How to survive in the information war - 6 useful books

In the age of information wars, it is more and more difficult to figure out where is the truth and where is propaganda. RBC Trends has prepared a list of books that will help you cope with the situation and not destroy relationships with loved ones in endless disputes Critically evaluate the news headlines “Guide to lies.

This book contains many formulas and diagrams. Their task is to show how, with the help of graphs and the interpretation of numbers, facts can be manipulated: to scare people with crime or force them to buy a house with a little magic with the presentation of data. A separate section is devoted to how survey data and statistics are collected and why they do not always reflect the real picture. This is not always a deliberate misrepresentation, the author notes, but the very wording of the question often affects the answers that researchers receive. However, the deliberate manipulation of facts in Levitin's book is also analyzed in sufficient detail. The ultimate goal of The Guide to Lies is to help people distinguish high-quality news from deliberately false news.

Stop quarreling with loved ones because of different points of view "Anatomy of Delusions: A Big Book on Critical Thinking", Nepryakhin Nikita

“Any person is sure that they are not personally affected by persuasive advertising messages or propaganda,” says Nikita Nepryakhin, a teacher of logic and critical thinking at MGIMO and author of the book Anatomy of Delusions. In it, he consistently analyzes several dozen cognitive distortions that prevent us from objectively perceiving reality. We are talking, for example, about the effect of the opposite result, when information that contradicts our deep convictions does not refute them, but, on the contrary, only strengthens the confidence that we are right. Another common distortion is called the "repetition effect": the more times we hear some information, the more we believe it. Most likely, after reading the book, you will find some of the distortions in yourself and begin to notice similar logical errors in others. The main thing,

Choose a credible source of information "Fake", Annemarie Bon

Annemarie Bohn, a Dutch journalist and writer, has published a book for teenagers, in which she analyzes the most common causes of holivars today: from vaccinations and superstitions to the manipulation of statistics. What is good about books for teenagers is that in them all the arguments are given as simply and clearly as possible, and this is exactly what a stressed brain needs. A separate chapter is devoted to how news is created. The author recalls journalistic professionalism and explains what it is. Serious publications, for example, clearly indicate what is a fact and what is just an opinion, and are always looking for additional confirmation of any figures and phenomena that they write about. In the author's home country, there is a Council on Journalistic Ethics, to which one can complain about a publication if there are reasons to consider it unreliable. In this case, the article will be checked and, if the untruth is discovered, it will put an end to the career of its author. Of course, in a number of countries, journalists are under serious pressure from the authorities, but even adjusted for this, high-quality journalism can be trusted.

Accept the irreversibility of the changes “Post-truth. Knowledge as power struggle Steve Fuller

The American social philosopher in the field of science and technology research, Steve Fuller, wrote a book about fakes in a somewhat unexpected way. The Oxford Dictionary, which proclaimed “post-truth” the word of 2016 after Brexit and Donald Trump’s election victory, gives an unambiguously negative assessment of this concept. However, Fuller recalls the theory of elite circulation developed by Vilfredo Pareto, which includes the division of people into “lions” and “foxes”. Leos have the power of the moment and strive to maintain the status quo. "Foxes" want to pull the blanket over themselves and for this they undermine the monopoly of "lions" on ideology, encouraging society to make independent decisions instead of agreeing with expert opinion.

The current order assumes that experts - doctors, journalists, lawyers, political scientists, and so on - control the flow of knowledge in their fields, and can limit or correct it. Such an expert community may turn out to be inert to ideas that go against the rules and hypotheses prevailing within their group, or expressed by a person who does not have a proven qualification in this field of knowledge. Fuller draws parallels with the New Age, when the usual social paradigms were changing, and shows situations in which post-truth, which the “foxes” subtly use, can be useful to society and destroy the prevailing stereotypes.

Stop dividing the world into white and black “Factuality. Ten reasons why we are wrong about the world - and why everything is not as bad as it seems, Hans Rosling

The physician, academician and founder of the Swedish branch of MSF, Hans Rosling, in his book calls for a reconsideration of our knowledge of the world. Many of them, in his opinion, are significantly outdated and may prevent us from giving a correct assessment of the crisis situation.

First of all, the author warns against "false gaps" - the tendency to divide the world into two poles, and to oppose "us" and "other countries" in which people live in poverty, give birth to dozens of children, die en masse from simple infections, or vice versa, live substantially better than us. This view was correct in the 1950s. Now, if you draw a graph of the distribution of people according to wealth, fertility, the spread of education among women, or any other indicators, then the absolute majority will be somewhere in the middle, and will not form two clearly defined camps at the poles.

In this regard, it is worth rejecting another limiting belief - the “instinct of fate”, the essence of which is that the future of a particular person or people is predetermined by the special culture that they possess. Objective data show that global trends are the same for all peoples, and over the past half century, living conditions have improved significantly on all continents and countries. People in all countries want about the same thing, regardless of their geographical location and religion. There is much more in common between us and other countries than is commonly thought.

Social economy Features of the national spirit: does the mentality really exist

Unfortunately, misconceptions are inherent not only to ordinary people, but also to experts. Rosling's surveys of the current state of the world economy and society, conducted in various professional communities, from journalists to world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, demonstrate that even in this environment outdated ideas about the world are widespread, which can influence the quality of decisions made.

Deeply understand the issue of “Fakes. Communication, meanings and responsibility»

If you, as a reader, want to be more academic, you can refer to the collective monograph published by researchers at the Baltic Federal University. I. Kant. In this book, experts analyze specific fake stories of recent years, for example, the story of a crucified boy or a report about a mass national round dance - osuokhai, allegedly organized in Yakutia in support of amendments to the constitution.

On the basis of the typology of the plot elements of Propp's Russian fairy tales, the analysis of the epic of different countries and classical rhetoric, the authors developed a value-normative model of narrative meaning formation. It explains why our compatriots are close to the narrative of the heroic Motherland and the sacralization of power. In addition to studies of historical memory, the authors also study the modern information and technological structure of the world, which determines our perception of news. In fact, what is now required of a person is not reasoning, but a reaction - “like, ban or buy,” notes one of the authors of the monograph, Doctor of Philosophy Grigory Tulchinsky.