Common misconceptions of critical thinkingSHARON BAILIN, R

Common misconceptions of critical thinking
SHARON BAILIN, ROLAND CASE,
JERROLD R. COOMBS and LEROI B. DANIELS
In this paper, the ® rst of two, we analyse three widely-held
conceptions of critical
thinking: as one or more skills, as mental processes, and as sets
of procedures. Each
view is, we contend, wrong-headed, misleading or, at best,
unhelpful. Some who write
about critical thinking seem to muddle all three views in an
unenlightening meÂ lange.
Apart from the errors or inadequacies of the conceptions
themselves, they promote or
abet misconceived practices for teaching critical thinking.
Together, they have led to
the view that critical thinking is best taught by practising it. We
o� er alternative
proposals for the teaching of critical thinking.
Critical thinking is a subject of considerable current interest,
both in terms
of theory and pedagogy. A great deal is written about critical
thinking,
conferences on the subject abound, and educational initiatives
aimed at
fostering critical thinking proliferate.1 It is our view that much
of the
theoretical work and many of the pedagogical endeavours in this
area are
misdirected because they are based on faulty conceptions of

critical think-
ing. Critical thinking is frequently conceptualized in terms of
skills, pro-
cesses, procedures and practice. Much of the educational
literature either
refers to cognitive or thinking skills or equates critical thinking
with certain
mental processes or procedural moves that can be improved
through
practice. In this paper we attempt to explain the misconceptions
inherent
in such ways of conceptualizing critical thinking. It is important
to note
that much of the literature contains a pervasive miasma of
overlapping uses
of such terms as skill, process, procedure, behaviour, mental
operations,
j. curriculum studies, 1999, vol. 31, no. 3, 269± 283
S haron Bailin, a professor in the Faculty of Education, Simon
Fraser University, Burnaby,
British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6, is interested in
philosophical inquiries into critical
thinking, creativity and aesthetic education. Her publications
include Reason and V alues:
New Essays in Philosophy of Education (Calgary, AB: Detselig,
1993), co-edited with John P.
Portelli.
Roland Case, an associate professor in the Faculty of Educati on,
Simon Fraser University,
conducts research in social studies and legal and global
education. His most recent book is
The Canadian Anthology of Social S tudies: Issues and S
trategies (Burnaby, BC: Faculty of
Education, Simon Fraser University), co-edited with Penney

Clark.
Jerrold R. Coombs, a professor in the Faculty of Education,
University of British Columbia,
has published extensively on ethical issues in education and the
development of competence
in practical reasoning. His publications include Applied Ethics:
A Reader (Oxford: Black-
well, 1993), co-edited with Earl R. Winkler.
L eRoi B. Daniels, a professor emeritus in the Faculty of
Education, University of British
Columbia, is interested in philosophy of mind and legal
education. He is currently editing
(with Roland Case) the `Critical Challenges Across the
Curriculum’ series (Burnaby, BC:
Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University).
Journal of Curriculum S tudies ISSN 0022± 0272 print/ISSN
1366± 5839 online Ñ 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/JNLS/cus.htm
http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/JNLS/cus.htm
etc. We thus ® nd similar kinds of error and confusion about
critical
thinking under super® cially di� erent ways of talking. We
have tried to
focus on plausibly distinct uses of skill, process and procedure
in our
critiques. Our arguments will lay the groundwork for o� ering a
new
conception based on di� erent foundational assumptions in the
following
paper on this theme.

Cr i ti c a l th i n ki n g a s s ki l l
Many educators and theorists appear to view the task of
teaching critical
thinking as primarily a matter of developing thinking skills.
Indeed, the
discourse on thinking is su� used with skill talk. Courses and
conferences
focus on the development of thinking skills and references to
skills appear
in much of the literature.2 Even leading theorists in the area of
critical
thinking conceptualize critical thinking largely in terms of skill.
Thus, for
example, Siegel (1988: 39, 41) writes of the critical thinker as
possessing à
certain character as well as certain skills’ , and makes reference
to `a wide
variety of reasoning skills’ . Similarly, Paul (1984: 5) refers to
critical
thinking skills and describes them as `a set of integrated macro-
logical
skills’ . The Delphi Report on critical thinking (Facione 1990),
which
purports to be based on expert consensus in the ® eld, views
critical thinking
in terms of cognitive skills in interpretation, analysis,
evaluation, inference,
explanation and self-regulation.
It is important to note that the term s̀kill’ can be used in a
variety of
senses and that, as a consequence, some of the discussion of
skills in critical
thinking is relatively unproblematic. In some instances s̀kill’ is
used to

indicate that an individual is pro® cient at the task in question.
It is used, in
this context, in an achievement sense. A skilled reasoner is one
who is able
to reason well and to meet the relevant criteria for good
reasoning. The use
of skill in this context focuses attention on students being
capable of
intelligent performance as opposed to merely having
propositional knowl-
edge about intelligent performance. Thus, someone who is
thinking criti-
cally can do more than cite a de® nition for ad hominem. He or
she will
notice inappropriate appeals to an arguer’ s character in
particular argu-
mentative contexts. Clearly, being a critical thinker involves,
among other
things, having a certain amount of `know-how’. Such thinkers
are skilled,
then, in the sense that they must be able to ful® ll relevant
standards of good
thinking. Conceptualizing critical thinking as involving skill in
this
achievement sense is relatively benign.
However, some of the discussion of skills in the context of
critical
thinking is more problematic. There is a strong tendency among
educators
to divide educational goals or objectives into three distinct
kinds: knowl-
edge, skills (i.e. abilities), and attitudes (i.e. values), and to
assign critical
thinking to the category of skills.3 Conceiving of critical
thinking as a skill

in this sense implies more than simply that an individual is a
competent or
pro® cient thinker. It is based on a conception of skill as an
identi® able
operation which is generic and discrete. There are di � culties
with both of
these notions. We will begin with the problems entailed in
viewing skills as
270 s. bailin ET A L .
generic, i.e. once learned, they can be applied in any ® eld of
endeavour; the
problems involved in viewing skills as discrete will be dealt
with later.
Skills as generic
The identi® cation of critical thinking with skill in the tripartite
division of
educational goals separates critical thinking from the
development of
knowledge, understanding and attitudes. Critical thinking is
seen to involve
generic operations that can be learned in themselves, apart from
any
particular knowledge domains, and then transferred to or
applied in
di� erent contexts. Thus, for example, Worsham and Stockton
(1986: 11,
12) claim that t̀here are some skills that are basic and common
to most
curriculum tasks (for example, gathering information, ® nding
the main

idea, determining meaning)’ . They further state that:
Most curriculum materials at the high school level require that
students
analyze, synthesize, and evaluate as well as to[sic] create new
`products’, such
as original oral and written pieces and artistic creations.
Students are
expected to apply the appropriate thinking skills to accomplish
these tasks.
In a similar vein, Beyer (1987: 163) makes reference to discrete
thinking
skills and claims that:
To be pro® cient in a thinking skill or strategy means to be able
to use that
operation e� ectively and e� ciently on one’s own in a variety
of appropriate
contexts.
The separation of knowledge and critical thinking is fraught
with
di� culties however. If the claim that critical thinking skills are
generic is
taken to mean that these skills can be applied in any context
regardless of
background knowledge, then the claim seems clearly false.
Background
knowledge in the particular area is a precondition for critical
thinking to
take place. A person cannot analyse a particular chemical
compound if he or
she does not know something about chemistry, and without an
under-
standing of certain historical events a person will be unable to

evaluate
competing theories regarding the causes of World War I.
Many theorists acknowledge the necessity of background
knowledge for
critical thinking but still maintain a separation between
knowledge and the
skill or skills of thinking critically. For example, Nickerson et
al. (1985: 49)
contend that:
recognizing the interdependence of thinking and knowledge
does not deny
the reality of the distinction. It is at least conceivable that
people possessing
the same knowledge might di� er signi® cantly in how
skillfully they apply
what they know.
We argue, however, that the distinction is itself untenable.
Skilled
performance at thinking tasks cannot be separated from
knowledge. The
kinds of acts, such as predicting and interpreting, which are put
forth as
generic skills will, in fact, vary greatly depending on the
context, and this
di� erence is connected with the di� erent kinds of knowledge
and under-
common misconceptions of critical thinking 271
standing necessary for successful completion of the particular
task. Inter-

preting a graph is a very di� erent sort of enterprise from
interpreting a
play. The former involves coming to an understanding of the
relationships
among the plotted entities based on understanding certain
geometric
conventions; the latter involves constructing a plausible
meaning for the
play based on textual evidence. Both of these di� er again from
the case of
interpreting someone’s motives, which involves imputing
certain beliefs or
attitudes to an individual based on reading verbal and bodily
cues as well as
on past knowledge of the person. Similarly, predicting how a
story will end
calls upon very di� erent understanding than does predicting
the weather. It
makes little sense, then, to think in terms of generic skills,
which are simply
applied or transferred to di� erent domains of knowledge.
Becoming pro® cient at critical thinking itself involves, among
other
things, the acquisition of certain sorts of knowledge. For
example, the
knowledge of certain critical concepts which enable one to
make distinc-
tions is central to critical thinking. Understanding the di �
erence between a
necessary and a su� cient condition is not just background
knowledge but is
very much a part of what is involved in thinking critically.
Similarly, pro® ciency in critical thinking involves an
understanding of

