The branch of ethics that applies to digital media, for example, in online contexts, how users interact with each other, both in representing themselves and controlling data about themselves in the platforms and technologies that they use and in their respect for other users and for other users’ rights to self-determination and privacy. Professionally, it means to be circumspect in engaging with clients or patients online, both in seeking data about them or interacting with them. Apart from these local issues, there are also global issues, such as whether Americans, their government, or their representatives will allow, for example, computer programs to act as speech regulators or set norms to frame governmental policy or to regulate behavior.
Published in Chapter:
Ten Lessons for the Age of Disinformation
Thomas Joseph Froehlich (Kent State University, USA)
Copyright: © 2020
|Pages: 53
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-2543-2.ch003
Abstract
This chapter outlines the structure and content of a course devoted to developing strategies to cope with the massive assault of disinformation on American democracy. Ten lessons for the age of disinformation will provide pedagogical techniques to teach high school, college students, or adult learners how to cope with our current environment, which the author calls the “Age of Disinformation.” It provides a multifaceted approach in which each facet reinforces the others. The 10 lessons are (1) characteristics of the age of disinformation; (2) the varieties of false information; (3) knowledge, opinion, and second-hand knowledge; (4) deception and self-deception; (5) psychological factors; (6) cognitive authorities; (7) social media, intellectual freedom, and libraries; (8) logical fallacies; (9) ethical principles; and (10) information, media, and digital literacies and personal, political, and professional commitments. Each lesson outlines the key ideas for each lesson and provides exercises that reinforce the key ideas of each lesson.