The Truth About Multiculturalism & Immigration. 9 Secrets About Female Nature Told By A Hot Girl Dying Of Cancer. CIA Funding and Manipulation of the U.S. News Media. New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship. A newly published study from Oxford’s Jon Penney provides empirical evidence for a key argument long made by privacy advocates: that the mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear and conformity and stifles free expression. Reporting on the study, the Washington Post this morning described this phenomenon: “If we think that authorities are watching our online actions, we might stop visiting certain websites or not say certain things just to avoid seeming suspicious.” The new study documents how, in the wake of the 2013 Snowden revelations (of which 87 percent of Americans were aware), there was “a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned ‘al Qaeda,’ ‘car bomb’ or ‘Taliban.'” People were afraid to read articles about those topics because of fear that doing so would bring them under a cloud of suspicion.
The fear that causes self-censorship is well beyond the realm of theory. 50-year-old CARTOON TRIED TO WARN US. The Principles of Influence (video) The Century Of The Self. Propaganda 2.0 and the rise of ‘narrative networks’ George Dvorsky November 16, 2011 DARPA, the Pentagon's advanced concepts think-tank, is looking to take propaganda to the next level and they're hoping to do so by controlling the very way their targets perceive and interpret the flow of incoming information. The Pentagon believes that by engaging in 'narrative control' they can alter an individual's grasp on reality and the way in which they evaluate current events.
Simply put, DARPA is looking to shape minds with stories. Now, this isn't an entirely new concept. It's been said that history books are written by the victors. The United States has been engaging in narrative control for quite some time now. Now I'm not suggesting that this isn't a valid interpretation of events. But now DARPA wants to take this further and make it more scientific and systematic.
This is pretty heavy stuff. Lim describes how the project will unfold: When it comes to security, little consideration is given to ethics. The Battle for Your Mind: Brainwashing Techniques Being Used On The Public By Dick Sutphen. Authoritarian followers Mind Control Subliminals By Dick Sutphen Summary of Contents The Birth of Conversion The Three Brain Phases How Revivalist Preachers Work Voice Roll Technique Six Conversion Techniques 1. keeping agreements 2.physical and mental fatigue 3. increase the tension 4. Uncertainty. 5. Jargon 6.
No humor Stockholm SyndromeDecognition Process Step One is ALERTNESS REDUCTION Step Two is PROGRAMED CONFUSION Step Three is THOUGHT STOPPINGTrue Believers & Mass Movements Persuasion Techniques YES SET TRUISMS SUGGESTION Imbedded Commands INTERSPERSAL TECHNIQUE Visualisation SHOCK AND CONFUSIONSubliminal Programming Mass Misuse Vibrato Extra Low Frequencies The Neurophone Summary of Contents The Birth of Conversion/Brainwashing in Christian Revivalism in 1735. I'm Dick Sutphen and this tape is a studio-recorded, expanded version of a talk I delivered at the World Congress of Professional Hypnotists Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Birth of Conversion Charles J. Alright. The Persuasive Power of Repeated Falsehoods. Chances are you heard some blatantly untrue statements during last night's debate. It's a cynical, manipulative strategy, but it works: Psychological studies have consistently shown that oft-repeated statements are more likely to be perceived as true, regardless of their actual veracity.
Since this "Illusory Truth Effect" was first noted in the late 1970s, it has been widely assumed that this ploy is effective only on people unfamiliar with the issue in question. Knowledge of the subject matter will lead people to dismiss the lie and distrust the liar, one might assume. But a newly published study reports that's not necessarily true: Even those of us with a solid grasp of the issue at hand are susceptible to this sort of misinformation.
"Reading a statement like 'A sari is the name of the short plaid skirt worn by Scots' increased participants' later belief that it was true. " The first of their experiments featured 40 Duke University undergraduates. That finding kilt me. Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada. Data Mining Reveals How Conspiracy Theories Emerge on Facebook. During the Italian elections last year, a post appeared on Facebook that rapidly became viral. The post’s title was this: “Italian Senate voted and accepted (257 in favor and 165 abstentions) a law proposed by Senator Cirenga to provide policy makers with €134 billion Euros to find jobs in the event of electoral defeat”. The post was created on Facebook page known for its satirical content and designed to parody Italian politics. It contains at least four false statements: the senator involved is fictitious, the total number of votes is higher than is possible in Italian politics, the amount of money involved is more than 10% of Italian GDP and the law itself is an invention.
