̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - newspapers

'Psychological vaccine’ could help immunise public against ‘fake news’ on climate change – study

fpjl2 — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 09:20:39 +0000

In medicine, vaccinating against a virus involves exposing a body to a weakened version of the threat, enough to build a tolerance.

Social psychologists believe that a similar logic can be applied to help “inoculate” the public against misinformation, including the damaging influence of ‘fake news’ websites propagating myths about climate change.

A new study compared reactions to a well-known climate change fact with those to a popular misinformation campaign. When presented consecutively, the false material completely cancelled out the accurate statement in people’s minds – opinions ended up back where they started.

Researchers then added a small dose of misinformation to delivery of the climate change fact, by briefly introducing people to distortion tactics used by certain groups. This “inoculation” helped shift and hold opinions closer to the truth, despite the follow-up exposure to ‘fake news’.

̽��ֱ��study on US attitudes found the inoculation technique shifted the climate change opinions of Republicans, Independents and Democrats alike.

Published in the journal Global Challenges, the study was conducted by researchers from the universities of Cambridge, UK, Yale and George Mason, US. It is one of the first on ‘inoculation theory’ to try and replicate a ‘real world’ scenario of conflicting information on a highly politicised subject.

“Misinformation can be sticky, spreading and replicating like a virus,” says lead author Dr Sander van der Linden, a social psychologist from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab.

“We wanted to see if we could find a ‘vaccine’ by pre-emptively exposing people to a small amount of the type of misinformation they might experience. A warning that helps preserve the facts.

“ ̽��ֱ��idea is to provide a cognitive repertoire that helps build up resistance to misinformation, so the next time people come across it they are less susceptible.”

Fact vs. Falsehood

To find the most compelling climate change falsehood currently influencing public opinion, van der Linden and colleagues tested popular statements from corners of the internet on a nationally representative sample of US citizens, with each one rated for familiarity and persuasiveness.

̽��ֱ��winner: the assertion that there is no consensus among scientists, apparently supported by the Oregon Global Warming Petition Project. This website claims to hold a petition signed by “over 31,000 American scientists” stating there is no evidence that human CO2 release will cause climate change.

̽��ֱ��study also used the accurate statement that “97% of scientists agree on manmade climate change”. Prior work by van der Linden has shown this fact about scientific consensus is an effective ‘gateway’ for public acceptance of climate change.

In a disguised experiment, researchers tested the opposing statements on over 2,000 participants across the US spectrum of age, education, gender and politics using the online platform Amazon Mechanical Turk.

In order to gauge shifts in opinion, each participant was asked to estimate current levels of scientific agreement on climate change throughout the study.

Those shown only the fact about climate change consensus (in pie chart form) reported a large increase in perceived scientific agreement – an average of 20 percentage points. Those shown only misinformation (a screenshot of the Oregon petition website) dropped their belief in a scientific consensus by 9 percentage points.

Some participants were shown the accurate pie chart followed by the erroneous Oregon petition. ̽��ֱ��researchers were surprised to find the two neutralised each other (a tiny difference of 0.5 percentage points).

“It’s uncomfortable to think that misinformation is so potent in our society,” says van der Linden. “A lot of people’s attitudes toward climate change aren’t very firm. They are aware there is a debate going on, but aren’t necessarily sure what to believe. Conflicting messages can leave them feeling back at square one.”

Psychological 'inoculation'

Alongside the consensus fact, two groups in the study were randomly given ‘vaccines’:

A general inoculation, consisting of a warning that “some politically-motivated groups use misleading tactics to try and convince the public that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists”.
A detailed inoculation that picks apart the Oregon petition specifically. For example, by highlighting some of the signatories are fraudulent, such as Charles Darwin and members of the Spice Girls, and less than 1% of signatories have backgrounds in climate science.

For those ‘inoculated’ with this extra data, the misinformation that followed did not cancel out the accurate message.

̽��ֱ��general inoculation saw an average opinion shift of 6.5 percentage points towards acceptance of the climate science consensus, despite exposure to fake news.

When the detailed inoculation was added to the general, it was almost 13 percentage points – two-thirds of the effect seen when participants were just given the consensus fact.

̽��ֱ��research team point out that tobacco and fossil fuel companies have used psychological inoculation in the past to sow seeds of doubt, and to undermine scientific consensus in the public consciousness.

They say the latest study demonstrates that such techniques can be partially “reversed” to promote scientific consensus, and work in favour of the public good.

̽��ֱ��researchers also analysed the results in terms of political parties. Before inoculation, the fake negated the factual for both Democrats and Independents. For Republicans, the fake actually overrode the facts by 9 percentage points.

However, following inoculation, the positive effects of the accurate information were preserved across all parties to match the average findings (around a third with just general inoculation; two-thirds with detailed).

“We found that inoculation messages were equally effective in shifting the opinions of Republicans, Independents and Democrats in a direction consistent with the conclusions of climate science,” says van der Linden.

“What’s striking is that, on average, we found no backfire effect to inoculation messages among groups predisposed to reject climate science, they didn’t seem to retreat into conspiracy theories.

“There will always be people completely resistant to change, but we tend to find there is room for most people to change their minds, even just a little.”

New research finds that misinformation on climate change can psychologically cancel out the influence of accurate statements. However, if legitimate facts are delivered with an “inoculation” – a warning dose of misinformation – some of the positive influence is preserved.

