Patterns of Deceptive Communication of Social and Religious Issues in Social Media

Deception and religion have evolved over the years. Deception and belief manipulation are aspects of religious communication. The digital space revolves around fake news and indicates that humans are more susceptible than ever to mental manipulation by powerful technological tools. This chapter demonstrates patterns in deceptive narrative usage in a communication of social and religious issues (CSRI) in social media among a religious community in Mumbai. Drawing from deception theory of David Ettingery and Philippe Jehiel, the exploitation by rational players of the fundamental attribution of error (FAE) made by other players, where FAE allows for belief manipulation. The authors propose that an increased presence of social media promotes patterns in CSRI in social media. The analysis depicted patterns in the preference to the use of text visual images, audio-visual, and audio formats when communicating social and religious issues.

The Role of Deceptive Communication and Gender in Shaping Online Dating Interactions

Online dating is becoming an increasingly used method for meeting significant others. As the research of lying behavior has advanced so has the technique of detecting the act of lying, especially in the online environment where deception is more likely to happen. The aim of this chapter is to simplify the perception of lying behavior to the general population and examine gender differences of lying behavior, namely, to verify whether one can observe a statistically significant difference in the speech behavior and exploitation of lying cues among men and women. The study shows correlation between gender and deception in online environment.

False Information Narratives

The issue of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election has been widely debated by scholars and journalists. However, these works have not fully analyzed the ads that have been released by Facebook and the U.S. Congress. This project uses a case study to analyze the ads posted by the Russian-affiliated Internet Research Agency, considering the quantities of ads targeted to particular geographic locations, the frequency of targeting for unique keywords, and the reach and impressions of each of the ads. Further, these results are compared to results from best practices in traditional social media campaigns as a way to better understand the goals and potential impacts of the IRA ads. In conclusion, the project, by analyzing the full set of IRA ads, sheds new light on the way false information narratives were leveraged by the Russian-linked IRA.

Fake News and Information Warfare

Fake news—false information passed off as factual—is an effective weapon in the information age. For instance, the Russian government perfected techniques used in its 2007 Estonian and 2008 Georgian cyber campaigns to support Donald Trump's successful candidacy in the 2016 United States presidential election. In this chapter, the authors examine fake news and Russia's cyberwarfare efforts across time as case studies of information warfare. The chapter identifies key terms and reviews extant political science and psychological research related to obtaining an understanding of psychological cyber warfare (“psywar”) through the proliferation of fake news. Specifically, the authors suggest that there are social, contextual, and individual factors that contribute to the spread and influence of fake news and review these factors in this chapter.

Fake Online News

Today, the media environment has traversed several phases of technological advancements and as a result, there is a shift in the production and consumption of news. This chapter conceived fake news within the milieu of influencing information spread in the society, especially on the cyberspace. Using the hierarchy of influence model trajectory with fake news, it was established that it has become almost impossible to sustain trust and credibility through individual influences on online news content. The primary reason is that journalists are constrained by professional ethics, organizational routines, and ownership influence. Rather than verify facts and offer supporting claims, online users without professional orientation engage in a reproducing information indiscreetly. The chapter recommends that ethics be reconsidered as a means to recreate and imbibe journalistic values that will contend with the fake news pandemic.

“Ridiculous and Untrue – FAKE NEWS!”

Beyond the spread of fake news, the term “fake news” has been used by people on social media and by people in the Trump administration to discredit reporting and show disagreement with the content of a story. This study offers a series of defining traits of fake news and a corresponding experiment testing its impact. Overall, this study shows that fake news, or at least labeling fake news can impact the gratifications people derive from news. Further, this study provides evidence that the impact of fake news might, in some cases, rely on whether or not the fake news complies with preexisting beliefs.

Factors Influencing Gossiping Behavior in Social Chatting Platforms

This chapter discusses the need for drama, interpersonal closeness, informational susceptibility, and compassion for others and their influence towards gossiping behavior via social chatting applications. Technological advancements have enabled people to communicate with each other at the convenience of their homes and in real time. This change, however, also means the changes in human behaviors, such as computer-mediated communication, can be shaped by the richness of the media that people can use to convey their thoughts and opinions. The existence of different chatting applications has fulfilled the needs of human beings to be connected and to interact with each other, and the interactions that take place can be in the form of gossiping and spreading information that may not necessarily be accurate.

“Type Amen” or Perish!

This chapter examines religious discourse on Facebook and brings to the fore the recurrent deceptive requests that have given rise to new forms of religious extremism and radicalism. Many Christians have turned to social media as a medium where their faith can be practiced and with the intention of enforcing it on others. One major avenue through which this ensues is in the inherent ideological requests on Facebook where members are threatened to either type “Amen” or be afflicted with curses as punishment. These misleading requests usually attract instantaneous thousands of “likes” and consenting responses that depict underlying fear. An awareness of these extremist inclinations against the backdrop of religion is crucial to the understanding and interpretation of the semiotic realities within such Facebook posts.

Profiting From the “Trump Bump”

This chapter contributes to scholarship in the fields of media ecology and political communication by investigating the effects of the Trump bump in media-driven democracy. Specifically, it explains how the media's obsession with Donald Trump allowed them to capitalize on his political brand, which in turn contributed to changing the tone of political discourse in the United States. The effects of mediatization, including click-bait framing, increased negativity, and person-centered media coverage, had a distinct impact on the behavior of political actors and the political system as a whole. The dominance of marketing logic in contemporary media democracies provides a compelling argument for critical investigation of brand appropriation in political communication and its impact on the state of democracy. This chapter advocates for the further investigation of the current media ecosystem in order to move toward a public deliberation model that would support enhanced media literacy and citizen engagement in public policy debates.

Misleading Media Portrayals in a Globalized World

This chapter discusses the phenomenon of media power and dissemination of misleading and spurious representations. The author argues that global mass media can increasingly be seen as devices of control. This is inferred from a frequent use of Orientalist discourses when portraying the Middle East, which bestows the media messages with hidden power structures. These messages, along with the emergence of social media and a high saturation of visual media, contribute to strengthening of media power. This enables the state to justify its control and political actions. By drawing on Orientalism and by exploring media portrayals of the Middle East, this chapter suggests that misrepresentations produced by the media should be seen as a violent rhetoric which aims at acting to discipline Middle Eastern bodies and trapping them in a cycle of alienation. The analysis discusses media coverage of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, the war in Iraq, and 9/11. The author suggests that through the practice of alienating subjects from society, mass media create an opportunity for them to turn to extremes.