the various principles which govern good thinking in particular
areas, and
many of these are domain speci® c, as McPeck (1981) has
pointed out.
Barrow (1991: 12) makes the point in this way:
What is clear, what is contradictory, what is logical, and so
forth, depends
upon the particular context. . . . To be logical in discussion
about art is not a
matter of combining logical ability with information about art.
It is a matter
of understanding the logic of art, of being on the inside of
aesthetic concepts
and aesthetic theory. The capacity to be critical about art is
inextricably
intertwined with understanding aesthetic discourse.
Facione (1990: 10) sums up well this general point:
This domain-speci® c knowledge includes understanding
methodological
principles and competence to engage in norm-regulated
practices that are
at the core of reasonable judgements in those speci® c contexts.
. . . Too much
of value is lost if CT [critical thinking] is conceived of simply
as a list of
logical operations and domain-speci® c knowledge is conceived
of simply as
an aggregation of information.
An additional di� culty with the identi® cation of critical
thinking solely
with skills to the exclusion of knowledge and attitudes is that it
fails to

recognize the central role played by attitudes in thinking
critically. Critical
thinking involves more than the ability to engage in good
thinking. It also
involves the willingness or disposition to do so. Siegel (1988)
refers to this
aspect of critical thinking as the critical spirit and sees it as of
equal
importance to the reason-assessment component. Ennis (1987)
includes a
list of dispositions in his conception of critical thinking, and
dispositions,
and values and traits of character are central to Paul’ s (1982)
notion of a
s̀trong sense’ of critical thinking.
Skills as discrete
Another major di� culty with the equation of critical thinking
with skill is
that it assumes the existence of certain discrete processes,
procedures or
operations. It is assumed that acquiring a skill involves
becoming pro® cient
at these processes. Thus, Chuska (1986: 25) distinguishes
between the
`ways of thinking (the processes involved)’ and t̀hinking skills
(the pro® -
ciency a person demonstrates in using the processes)’. In some
cases these
processes are thought to involve certain mental processes or
operations, and

in others these processes are conceived of in terms of
procedures or steps.
The di� culties with both these conceptualizations are dealt
with below.
Cr i ti c a l th i n ki n g a s m e n ta l p r o c e s s e s
It is a common assumption in discourse about critical thinking
that being
good at critical thinking is basically a matter of being pro®
cient at certain
mental processes.4 These processes are generally thought to
include such
things as classifying, inferring, observing, evaluating,
synthesizing and
hypothesizing. Kirby and Kuykendall (1991: 7, 11), for
example, hold
that t̀hinking is a holistic process in which di� erent mental
operations
work in concert’ and allude to ìntellectual skills training’ . It is
our view
that a purely `processes’ conception of critical thinking is
logically mis-
leading and pedagogically mischievous.5
In medicine, talking about processes as outcomes makes some
sense. An
obstetrician may give a newborn infant an appropriately sound
smack to
start up certain vital processes. May we not suggest that
teachers should
seek to do something analogous? If we do, we are presumably
not suggest-
ing that they should seek the occurrence of physical processes
such as
synapse-® ring in the brain, but that they should seek the

occurrence of such
mental processes as analysing or translating. Should they not,
then, seek to
invoke mental processes?
Talk about mental processes has a logic very di� erent from the
logic of
talk about physical processes. Physical processes, such as
baking or
synapse-® ring, can, at least in principle, be observed and
identi® ed
independently of any product they may have. Mental processes
can be
identi® ed only via their products; observing them directly is a
logical
impossibility. For example, we suppose that a translating
`process’ has
occurred in some person only because the person has succeeded
in produ-
cing a translation.
Descriptions of translating and classifying `behaviours’ are not
descrip-
tions of behaviours at all, but descriptions of upshots or
accomplishments
such as converting poetry to prose. When someone succeeds in
such a
conversion there is no doubt that something must have gone on
ìn’ that
person which enabled him or her to succeed. To identify this
s̀omething’ as
a particular mental process is to assume that the same sort of
thing goes on
within a person in every case in which he or she translates
something.
There is no reason to suppose this is the case. The so-called

`processes’ are
hypothesized, and then rei® ed after the fact of these upshots.
Mental processes are di� erentiated from one another not by
observing
features of the processes, but by distinguishing among kinds of
upshots or
accomplishments. The number of di� erent kinds of processes
we identify
depends upon how we decide to di� erentiate upshots. For some
purposes
we may wish to lump them all together. For instance, we may
lump
together all of the upshots that represent successful application
of conven-
tional meaning rules and standards, and then we might talk of
t̀he process’
of translation that all have in common. We may, on the other
hand, want to
subdivide student successes on the basis of the di� erent kinds
of meaning
conventions they ful® l. In either case, we will be less inclined
to reify and
confound categories if we talk about enabling students to ful® l
the
conventions and standards rather than about their exercising
mysterious
processes presumed to lie behind such accomplishments. No
useful ped-
agogical aim is served by postulating such processes.
Regardless of the conceptual hazards, people interested in

critical
thinking, and in education in general, are prone to talk about
processesÐ
the thinking process, the reading process, the creative process.
What makes
this way of characterizing teaching and learning so attractive?
In part, the
attraction may arise from the ambiguity of the term `process’. In
part, it
may also occur because it seems to o� er a promising answer to
the question,
`Are critical thinking abilities transferable?’
Broadly speaking, a process may be any course of events that
has an
upshot or a result of some sort. However, there are at least three
distinct
ways that courses of events relate to their upshots. In the ® rst
instance, they
may relate as that course of events people now call `natural
selection’ relates
to its upshot, the evolution of a species. In the second, they may
relate as
running a race relates to ® nishing the race. In the third, they
may relate as
facing an object relates to noticing it. We may characterize
these, for the
sake of convenience, as: (1) process-product, (2) task-
achievement, and (3)
orient-reception relations. Process-product pairs are used to
pick out
situations in which a series of changes or a particular relation
produces
an identi® able upshot. Task-achievement pairs are used to talk
about what
people do to bring about upshots. Tasks di� er from other

`processes’ in that
tasks are things people do on purpose in an e� ort to succeed at
something.
There are doubtless thousands of task words in most natural
languages.
Words like l̀ook’, s̀earch’ , r̀ace’ and t̀each’ can all be used as
task words.
Their use in this way re¯ ects the fact that many things people
seek to
accomplish are di� cult to bring o� . They can try and fail.
Ambiguity in the term `process’ lends a spurious sort of
plausibility to
the processes conception of critical thinking because it makes it
plausible to
suppose that all upshots of human activity have the same
relation to the
activity as products of combustion have to the process of
combustion.
Because processes are routinely named after their products, it is
natural to
suppose that achievements and receptions must also have
corresponding
processes. The result, of course, is unwarranted rei® cationÐ
reading back
from outcomes to mysterious antecedent processes.
The process conception is also bolstered by the fact that the
same
happening may be spoken of as both a process and a task. When
one bakes a
loaf of bread the changes in the loaf may be seen either as a
natural function

of heating and of the chemistry of its constituents, or as what
the cook
doesÐ heating the oven to the proper temperature and so on.
The same
happenings are, thus, characterized di� erently. Baking, the
chemical pro-
cess, is a causal occurrence; baking, the task, is a procedure (or
an art)
intended to bring about the chemical process in proper degree,
so that the
result is not pasty, or charred, or leaden. Because such words as
`baking’
may be ambiguous, it is easy to neglect the di� erence between
the process
and the task.
Such reception verbs, as s̀ee’, `notice’ and r̀ealize’ refer to
upshots of a
special kind. First, they involve either (or both) our literal
perception
apparatuses (eyes, ears, etc.) or our mental abilities. Secondly,
although
there are tasks we can carry out to position ourselves to see
(e.g. sit where
we can watch the horizon) or prepare ourselves conceptually
(e.g. acquire
the concepts of truth and validity), these tasks cannot guarantee
that we will
have the desired upshot. As White (1967: 69) puts it:
We can ask someone how he [sic] `would’ discover or cure, but
not how he
`would’ notice, although it is as legitimate to ask how he `did’
notice as it is to

ask how he `did’ discover or cure. For the former `how’
question asks for the
method, but the latter for the opportunity. Although appropriate
schooling
and practice can put us in a condition to notice what we used to
miss, people
cannot be taught nor can they learn how to notice, as they can
be taught or
can learn how to detect. Noticing, unlike solving, is not the
exercise of a skill.
For those interested in teaching students to become better at
critical
thinking, the moral is clear. We cannot teach students the
process of
noticing fallacies, for we have no grounds for believing there is
such a
process. The most we can do is orient them, and this, it seems,
we do in at
least three ways.
� We teach the person certain conceptsÐ for instance, the
concept of
a valid argument. This enables them to notice fallacies they
would
otherwise have overlookedÐ but does not, of course, guarantee
they will notice them.
� We motivate the person to care that arguments are valid and
to be
on the lookout for invalid arguments.
� We teach procedures that enable the person to orient himself
or
herself where certain kinds of reception are sought.