The parody struck a chord with disenchanted voters who shared it some 35,000 times in less than a month. Then things quickly became strange. The meme was re-posted with additional commentary on a Facebook page devoted to political commentary. Welcome to the murky world of conspiracy theories. Study: Belief in Free-Market Economics Linked to Distrust of Science. April 22, 2013 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org. People who support free-market economics are more likely to reject proven science, according to a study published in Psychological Science last month. Examining 1,377 visitors to climate change denial blogs, researchers found that belief in a hands-off approach to economics predicted denial that human activity causes climate change, a fact accepted by 97 percent of scientists. The study’s authors—which include Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia and Klaus Oberauer of the University of Zurich—noted that the anti-science movement is especially prevalent in the United States.
“The conspiracist ideation that all of the world’s scientific academies have conspired together to create a hoax known as global warming has found traction in American mainstream politics,” the study reads. h/t Raw Story. 10 Search Engines to Explore the Invisible Web. Not everything on the web will show up in a list of search results on Google or Bing; there are lots of places that their web crawlers cannot access. To explore the invisible web, you need to use specialist search engines. Here are our top 12 services to perform a deep internet search. What Is the Invisible Web? Before we begin, let's establish what does the term "invisible web" refer to?
Simply, it's a catch-all term for online content that will not appear in search results or web directories. There are no official data available, but most experts agree that the invisible web is several times larger than the visible web. The content on the invisible web can be roughly divided into the deep web and the dark web. The Deep Web The deep web made up of content that typically needs some form of accreditation to access. If you have the correct details, you can access the content through a regular web browser. The Dark Web The dark web is a sub-section of the deep web. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Former fellows at conservative think tanks issued flawed UCLA-led study on media's "liberal bias. News outlets including CNN cited a study of several major media outlets by a UCLA political scientist and a University of Missouri-Columbia economist purporting to "show a strong liberal bias.
" But the study employed a measure of "bias" so problematic that its findings are next to useless, and the authors -- both former fellows at conservative think tanks cited in the study to illustrate liberal bias -- seem unaware of the substantial scholarly work that exists on the topic. In recent days, news outlets including CNN cited a study of several major media outlets, "A Measure of Media Bias" (pdf) by political scientist Timothy J. Groseclose of UCLA and economist Jeffrey D. Milyo of the University of Missouri-Columbia, purporting to demonstrate that America's news content has "a strong liberal bias.
" But the UCLA-led study employed a measure of "bias" so problematic that its findings are next to useless. Study riddled with flaws Definition of bias categorized ACLU as conservative. A Measure of Media Bias. A Measure of Media Bias Tim Groseclose Department of Political Science Jeff Milyo Department of Economics December 2004 We are grateful for the research assistance by Aviva Aminova, Jose Bustos, Anya Byers, Evan Davidson, Kristina Doan, Wesley Hussey, David Lee, Pauline Mena, Orges Obeqiri, Byrne Offut, Matt Patterson, David Primo, Darryl Reeves, Susie Rieniets, Tom Rosholt, Michael Uy, Diane Valos, Michael Visconti, Margaret Vo, Rachel Ward, and Andrew Wright. In this paper we estimate (Americans for Democratic Action) scores for major media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, Fox News’ Special Report, and all three network television news shows. “The editors in killed the story. Do the major media outlets in the have a liberal bias?
Few studies provide an objective measure of the slant of news, and none has provided a way to link such a measure to ideological measures of other political actors. Our results show a strong liberal bias. Some Previous Studies of Media Bias Data. Pew Finds Extreme Conservative Bias In Media. A study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, in the past five months, the American main stream media has given Pres. Obama the most unremittingly negative press of any of the presidential candidates by a wide margin, while giving Republican candidates extremely positive press coverage. Liberal Media Bias -- You’ve probably heard it used to describe the American main stream media hundreds, if not thousands of times. One of the most often made claims of the right-wing messaging machine is that the mainstream media are composed almost entirely of liberals who work in concert to promote progressive viewpoints and elect Democrats, while portraying conservative viewpoints, Republicans, and the Tea Party AstroTurf movement with contempt.
Liberal Media Bias is a useful red herring, in that it fires up the faithful conservative base and provides a convenient scapegoat for when the American public rejects conservative policies and/or politicians. Top Think Tanks Cited by the U.S. Media Changes: A Shifting Bias? | Suite101.com. According to the progressive media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), there is a distinct bias in the U.S. media. More right-wing think tanks are cited than left-wing think tanks. More recently however, centrist organizations with little or no political bias have been referenced more than either the right or the left. What factors contribute to this trend and what does it say about American media and society? Top Think Tanks Cited in 2005 A study released in 2005 by FAIR shows that there was a heavy bias in favor of conservative think tanks.
