Download or read book Counterfeit Politics written by David Kelman and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-20 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Counterfeit Politics, David Kelman reassesses the political significance of conspiracy theory. Traditionally, political theory has sought to banish the “paranoid style” from the “proper” domain of politics. But if conspiracy theory lies outside the sphere of legitimate politics, why do these narratives continue to haunt political life? Counterfeit Politics accounts for the seemingly ineradicable nature of conspiracy theory by arguing that all political statements ultimately take the form of conspiracy theory. Through careful readings of works by Ernest Hemingway, Ricardo Piglia, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Jorge Luis Borges, Ishmael Reed, Jorge Volpi, Rigoberta Menchú, and Ángel Rama, Kelman demonstrates that conspiracy narratives bear witness to an illegitimate or “counterfeit” secret that cannot be fully recognized, understood, and controlled. Even though the secret is not authorized to speak, this “silence” is nevertheless precisely what gives the secret its force. Kelmangoes on to suggest that all political statements—even those that do not seem “paranoid”—are constitutively illegitimate or counterfeit, since they always narrate this unresolved play of legitimacy between an official or authorized plot and an unofficial or unauthorized plot (a “complot”). In short, Counterfeit Politics argues that politics only takes place as “conspiracy theory.”
Download or read book Fake Politics written by Jason Bisnoff and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In “grassroots” campaigns, the grass isn’t always green—or natural. In today’s chaotic world, where the multiplication of information sources creates competing narratives, credibility is the key to winning the war of ideas. This is the reason why governments and corporations resort to astroturfing—creation of ostensibly grassroots movements set up to advance political agendas and commercial campaigns. The democratization of information and polarization of politics offer a perfect storm. Fake Politics tells the stories of how this practice has transformed political activism into a veiled lobbying effort by the rich and the powerful. Through a series of vignettes involving the tea party, oil industry, big tobacco, big data, and news media, this book will explore the similarities and differences between various campaigns that appeared as grassroots but, in reality, were lobbying efforts fueled by governments, corporations, major industries, and religious institutions. The process, named for the artificial grass fields at football stadiums and high schools across the country, became so prevalent in the last two decades that it now sits at a tipping point. In the era of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” with the truth well on its way to becoming indistinguishable from fabrication, what can the past of astroturfing tell us about the future of grassroots activism?
Download or read book Counterfeit Crime written by R.T. Naylor and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Counterfeit Crime, economist, historian, and criminologist R.T. Naylor dissects the costs - economic, social, and political - of the seemingly never-ending wars on the grossly exaggerated menaces of Crime and Terror and how most things politicians do to combat them make matters worse - for the public and the public good. He explains how the post-World War II welfare state, with its commitment to building public infrastructure, maintaining social security, and providing accessible education, gave way to the modern executive state, with its focus on guaranteeing corporate welfare, dropping bombs on countries too weak to fight back, and manipulating the thoughts and actions of populations kept in line by the carrot of glitzy toys and the stick of ever-heavier legal sanctions. He dissects how the canons of free-market fundamentalism, backed by the cannons of state power, paved the road toward a soft form of totalitarianism, which march hand in hand with millennial Christianity and a military-security-industrial complex in search for new - mostly imaginary - enemies. Counterfeit Crime is savage in its critique of the political and judicial status quo and outraged at an economy rife with corruption.
Download or read book Democracy and Fake News written by Serena Giusti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the challenges that disinformation, fake news, and post-truth politics pose to democracy from a multidisciplinary perspective. The authors analyse and interpret how the use of technology and social media as well as the emergence of new political narratives has been progressively changing the information landscape, undermining some of the pillars of democracy. The volume sheds light on some topical questions connected to fake news, thereby contributing to a fuller understanding of its impact on democracy. In the Introduction, the editors offer some orientating definitions of post-truth politics, building a theoretical framework where various different aspects of fake news can be understood. The book is then divided into three parts: Part I helps to contextualise the phenomena investigated, offering definitions and discussing key concepts as well as aspects linked to the manipulation of information systems, especially considering its reverberation on democracy. Part II considers the phenomena of disinformation, fake news, and post-truth politics in the context of Russia, which emerges as a laboratory where the phases of creation and diffusion of fake news can be broken down and analysed; consequently, Part II also reflects on the ways to counteract disinformation and fake news. Part III moves from case studies in Western and Central Europe to reflect on the methodological difficulty of investigating disinformation, as well as tackling the very delicate question of detection, combat, and prevention of fake news. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, law, political philosophy, journalism, media studies, and computer science, since it provides a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of post-truth politics.
