Friday, December 29, 2017

Technocognition as cure for fake news

This story discusses a recent paper in The Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. They propose technocognition to counter fake news, its definition being "the idea that we should use what we know about psychology to design technology in a way that minimizes the impact of misinformation. By improving how people communicate, they hope, we can improve the quality of the information shared." One proposal is to created a neutral international non-governmental organization that creates a rating system for misinformation. Then social media outlets like Facebook and Google could use the rating system in what appears in their feeds.

The problem is that those inclined to ideological misinformation would just consider any such rating system itself as fake news, like they do with current, reputable fact-checkers. This is especially true of politicians, who due to those who bribe them will curtail any factual information counter to their profitable agenda. And it is those representatives that continue to generate the false narratives that brainwash their followers into denying facts like human-caused climate change. So a prerequisite for the public to once again accept a neutral, non-partisan fact checker is to replace Congress and the Presidency with those who 1) accept reality and 2) will then influence people to also accept it.

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