'Fake news' - nothing new under the Sun

INDIVIDUAL
|

 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

	PD Reporter with "fake news" from an 1894 illustration by Frederick Burr Opper

Kruck, D. A 'ROYAL' BIT OF FAKE NEWS. Gibbons Stamp Monthly, August 2021, pp.28-30.

Image source:
https://aleteia.org/2018/02/09/fake-news-post-truth-and-technology-in-the-19th-century/

Art as 'social media' 1923

Music, Health and Character

"The varied picture presented by life is viewed by each individual through the transforming medium of his own private consciousness. Our judgements are biased, being coloured, inevitably, by our personal  interests, occupation and experience. To the physician has been entrusted the health of the body; his outlook upon the world is tinged by his desire to prevent disease by eliminating abnormal predisposing causes. So close and so intricate is the union of mind and body that modern medicine recognizes the necessity of right thinking and right conduct for the highest development of the body. Hence, from his unique corner of advantage, that of the sympathetic confidant of innumerable life tragedies, the physician views with dismay the ruin of individuals, and the disaster brought on families and entire communities by frequent contact with the morbid, even at times the depraved teaching which is embodied in many branches of art with lighthearted irresponsibility. More and more profoundly are the medical psychologists impressed by the creative and the destructive power of such intangible forces as ideas. More and more urgently, therefore, does modern medicine plead, in its capacity as guardian of the public health, for the improvement of mental and moral conditions. With wiser education people will demand that Art shall be pure, sincere and life-giving, and that artists shall value seriously their responsibility and their power to mould the character of the community. The true artist always aims high and discourages the association of art with all that is trivial, insincere and debasing." p.225-226.

Agnes Savill (Agnes Forbes Blackadder), Music, Health and Character, London: Bodley Head Limited. 1923.
(Book cover: AbeBooks)

What precedes/follows mis- dis- malinformation, fake news...?

"Sartori (1970: 1034) put it well when he wrote almost fifty years ago: ‘We badly need information which is sufficiently precise to be meaningfully comparable. Hence we need a filing system provided by discriminating, i.e., taxonomic, conceptual containers. If these are not provided, data misgathering is inevitable; and statistical, computerized sophistication is no remedy for misinformation.’ Turnheim et al. (2015) agree when they write that a structured dialogue among practitioners of different approaches is needed to better understand processes and pathways of sociotechnical change. Similar calls for more inclusive, comparative, cross-disciplinary research have come recently from many researchers (e.g. Castree, 2016; Sovacool et al., 2015; Stern et al., 2016; Viseu, 2015; Webster, 2016)." p.704.

"Borrowing from a mix of disciplines, including history, evolutionary economics, institutional theory and STS, the approach suggests that diffusion or transitions occurs through interactions among three levels: the niche, the regime, and the landscape. The niche refers to a radical innovation that is emerging to gain diffusion or adoption, to move from invention and innovation to viable market introduction (Grin et al., 2010). The regime refers to the incumbent sociotechnical system that the niche is potentially affecting or replacing; such regimes contain cognitive, regulative, and normative institutions (Geels, 2004). The ‘landscape’ refers to exogenous developments or shocks (e.g. economic crises, demographic changes, wars, ideological change, major environmental disruption like climate change) that create pressures on the regime, which in turn create windows of opportunity for the diffusion of niche-innovations."

Sovacool, B. K., & Hess, D. J. (2017). Ordering theories: Typologies and conceptual frameworks for sociotechnical change. Social Studies of Science, 47(5), 703–750. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312717709363

"Users online tend to acquire information adhering to their worldviews, to ignore dissenting information and to form polarized groups around shared narratives. Furthermore, when polarization is high, misinformation might easily proliferate."

Cinelli, M., Quattrociocchi, W., Galeazzi, A. et al. The COVID-19 social media infodemic. Sci Rep 10, 16598 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73510-5
[Reference numbers removed in quotation.]

 See also:

'landscape'

'socio-technical'

'habitus'

#HelloMyNameIs ... Socrates^

INDIVIDUAL

|

 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

The Last Days of Socrates*
	Cancelling Socrates

Overview

“They say Pericles caught democracy from you in bed.”

Today, Socrates is revered as the founding father of Western philosophy. But in 399BC Athens, he was a pain in the neck. The plague is over, democracy is (just about) restored, and everyone would like to get back to normal. How hard is it for one ageing firebrand to stop asking questions? It’s time to shut him up…

Based on eyewitness accounts, Cancelling Socrates is a provocative, witty and dangerous world premiere from Howard Brenton, one of our foremost dramatists, whose acclaimed plays have been staged at the National Theatre, RSC, Shakespeare’s Globe, and worldwide. He reunites with our Artistic Director, Tom Littler.

My sources: 'Front Row' BBC Radio 4, 9 June 2022.

Images - c/o Penguin and Nick Hern Books (https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/cancelling-socrates)

Jermyn Street Theatre - text (as per links).

*(Just) A philosopher.

^You can play here too.

There is a play in #h2cm

#HelloMyNameIs #aPlay too,