The second reason why people become advocates of critical
thinking
processes is that they want schools to provide curricula such
that students
learn to do certain things across the curriculumÐ and into their
non-school
livesÐ abstract, analyse, classify, evaluate, sequence,
synthesize, translate,
etc. These `processes’ are believed to be common to all critical
thinking
situations and to a range of activities beyond. To educators this
means that
in teaching them they can economize on instruction because
there will be
transfer of training. Someone who learns the forehand smash in
tennis is
likely to learn the forehand smash in squash with less di � culty
than a
person novice to both. Are we then to suggest that someone who
learns, for
example, to abstract in the writing of a preÂ cis will be able,
because of that
prior learning, to abstract in depicting a house, or that one who
is able to
evaluate cars will thereby be able to evaluate hypotheses? What
else can we
make of talk of processes as general abilities? Critical thinking
situations
may well have common features, but speaking of processes is of
no value; it
is, indeed, either otiose or misleading, and we almost certainly

risk losing
more than we gain. We risk falling into a monochromatic and
wholly
misleading view of the teaching of critical thinking.
Cr i ti c a l th i n ki n g a s p r o c e d u r e s
Another common misconception of critical thinking sees it as
basically a
matter of following a general procedure, described usually in
terms of a set
of steps, stages or phases. We contend that developing students’
compe-
tence in thinking is not, at heart, dependent on teaching them
steps or
procedures to follow. We begin by clarifying what we believe is
implied by
those who characterize critical thinking as following step-by-
step pro-
cedures. Next, we compare this view with an account of
thinking as the
exercise of judgement.
Thinking as procedure
Although there is no consensus about the general procedures
that constitute
thinking, the three most frequently discussed are inquiry (i.e.
t̀he scienti® c
method’), problem solving, and decision making (Wright 1993).
Some
writers refer to critical thinking and creative thinking as
separate pro-
cedures (Marzano et al. 1988: 32, Overgaard 1989: 9). By some
accounts,
there are as many as eight general thinking procedures: concept

formation,
principle formation, comprehension, problem solving, decision
making,
research, composition, and oral discourse (Marzano et al. 1988:
32± 33).
Each of these is distinguished by the type of conclusion or
result produced
(e.g. clari® cation of a concept, a decision about what course of
action to
take). Proponents of thinking as procedure, by de® nition,
believe that
procedures are at the heart of promoting thinking.
An important variable in this view of thinking is the formality
of the
sequence of steps involved in these general procedures. There is
a range of
opinion on this matter, spanning what we will call the
algorithmic and the
heuristic views of thinking as procedure. According to
Nickerson et al.
(1985: 74), algorithms and heuristics are two types of
procedures: an
algorithm is a step-by-step prescription that is guaranteed to
accomplish
a particular goal; an heuristic is a procedure that is merely
reasonably likely
to yield a solution. Proponents of an algorithmic view of
thinking as
procedure hold that: (1) there is a manageable number of highly
reliable
procedures that, taken as a whole, can address the range of
situations that
students need to resolve, (2) the steps in these procedures form
a ® xed
order, and (3) mastery of these steps is the central challenge in

learning to
think. Supporters of the heuristic view hold a less stringent set
of assump-
tions: (1) there is a potentially large number of procedures
helpful across
the range of situations that students need to resolve, (2) the
order of the
steps in these is not ® xed, and (3) mastery of these steps is a
pre-eminent,
but not necessarily the only, challenge in learning to think.
Although it is di� cult to ® nd much support for the algorithmic
view of
critical thinking, many academics, particularly psychologists,
appear to
accept the heuristic view. Thus, after reviewing a representative
range of
programmes to promote thinking, Glaser (1984: 96) notes that
`most of
these programs place emphasis on the teaching of general
processes, general
heuristics and rules for reasoning and problem solving, that
might be
acquired as transferable habits of thinking’ . Marzano et al.
(1988: 34)
suggest that the procedures should not be taught as `prescribed
procedures’
but rather as r̀epertoires or arrays of alternatives’ that are s̀emi-
ordered’ or
are `working hypotheses about the best way to accomplish a
goal, general

procedures to be used ¯ exibly by teachers and adapted by
students’ . For
others, however, the sequence of steps to be followed is more
signi® cant
(e.g. Beach 1987: 146± 147).
It is intuitively appealing to describe critical thinking in terms
of how
an individual is to go about it. The procedure approach, by
reducing
critical thinking to steps, seeks to provide operational or task
descriptions
of the building blocks of such thinking. Consider the following
exampleÐ
the `Decide Model’ by E. Daniel Eckberg.6 This conception
holds or
assumes that critical thinking comprises a set of steps
characterized as
follows:
D. De® ne the dilemma
What’s the problem?
Why does it concern me?
What’s the basic issue?
E. Examine electives
What are all sorts of possible ways of solving the problem?
What choices do we have?
What are our alternative courses of action?
What hypothesis can we make?
C. Consider consequences
What happens if we try each choice?
If we do this, then what?
How will things change if I choose this one?
What data can I collect and consider in considering these con-

sequences?
I. Investigate importance
What principles are important to me here?
What things do I most value?
How will these values in¯ uence my choice?
What am I assuming to be true?
What are my preferences and biases?
D. Decide direction
In the light of the data, what’ s my choice?
Which choice should now be chosen?
Which hypothesis seems to be the best?
Based on the evidence, what course of action should I take?
E. Evaluate ends
How can I test my hypothesis?
Was my course of action correct?
What are the consequences of my choice?
Has a tentative hypothesis been proven or disproved?
What are my conclusions?
As one can see, the model attempts to characterize critical
thinking as a set
of procedures to be carried out. None of the steps directly raises
the
underlying normative questions. Even in asking, `Was my
course of action
correct?’, the schema refers to what has been completedÐ a re¯
ection back.
Thus, the fundamentally normative and ongoing nature of
critical thinking

is ignored or masked. Critical thinking is not simply a
retrospective
undertaking.
It might be suggested that a more appropriate description of the
`decide
direction’ step is `make an informed, fair-minded decision’ . We
agree, but
this no longer describes a procedure to be performed, rather it
identi® es
norms to be ful® lled. As such, it is not characteristic of the
procedure view.
Although some educators may use the term s̀tep’ to refer to
achievement of
standards, the focus is overwhelmingly on strategies and
heuristics. We do
not wish to quibble over conceptual territory; rather we draw
attention to
the dominant (possibly, paradigmatic) use of the term s̀tep’ so
as to expose
the inadequacies of this view of critical thinking as following
general
procedures.
Concerns with t̀hinking as general procedures’
Although we believe that heuristics serve a useful role in
learning to think
critically, we do not regard them as the central feature of good
thinking:
there are two basic reasons why the general procedures view is
an
inadequate way of conceiving of critical thinking. We believe it
misrepre-
sents the major obstacle to good thinking, and grossly
understates the

signi® cance of contextual factors in deciding how to proceed
in any
particular case of critical thinking
On the general procedures view, the performance of certain
tasks is seen
to be a highly reliable means of achieving the desired results of
thinking.
The educational challenge is, therefore, to equip students with
repertoires
of procedures they can employ across the range of thinking
situations. In
our view, the mere performance of certain procedures identi®
ed in
descriptive terms is insu� cient to ensure that what has
happened counts
as critical thinking.
The performance of tasks such as thinking of reasons for and
against a
position, or of brainstorming alternatives, does not guarantee
that an
individual is thinking critically. The pro and con reasons that
the individual
comes up with may address only the most trivial aspects of the
issue; so,
too, the brainstorming of alternatives may miss the most
sensible alter-
natives. Learning to engage in such activities has little
educational merit
unless these things are done in such a way as to ful® l relevant
standards of

adequacy. Students have, after all, performed these sorts of
tasks for
much of their lives. The educational goal must be to teach them
to
do such tasks well by increasing their capacity and inclination
to
make judgements by reference to criteria and standards that
distinguish
thoughtful evaluations from sloppy ones, fruitful classi® cation
schemes
from trivial ones, and so on. A general procedures approach that
does
not teach standards of good thinking is unlikely to sharpen
students’
critical judgement. It is for this reason we have suggested that
critical
thinking should be characterized not in terms of procedures to
be carried
out, but in terms of the standards a performance must ful® l to
count as
successful.
Critical thinking is a polymorphous or multi-form enterprise;
there
are numerous activities that may be helpful in solving a problem
or
reaching a decision. What steps are appropriate is determined
both by
the nature of the problem and its context. They are context-
bound. For
example, in deciding whether any particular government should
support international military intervention in `civil’ wars, it is
hard to
imagine how one set of steps, or any limited set of procedures,
could

be appropriate for all such circumstances. Nor could the same
sequence
of problem-solving steps usefully be applied both to ® xing a
failing
relationship and to ® xing a civil war. Identifying both these
situations
as `problems’ masks the very di� erent factors that need to be
considered
in deciding what should be done in each case.7 Given the
diversity
of problems and problem contexts, we believe that any account
of
the steps involved in problem solving or decision making will
either be
so vague as to be largely unhelpful, or they will be so speci® c
that they
will have little generalizability beyond a speci® c class of
problems or
decisions.
To a considerable extent, what we should do in solving a
problem is
determined by the standards that must be met for the solution in
the
particular case to be successful. In the case of a failing
relationship, it may
be lack of honesty with oneself that is the problem. In deciding
whether a
government should participate in an international intervention
may involve
honesty, but it often involves considering the e� ect on the
lives of many
innocentsÐ and very large economic e� ects. Following the
decision-making
model listed above may simply be an occasion to rationalize the
self-

deception that gave rise to the personal problem in the ® rst
placeÐ or the
international problem in the ® rst place. Nurturing open-
mindedness may
be the only s̀tep’ needed to repair this situation
We are not claiming that teaching about general procedures is a
com-
pletely inappropriate way to promote critical thinking. Rather,
we empha-
size that the e� ectiveness of any procedure depends on its e�
cacy in
helping students meet the relevant standards for good thinking:
there are
no inherent or highly reliable connections between learning to
think well
and performing particular operations. Put another way, what
drives
increased competence in thinking is greater mastery of the
standards for
judging an appropriate tack to take in a particular context, not
learning pre-
programmed, supposedly generalizable, procedures.
Cr i ti c a l th i n ki n g a n d th e p e d a g o g y o f p r a c ti c e
We have reviewed three conceptions of critical thinking: skills,
processes,
and procedures. All three have been used to promote the idea
that
competence in thinking critically is gained primarily through
practice.

