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Dictionary.com Picks 'Misinformation' As Word of the Year (cbsnews.com)
Misinformation was chosen Monday as Dictionary.com's word of the year. "Jane Solomon, a linguist-in-residence at Dictionary, said in a recent interview that her site's choice of 'mis' over 'dis' was deliberate, intended to serve as a 'call to action' to be vigilant in the battle against fake news, flat earthers and anti-vaxxers, among other conduits," reports CBS News. From the report: It's the idea of intent, whether to inadvertently mislead or to do it on purpose, that the Oakland, California-based company wanted to highlight. The company decided it would go high when others have spent much of 2018 going low. "The rampant spread of misinformation is really providing new challenges for navigating life in 2018," Solomon told The Associated Press ahead of the word of the year announcement. "Misinformation has been around for a long time, but over the last decade or so the rise of social media has really, really changed how information is shared. We believe that understanding the concept of misinformation is vital to identifying misinformation as we encounter it in the wild, and that could ultimately help curb its impact."
"Disinformation would have also been a really, really interesting word of the year this year, but our choice of misinformation was very intentional," she said. "Disinformation is a word that kind of looks externally to examine the behavior of others. It's sort of like pointing at behavior and saying, 'THIS is disinformation.' With misinformation, there is still some of that pointing, but also it can look more internally to help us evaluate our own behavior, which is really, really important in the fight against misinformation. It's a word of self-reflection, and in that it can be a call to action. You can still be a good person with no nefarious agenda and still spread misinformation." Some of the runners-up include "representation," "self-made," and "backlash."
"Disinformation would have also been a really, really interesting word of the year this year, but our choice of misinformation was very intentional," she said. "Disinformation is a word that kind of looks externally to examine the behavior of others. It's sort of like pointing at behavior and saying, 'THIS is disinformation.' With misinformation, there is still some of that pointing, but also it can look more internally to help us evaluate our own behavior, which is really, really important in the fight against misinformation. It's a word of self-reflection, and in that it can be a call to action. You can still be a good person with no nefarious agenda and still spread misinformation." Some of the runners-up include "representation," "self-made," and "backlash."
The word should have been "minion".
Sad.
I thought only the Oxford English Dictionary could pick the "Word of the Year"...
Fake news is simply the breakdown of bourgeois control of the narrative.
There is no left vs right politics, only class domination.
While chaotic in the short term, this total disintegration is for the best.
What would Slashdotters call a situation in which main stream media simply regurgitates a government position?
We've seen this through the years, where no journalistic effort is taken; this position is backed up with countless [paid] pundits, spewing vitriol to sway public opinion.
Someone who works with language all the time should not call something "really, really important". That is really, really the kind of expression I would expect from an American president, not an educated person.
Weird. I would have picked "TrumpTruth". How odd.
"... intended to serve as a 'call to action' to be vigilant in the battle against fake news, flat earthers and anti-vaxxers, among other conduits..."
An interesting selection of examples, especially if they are meant to correspond to categories of "misinformation".
"Fake news" is a hopelessly meaningless term. As William Randolph Hearst is said to have declared, "News is something someone doesn't want printed. All else is advertizing".
That being so, we can always rely on those who don't want any particular piece of news printed to denounce it as "fake news". Although the scope for such disagreements can be reduced if reporters are careful to stick to the facts, all the facts and nothing but the facts. It's when interpretation and opinion slip in that "news reports" become hopelessly contentious and divisive. It also helps if reporters are always careful to list their sources for all claims. (For example, "in the vicious war between X and Y, today Y cruelly murdered 5,000 tiny helpless children *according to X*" is not very persuasive).
"Flat earthers" probably get little support these days, as belief that the Earth is an oblate spheroid has a great deal of evidence behind it.
"Anti-vaxxers" (presumably meaning people who are concerned that some vaccinations may cause harm) are rather different, as there may well be evidence supporting their position. Moreover, there is a lot of complexity in the issue: which vaccination exactly (or what combination), given to whom under what circumstances?
And then there are the other obvious public issues, such as anthropogenic climate change (and how much it matters), the rights and wrongs of political and geopolitical disagreements, even the strengths and weaknesses of various programming languages...
Surely we should all be "vigilant" for incorrect statements and claims. But it would be wrong to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and condemn reasonable or plausible statements and claims just because they are currently unfashionable.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind".
- John Stuart Mill
Especially as, in the past, the one person has sometimes been right, and the rest of mankind wrong.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Says the person who wants people no-platformed and fired for asserting the existence of only two genders.
There is a basic principle that the left doesn't understand and is doubling down on to its own destruction: "if I cannot trust you to not lie to me in the small things, how can I ever trust you in the things that matter?"
The more "fact checkers" and "scientists" become political, the less credibility they have and rightly so. Politics is where hard facts typically go to die.
that describes almost all tech companies.
Fixed it
neither here nor there, unlikely to prosper.. cease fire stand down, there are mothers & infants in every town. thanks again
Deplatforming is an act of aggression. They knock out free speech in one place, and then keep on chasing it and closing down any dissenting thought.
Other sites that tried had lefties upload kiddoporn, screenshot and then complain to the ISP to get it shut down. Other times they appear as ultra racist people (false flag), screen shot and try and get it closed down.
There is no 'other place'. You have to hold and push back on deplatforming - it never stops.
"The rampant spread of misinformation is really providing new challenges for navigating life in 2018," Solomon told The Associated Press ahead of the word of the year announcement.
Bollocks.
Translation: some people continue to do unapproved things and think unapproved thoughts. We can't have that.
Since just calling them stupid doesn't seem to be working anymore, we need to blame something for fooling them.
They really need to add it anyway.
Just happened to read this: https://www.redstate.com/strei..., which describes a concerted media effort to cast a Democrat election stunt as coming from "racist" Republicans.
Where can I get the swimsuit calendar?
Have gnu, will travel.
Would have been for the word "misdirection". Yes, I work in management.