Half of all the citations were from right-wing think tanks, sixteen percent were from liberal organizations. The top ten most cited think tanks and their political orientations for 2005 are: Top Think Tanks Cited in 2009 The 2009 report by FAIR showed a significant change in the political bias of expert media citations. The top ten most cited think tanks and their political orientations for 2009 are: References Rich, Andrew and R. American News Media--Liberal or Conservative Bias? The_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful. Photo by Gokhan Sahin/Getty Images It’s a good time to be a pessimist.
ISIS, Crimea, Donetsk, Gaza, Burma, Ebola, school shootings, campus rapes, wife-beating athletes, lethal cops—who can avoid the feeling that things fall apart, the center cannot hold? Last year Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before a Senate committee that the world is “more dangerous than it has ever been.” This past fall, Michael Ignatieff wrote of “the tectonic plates of a world order that are being pushed apart by the volcanic upward pressure of violence and hatred.” As troubling as the recent headlines have been, these lamentations need a second look. How can we get a less hyperbolic assessment of the state of the world? We also have to avoid being fooled by randomness. Finally, we need to be mindful of orders of magnitude. The only sound way to appraise the state of the world is to count. Homicide. Violence Against Women. Violence Against Children.
Democratization. War. Most of the information we spread online is quantifiably “bullshit” In his well-known essay On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt defines bullshit as speech that is designed to impress but lacks a direct concern for the truth. Under such a definition, a large portion of what we read online today is likely to be bullshit.
Some types of bullshit are political in nature, such as the misleading claim that only 16 mass shootings took place under President Bush’s tenure, compared to a whopping 162 under President Obama. Such claims are valued for their persuasiveness in making a point, rather than for their connection to reality. Other bullshit, such as clickbait, is motivated by the commercial mandates of the digital age, in which companies endlessly chase more page views, likes, followers, subscribers and customers. Still more bullshit springs from vanity and hunger for attention. Reddit rewards users with “karma” for popular comment and link contributions, a system that can compel people to share bullshit or create their own.
'Blacklisting' of Right-Wing Stories More Proof that Facebook 'Rules the News' Revelations that Facebook may have regularly "blacklisted" conservative stories from the platform's "trending" news section was met with outrage on Monday from journalists across the political spectrum who found the company's alleged abuse of power "disturbing" and potentially dangerous. After speaking with several former "news curators," Gizmodo technology editor Michael Nunez reported Monday that the social media platform routinely censored stories "about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users.
" The contracted employees also said they were "instructed to artificially 'inject' selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all," and were specifically asked to exclude "news about Facebook itself in the trending module. " He continued: The Conspiracy Theory Detector. This past September 23 a Canadian 9/11 "truther" confronted me after a talk I gave at the University of Lethbridge. He turned out to be a professor there who had one of his students filming the “confrontation.” By early the next morning the video was online, complete with music, graphics, cutaways and edits apparently intended to make me appear deceptive (search YouTube for “Michael Shermer, Anthony J. Hall”). “You, sir, are not skeptical on that subject—you are gullible,” Hall raged. Conspiracy theories are a dollar a dozen.
Nevertheless, we cannot just dismiss all such theories out of hand, because real conspiracies do sometimes happen. Proof of the conspiracy supposedly emerges from a pattern of “connecting the dots” between events that need not be causally connected. The fact that politicians sometimes lie or that corporations occasionally cheat does not mean that every event is the result of a tortuous conspiracy. Undoing Power. Why You're Stuck in a Narrative. Culture Hacking: America's next big industry? The End Of The World Isn't As Likely As Humans Fighting Back. The web video problem | why it’s time to rethink visual storytelling on the web from the bottom up | Adam Westbrook // Journal.
Upworthy: I Thought This Website Was Crazy, but What Happened Next Changed Everything - Derek Thompson. Post-Digital Writing. Why Google Wants to Get Its Hands on Mystery Company 'Magic Leap' Random Image Experiment Reveals The Building Blocks of Human Imagination. Google's Secretive DeepMind Start-up Unveils A "Neural Turing Machine" Augmented Reality Startup Magic Leap, Funded by Google, is Working on Super-Real 3-D “Light Field” Display. Make Your Own World With Programmable Matter. CNN: Anonymous Wants To See An All Out Revolution Here In The United States! Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action. Social Movements in the Age of the Internet. Twitter, Facebook, and social activism.
A Catalogue of Social Media (and Related) Tools | Digital Politics. 7 Citizen Journalism Websites For Crowdsourced News. Former CIA Spy Tells the Truth.