Thus, although we will focus in this section on the skills-
conception as a
source of the pedagogy of practice, we could just as well focus
on either the
process or the procedures view. Nickerson et al. (1985) discuss
learning
thinking skills as analogous to two ways of learning physical
skillsÐ one
when a person practises a particular skill to strengthen it; the
other where,
by appropriately directing intellectual energy, teachers replace
the novice’ s
ine� cient movements with more e� cient ones. Practice is seen
as exercis-
ing the skills of critical thinking so that improvement will take
place.
Students may, for example, be given frequent opportunities to
make
comparisons in a variety of domains so that the s̀kill of
comparing’ will
be exercised, and this aspect of critical thinking improved. We
contend,
however, that critical thinking is not promoted simply through
the repeti-
tion of s̀kills’ of thinking, but rather by developing the relevant
knowledge,
commitments and strategies and, above all, by coming to
understand what
criteria and standards are relevant. Repetition does indeed have
some role
to play, but only if it takes place in the context of the
development of such
knowledge, criteria, commitments and strategies.
The main assumption underpinning the practice view is that
critical

thinking consists of a variety of discrete skills that can be
improved through
repetition. On this view critical thinking skills are analogous to
skills in an
athletic endeavour such as soccer, where it is possible to
practise kicking,
heading the ball, passing, etc., and to develop skill at each of
these
constituent activities independently of ever playing a football
game. One
repeats the skill until it has become routinized and one no
longer needs to
apply conscious attention to its execution.
However, this is not an appropriate model for what is involved
in
becoming better at critical thinking. Unlike athletic skill, skill
in critical
thinking cannot be separated from understanding the nature and
purpose of
the task one is attempting to accomplish.8 Becoming better at
comparing,
for example, involves learning to make comparisons according
to relevant
criteria, making comparisons which are appropriate to the
particular
circumstances, comparing with a view to the reason the
comparison is
being made, and so on.
We argued earlier that critical thinking cannot be characterized
in terms
of speci® c mental processes, and that there are no good
grounds for
supposing that terms like comparing, classifying and inferring
denote

generic mental processes which one can improve through
repetition.
Here, we emphasize that all aspects of critical thinking centrally
involve
judgement, and judgement cannot be made routine. Scheƒ er
(1965: 103)
makes this point with reference to chess:
critical skills call for strategic judgement and cannot be
rendered automatic.
To construe the learning of chess as a matter of drill would thus
be quite
wrong-headed in suggesting that the same game be played over
and over
again, or intimating that going through the motions of playing
repeatedly
somehow improves one’s game. What is rather supposed, at
least in the case
of chess, is that improvement comes about through development
of strategic
judgement, which requires that such judgement be allowed
opportunity to
guide choices in a wide variety of games, with maximal
opportunity for
evaluating relevant outcomes and re¯ ecting upon alternative
principles and
strategy in the light of such evaluation.
An examination of those areas where practice is helpfulÐ for
example
artistic performanceÐ makes evident that useful practice

involves far more
than mere repetition. Practising the piano is not simply a matter
of
continually repeating a piece in the same manner, but rather of
being
alert to and attempting to correct errors and continually striving
for
improvement according to the standards of quality performance.
Dewey
(1964: 201) makes the point that simply sawing a bow across
violin strings
will not make a violinist.
It is a certain quality of practice, not mere practice, which
produces the
expert and the artist. Unless the practice is based upon rational
principles,
upon insights into facts and their meaning, èxperience’ simply
® xes incorrect
acts into wrong habits.
Howard (1982: 161, 162) also maintains that practice is not
mere repetition,
but claims that it is, rather, repetition which is g̀uided by
speci® c aims
such as solving various kinds of problems’ or ìmproving
acquired skills’ ,
and ìn accord with some . . . criteria of performance’ which
enable one to
judge the level of mastery of the activity. Thus, he states:
Rather than mechanically duplicating a passage, one strives for
particular
goals, say, of ¯ uency, contrast, or balance. Successive repeats
re¯ ect a drive
toward such goals rather than passive absorption of a sequence

of motor acts.
The question arises at this point as to how critical thinking can
best be
developed and what role practice plays in this development. We
have
argued that what characterizes thinking which is critical is the
quality of the
reasoning. Thus, in order to become a (more) critical thinker
one must
understand what constitutes quality reasoning, and have the
commitments
relevant to employing and seeking quality reasoning. The
knowledge
necessary for such understanding includes background
knowledge relevant
to the context in question, knowledge of the principles and
standards of
argumentation and inquiry, both in general and in specialized
areas,
knowledge of critical concepts, and knowledge of relevant
strategies and
heuristics. The kinds of habits of mind, commitments or
sensitivities
necessary for being a critical thinker include such things as
open-mind-
edness, fair-mindedness, the desire for truth, an inquiring
attitude and a
respect for high-quality products and performances. Thus,
fostering criti-
cal thinking would involve the development of such knowledge
and
commitments.
A variety of means may be employed to promote such
development,

including direct instruction, teacher modelling, creation of an
educational
environment where critical inquiry is valued and nurtured, and
provision
for students of frequent opportunities to think critically about
meaningful
challenges with appropriate feedback. Practice may also have a
role to play,
but it must be understood that it is not practice in the sense of a
simple
repetition of a skill, process or procedure. Rather such practice
presupposes
the kind of knowledge outlined above, and involves the
development of
critical judgement through applying this knowledge in a variety
of contexts.
It also involves attempts on the part of the learner to improve
according to
speci® c criteria of performance, and frequent feedback and
evaluation with
respect to the quality of thinking demonstrated.
N o te s
1. See, for example, Presseisen (1986).
2. Some examples are Worsham and Stockton (1986) and Beyer
(1991).
3. One fairly recent example of the use of this tripartite division
of goals is to be found in
British Columbia Ministry of Education (1991a, b).

4. It is, of course, a category mistake to talk about `doing’
processes; processes happen;
people do not do them.
5. One which comes close to this is found in a document
produced by a Canadian Ministry
of Education (British Columbia Ministry of Education 1991b:
15) which refers to
t̀hirteen thinking operations: observation, comparing,
classifying, making hypotheses,
imagining . . . ’ .
6. The `Decide Model’ is used in an introductory text on
economic reasoning (described in
Mackey 1977: 410).
7. According to Mackey (1977: 408) problem solving is t̀he
application of an organized
method of reasoning to a di� cult, perplexing or bewildering
situation’.
8. This is not to deny that many activities, such as football,
deeply involveÐ in addition to
skillsÐ critical thinking.
R e fe r e n c e s
BARROW, R. (1991) The generic fallacy. Educational
Philosophy and Theory, 23 (1), 7± 17.
BEACH, R. (1987) Strategic teaching in literature. In B. F.
Jones, A. S. Palincsar, D. S. Ogle
and E. G. Carr (eds), S trategic Teaching and L earning:
Cognitive Instruction in the
Content Areas (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision

and Curriculum
Development), 135± 159.
BEYER, B. K. (1987) Practical S trategies for the Teaching of
Thinking (Boston: Allyn &
Bacon).
BEYER, B. K. (1991) Teaching Thinking Skills: A Handbook
for Elementary S chool Teachers
(Boston: Allyn & Bacon).
BRITISH COLUMBIA MINISTRY OF EDUCATION (1991a)
Thinking in the Classroom (Resources for
Teachers), V olume One: The Context for Thoughtful L earning
(Victoria, BC:
Assessment, Examinations, and Reporting Branch, Ministry of
Education and
Ministry Responsible for Multiculturalism and Human Rights).
BRITISH COLUMBIA MINISTRY OF EDUCATION (1991b)
Thinking in the Classroom (Resources
for Teachers), V olume Two: Experiences that Enhance
Thoughtful L earning (Victoria,
BC: Assessment, Examinations, and Reporting Branch, Ministry
of Education and
Ministry Responsible for Multiculturalism and Human Rights).
CHUSKA, K. R. (1986) Teaching the Process of Thinking, K-
12, Fastback 244 (Bloomington,
IN: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation).
DEWEY, J. (1964) What psychology can do for the teacher. In
R. D. Archambault (ed.), John
Dewey on Education: Selected Writings (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press), 195±
211.

ENNIS, R. H. (1987) A taxonomy of critical thinking
dispositions and abilities. In J. B. Baron
and R. J. Sternberg (eds), Teaching Thinking S kills: Theory
and Practice (New York:
Freeman), 9± 26.
FACIONE, P. A. (1990) Critical thinking: A statement of expert
consensus for purposes of
educational assessment and instruction: Research ® ndings and
recommendations (The
Delphi Report). Prepared for the Committee on Pre-College
Philosophy of the
American Philosophical Association. ERIC ED 315 423.
GLASER, R. (1984) Education and thinking: the role of
knowledge. American Psychologist, 39
(2), 93± 104.
HOWARD, V. A. (1982) Artistry: The Work of Artists
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett).
KIRBY, D. and KUYKENDALL, C., 1991, Mind Matters:
Teaching for Thinking (Portsmouth,
NH: Boynton/Cook).
MACKEY, J. (1977) Three problem-solving models for the
elementary classroom. S ocial
Education, 41 (5), 408± 410.
MARZANO, R. J., BRANDT, R. S., HUGHES, C. S., JONES, B.
F., PRESSEISEN, B. Z., RANKIN,

C. S. and SUHOR, C. (1988) Dimensions of Thinking: A
Framework for Curriculum and
Instruction (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and
Curriculum
Development).
MCPECK, J. E. (1981) Critical Thinking and Education
(Oxford: Martin Robertson).
NICKERSON, R. S., PERKINS, D. N. and SMITH, E. E., 1985,
The Teaching of Thinking
(Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum).
OVERGAARD, V. (1989) Focus on thinking: Towards
developing a common understanding. In
R. W. Marx (ed.), Curriculum: Towards Developing a Common
Understanding: A
Report to the British Columbia Ministry of Education
(Vancouver, BC: Vancouver
School District), 5± 34.
PAUL, R. W. (1982) Teaching critical thinking in the strong
sense: a focus on self-deception,
world views, and dialectical mode of analysis. Informal L ogic,
4 (2), 2± 7.
PAUL, R. W. (1984) Critical thinking: fundamental to education
for a free society. Educational
L eadership, 42 (1), 4± 14.
PRESSEISEN, B. Z. (1986) Critical Thinking and Thinking
Skills: S tate-of-the-Art De® nitions
and Practice in Public S chools (Philadelphia: Research for
Better Schools).
SCHEFFLER, I. (1965) Conditions of Knowledge: An

