Organizations in an (Anti-)Information Age.
| Autor | Bellini, Carlo Gabriel Porto |
| Cargo | Editorial |
The Internet is a powerful means for people to share information freely and reliably. This is possible due to the Internet's technological infrastructure, governance principles, global reach, and Web 2.0 features that enable on-the-scene, real-time, user-generated content (1). However, some governments around the world have been censoring online content or building their own regional Internet infrastructure in order to manipulate information, create particular visions of the information world, and ultimately dominate their people (Naim & Bennett, 2015). Governments may also reframe available online information into useful information for their own intents.
While governments challenge the world of free information in a systematic fashion and with long-term intents, certain individuals also act alone or in groups to manipulate information with short-term goals based on incidental motivations and convenient opportunities. Interestingly, such opportunities emerge in regions where governments do not censor the flow of information in cyberspace, that is, where information democracy is the norm. In such places, certain individuals may want to cause instant damage to other individuals or institutions, and they find opportunities in distributing false information to a large audience given the Internet's reach. Perpetrators engage in information frauds even though oftentimes such frauds can be detected by merely inspecting other relevant sources also available on the Internet. This is the case in a large number of situations, such as when individuals distort a politician's image, a region's socioeconomic indicators, or a company's prospects. Life expectancy of certain false online information is short, but such falsehoods can exert immediate damage to their targets--and there is virtually no penalty for such crimes since legislations regulating the spread of false information on the Internet is largely missing in the democratic world and across countries.
Though the Internet is commonly recognized as the best tool available to promote quality information inasmuch as quality can be asserted by accuracy, completeness, timeliness and source transparency, in fact it has been used also to spread false information. False information or rumors are extremely powerful to ignite the emergence of an anti-information/anti-intellectual society. Particularly dangerous in cyberspace is the use of evidence-based data to craft false arguments, usually by resorting to...
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