Download or read book Counterfeit Community written by John F. Freie and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1998 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Counterfeit Community shows, building genuine community means no quick fixes and no false appeals. The hard work of weaving relationships must be combined with political, economic, and social change to counter the counterfeit trend.
Download or read book Post Truth Fake News and Democracy written by Johan Farkas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-23 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western societies are under siege, as fake news, post-truth and alternative facts are undermining the very core of democracy. This dystopian narrative is currently circulated by intellectuals, journalists and policy makers worldwide. In this book, Johan Farkas and Jannick Schou deliver a comprehensive study of post-truth discourses. They critically map the normative ideas contained in these and present a forceful call for deepening democracy. The dominant narrative of our time is that democracy is in a state of emergency caused by social media, changes to journalism and misinformed masses. This crisis needs to be resolved by reinstating truth at the heart of democracy, even if this means curtailing civic participation and popular sovereignty. Engaging with critical political philosophy, Farkas and Schou argue that these solutions neglect the fact that democracy has never been about truth alone: it is equally about the voice of the democratic people. Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy delivers a sobering diagnosis of our times. It maps contemporary discourses on truth and democracy, foregrounds their normative foundations and connects these to historical changes within liberal democracies. The book will be of interest to students and scholars studying the current state and future of democracy, as well as to a politically informed readership.
Download or read book Making It at Any Cost written by Matías Dewey and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: La Salada is South America’s largest marketplace for fraudulently labeled clothing, a sprawling and dangerous bazaar on the fringes of Buenos Aires where counterfeit goods are bought and sold, armed thieves roam the nearby streets, and corrupt police and politicians turn a blind eye to widespread unlawful behaviors. Despite conditions traditionally considered inhospitable to economic growth—including acute interpersonal distrust, pervasive personal insecurity, and rampant violence—business in La Salada is booming under an established order completely detached from the state. Matías Dewey dives deep into the world of La Salada to examine how market exchanges function outside the law and how agreements and norms develop in the economy for counterfeit clothing. Drawing on seven months of ethnographic research and more than a hundred interviews, Dewey argues that aspirations for a better future shape garment workers’ everyday practices, from their home-based sweatshops to the market stalls. The book unearths a new configuration of garment production and commercialization detached from global supply chains, submerged in the shadows of informality and illegality, and rooted in aspiration and opportunity.
Download or read book Virtual Politics written by Andrew Wilson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: States like Russia and Ukraine may not have gone back to totalitarianism or the traditional authoritarian formula of stuffing the ballot box, cowing the population and imprisoning the opposition - or not obviously. But a whole industry of 'political technology' has developed instead, with shadowy private firms and government 'fixers' on lucrative contracts dedicated to the black arts of organizing electoral success. This book uncovers the sophisticated techniques of the 'virtual' political system used to legitimize post-Soviet regimes; entire fake parties, phantom political rivals and 'scarecrow' opponents. And it exposes the paramount role of the mass media in projecting these creations and in falsifying the entire political process. Wilson argues that it is not primarily economic problems that have made it so difficult to develop meaningful democracy in the former Soviet world. Although the West also has its 'spin doctors', dirty tricks, and aggressive ad campaigns, it is the unique post-Bolshevik culture of 'political technology' that is the main obstacle to better governance in the region, to real popular participation in public affairs, and to the modernization of the political economy in the longer term.