Introduction to Epistemology and
Education (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman).
SIEGEL, H. (1988) Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical
Thinking, and Education (New
York: Routledge).
WHITE, A. R. (1967) T he Philosophy of Mind (New York:
Random House).
WORSHAM, A. M. and STOCKTON, A. J. (1986) A Model for
Teaching Thinking Skills: The
Inclusion Process, Fastback 236 (Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta
Kappa).
WRIGHT, I. (1993) Inquiry, problem-solving, and decision
making in elementary social studies
methods textbooks. Journal of S ocial Studies Research, 16± 17
(1), 26± 32.
American Library Association
Library Technology
R E P O R T S
E x p e r t G u i d e s t o L i b r a r y S y s t e m s a n d S e r
v i c e s
alatechsource.org

Combating Fake News in the Digital Age
Joanna M. Burkhardt
http://alatechsource.org
Library Technology
R E P O R T S
Abstract
The issue of fake news has become very prominent
in recent months. Its power to mislead and misinform
has been made evident around the world. While fake
news is not a new phenomenon, the means by which
it is spread has changed in both speed and magni-
tude. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twit-
ter, and Instagram are fertile ground for the spread
of fake news. Algorithms known as bots are increas-
ingly being deployed to manipulate information, to
disrupt social media communication, and to gain user
attention. While technological assistance to identify
fake news are beginning to appear, they are in their
infancy. It will take time for programmers to create
software that can recognize and tag fake news with-
out human intervention. Even if technology can help
to identify fake news in the future, those who seek to
create and provide fake news will also be creating the
means to continue, creating a loop in which those who
want to avoid fake news are always playing catch up.
Individuals have the responsibility to protect
themselves from fake news. It is essential to teach
ourselves and our students and patrons to be critical

consumers of news. This issue of Library Technology
Reports (vol. 53, no. 8), “Combating Fake News in the
Digital Age,” is for librarians who serve all age levels
and who can help by teaching students both that they
need to be aware and how to be aware of fake news.
Library instruction in how to avoid fake news, how
to identify fake news, and how to stop fake news will
be essential.
Library Technology Reports (ISSN 0024-2586) is published
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year (January, March, April, June, July, September, October,
and Decem-
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and the American Library Association state that the names are
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trademarks. There is absolutely no intention of infringement on
the rights
of the trademark owners.
Copyright © 2017

Joanna M. Burkhardt
All Rights Reserved.
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Volume 53, Number 8
Combating Fake News in the Digital Age
ISBN: 978-0-8389-5991-6
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About the Author
Joanna M. Burkhardt is Full Professor/Librarian at the
University of Rhode Island Libraries. She is Director of
the branch libraries in Providence and Narragansett and
the URI Libraries Collection Development Manager. She
earned an MA in anthropology from the University of
Wisconsin–Madison in 1981 and an MLS from the Uni-
versity of Rhode Island in 1986. She has taught informa-
tion literacy to both students and teachers since 1999.
She has given workshops, presentations, podcasts, key-
note addresses, and panel discussions about information
literacy. She is coauthor or author of four books about
information literacy. She addressed the topic of fake news
at the ALA Annual Conference in 2017 and designed a
poster and bookmark on that topic for ALA Graphics.
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Chapter 1—History of Fake News 5

Pre–Printing Press Era 5
Post–Printing Press Era 5
Mass Media Era 6
Internet Era 6
Global Reach of Fake News 7
Notes 8
Chapter 2— How Fake News Spreads 10
Word of Mouth 10
Written Word 10
Printed Media 11
Internet 11
Social Media 12
Notes 12
Chapter 3—Can Technology Save Us? 14
Technology of Fake News 14
Big Data 15
Bots 15
Experiments in Fake News Detection 16
Experiments in Bot and Botnet Detection 17
Google and Facebook Anti–Fake News Efforts 18
Notes 19
Chapter 4—Can We Save Ourselves? 22
Learn about Search Engine Ranking 22
Be Careful about Who You “Friend” 22
ID Bots 23
Read before Sharing 23
Fact-Check 24
Evaluate Information 24
Seek Information beyond Your Filter Bubble 26
Be Skeptical 26
Use Verification and Educational Tools 26
Notes 27

Chapter 5—How Can We Help Our Students? 29
Teach Information or Media Literacy 29
Make Students Aware of Psychological Processes 30
Tie Information Literacy to Workplace Applications 30
Teach Students to Evaluate Information 31
Teach Information Literacy Skills and Concepts 31
Teach the Teachers 32
Conclusion 32
Notes 33
Contents
5
Lib
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o
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7

Combating Fake News in the Digital Age Joanna M. Burkhardt
History of Fake News
“Massive digital misinformation is becoming pervasive
in online social media to the extent that it has been listed
by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as one of the main
threats to our society.”1
F
ake news is nothing new. While fake news was in
the headlines frequently in the 2016 US election
cycle, the origins of fake news date back to before
the printing press. Rumor and false stories have prob-
ably been around as long as humans have lived in
groups where power matters. Until the printing press
was invented, news was usually transferred from per-
son to person via word of mouth. The ability to have
an impact on what people know is an asset that has
been prized for many centuries.
Pre–Printing Press Era
Forms of writing inscribed on materials like stone,
clay, and papyrus appeared several thousand years
ago. The information in these writings was usually
limited to the leaders of the group (emperors, pha-
raohs, Incas, religious and military leaders, and so on).
Controlling information gave some people power over
others and has probably contributed to the creation
of most of the hierarchical cultures we know today.
Knowledge is power. Those controlling knowledge,
information, and the means to disseminate informa-
tion became group leaders, with privileges that others

in the group did not have. In many early state soci-
eties, remnants of the perks of leadership remain—
pyramids, castles, lavish household goods, and more.
Some of the information that has survived, carved
in stone or baked on tablets or drawn in pictograms,
extolled the wonder and power of the leaders. Often
these messages were reminders to the common peo-
ple that the leader controlled their lives. Others were
created to insure that an individual leader would be
remembered for his great prowess, his success in bat-
tle, or his great leadership skills. Without means to
verify the claims, it’s hard to know whether the infor-
mation was true or fake news.
In the sixth century AD, Procopius of Caesarea
(500–ca. 554 AD), the principal historian of Byzan-
tium, used fake news to smear the Emperor Justin-
ian.2 While Procopius supported Justinian during his
lifetime, after the emperor’s death Procopius released
a treatise called Secret History that discredited the
emperor and his wife. As the emperor was dead, there
could be no retaliation, questioning, or investigations.
Since the new emperor did not favor Justinian, it is
possible the author had a motivation to distance him-
self from Justinian’s court, using the stories (often
wild and unverifiable) to do so.
Post–Printing Press Era
The invention of the printing press and the concurrent
spread of literacy made it possible to spread informa-
tion more widely. Those who were literate could eas-
ily use that ability to manipulate information to those
who were not literate. As more people became liter-

ate, it became more difficult to mislead by misrepre-
senting what was written.
As literacy rates increased, it eventually became
economically feasible to print and sell informa-
tion. This made the ability to write convincingly
and authoritatively on a topic a powerful skill. Lead-
ers have always sought to have talented writers in
their employ and to control what information was
Chapter 1
6
Li
b
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T
e
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p
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s
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ec
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N
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m
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2
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1
7
produced. Printed information became available in
different formats and from different sources. Books,
newspapers, broadsides, and cartoons were often cre-
ated by writers who had a monetary incentive. Some
were paid by a publisher to provide real news. Others,
it seems, were paid to write information for the ben-
efit of their employer.
In 1522, Italian author and satirist Pietro Aret-
ino wrote wicked sonnets, pamphlets, and plays. He
self-published his correspondence with the nobility of
Italy, using their letters to blackmail former friends
and patrons. If those individuals failed to provide the
money he required, their indiscretions became pub-
lic. He took the Roman style of pasquino—anonymous
lampooning—to a new level of satire and parody.
While his writings were satirical (not unlike today’s
Saturday Night Live satire), they planted the seeds of
doubt in the minds of their readers about the people in
power in Italy and helped to shape the complex politi -
cal reality of the time.3

Aretino’s pasquinos were followed by a French
variety of fake news known as the canard. The French
word canard can be used to mean an unfounded rumor
or story. Canards were rife during the seventeenth cen-
tury in France. One canard reported that a monster,
captured in Chile, was being shipped to France. This
report included an engraving of a dragon-like creature.
During the French Revolution the face of Marie Antoi-
nette was superimposed onto the dragon. The revised
image was used to disparage the queen.4 The resulting
surge in unpopularity for the queen may have contrib-
uted to her harsh treatment during the revolution.
Jonathan Swift complained about political fake
news in 1710 in his essay “The Art of Political Lying.”
He spoke about the damage that lies can do, whether
ascribed to a particular author or anonymous: “False-
hood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that
when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the
jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.”5 Swift’s
descriptions of fake news in politics in 1710 are
remarkably similar to those of writers of the twenty-
first century.
American writer Edgar Allan Poe in 1844 wrote a
hoax newspaper article claiming that a balloonist had
crossed the Atlantic in a hot air balloon in only three
days.6 His attention to scientific details and the plau-
sibility of the idea caused many people to believe the
account until reporters failed to find the balloon or
the balloonist. The story was retracted four days after
publication. Poe is credited with writing at least six
stories that turned out to be fake news.7
Mass Media Era

