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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of exercises
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 A Brief History of Media and Media Manipulation
- 2 The Psychology of Memory and Learning
- 3 The Internet, Technology and the Media
- 4 Selecting Sources of Information
- 5 Expertise, Authority and Credibility
- 6 Language in Media Messages
- 7 Algorithms, Bots, Trolls, Cyborgs and Artificial Intelligence
- 8 Statistics and Data Visualization
- 9 Images, Reverse Image Searching and Deepfakes
- 10 Media Manipulation and Fact Checking
- 11 The Ethics of Likes, Clicks, Shares and Data Harvesting
- 12 How We Can Help Ourselves
- Resources
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - The Psychology of Memory and Learning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of exercises
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 A Brief History of Media and Media Manipulation
- 2 The Psychology of Memory and Learning
- 3 The Internet, Technology and the Media
- 4 Selecting Sources of Information
- 5 Expertise, Authority and Credibility
- 6 Language in Media Messages
- 7 Algorithms, Bots, Trolls, Cyborgs and Artificial Intelligence
- 8 Statistics and Data Visualization
- 9 Images, Reverse Image Searching and Deepfakes
- 10 Media Manipulation and Fact Checking
- 11 The Ethics of Likes, Clicks, Shares and Data Harvesting
- 12 How We Can Help Ourselves
- Resources
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
We are in an era of endemic misinformation and outright disinformation. Plenty of bad actors are helping the trend along. But the real drivers, some experts believe, are social and psychological forces that make people prone to sharing and believing misinformation in the first place. And those forces are on the rise.
(Fisher, 2021)Storing and processing information
Some of the problems with our online systems of communication stem from how memory works, how and what we remember, how emotion can override all other considerations and how those who know how to manipulate information can profit from all of the above.
When learning something new, the brain stores information in short-term memory. This allows the information to be held long enough to understand it and to ‘recall’ it for a short time. If the information is not used again, or used only infrequently, it does not stay in the memory and must be renewed or refreshed or even relearned if needed again. Some researchers believe that the use of the cell phone as an external short-term memory is eroding our ability to use our built-in short-term memory, which short circuits the process of remembering.
For information that is repeatedly required, a new storage place is created in the brain. Repetition is key to creating a place, or places, in the brain where new information can be stored on a more permanent basis. The brain will move information that is used several times from short-term memory to long-term memory. A space in the brain is created to hold each piece of information needed for the long term. If the information has more than one component – for example a picture and a caption – the brain may store the information in more than one place. The picture is stored in one place and the caption is stored in another place and the brain creates a link between the two locations. If a connection can be made between new information and an already stored piece of information, there may be multiple places in the brain where the new information is stored and there may be multiple connections between the new piece of information and already stored information. As connections are made between pieces of information, networks of links are formed. The multiple pathways between pieces of information make it easier for the brain to recall the information when it is wanted. .
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Media SmartLessons, Tips and Strategies for Librarians, Classroom Instructors and Other Information Professionals, pp. 13 - 24Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2022