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International Journal of Internet Science |
A peer reviewed open access journal for empirical findings,
methodology, and theory of social and behavioral science concerning the
Internet and its implications for individuals, social groups,
organizations, and society.
New Internet Myths: No Truth in a Postfactual World?
Ulf-Dietrich Reips1 & Uwe Matzat2
1University of Konstanz, Germany,
2Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Summary: The year 2016 has seen an unprecedented series of political campaigns that made use of the Internet, especially social media. Consequently, the Internet is increasingly being seen as a channel for influencing opinions, and it is being blamed for allowing spin doctors and other shady elements lurking at campaign trails in doing so without the necessity of content being related to facts. "Post-truth" was named the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016, an adjective defined as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief" (Oxford Dictionary, 2016). Relatedly, language institutions in several other languages followed suit, e.g. "postfaktisch" was also elected word of the year for German. The history of making new technologies responsible for societal developments beyond their actual impact is not new: when books were first printed, the invention of trains was thought to blind people, make them go crazy or cause female passengers' "uteruses ... fly out of [their] bodies" (Rooney, 2011). Old TV seems to get a break on its couch these days, while a crowd of teenage Internet services is being blamed for shattering the world's windows. In the current editorial, we take a close look at these "new Internet myths".
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Keywords: Postfactual, Internet myths, impact, editorial
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The article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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Editors
Ulf-Dietrich Reips
(University of Konstanz, Germany)
Uwe Matzat
(Eindhoven University of Technology, NL)
Editorial Board
Michael Birnbaum (California State University at Fullerton, USA)
Tom Buchanan (Westminster University, UK)
Don Dillman (Washington State University, USA)
Anja Göritz (University of Freiburg Germany)
Adam Joinson (Open University, UK)
John Krantz (Hanover College, USA)
Han Woo Park (Yeungnam University, South Korea)
Chris Snijders (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL)
Barry Wellman (University of Toronto, Canada)
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Scope
The International Journal of Internet Science is an
interdisciplinary, peer reviewed journal for the publication of research
articles about empirical findings, methodology, and theory in the
field of Internet Science. It provides an outlet for articles on the
Internet as a medium of research and its implications for individuals,
social groups, organizations, and society.