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School for Cross-faculty Studies Liberal Arts

IP121 Truth and Misinformation

Module Overview

This is a core first-year module on the BA in Liberal Arts course. The module engages students with key theories and contemporary questions around the issues of truth and misinformation from multiple perspectives, including within a variety of disciplines and contexts.

The module's content will introduce you to a set of topical issues around truth and misinformation today, expose you to practical considerations and consequences of certain positions, while also inviting critical and creative responses. This module will not provide you with a definition or a ready-made model of truth or misinformation, but rather will give you the tools to reflect and define your own approach to these concepts.

Module aims:

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

  • articulate your own understanding of "truth" and "misinformation" along with related critical issues
  • critically examine case studies related to the issue of truth and misinformation from interdisciplinary perspectives
  • demonstrate an improvement in your ability to express and structure an evidence-based argument
  • explain the complex relationship between academic disciplines such as science and critical theory
  • express your own perspective of how truth is constructed and the contexts of its production
  • critically analyse misinformation, emerging media, and media literacy across cultures, disciplines, and time periods
  • apply compassion and curiosity to gain a greater understanding of misinformation campaigns and their popularity among certain groups
  • demonstrate an understanding of the threat that misinformation poses within the contemporary information ecology

Module Leader:

Dr Bryan Brazeau

Core module

Term 1 and Term 2 | 20 weeks

30 CATS

2 hour workshop per week


Not available to students outside the School for Cross-Faculty Studies.

Please note: Module availability and staffing may change year on year depending on availability and other operational factors. The School for Cross-Faculty Studies makes no guarantee that any modules will be offered in a particular year, or that they will necessarily be taught by the staff listed on these pages

Indicative topics:

Please note that these topics are purely illustrative, and that actual module content may differ.

  • concepts of scientific objectivity and universality
  • socially-constructed models of truth
  • the individual, social, and political consequences of various models of truth
  • communication of risk and risk perception
  • political and social constructions of misinformation
  • the key role played by news media in society in spreading both information and disinformation
  • propaganda, conspiracy theories, fake news, memes, social media
  • the changing role of expertise in a fragmented public sphere
Assessments:

There are five assessments on this module:

Assessment Weighting Description
Pop Quizzes 15% short multiple-choice quizzes based on reading and class discussions
Group Reflection 15% essay or podcast on ideas of truth
Literature Review 15% essay or podcast exploring interdisciplinary research
Group Media Production 25% group video exploring truth and/or misinformation
Research Project 30% independent research project

Illustrative reading list:

  • Alberti, S. J. M. M. (2005) 'Objects and the Museum', Isis, 96(4), pp. 559-571. doi: 10.1086/498593.
  • Bauer, S. W. (2015) The story of science: from the writings of Aristotle to the big bang theory. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
  • Binns, Peter (1973) "The Marxist Theory of Truth." Radical Philosophy 4, pp.3-9.
  • Brake, M. and Weitkamp, E. (2010) Introducing science communication: a practical guide. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Camporeale, Salvatore I. (1996) "Lorenzo Valla's Oratio on the Pseudo-Donation of Constantine: Dissent and Innovation in Early Renaissance Humanism." Journal of the History of Ideas 57.1: 9-26.
  • Centre for Countering Digital Hate (2021) Malgorithm: How Instagram's Algorithm Publishes Misinformation and Hate to Millions During a Pandemic. https://www.counterhate.com/malgorithmLink opens in a new window
  • Ceron, A. (2015) Internet, News, and Political Trust: The Difference Between Social Media and Online Media Outlets. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20, 487–503.
  • Cheyfitz, E. (2017) The Disinformation Age: The Collapse of Liberal Democracy in the United States. New York: Routledge.
  • De Beauvoir, S. (2009) The second sex. Trans. C. de, Borde and S. Malovany-Chevallier, London: Jonathan Cape.
  • Debord, G. (2002), trans. Ken Knabb, The Society of the Spectacle. Hobgoblin Press: Canberra.
  • DeSalle, R. and Tattersall, I. (2018) Troublesome science: the misuse of genetics and genomics in understanding race. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Gillespie, T. (2018) Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Graham, G. (2013) "Public opinion and the public sphere."" In: Emden, C.J. and Midgley, D. eds. Beyond Habermas: democracy, knowledge, and the public sphere. New York; Oxford: Berghan Books: 29-41.
  • Gregory, J. and Miller, S. (2000) Science in public: communication, culture, and credibility. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Pub.
  • Habermas, J. (1991) The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Translated by Thomas Burger. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
  • Henry, J. (2012) A short history of scientific thought. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Klein, N. (2023) Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. New York: Penguin.
  • Koertge, N., ed. (1998) A house built on sand: exposing postmodernist myths about science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Kuhn, T. (1963) "The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research," in A. Crombie, ed., Scientific change: historical studies in the intellectual, social and technical conditions for scientific discovery and technical invention, from antiquity to the present. London: Heineman.
  • Latour, B. (1999) Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Nelkin, D. (1996) 'The Science Wars: Responses to a Marriage Failed', Social Text, (46/47). doi: 10.2307/466846.
  • Lewandowsky, S., and Klaus Oberauer, (2016) "Motivated Rejection of Science," Current Directions in Psycholgical Science 25(4): 217-222.
  • ——., Ullrich K.H. Ecker, Colleen M. Seifert, et al., (2012) "Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing," Psychological Science in the Public Interest 13 no.3: 106-131.
  • Markham, T. (2017) Media and everyday life. London: Macmillan Education. Nelkin, D. (1996) 'The Science Wars: Responses to a Marriage Failed', Social Text, (46/47). doi: 10.2307/466846.
  • Markova, I. (1996) "Towards an Epistemology of Social Representations."" Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 26(2), 177-196.
  • Mejia, R., Kay Beckermann, and Curtis Sullivan, eds. "White Lies: a Racial History of the (Post)Truth." Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 15: 2, 109-126.
  • Mihailidis, P., and Viotty, S. (2017) Spreadable Spectacle in Digital Culture: Civic Expression, Fake News, and the Role of Media Literacies in “Post-Fact” Society. American Behavioral Scientist, 61(4), 441– 454.
  • Moscovici, S. (1992). The psychology of scientific myths. In M. von Cranach, W. Doise & G. Mugny (Eds.), Social representations and the social bases of knowledge. Lewiston, NY: Hogrefe & Huber.
  • O’Connor, C. and James Owen Weatherall (2020) The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Pinker, S. (2018) Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. London: Allen Lane.
  • Pomerantsev, P. (2019) This is not propaganda: adventures in the war against reality. London: Faber and Faber.
  • Snow, C. P. (1959) The two cultures and the scientific revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sokal, A., (1996) "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies," Lingua Franca 4. ---, (1996) 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity', Social Text, (46/47). doi: 10.2307/466856. ---, (2000) The Sokal hoax: the sham that shook the academy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
  • Sur, Abha. (2008) 'Persistent Patriarchy: Theories of Race and Gender in Science' Economic and Political Weekly, pp. 7-8.
  • Tufekci, Z. (2018) Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Vasterman, P., ed. (2018) From Media Hype to Twitter Storm. Amsterdam University Press.
  • Verhulsdonck, G. and Marohang Limbu, eds., (2013) Digital Rhetoric and Global Literacies: Communication Modes and Digital Practices in the Networked World. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
  • Wagner, W., Gerard Duveen, Sandra Jovchelovitch, et al. (1999) "Theory and Method of Social Representations," Asian Journal of Social Psychology 2 (1999): 95–125.
  • Wu, T. (2017) The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. New York: Knopf Publishing.
  • Yearley, Steven. (2005) Making sense of science. London: SAGE Publications.
  • Zimdars, M. and Kembrew McLeod (2020) Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press.