Father Ronald Arbuthnott Knox did a fake news
broadcast in January 1926 called “Broadcasting the
Barricades” on BBC radio.8 During this broadcast Knox
implied that London was being attacked by Commu-
nists, Parliament was under siege, and the Savoy Hotel
and Big Ben had been blown up. Those who tuned in
late did not hear the disclaimer that the broadcast was
a spoof and not an actual news broadcast. This dra-
matic presentation, coming only a few months after
the General Strike in England, caused a minor panic
until the story could be explained.
This fake news report was famously followed by
Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938.
The War of the Worlds was published as a book in 1898,
but those who did not read science fiction were unfa-
miliar with the story. The presentation of the story as a
radio broadcast again caused a minor panic, this time
in the United States, as there were few clues to indi-
cate that reports of a Martian invasion were fictional.
While this broadcast was not meant to be fake news,
those who missed the introduction didn’t know that.9
On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Daily Tribune
editors were so certain of the outcome of the previ-
ous day’s presidential election that they published the
paper with a headline stating, “Dewey Defeats Tru-
man.” An iconic picture shows President Truman hold-
ing up the newspaper with the erroneous headline.
The caption for the picture quotes Truman as saying,
“That ain’t the way I heard it.”10 The paper, of course,
retracted the statement and reprinted the paper with
the correct news later in the day. This incident is one
reason that journalists at reputable news outlets are
required to verify information a number of times

before publication.
It is easy to see that fake news has existed for a
long time. From the few examples described above,
the effects of fake news have ranged widely, from
amusement to death. Some authors of fake news prob-
ably had benign motivations for producing it. Others
appear to have intended to harm individuals, families,
or governments. The intended and unintended con-
sequences of fake news of the pre-internet era were
profound and far-reaching for the time. As the means
of spreading fake news increased, the consequences
became increasingly serious.
Internet Era
In the late twentieth century, the internet provided
new means for disseminating fake news on a vastly
increased scale. When the internet was made pub-
licly available, it was possible for anyone who had a
computer to access it. At the same time, innovations
in computers made them affordable to the average
person. Making information available on the inter-
net became a new way to promote products as well
as make information available to everyone almost
instantly.
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Some fake websites were created in the early years
of generalized web use. Some of these hoax websites
were satire. Others were meant to mislead or deliber-
ately spread biased or fake news. Early library instruc-
tion classes used these types of website as cautionary
examples of what an internet user needed to look for.
Using a checklist of criteria to identify fake news web-
sites was relatively easy. A few hoax website favor-
ites are
• DHMO.org. This website claims that the com-
pound DHMO (Dihydrogen Monoxide), a compo-
nent of just about everything, has been linked to
terrible problems such as cancer, acid rain, and
global warming. While everything suggested on
the website is true, it is not until one’s high school
chemistry kicks in that the joke is revealed—
DHMO and H2O are the same thing.
• Feline Reactions to Bearded Men. Another popular

piece of fake news is a “research study” regarding
the reactions of cats to bearded men. This study is
reported as if it had been published in a scientific
journal. It includes a literature review, a descrip-
tion of the experiment, the raw data resulting
from the experiment, and the conclusions reached
by the researchers as a result. It is not until the
reader gets to the bibliography of the article that
the experiment is revealed to be a hoax. Included
in the bibliography are articles supposedly writ-
ten by Madonna Louise Ciccone (Madonna the
singer), A. Schwartzenegger (Arnold, perhaps?),
and Doctor Seuss and published in journals such
as the Western Musicology Journal, Tonsological
Proceedings, and the Journal of Feline Forensic
Studies.
• city-mankato.us. One of the first websites to make
use of website technology to mislead and mis-
direct was a fake site for the city of Mankato,
Minnesota. This website describes the climate
as temperate to tropical, claiming that a geologi-
cal anomaly allows the Mankato Valley to enjoy
a year-round temperature of no less than 70
degrees Fahrenheit, while providing snow year-
round at nearby Mount Kroto. It reported that one
could watch the summer migration of whales up
the Minnesota River. An insert shows a picture of
a beach, with a second insert showing the current
temperature—both tropical. The website proudly
announces that it is a Yahoo “Pick of the Week”
site and has been featured by the New York Times
and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Needless to say,
no geological anomaly of this type exists in Min-
nesota. Whales do not migrate up (or down) the
Minnesota River at any time, and the pictures of

the beaches and the thermometer are actually
showing beaches and temperatures from places
very far south of Mankato. It is true that Yahoo,
the New York Times, and the Minneapolis Star Tri-
bune featured this website, but not for the rea-
sons you might think. When fake news could still
be amusing, this website proved both clever and
ironic.
• MartinLutherKing.org. This website was created
by Stormfront, a white supremacist group, to try
to mislead readers about the Civil Rights activ-
ist by discrediting his work, his writing, and his
personal life.11 The fact that the website used the
.org domain extension convinced a number of
people that it was unbiased because the domain
extension was usually associated with nonprofit
organizations working for good. The authors of
the website did not reveal themselves nor did they
state their affiliations. Using Martin Luther King’s
name for the website insured that people looking
for information about King could easily arrive at
this fake news website. This website is no longer
active.
HOAX Websites
DHMO.org
www.dhmo.org
“Feline Reactions to Bearded Men”
www.improbable.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html
“Mankato, Minnesota”
http://city-mankato.us

“Martin Luther King, Jr.”
www.martinlutherking.org
Global Reach of Fake News
Initial forays into the world of fake news fall into the
category of entertainment, satire, and parody. They
are meant to amuse or to instruct the unwary. Canards
and other news that fall into the category of misinfor-
mation and misdirection, like the Martin Luther King
website, often have more sinister and serious motives.
In generations past, newspaper readers were warned
that just because something was printed in the news-
paper did not mean that it was true. In the twenty-first
century, the same could be said about the internet.
People of today create fake news for many of the same
reasons that people of the past did. A number of new
twists help to drive the creation and spread of fake
news that did not exist until recently.
Twenty-first-century economic incentives have
increased the motivation to supply the public with
fake news. The internet is now funded by advertisers
http://www.dhmo.org
http://www.improbable.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html
http://city-mankato.us/
http://www.martinlutherking.org
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rather than by the government. Advertisers are in
business to get information about their products to as
many people as possible. Advertisers will pay a website
owner to allow their advertising to be shown, just as
they might pay a newspaper publisher to print adver-

tisements in the paper. How do advertisers decide in
which websites to place their ads? Using computing
power to collect the data, it is possible to count the
number of visits and visitors to individual sites. Popu-
lar websites attract large numbers of people who visit
those sites, making them attractive to advertisers. The
more people who are exposed to the products adver-
tisers want to sell, the more sales are possible. The fee
paid to the website owners by the advertisers rewards
website owners for publishing popular information
and provides an incentive to create more content that
will attract more people to the site.
People are attracted to gossip, rumor, scandal,
innuendo, and the unlikely. Access Hollywood on TV
and the National Enquirer at the newsstand have used
human nature to make their products popular. That
popularity attracts advertisers. In a Los Angeles Times
op-ed, Matthew A. Baum and David Lazer report
“Another thing we know is that shocking claims stick
in your memory. A long-standing body of research
shows that people are more likely to attend to and
later recall a sensational or negative headline, even if
a fact checker flags it as suspect.”12
In the past several years, people have created web-
sites that capitalize on those nonintellectual aspects
of human nature. Advertisers are interested in how
many people will potentially be exposed to their prod-
ucts, rather than the truth or falsity of the content
of the page on which the advertising appears. Unfor-
tunately, sites with sensational headlines or sugges-
tive content tend to be very popular, generating large
numbers of visits to those sites and creating an adver-
tising opportunity. Some advertisers will capitalize on
this human propensity for sensation by paying writ-

ers of popular content without regard for the actual
content at the site. The website can report anything it
likes, as long as it attracts a large number of people.
This is how fake news is monetized, providing incen-
tives for writers to concentrate on the sensational
rather than the truthful.
The problem with most sensational information
is that it is not always based on fact, or those facts
are twisted in some way to make the story seem like
something it is not. It is sometimes based on no infor-
mation at all. For example:
Creators of fake news found that they could cap-
ture so much interest that they could make money
off fake news through automated advertising that
rewards high traffic to their sites. A man running
a string of fake news sites from the Los Angeles
suburbs told NPR he made between $10,000 and
$30,000 a month. A computer science student in
the former Soviet republic of Georgia told the New
York Times that creating a new website and filling
it with both real stories and fake news that flat-
tered Trump was a “gold mine.”13
Technological advances have increased the spread
of information and democratized its consumption
globally. There are obvious benefits associated with
instantaneous access to information. The dissemina-
tion of information allows ideas to be shared and for-
merly inaccessible regions to be connected. It makes
choices available and provides a platform for many
points of view.
However, in a largely unregulated medium, sup-

ported and driven by advertising, the incentive for
good is often outweighed by the incentive to make
money, and this has a major impact on how the
medium develops over time. Proliferation of fake
news is one outcome. While the existence of fake news
is not new, the speed at which it travels and the global
reach of the technology that can spread it are unprec-
edented. Fake news exists in the same context as real
news on the internet. The problem seems to be distin-
guishing between what is fake and what is real.
Notes
1. Michela Del Vicario, Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zollo,
Fabio Petroni, Antonio Scala, Guido Caldarelli, H.
Eugene Stanley, and Walter Quattrociocchi, “The
Spreading of Misinformation Online,” Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
of America 113, no. 3 (January 19, 2016): 534, https://
doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517441113.
2. Procopius, Secret History, trans. Richard Atwater (New
York: Covici Friede; Chicago: P. Covici, 1927; repr. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), https://
sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/procop-anec.asp.
3. “Pietro Aretino,” Wikipedia, last updated August 7,
2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Aretino.
4. Robert Darnton, “The True History of Fake News,”
NYR Daily (blog), New York Review of Books, Febru-
ary 13, 2017, http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017
/02/13/the-true-history-of-fake-news/.
5. Jonathan Swift, “The Art of Political Lying,” Ex-
aminer, no. 14 (November 9, 1710), para. 9, repr. in

