presents itself as allowing readers to 'be smarter consumers of news' but altogether I wouldn't classify myself as more confident in identifying falsehoods in what I read now than before
November 12, 2020
Since the 2016 election and the foreign influence on social media, I've wanted to understand how people can fall for fake news. After reading Brotherton's first book about the psychology of conspiracy theories, Suspicious Minds, I knew I had to get this book. Brotherton has become one of my favorite authors and researchers, and he does an amazing job breaking down the psychology behind why people believe what they believe.
I think my favorite part about this book is that Brotherton debunks a lot of conventional wisdom we have about fake news and echo chambers. Intuitively, we believe that echo chambers drive people further to polarization and that high numbers of people fall for fake news. Based on the research, the data shows otherwise. If you're interested in learning more about how fake news affects people and the world we live in today, I highly recommend this book.
I think my favorite part about this book is that Brotherton debunks a lot of conventional wisdom we have about fake news and echo chambers. Intuitively, we believe that echo chambers drive people further to polarization and that high numbers of people fall for fake news. Based on the research, the data shows otherwise. If you're interested in learning more about how fake news affects people and the world we live in today, I highly recommend this book.
May 15, 2022
Bad news offers a unique look into the psychological reasons that people fall for fake news and analyses the current information environment through a jornalistic and sociological lens.
To the author, the problems news face today are not unique, as they have been present since the beginning of what we call "journalism". Therefore, by understanding how these issues presented themselves in the past, we can be hopeful in solving them in their current forms.
Overall, and without going into too much unnecessary detail, the book offers refreshing points of view, complemented with studies to justify it and with a lighthearted tone that makes it a joy to read. Essential work for understanding the current information landscape.
To the author, the problems news face today are not unique, as they have been present since the beginning of what we call "journalism". Therefore, by understanding how these issues presented themselves in the past, we can be hopeful in solving them in their current forms.
Overall, and without going into too much unnecessary detail, the book offers refreshing points of view, complemented with studies to justify it and with a lighthearted tone that makes it a joy to read. Essential work for understanding the current information landscape.
March 20, 2021
A good and thorough examination of the concept of news, how we interact with it and the misconceptions we have about its general veracity. What seemed like an intriguing premise is whittled down to quite a dry examination of news throughout history. It’s interesting and relates some good psychological experiments that help explain why novelty and recency matter as much as they do. However in its relentless explaining, somehow it manages to demystify to such an extent that you’re left underwhelmed. Definitely pretty good. Definitely not essential.
November 22, 2020
There’s a lot to like here. And yet, the author lacks an intersectional lens. White cis-dude wrote 300 pages without mention of how race, gender, sexuality and class might (do!) play a role. E.G. the author uses a study of voters from 1954 to help bolster a point. Who could and could not vote in 1954 is not explained! This book seems best for white cis straight and class privileged people who are never pathologized as the subject of “the news.”
So disappointed. Do better.
So disappointed. Do better.
February 15, 2023
Bad News filled with the history of news, and the psychology of how people interpret what the media tells them. I don’t know what I thought it would be about, but I am glad that it is a rational and non partisan exploration, and I think it’s a message that we all need to hear with a country so politically divided.
August 17, 2023
A bit slow at the beginning, as the anecdotes sometimes interrupt the reading flow. An interesting perspective on the supply side rather than demand side of fake news, even though both sides are featured. Towards the end, the focus was too much on errors in news instead of fake news, for my taste.
February 2, 2024
We all know the corporate monopolists in the media are shaping the public discourse to their own goals. It is nice to see at least one book calling them out on it. My only beef is that the examples are all old since I didn't read this when it was first printed. It is badly in need of an update.
June 19, 2021
This book feels like it has a lot more building of the history of the subject than was expected, but still a wonderful read.
September 4, 2025
Eh. Simple concept, dragged out for a bit too much. Most interesting part of the book is the opening. Turns out, spoiler alert, humans are not infallible
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