Download or read book Cheap Speech written by Richard L. Hasen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An informed and practical road map for controlling disinformation, embracing free speech, saving American elections, and protecting democracy "A fresh, persuasive and deeply disturbing overview of the baleful and dangerous impact on the nation of widely disseminated false speech on social media. Richard Hasen, the country’s leading expert about election law, has written this book with flair and clarity.”—Floyd Abrams, author of The Soul of the First Amendment What can be done consistent with the First Amendment to ensure that American voters can make informed election decisions and hold free elections amid a flood of virally spread disinformation and the collapse of local news reporting? How should American society counter the actions of people like former President Donald J. Trump, who used social media to convince millions of his followers to doubt the integrity of U.S. elections and helped foment a violent insurrection? What can we do to minimize disinformation campaigns aimed at suppressing voter turnout? With piercing insight into the current debates over free speech, censorship, and Big Tech’s responsibilities, Richard L. Hasen proposes legal and social measures to restore Americans’ access to reliable information on which democracy depends. In an era when quack COVID treatments and bizarre QAnon theories have entered mainstream, this book explains how to assure both freedom of ideas and a commitment to truth.
Download or read book The Counterfeit Detector Or The Leaders of The Party Exposed written by Allen A. Hall and published by . This book was released on 1839 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fake News Nation written by James W. Cortada and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How rumors, lies, and misrepresentations shaped American history After the election of Donald Trump as president, people in the United States and across large swaths of Europe, Latin America, and Asia engaged in the most intensive discussion in modern times about falsehoods pronounced by public officials. Fake facts in their various forms have long been present in American life, particularly in its politics, public discourse, and business activities – going back to the time when the country was formed. This book explores the long tradition of fake facts, in their various guises, in American history. It is one of the first historical studies to place the long history of lies and misrepresentation squarely in the middle of American political, business, and science policy rhetoric. In Fake News Nation, James Cortada and William Aspray present a series of case studies that describe how lies and fake facts were used over the past two centuries in important instances in American history. Cortada and Aspray give readers a perspective on fake facts as they appear today and as they are likely to appear in the future.
Download or read book Counterfeit Governor written by Randolph Harrison and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2004-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recipe for a Devil's Brew is greed, intimidation, sexual deviancy, crime, gambling, murder and unchecked political power. This Novel delivers this and more! Counterfeit Governor begins in the mid-1960's with two young men surviving the death and destruction of Vietnam. Upon returning home they start their parallel political careers, one in Chicago, the other in Springfield. One will become the Governor of Illinois, the other the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. On the streets of Chicago a tough guy is forging his own destiny using intimidation and murder. He works his way to the top of organized crime in Chicago then changes direction using his influence to gain a foothold into Illinois politics. Riding the coat tails of these men are two women who will do anything to gain their own power and prestige. In the end, only two will claim the seats of power in Illinois.
Download or read book The Smear written by Sharyl Attkisson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Ever wonder how politics turned into a take-no-prisoners blood sport? The New York Times bestselling author of Stonewalled pulls back the curtain on the shady world of opposition research and reveals the dirty tricks those in power use to influence your opinions. Behind most major political stories in the modern era, there is an agenda; an effort by opposition researchers, spin doctors, and outside interests to destroy an idea or a person. The tactic they use is the Smear. Every day, Americans are influenced by the Smear without knowing it. Paid forces cleverly shape virtually every image you cross. Maybe you read that Donald Trump is a racist misogynist, or saw someone on the news mocking the Bernie Sanders campaign. The trick of the Smear is that it is often based on some shred of truth, but these media-driven "hit pieces" are designed to obscure the truth. Success hinges on the Smear artist’s ability to remain invisible; to make it seem as if their work is neither calculated nor scripted. It must appear to be precisely what it is not. Veteran journalist Sharyl Attkisson has witnessed this practice firsthand. After years of being pitched hit jobs and puff pieces, she’s an expert at detecting Smear campaigns. Now, the hard-hitting investigative reporter shares her inside knowledge, revealing how the Smear takes shape and who its perpetrators are—including Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal and, most influential of all, "right-wing assassin turned left-wing assassin" (National Review) political operative David Brock and his Media Matters for America empire. Attkisson exposes the diabolical tactics of Smear artists, and their outrageous access to the biggest names in political media—operatives who are corrupting the political process, and discouraging widespread citizen involvement in our democracy.