There will always be people completely resistant to change, but we tend to find there is room for most people to change their minds, even just a little

Sander van der Linden

Takver

Victorians rally for No New Coal projects

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Forgotten poems recovered by American Civil War research

sjr81 — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 09:20:25 +0000

‘“Will not these days be by thy poets sung": Poems of the Anglo-African and National Anti-Slavery Standard, 1863-1864’ features nearly 140 poems that appeared in two New York-based newspapers during a single tumultuous year of the Civil War.

Until now, access to the National Anti-Slavery Standard and the Anglo-African - and the poems they contain - has been limited to microfilm or subscription-only online resources.

̽��ֱ��ground-breaking edition of poems, including many pieces by little-known African American writers, has been published online following extensive research by Dr Rebecca Weir at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and Dr Elizabeth Lorang at the ̽��ֱ�� of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Drs Weir and Lorang found verses by figures previously unknown as poets. Fanny M. Jackson, a former slave who became one of the foremost educators of her age, contributed ‘ ̽��ֱ��Black Volunteers’ and a mourning poem for a friend’s daughter to the Anglo-African. William Slade, a prominent black civil leader in wartime Washington as well as a lead servant in the White House, wrote ‘ ̽��ֱ��Slave to His Star’ for that title. Ellen Murray, an abolitionist who travelled from New England to South Carolina’s occupied Sea Islands to teach freed people there, contributed a cluster of poems to the National Anti-Slavery Standard.

“This is a story about two newspapers, the people who contributed to them and the people who put them together during a crucial period of the war,” said Dr Weir. “ ̽��ֱ��writers who sent poems to the Anglo-African and the National Anti-Slavery Standard used their poetry as a means to express their views and participate in public debate.

“ ̽��ֱ��newspapers’ editors also reprinted poems from different newspapers, magazines, and books as a matter of course. While reprinted pieces have been all but overlooked by literary critics and historians, they form a vital part of the Civil War’s literary record.”

̽��ֱ��poems in the edition reveal contemporary responses to a host of wartime issues and events: emancipation, African American enlistment, diplomatic relations and civilian duty amongst them. Treating love, loss, trauma, hope, despair, and politics, as well as more mundane - yet remarkably symbolic - subjects, such as the passage of time and changing seasons, the poems played a vital role in shaping how Americans experienced the war.

̽��ֱ��edition puts to rest popular lingering myths about Civil War literature, especially poetry. In particular, Will not these days unravels the misguided notion that the Civil War produced only a handful of poems worth remembering and studying. In reality, a perhaps unknowable number of poems were written and circulated during the Civil War, and poetry was central to many people’s experience of the war.

Will not these days presents the poems alongside images of the newspaper pages, so that twenty-first century readers can see the poems in their original publication contexts – contexts which Drs Weir and Lorang describe as ‘transformative’.

“ ̽��ֱ��poems were created in part by their publication contexts,” said Dr Lorang. “Two instances of a poem that share the same words, grammar and syntax printed in two different newspapers aren’t necessarily the same text. That’s one reason why it’s important to think about poems in particular newspapers.”

Although literary critics and historians recognise the Anglo-African as one of the most important African American serials of the Civil War era, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the poetry it published, or to its relations with its close abolitionist neighbour, the National Anti-Slavery Standard.

“One of the great finds we’ve made is that it appears there was a previously unacknowledged but remarkable collaboration between the two newspapers,” said Dr Lorang. “What's unique about this edition is the focus on the relationships between two Civil War publications. It's the first edition of its kind.”

Ellen Murray’s ‘ ̽��ֱ��Working man’, published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard in early 1864, is one of several poems in the edition that illuminates the war’s transatlantic aspects. Murray celebrated the antislavery principles of Lancashire factory workers who refused to support the Confederacy even though their livelihoods depended upon shipments of cotton:

̽��ֱ��working men of Lancashire!
Their great self-sacrifice
Those, for whose sake 'twas undergone,
Will never know or prize;
Only when freedmen kneel at dawn
And bless their friends in prayer,
They bless the noble working men
Of England, unaware.

Among Dr Weir’s favourite pieces is ‘A Voice from the Crowd’ -- an anonymous parody from a London newspaper that caught the National Anti-Slavery Standard editor’s eye in the summer of 1863, presumably because it attacked the London Times’ New York correspondent Charles Mackay for his Confederate sympathies:

There's a good time coming, boys,
A good time coming;
When the Slave Confederacy
Recognized by all shall be
In the good time coming.
Let us aid it all we can,
Correspondents—every man,
To make the impulse stronger;
We shall well rewarded be
For our grand apostacy—
Wait a little longer!

Dr Weir added: “Before the Civil War broke out, Mackay wrote a poem called ‘Wait a Little Longer.’ It was published in a collection called Voices from the Crowd and, once set to music, it became a hit song. By turning Mackay’s own words against him, the anonymous poet who wrote ‘A Voice from the Crowd’ challenged Mackay’s principles, and affirmed that the Times correspondent didn’t speak for the British ‘crowd’. It’s a poetic comeback that helps us to appreciate the cultural significance of the verse in newspaper corners.”

̽��ֱ��edition can be viewed here: http://www.scholarlyediting.org/2013/editions/intro.cwnewspaperpoetry.html

American Civil War poetry that sheds light on a neglected chapter of the era’s literary history has been recovered and made freely available online after 150 years.

̽��ֱ��writers who sent poems to the Anglo-African and the National Anti-Slavery Standard used their poetry as a means to express their views and participate in public debate.

Rebecca Weir

Library of Congress

Co. E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, Ft. Lincoln, defences of Washington.”

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