jeudi 29 novembre 2018
The Year of the mis(s)!
Misinformation is "the word of the year", according to dictionary.com. The dictionary gives its own definition of the word: "false information that is spread, regardless of whether there is intent to mislead".
Thanks to Facebook, of course but not only. Politicians contributed a lot too. Not to mention the historians (negationists of all kinds) and the propagators of "fake news", "alternative facts"...
But there is more:
Advertising brought its own "mis": misplacement. And, best of all: miscalculation. So many opportunities to miss the target. A wonderful prefix, so productive, so useful nowadays.
But do not misunderstand me, this is nothing new: Socrates, about 380 BCE, used to complain about the Sophists and rhetoric: "a tool of persuasion" and not a tool for justice or for truth. "Thus rhetoric, it seems, is an operator (demiourgos, "δημιουργός") of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in right and wrong", (Plato, Gorgias, 455a).
And worse, of course, there is misconduct in so many companies, sexual misconduct, financial misconduct...
Misbehaving? "The year of our discontent"? We won't miss it. "The Uneasyness in Civilization", wrote Freud (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)... Uneasiness, yes... really. And morality?
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3 commentaires:
“Misplacement in the world of fake news” - sounds sarcastic, doesn’t it? In the ecosystem where about 1/3 of all ads aren’t even seen while advertisers are paying a lot it becomes hard not to miss! We (especially students of 226) are probably more concerned about media and ad industries when we say it. However, just imagine if a doctor misplaced something during operation or an engineer “miscalculated” the norm for concrete of a building and all of a sudden the walls fall on you. But in the industries where “nobody knows” nobody cares either.
In the internet era, mistakes can be made so easily and then be spread really quickly...
Concerning Misinformation, I think that this is a real "fléau" nowadays, a big issue for democracies, and a new way to spread bad ideas easily to mislead people...
As you told us during the last lesson, misplacement in advertising can be so quick and can have a lot of consequences over the brand's vision.
In a society that goes faster and faster, with a permanent information flow over social networks and other platforms, we must take a second look on what we post or share to avoid these misconducts.
Misplacement in the world of fake news - sounds sarcastic, doesn't it? We (especially students of master 226) tend to think of this in the context of advertising where brands keep on spending tons of money while ad fraud is so common that it's almost naive to think that 100% of your ad budget will be spent wisely.
But what if a doctor MISplaced something during an operation, or an engineer made a MIStake and then the walls of a building would just fall cause the norms weren't calculated correctly?
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