Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies: How to Find Trustworthy Information in the Digital Age

by Donald A. Barclay

Overview

Are you overwhelmed at the amount, contradictions, and craziness of all the information coming at you in this age of social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles?

Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies will show you how to identify deceptive information as well as how to seek out the most trustworthy information in order to inform decision making in your personal, academic, professional, and civic lives.

• Learn how to identify the alarm bells that signal untrustworthy information.
• Understand how to tell when statistics can be trusted and when they are being used to deceive.
• Inoculate yourself against the logical fallacies that can mislead even the brightest among us.

Donald A. Barclay, a career librarian who has spent decades teaching university students to become information literate scholars and citizens, takes an objective, non-partisan approach to the complex and nuanced topic of sorting deceptive information from trustworthy information.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538136843
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	01/30/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	244
Sales rank:	666,155
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Donald A. Barclay has been a professional academic librarian since 1990, having formerly held positions at New Mexico State University, the University of Houston, and the Houston Academy of Medicine—Texas Medical Center Library. He is currently the Deputy University Librarian at the University of California, Merced, where he has been employed since 2002. As a librarian, he has decades of experience in teaching students how to become more information literate. Besides working as a librarian, he was employed for four years as a special lecturer in composition and literature at Boise State University and also worked for ten years as a seasonal wildland fire fighter for the United States Forest Service.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Credible Information: Why It Matters, What Are Its Limitations
Chapter 2: Fake News as Phenomenon: (Almost) Nothing New Under the Sun
Chapter 3: Tricks of the Trade: Techniques that Lower Your Information GuardChapter 4:Logical Fallacies: More Tools of Deception
Chapter 5: Evaluating an Information Source: Nine Essential Questions Everyone Should Ask
Chapter 6: Power in Numbers: Negotiating the Statistics Minefield
Chapter 7: Scholarly Information: Identifying, Evaluating, and Understanding It
Chapter 8: Help Is Where You Find It: Resources for Evaluating Information
Final Thoughts

Editorial Reviews

[Barclay's] chapter on fake news provides a clear and succinct overview of the not-so-new phenomenon and the factors that have contributed to its recent proliferation (e.g., information overload, search engine optimization, and political bots). And his evaluation (and endorsement) of Wikipedia as a viable of information source is spot-on.

The callout section on the Dunning-Kruger effect (inadvertently) explains much of what's happening in America's political climate; readers will find it chilling. Additionally helpful are chapters devoted to finding and evaluating scholarlyinformation and a list of helpful resources--turns out there are a lot more options than just Snopes.com.Librarians may find this a useful resource, but it should be read by anyone who wants to better understand fake news and to better discern its presence and defend oneself against it. Barclay addresses this timely topic in a readable manner, free from jargon.

[Barclay provides] students with a wonderful and succinct introduction to the importance of stopping and recognizing how we are being persuaded . . . I have read numerous academic and non-academic sources on fake news and our modern information landscape but this book has, to date, been the only one I felt I could require as a text for a seminar on the topic of fake news. It is engaging enough to be interesting to students, and useful enough that it covers a good deal of the ground we want our students to cover without being dry and repetitive.

No serious collection should be without this specific approach to independent, critical thinking and fact-finding.

This book provides readable, practical guidance from a librarian and scholar of information literacy on understanding the trustworthiness of information in an era of fake facts. In Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies, Donald Barclay provides useful information about the tricks such as logical and statistical fallacies used to create false facts. The book will provide value to high school teachers, undergraduate teachers and students, librarians, and parents who want to guide young people and the general public to being information-literate.

From the Publisher

The callout section on the Dunning-Kruger effect (inadvertently) explains much of what’s happening in America’s political climate; readers will find it chilling. Additionally helpful are chapters devoted to finding and evaluating scholarly information and a list of helpful resources—turns out there are a lot more options than just Snopes.com. Librarians may find this a useful resource, but it should be read by anyone who wants to better understand fake news and to better discern its presence and defend oneself against it. Barclay addresses this timely topic in a readable manner, free from jargon.

Booklist

04/02/2018
Barclay, a deputy University Librarian at University of California, Merced, offers a slim guide on how to separate factual information from fake news. He offers basic methods for evaluating information, such as determining whether the source for a news story is identified, and whether a so-called expert has the relevant credentials to provide an informed opinion. There’s also a quick introduction to logical fallacies, with short definitions of concepts like confirmation bias and moral equivalence. The best parts of the book deal directly with web-related topics. His chapter on fake news provides a clear and succinct overview of the not-so-new phenomenon and the factors that have contributed to its recent proliferation (e.g., information overload, search engine optimization, and political bots). And his evaluation (and endorsement) of Wikipedia as a viable of information source is spot-on. Toward the end, the book shifts to more advanced topics (statistical models, scholarly information) that will be less useful to lay readers. Though Barclay intends this work for “anyone who cares about the trustworthiness of the information they encounter,” its scope will make it most useful as part of college coursework . (June)

Publishers Weekly

The callout section on the Dunning-Kruger effect (inadvertently) explains much of what’s happening in America’s political climate; readers will find it chilling. Additionally helpful are chapters devoted to finding and evaluating scholarlyinformation and a list of helpful resources—turns out there are a lot more options than just Snopes.com.Librarians may find this a useful resource, but it should be read by anyone who wants to better understand fake news and to better discern its presence and defend oneself against it. Barclay addresses this timely topic in a readable manner, free from jargon.

Booklist

[Barclay provides] students with a wonderful and succinct introduction to the importance of stopping and recognizing how we are being persuaded. .. I have read numerous academic and non-academic sources on fake news and our modern information landscape but this book has, to date, been the only one I felt I could require as a text for a seminar on the topic of fake news. It is engaging enough to be interesting to students, and useful enough that it covers a good deal of the ground we want our students to cover without being dry and repetitive.

Technical Services Quarterly

No serious collection should be without this specific approach to independent, critical thinking and fact-finding.

Donovan's Bookshelf

This book provides readable, practical guidance from a librarian and scholar of information literacy on understanding the trustworthiness of information in an era of fake facts. In Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies, Donald Barclay provides useful information about the tricks such as logical and statistical fallacies used to create false facts. The book will provide value to high school teachers, undergraduate teachers and students, librarians, and parents who want to guide young people and the general public to being information-literate.

William Aspray