Richard Nordquist, “The Art of Political Lying, by
Jonathan Swift,” ThoughtCo., last updated March 20,
2016, https://www.thoughtco.com/art-of-political
-lying-by-swift-1690138.
6. Edgar Allan Poe, “The Balloon Hoax,” published
1844, reprinted in PoeStories.com, accessed
September 6, 2017, https://poestories.com/read
/balloonhoax.
7. Gilbert Arevalo, “The Six Hoaxes of Edgar Al-
lan Poe,” HubPages, last updated March 30, 2017,
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-Six-Hoaxes
-of-Edgar-Allan-Poe.
8. A. Brad Schwartz, “Broadcasting the Barricades,” A.
Brad Schwartz website, January 16, 2015, https://
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517441113
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517441113
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/procop-anec.asp
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/procop-anec.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Aretino
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/02/13/the-true-history-of-
fake-news/
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/02/13/the-true-history-of-
fake-news/
https://www.thoughtco.com/art-of-political-lying-by-swift-
1690138
https://www.thoughtco.com/art-of-political-lying-by-swift-
1690138
https://poestories.com/read/balloonhoax
https://poestories.com/read/balloonhoax
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-Six-Hoaxes-of-Edgar-
Allan-Poe
https://hubpages.com/literature/The-Six-Hoaxes-of-Edgar-

Allan-Poe
https://abradschwartz.com/2015/01/16/broadcasting-the-
barricades/
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abradschwartz.com/2015/01/16/broadcasting
-the-barricades/.
9. “The War of the Worlds (radio drama),” Wikipedia,
last updated August 24, 2017, https://en.wikipedia
.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama).
10. Tim Jones, “Dewey Defeats Truman,” Chicago Tri-

bune website, accessed September 6, 2017, www
.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics
/chi-chicagodays-deweydefeats-story-story.html.
11. Keith Thomson, “White Supremacist Site Martin-
LutherKing.org Marks 12th Anniversary,” The Blog,
HuffPost, last updated May 26, 2011, www.huffing
tonpost.com/entry/white-supremacist-site-ma_b
_809755.html.
12. Matthew A. Baum and David Lazer, “Google and
Facebook Aren’t Fighting Fake News with the Right
Weapons,” op-ed, Los Angeles Times, May 8, 2017,
www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-baum
-lazer-how-to-fight-fake-news-20170508-story.html.
13. Angie Drobnic Holan, “2016 Lie of the Year: Fake
News,” PolitiFact, December 13, 2016, www.politi
fact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/dec/13
/2016-lie-year-fake-news/.
barricades/
barricades/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_d
rama)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_d
rama)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/chi-
chicagodays-deweydefeats-story-story.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/chi -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/chi -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-thomson/white-

supremacist-site-ma_b_809755.html
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-baum-lazer-how-
to-fight-fake-news-20170508-story.html
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-baum-lazer-how-
to-fight-fake-news-20170508-story.html
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/article/2016/dec/13/2016-lie-year-fake-news/
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How Fake News Spreads
Word of Mouth
News has always been disseminated by word of mouth.
Early humans lived in small groups, moving from place
to place as needs required. As the human population
grew, there was greater need for communication. Con-
tact between groups became more common, and the
connections between groups became more complex.1
News was still spread by word of mouth, but there was
more to tell. There were, of course, subsistence details
to convey, but there was also family news to share,
gossip to pass on, fashion trends to consider, and theo-
logical questions to answer. There were few means to
verify news that came from outside the local group.
If a traveler arrived from a distance and said that the
people in the next large town were wearing silk rather
than skins, there was no way to verify this informa-

tion without visiting the distant place in person.
Presumably as people came to view local resources
as belonging to the group, there might have been
incentive to mislead outsiders about the size of the
population protecting those resources or to understate
the quality or amount of resources. If a resource was
scarce or valuable, there might be reason to provide
misinformation. However, because news was oral,
there is no record. We can’t know exactly what was
said.
Written Word
Groups began to create tools that would allow them
to tell a story, keep track of numbers, give direc-
tions, and so on about the same time as populations
became sedentary and began to grow. In the Middle
East, farmers, landowners, politicians, and family
historians began to invent the means to keep track
of, remember, and convey information.2 Some groups
used pictures, some used counting devices, and even-
tually systems of writing were born. Written informa-
tion posed its own set of problems.
First, there is the problem of writing material.
Some people used stone for a writing surface.3 Mark-
ing stone takes a lot of time and effort. The result
is permanent, but it is hard to carry around. Some
groups used clay as a writing surface.4 This is a terrific
material to use if you want to make your information
permanent. Mark the clay, fire it, and the information
is available for a long period of time. The downside
of clay is that it is relatively heavy, it takes up a lot
of room, and it breaks easily. This makes it somewhat

difficult to transport. The Egyptians used papyrus
(labor intensive and expensive).5 Native Americans
used tree bark (delicate and easily damaged).6 Peo-
ple with herds of animals used animal skins to make
parchment and vellum (not always available when
required, lots of preparation needed).7 The Incas used
knotted cords called quipus that acted as mnemonic
devices as well as counting devices.8
Second, not everyone knew the secret of how to
interpret the writing between groups or even inside
a group. If knowledge is power, knowing how to read
allowed people to assume the reins of power and to
limit access to information, thus controlling what
people did or did not know. This control made people
dependent on those who knew the secret. As we saw
above, some people did not hesitate to offer fake news
to serve their own purposes to manipulate or influ-
ence those who could not read.
While the elite used systems of writing, the non-
literate members of the group would have continued
to use word-of-mouth transmission of information.
Chapter 2
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Information was conveyed from those in power by
proclamation. A representative of the leader would be
sent to read out a message to those who could not read
but who had a need to know. Again there was no guar-
antee that the information being read was written
truthfully, nor that it was read accurately to the non-
literate public. What people knew in the early stages
of literacy was controlled by the literate.
Different writing systems required translators to
convey information between groups. Here again, the
honesty and or accuracy of the translation had a large
effect on the exact information that people received.
The same is true today. We often see articles that
essentially “translate” information from highly tech-
nical and specialized fields into information most peo-
ple can understand. The translator’s motives can influ-
ence what is reported and what language is used to
report it. In the Wild West of the internet world, it’s
hard to know what a translator’s motives are without
spending an inordinate amount of time checking out

the author’s credentials.
Printed Media
As more people became literate, it became harder
to control information. More information appeared
in printed form. More kinds of information were
shared.9 Printed information was carried from place
to place, and as new and faster means of transpor-
tation became available, people got news faster and
more often. As means of spreading news widely and
quickly, without intervention or translation, became
more common, it was harder to control the messages
people saw and heard. Newspapers, magazines, tele-
graph, and eventually radio, television, and the inter-
net provided multiple avenues to transmit informa-
tion without necessarily getting permission from the
state or other power holder. As new media inventions
became viable, they were used to share the news and
other information, creating a wide range of options
for news seekers.
Internet
With the birth and spread of the internet, it was
thought that a truly democratic and honest means of
sharing information had arrived. Control of the con-
tent accessible via the internet is difficult (but not
impossible), making former information power hold-
ers less powerful. Anyone with access and a desire to
share their thoughts could use the internet to do so.
At first the technological requirements for creating
a web page were beyond most individuals, but com-
panies who saw a market built software that allowed
“non-programmers” to create a web page without any

knowledge of the computer code that was actually
responsible for transmitting the message.
Information can now come from anywhere and
at any time. Literally billions of actors can partici-
pate in the spread of information. The rate of flow
of information and the sheer volume of information
are overwhelming and exhausting. The democratiza-
tion in information allows everyone and anyone to
participate and includes information from bad actors,
biased viewpoints, ignorant or uninformed opinion—
all coming at internet users with the velocity of a fire
hose. The glut of information is akin to having no
information at all, as true information looks exactly
like untrue, biased, and satirical information.
Added to the overwhelming amount of informa-
tion available today is the impossibility for anyone to
know something about everything. The details about
how things work or what makes them function are
beyond most individuals. What makes a cellphone
work? What happens when you store something “in
the cloud”? How does a hybrid car engine know which
part of the engine to use when? What is the statis-
tical margin of error, and how does it affect polls?
Are vaccines harmful? Did the Holocaust really hap-
pen? Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states, “Any suffi-
ciently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.”10 What this means in terms of fake news is that
people are vulnerable to being misinformed because,
in a world where all things seem possible, they have
little or no basis for separating truth from fiction. It’s
hard to find a trusted source, so all sources must be
trustworthy or all must be suspect.
When the internet was made available to the gen-

eral public in the 1990s, it was seen as a means of
democratizing access to information. The amount of
information that became available began as a trickle
and turned into a Niagara, fed by a roaring river of
new content. It became wearisome and then almost
impossible to find a single piece of information in
the torrent. Search engines were developed that used
both human and computer power to sort, categorize,
and contain much of the content on the internet. Even-
tually Google became the go-to means for both access
to and control of the flood of information available,
becoming so common that Google became a verb.
Computerization of information has a number of
benefits. Large amounts of information can be stored
in increasingly small spaces. Records of many kinds
have become public because they can be conveyed
electronically. With the advent of the internet, peo-
ple can benefit from the combination of computeriza-
tion and access, allowing information to be sent and
received when and where it is needed. New devices
have been invented to supply the fast and furious
appetite for information. New types of information
and new avenues for communication have become
commonplace in the last decade. More and newer
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versions of devices and platforms appear with increas-
ing frequency. Originally this explosion of informa-
tion available to the public was viewed as the democ-
ratization of power for the benefit of everyone, but
this view didn’t last long.11
This utopian view of the benefits of the comput-
erization of information began to be overshadowed

