CFP: How Higher Education Should Respond to Fake News and the Post-Truth World

Abstract: Fake news, a generic term with a political origin that refers to misinformation, disinformation, misrepresentations, information pollution, false narratives, propaganda, and conspiracy theories spread on the web, have become a major issue for educational institutions concerned with students’ ability to distinguish factual from nonfactual information. Tesich (1992), Keyes (2004), and Crouch (2004) argued that we have entered into a post-truth world and political environment in which rhetorical arguments are largely designed to solely appeal to the audience’s emotions (pathos) while ignoring facts and policies, and that fake news are products of the current post-truth moment. West (2018) argued that misinformation is being shared all over the web because people are able to share information widely without having that information pre-vetted by journalists and editors. The threat of fake news to education is so alarming that the majority of sessions presented at the 2018 Moder... Read more

Abstract: Fake news, a generic term with a political origin that refers to misinformation, disinformation, misrepresentations, information pollution, false narratives, propaganda, and conspiracy theories spread on the web, have become a major issue for educational institutions concerned with students’ ability to distinguish factual from nonfactual information. Tesich (1992), Keyes (2004), and Crouch (2004) argued that we have entered into a post-truth world and political environment in which rhetorical arguments are largely designed to solely appeal to the audience’s emotions (pathos) while ignoring facts and policies, and that fake news are products of the current post-truth moment. West (2018) argued that misinformation is being shared all over the web because people are able to share information widely without having that information pre-vetted by journalists and editors. The threat of fake news to education is so alarming that the majority of sessions presented at the 2018 Modern Language Association (MLA) conference were devoted to addressing this issue. . . . See full CFP at http://bit.ly/liminalcfp20181