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    Web of Deceit: Misinformation and Manipulation in the Age of Social Media
    Unavailable
    Web of Deceit: Misinformation and Manipulation in the Age of Social Media
    Unavailable
    Web of Deceit: Misinformation and Manipulation in the Age of Social Media
    Ebook303 pages6 hours

    Web of Deceit: Misinformation and Manipulation in the Age of Social Media

    By Amber Benham, Eli Edwards, Ben Fractenberg and

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    For all its amazing benefits, the worldwide social media phenomenon—epitomized by such sites as Facebook, Myspace, eBay, Twitter, and craigslist—has provided manipulative people and organizations with the tools (and human targets) that allow hoaxes and con games to be perpetrated on a vast scale.In this eye-opening follow-up to her popular 2002 book, Web of Deception, Anne P. Mintz brings together a team of expert researchers, journalists, and subject experts to explain how misinformation is intentionally spread and to illuminate the dangers in a range of critical areas.Web of Deceit is a must-read for any internet user who wants to avoid being victimized by liars, thieves, and propagandists in the age of ubiquitous social media.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInformation Today, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 1, 2012
    ISBN9781937290634
    Unavailable
    Web of Deceit: Misinformation and Manipulation in the Age of Social Media

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    Reviews for Web of Deceit

    3/5

    13 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a reasonable overview of various forms of online deception, although it concentrates primarily on the fraudulent and criminal. Given the mention of social media in the subtitle, I had expected there to be more about personal deception: false personas, cyberbullying, etc.. There is one chapter that covers that sort of material, but it's not the primary aim.That being said, the topics that are covered are good things to know about. The problem is that some of the coverage is fairly superficial (and a bit uneven from chapter to chapter). Some contributors offer useful resources and websites that can be used to, say, evaluate a charity or combat identity theft. Others provide a little too much detail. I found the first appendix, on evaluating websites, to be a good reminder of how to assess sources critically; but the second, an annotated glossary of terms, to be a little more specific than I needed it to be.
    • 3/5
      This is a straightforward manual about how to protect yourself in cyberspace: a 200-page softcover compilation of material that's been covered in a hundred breathless newspaper, magazine, and TV feature stories. It's the kind of book that school districts would assign to a high school "online literacy" course: fact-filled, practical, earnest, and dull. School districts, their libraries, and larger public libraries are -- along with well-meaning parents wanting to protect their middle- and high-school-age offspring -- are, in fact, probably the natural audience for this book. Few adults are likely to pay the $30 cover price, and few teens (not driven by a course assignment or parental edict) are likely to pull this off the shelf.The book is packed with solid advice: Be thoughtful about what you post online, watch out for too-good-to-be-true offers, assume that any email asking for your bank account number or PIN code is a scam, don't give to charities without checking their credentials, turn your bullshit-detector to "high" when confronted with alarming political news. All of this is worth repeating, and repeating again . . . all of it is good advice . . . but none of it is new, and none of it goes beyond the "Online Safety 101" level. There are websites out there that will walk you, step-by-step, through how to navigate Facebook's privacy controls . . . the relevant essay in this book starts (and stops) by reminding you that Facebook has privacy controls, and that you should use them.Like the journalistic feature stories they tend to resemble -- albeit in longer and more detailed form -- the chapters in this book shun complexity, nuance, and historical context. They barely acknowledge the possibility that the "openness" visible on social media sites is part of a larger cultural shift rather than simply youthful foolishness . . . consider the rituals through which trust (without which e-commerce would not exist) is established online . . . or address (beyond vague hand-waves at "the 24/7 news cycle) the ways in which journalism in the electronic era promotes the spread of rumor by making the existence of the rumor the story. A warning to parents against posting pictures of (or information about) their children leans on the implied -- and, according to countless studies, wildly exaggerated -- threat of stranger abduction rather than the far less clear-cut issue of privacy. A discussion of the "Obama is not an American citizen" meme characterizes it simply as a knowing lie rather than dissecting the mash-up of disinformation, misunderstanding, ignorance, xenophobia, and wishful thinking it became. An attempt to reiterate (I think) Chris Mooney's point that stories about science are ill-served by an obsession with "balance" becomes -- in its effort to treat all sides equally -- an example of precisely the phenomenon it decries.If you need a solid, reliable, portable guide to " Bad Things That Can Happen To You Online, and How To Avoid Most of Them," this is your book. If you already know what your Facebook privacy settings are, ignore stern warnings that your bank account needs to be "verified," and routinely slap the "spam" tag on misspelled, ungrammatical emails allegedly from major corporations . . . save your money, or (better yet!) use it to go buy something by Cass Sunstein, Chris Mooney, or Cory Doctorow.
    • 3/5
      Pretty standard opportunistic work about lying online. If you know nothing about social media, this might be new. Otherwise, this is pretty standard. Still, this is a pretty useful book as a snapshot of online nefarious activity. Most academic libraries should probably get this book, despite the "fluffiness" of the subject matter. It's actually a collection of fairly well written essays on the subject. I'd probably give this a higher rating if the content was more research oriented.
    • 3/5
      Like many books which are compilations, Web of Deceit is uneven. The sections written by the editor are well-written and to the point. The other chapters vary from informative, well-written, and helpful to very much otherwise. The book gives very good advice on the ease of lying on social media, cyberbullying, and guarding your identity, privacy, and money (scams, charity scams, and e-buying) in today's Internet. Its hints on what to look for in evaluating a website is basic but very clear. The chapter on hate speech on the Internet could have been helpful, but it dates this book, not only to the decade, but to this election year. Not a good idea in a compilation intended to help individuals for years to come. The chapter on political misinformation, however, will be useful for many voting years to come. The chapter on cybersecurity uses unnecessary acronym overload, defining IW and IO and so on once (information warfare and information operations by the way) and then using the acronyms the rest of the chapter as if they were words.There is a very useful glossary and index. Each chapter gives source notes on where the chapter got its information. These can lead to quite useful further reading.So, basically, this is a good book with unfortunate flaws. It is probably worth $20, but is priced at almost $30 ($29.95) which puts it beyond what I would pay for it. Without the flaws it would be worth that higher price to me.