Misinformation and Disinformation (PDF)

This book, geared towards both students and professionals, examines the synthesis of artificial intelligence (AI) and psychology in detecting mis-/disinformation in digital media content, and suggests practical means to intervene and curtail this current global 'infodemic'. This interdisciplinary book explores technological, psychological, philosophical, and linguistic insights into the nature of truth and deception, trust and credibility, cognitive biases and logical fallacies and how, through AI and human intervention, content users can be alerted to the presence of deception. The author investigates how AI can mimic the procedures and know-hows of humans, showing how AI can help spot fakes and how AI tools can work to debunk rumors and fact-check. The book describes how AI detection systems work and how they fit with broader societal and individual concerns. Each chapter focuses attention on key concepts and their inter-connection. The first part of the book seeks theoretical footing to understand our interactions with new information and reviews relevant empirical findings in behavioral sciences. The second part is about applied knowledge. The author looks at several known practices that guard us against deception, and provides several real-world examples of manipulative persuasive techniques in advertising, political propaganda, and public relations. She provides links to the downloadable executable files to three AI applications (clickbait, satire, and falsehood detectors) via LiT.RL GitHub, an open access repository. The book is useful to students and professionals studying AI and media studies as well as library and information professionals.