almost immediately. The concept of free information
for the masses required that someone other than the
consumers of that information pay for it. To make pay-
ing for the internet attractive, data was needed. Auto-
matic software programs were developed to perform
repetitive tasks that gathered data. These programs
were known as bots—short for robots. What they col-
lected became a commodity. Data collected by bots
showed what sites were being used and what prod-
ucts were being purchased, by whom, and how often.
This information could be used to convince advertis-
ers to pay to place their advertisements on websites.
The data could also be offered for sale to prospective
clients to use for their own purposes. Through using
bots, it became possible to harvest a wide variety of
information that could be sold. Once bots were suc-
cessfully programmed to collect and send informa-
tion, that ability was expanded for uses far beyond
simple advertising.
Social Media
The advent of social media presented another oppor-
tunity for advertising to specific and targeted groups
of people. On social media sites such as Facebook and
Twitter, information is often personal. These platforms
are used to find like-minded people, to stay in touch
with family and friends, to report the news of the day,
and to create networks among people. These platforms
provide an easy way to share information and to make
connections. Social media networks provide a short-
hand method of communication using icons to indi-
cate approval and various emotions. This allows peo-
ple to respond to items posted on their pages without
actually having to write something themselves. If they
enjoy something, the push of a button allows that mes-

sage to be conveyed. It they wish to share the infor-
mation with friends and followers, a single click can
accomplish that task. It is possible for bots to be pro-
grammed to count those clicks and respond to them.
News outlets, advertisers, political parties, and
many others have created web pages that can be
directed to the accounts and networks of social media
users using programmed algorithms called bots. The
bots can be programmed to search for information
on the internet that is similar to what a social media
user has already clicked on, liked, or shared. They can
then inject that new information into what the user
sees.12 So, for example, rather than seeing stories from
hundreds of news outlets, a bot will find news outlets
that are similar to those already being viewed. Bots
provide users with easy access to information about
things they already like. By following links between
accounts, bots can push information to the friends of
a user as well. This means that friends begin to see
the same array of information. Eventually one user
and the friends and followers of that individual are
seeing only information they agree with. This cre-
ates an information bubble that makes it appear that
the likes of the group inside the bubble represent the
likes of the majority of people (because the group
inside the bubble never sees anything contrary to its
preferences).
In Imperva Incapsula’s 2015 annual report on
impersonator bot and bad bot traffic trends, Igal Zeif-
man states, “The extent of this threat is such that, on
any given day, over 90 percent of all security events on
our network are the result of bad bot activity.”13 Social
and political bots have been used for the purposes of

collecting and sharing information. In the last decade,
there has been a concerted effort to design bots and
bot practices that work to steer populations in general
toward a particular way of thinking; to prevent people
from organizing around a specific cause; and to mis-
direct, misinform, or propagandize about people and
issues.14 The bots work much faster than humans can
and work 24/7 to carry out their programming.
Humans assist bots in their work by liking and
sharing information the bots push at them, often with-
out reading the information they are sending along.
Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, studied “two billion
visits across the web over the course of a month and
found that most people who click don’t read. In fact, a
stunning 55% spent fewer than 15 seconds actively on
a page. . . . We looked at 10,000 socially-shared arti-
cles and found that there is no relationship whatso-
ever between the amount a piece of content is shared
and the amount of attention an average reader will
give that content.”15 This means that once a message
has reached a critical number of people via bots, those
people will assist in the spread of that information
even though more than half of them will not have
read it. The manipulation of computer code for social
media sites allows fake news to proliferate and affects
what people believe, often without ever having been
read beyond the headline or caption.
Notes
1. “History of Communication,” Wikipedia, last updat-
ed August 28, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
/History_of_communication.
2. Joshua J. Mark, “Writing,” Ancient History Encyclope-

dia, April 28, 2011, www.ancient.eu/writing/.
3. “Stone Carving,” Wikipedia, last updated August 30,
2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_carving.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communication
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communication
http://www.ancient.eu/writing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_carving
13
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0
1
7
4. “Clay Tablet,” Wikipedia, last updated August 25,
2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_tablet.

5. Joshua J. Mark, “Egyptian Papyrus,” Ancient History
Encyclopedia, November 8, 2016, www.ancient.eu
/Egyptian_Papyrus/.
6. “Uses for Birchbark,” NativeTech: Native American
Technology and Art, accessed September 6, 2017,
www.nativetech.org/brchbark/brchbark.htm.
7. “Differences between Parchment, Vellum and Paper,”
National Archives website, US National Archives and
Records Administration, accessed September 6, 2017,
https://www.archives.gov/preservation/formats
/paper-vellum.html.
8. Mark Cartwright, “Quipu,” Ancient History Encyclo-
pedia, May 8, 2014, www.ancient.eu/Quipu/.
9. Winstone Arradaza, “The Evolution of Print Media,”
Prezi presentation, November 11, 2013, https://prezi
.com/qpmlecfqibmh/the-evolution-of-print-media/;
“A Short History of Radio with an Inside Focus on
Mobile Radio,” Federal Communications Commis-
sion, Winter 2003–2004, https://transition.fcc.gov
/omd/history/radio/documents/short_history.pdf;
“Morse Code and the Telegraph,” History.com, ac-
cessed September 6, 2017, www.history.com/topics
/inventions/telegraph; Andrew Anthony, “A His-
tory of the Television, the Technology That Seduced
the World—and Me,” Guardian, September 7, 2013,
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013
/sep/07/history-television-seduced-the-world.
10. Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry
into the Limits of the Possible (London: V. Gollancz,
1973), 39.

11. Peter Ferdinand, “The Internet, Democracy and
Democratization,” Democratization 7, no. 1 (2000):
1–17, https://doi.org/10.1080/13510340008403642.
12. Tarleton Gillespie, “The Relevance of Algorithms,” in
Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materi-
ality and Society, ed. Tarleson Gillespie, Pablo J. Boc-
zkowski, and Kirsten A. Foot (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2014), 167–94; Alessandro Bessi and Emilio
Ferrara, “Social Bots Distort the 2016 U.S. Presiden-
tial Election Online Discussion,” First Monday 21, no.
11 (November 7, 2016), http://journals.uic.edu/ojs
/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/7090/5653; Tim
Hwang, Ian Pearce, and Max Nanis, “Socialbots:
Voices from the Fronts,” Interactions, March/April
2012: 38–45; Emilio Ferrara, Onur Varol, Clayton
Davis, Filippo Menczer, and Alessandro Flammini,
“The Rise of Social Bots,” Communications of the
ACM 59, no. 7 (July 2016): 96–104.
13. Igal Zeifman, “2015 Bot Traffic Report: Humans Take
Back the Web, Bad Bots Not Giving Any Ground,”
Imperva Incapsula Blog, December 9, 2015, https://
www.incapsula.com/blog/bot-traffic-report-2015
.html.
14. Samuel C. Woolley, “Automating Power: Social Bot
Interference in Global Politics,” First Monday 21, no.
4 (April 4, 2016), http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index
.php/fm/article/view/6161/5300; Peter Pomerantsev
and Michael Weiss, The Menace of Unreality: How the
Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money
(Institute of Modern Russia and The Interpreter,
2014), www.interpretermag.com/wp-content

/uploads/2015/07/PW-31.pdf; Bence Kollanyi, Philip
N. Howard, and Samuel C. Wooley, Bots and Automa-
tion over Twitter during the U.S. Election, Data Memo
2016.4 (Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Pro-
paganda, November 2016), http://comprop.oii.ox.ac
.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2016/11/Data-Me-
mo-US-Election.pdf; Paul Roderick Gregory, “Inside
Putin’s Campaign of Social Media Trolling and Fake
Ukrainian Crimes,” Forbes, May 11, 2014, https://
www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05
/11/inside-putins-campaign-of-social-media-trolling
-and-faked-ukrainian-crimes/; Brian T. Gaines, James
H. Kuklinski, Paul J. Quirk, Buddy Peyton, and Jay
Verkuilen, “Same Facts, Different Interpretations:
Partisan Motivation and Opinion on Iraq,” Journal of
Politics 69 no. 4 (November 2007): 957–74; Sara El-
Khalili, “Social Media as a Government Propaganda
Tool in Post-revolutionary Egypt,” First Monday 18,
no. 3 (March 4, 2013), http://firstmonday.org/ojs/
index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/4620/3423.
15. Tony Haile, “What You Think You Know about the
Web Is Wrong,” Time.com, March 9, 2014, http://
time.com/12933/what-you-think-you-know
-about-the-web-is-wrong/.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_tablet
http://www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Papyrus/
http://www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Papyrus/
http://www.nativetech.org/brchbark/brc hbark.htm
https://www.archives.gov/preservation/formats/paper-
vellum.html
https://www.archives.gov/preservation/formats/paper-
vellum.html
http://www.ancient.eu/Quipu/
https://prezi.com/qpmlecfqibmh/the-evolution-of-print-media/

https://prezi.com/qpmlecfqibmh/the-evolution-of-print-media/
https://transition.fcc.gov/omd/history/radio/documents/short_his
tory.pdf
https://transition.fcc.gov/omd/history/radio/documents/short_his
tory.pdf
http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/telegraph
http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/telegraph
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/sep/07/history-
television-seduced-the-world
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/sep/07/history-
television-seduced-the-world
https://doi.org/10.1080/13510340008403642
http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/7090/
5653
http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/7090/
5653
https://www.incapsula.com/blog/bot-traffic-report-2015.html
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6161/5300
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6161/5300
http://www.interpretermag.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/PW-31.pdf
http://www.interpretermag.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/PW-31.pdf
http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/sites/89/2016/11/Data-Memo-US-Election.pdf
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/4620/
3423
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/4620/
3423
http://time.com/12933/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-

web-is-wrong/
web-is-wrong/
web-is-wrong/
14
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