1. The document discusses the rise of social media and how it has transformed how people consume and share information by turning consumers into publishers. 2. Critics argue that social media leads to an "anarchy" of opinions online and that technology does not necessarily bring more democracy. 3. The reliability and biases of information sources on social media are discussed as well as how to analyze claims using tools like confirming evidence and alternative explanations.

1. Always online
Mathias Klang @klang67

2. Neo-optimists vs neo-pessimists

3. Blogger 1999
Google 1999
End of communications monopoly

4. The facebook/twitter revolution

5. Normalizing the abnormal

6. Is there meaning in this madness?

7. 2006

8. Social media…At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in
how people discover, read and share news, information and
content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming
monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is
the democratization of information, transforming people from
content readers into publishers.
(Wikipedia, May 2009)

9. "Out of this anarchy…
what was governing
the infinite monkeys
now inputting away on
the Internet was the
law of digital
Darwinism, the survival
of the loudest and most
opinionated.”
Andrew Keen: Cult of the amateur
(2007)

10. Morosov is critical to the “technology brings
democracy” approach and is concerned that we are
“amusing ourselves to death” (Postman 1985)

11. The media sends the message

12. Facebook makes you unhappy

16. http://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/28893

21. The authors

22. Source criticism

23. Michael Shermer "Baloney Detection Kit"
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/baloney.html

24. Pseudoscientists often appear
quite reliable, but when examined
closely, the facts and figures they
cite are distorted, taken out of
context or occasionally even
fabricated… The question is, Do
the data and interpretations show
signs of intentional distortion?
1. How reliable is the source of the claim?

25. 2. Does this source often make similar claims?
Pseudoscientists have a habit of going well beyond the facts… Watch out
for a pattern of fringe thinking that consistently ignores or distorts data.

26. …pseudoscientists make
statements that are
unverified or verified only
by a source within their
own belief circle. We must
ask, Who is checking the
claims, and even who is
checking the checkers?
3. Have the claims been
verified by another source?

27. 4. How does the
claim fit with what An extraordinary claim must be
we know about how placed into a larger context to
the world works? see how it fits.

28. This is the confirmation bias, or
the tendency to seek
confirmatory evidence and to
reject or ignore disconfirmatory
evidence. The confirmation bias
is powerful, pervasive and
almost impossible for any of us
to avoid. It is why the methods
of science that emphasize
checking and rechecking,
verification and replication, and
especially attempts to falsify a
claim, are so critical.
5. Has anyone gone out of the way to disprove the claim, or has
only supportive evidence been sought?

29. The theory of evolution, for example, is ``proved'' through a convergence
of evidence from a number of independent lines of inquiry… Creationists
conveniently ignore this confluence, focusing instead on trivial anomalies
or currently unexplained phenomena in the history of life.
6. Does the preponderance of evidence point to the claimant's
conclusion or to a different one?

30. A clear distinction can be
made between SETI
(Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence) scientists and
UFOlogists. SETI scientists
begin with the null
hypothesis that ETIs do
not exist …
7. Is the claimant employing the accepted rules of reason and
tools of research, or have these been abandoned in favor of
others that lead to the desired conclusion?

31. 8. Is the claimant providing an explanation for the observed
phenomena or merely denying the existing explanation?
This is a classic debate strategy--criticize
your opponent and never affirm what
you believe to avoid criticism.

32. 9. If the claimant proffers a new explanation, does it account for
as many phenomena as the old explanation did?
Many HIV/AIDS skeptics
argue that lifestyle causes
AIDS. Yet their alternative
theory does not explain
nearly as much of the data as
the HIV theory does.

33. 10. Do the claimant's personal beliefs and biases drive the
conclusions, or vice versa?
All scientists hold social, political and ideological beliefs that could
potentially slant their interpretations of the data, but how do those
biases and beliefs affect their research in practice?

34. Bologna sausage… also known as boloney, baloney[1] or polony, is an
American sausage derived from and somewhat similar to the Italian
mortadella (a finely hashed/ground pork sausage containing cubes of
lard that originated in the Italian city of Bologna, (Wikipedia)
Baloney

35. Researcher Martin Rimm
83.5% of images traded
on Usenet are
pornographic
TIME
Magazine
Cover: Cyber
Porn - July 3,
1995

36. "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of
917,410 Images, Description, Short Stories and Animations Downloaded
8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries,
Provinces and Territories.” Georgetown Law Review
Martin Rimm

37. "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of
917,410 Images, Description, Short Stories and Animations Downloaded
8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries,
Provinces and Territories.” Georgetown Law Review
Martin Rimm

38. "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of
917,410 Images, Description, Short Stories and Animations Downloaded
8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries,
Provinces and Territories.” Georgetown Law Review
Martin Rimm

39. "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of
917,410 Images, Description, Short Stories and Animations Downloaded
8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries,
Provinces and Territories.” Georgetown Law Review
Martin Rimm

40. THANKS!

41. Mathias Klang
klang@ituniv.se or @klang67
www.digital-rights.net
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