Download or read book Politics of Disinformation written by Guillermo López García and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Concerns about disinformation have witnessed extraordinary growth since the mid-2010s, despite the spread of false and distorted messages in the public arena not being a new phenomenon. In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary declared 'post-truth' as its word of the year, highlighting a historical and political time in which disinformation strategies reached new heights, fueled by the hybridization of the communicative ecosystem (Chadwick 2013) in a context of increasing polarization and populism. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 or the Brexit referendum the same year were milestones in the awareness of the role manipulative messages play and their effects on political decisions, particularly in times of crisis (Spence, Lachlan, Edwards, and Edwards 2016). Disinformation strategies take advantage of social networks to go viral quickly, and benefit from another of these networks' inherent characteristics: their ability to discriminate and stratify the public according to the most diverse criteria (Wagner and Boczkowski 2019). Any person or company with a sufficiently large and specialized database can now distribute content among the public according to multiple criteria, allowing much more to be known about their tastes, hobbies, opinions, etc. than in the past. In fact, public participation data on social networks (who they follow, in which groups they participate, what content they share, etc.) is one of the main elements that helps increase the effectiveness of the messages sent to the public. The snowball of disinformation can, in fact, feed itself and improve its effectiveness in each wave (Tucker et al. 2018)"--
Download or read book A Nation of Counterfeiters written by Stephen Mihm and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation. Their success, Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by freewheeling capitalism and little government control. Mihm shows how eventually the older monetary system was dismantled, along with the counterfeit economy it sustained.
Download or read book Fake News written by Melissa Zimdars and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New perspectives on the misinformation ecosystem that is the production and circulation of fake news. What is fake news? Is it an item on Breitbart, an article in The Onion, an outright falsehood disseminated via Russian bot, or a catchphrase used by a politician to discredit a story he doesn't like? This book examines the real fake news: the constant flow of purposefully crafted, sensational, emotionally charged, misleading or totally fabricated information that mimics the form of mainstream news. Rather than viewing fake news through a single lens, the book maps the various kinds of misinformation through several different disciplinary perspectives, taking into account the overlapping contexts of politics, technology, and journalism. The contributors consider topics including fake news as “disorganized” propaganda; folkloric falsehood in the “Pizzagate” conspiracy; native advertising as counterfeit news; the limitations of regulatory reform and technological solutionism; Reddit's enabling of fake news; the psychological mechanisms by which people make sense of information; and the evolution of fake news in America. A section on media hoaxes and satire features an oral history of and an interview with prankster-activists the Yes Men, famous for parodies that reveal hidden truths. Finally, contributors consider possible solutions to the complex problem of fake news—ways to mitigate its spread, to teach students to find factually accurate information, and to go beyond fact-checking. Contributors Mark Andrejevic, Benjamin Burroughs, Nicholas Bowman, Mark Brewin, Elizabeth Cohen, Colin Doty, Dan Faltesek, Johan Farkas, Cherian George, Tarleton Gillespie, Dawn R. Gilpin, Gina Giotta, Theodore Glasser, Amanda Ann Klein, Paul Levinson, Adrienne Massanari, Sophia A. McClennen, Kembrew McLeod, Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, Paul Mihailidis, Benjamin Peters, Whitney Phillips, Victor Pickard, Danielle Polage, Stephanie Ricker Schulte, Leslie-Jean Thornton, Anita Varma, Claire Wardle, Melissa Zimdars, Sheng Zou
Download or read book Spirit of Disobedience written by Curtis White and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-24 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trained relentlessly to work and consume, we make daily lifestyle decisions that promote corporate profits more than our own well-being. We also find ourselves working more, living in fragmented communities, and neglecting our most basic spiritual and political values. As Curtis White puts it, “In order to live, you will be asked to do what is no good, what is absurd, trivial, demeaning, and soul killing.” Although we belong to the world’s most affluent society, somehow we never have the chance to ask: How shall we live? With his trademark humor and acerbic wit, White raises this impertinent question. He also debunks the conventional view that liberalism can answer it without drawing on spiritual values. Surveying American popular culture (including Office Space and The Da Vinci Code) to illustrate his points, White urges us to renew our commitment to “human fundamentals” as articulated by Henry David Thoreau-especially free time, home, and food-and to reclaim Thoreau’s spirit of disobedience. Seeking imaginative answers to his central questions, White also interviews John De Graaf (Affluenza), James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency) and Michael Ableman (Fields of Plenty) about their views of the good life in our time.
