Next time taught: Winter 2025 term (confirmed as of 02/28/2024.) Open to all FIMS graduate students and some other graduate programs, with the home department’s approval and the instructor’s permission.
Location: FNB, University of Western Ontario, London, CANADA.


Course Description:

Foundations of credibility assessment and information quality verification. Philosophical and psychological underpinnings of deceptive behaviours. Information manipulation by digital environment type (fudging, forging, spamming, trolling), format (image- or text-based), domain (communication, news provision, information organization). Best prevention guidelines for digital/off-line environments. Technological advancements in lie detection and information verification.


Problem Statement:

Recent controversies over “fake news” and concerns over entering a “post-truth” era, highlighted the need for deeper understanding of the problematical information that circulates in contemporary technologically-mediated environments. Such information may be inaccurate, misleading, inappropriately attributed, or altogether fabricated and it has a potential to disrupt politics, business, and culture (Jack, 2017). Everyday life decision-making, behavior, and mood are influenced by the quality of information we receive. When professional analysts sift through the news, their future forecasts, fact and pattern discovery depend on veracity of the information in knowledge management and curation areas. It is critical to distinguish truthful, credible information from deceptively manipulated one. Few verification mechanisms currently exist, and the sheer volume of the information requires systematic guidelines and novel technological approaches (Rubin, Chen, & Conroy, 2015)

This course will discuss deception, as a deliberate effort to create false beliefs or conclusions, in contrast with other closely related phenomena such as misinformation (Fox, 1983) and disinformation. While both terms refer to misleading infor­mation, misinformation is usually used to imply no deliberate intent to mislead, while disinformation implies knowing deception.

The significance of the course material to the information professional is four-fold:
1) Analytical methods complement and enhance the notoriously poor human ability to discern information from misinformation.
2) Credibility assessment of digital sources will be addressed.
3) Metrics of information quality assessment will be discussed.
4) The mere awareness of potential digital deception constitutes part of new media literacy and can prevent undesirable consequences.


Course Content (Subject to Change and Refinement):

  • Introduction to misinformation, deception and information manipulation.
  • Philosophical and ethical foundation of morality. Information quality.
  • Psychological basics of deceptive and deviant behaviors.
  • Deception in computer-mediate environments.
  • Credibility assessments in law enforcement and related information policies.
  • Digital environments specificity (“fake news” controversy, fake social network and dating profiles, fudged online resumes, fake product reviews, “butler lies” in texting, “gaslighting”, spam and phishing, astroturfing and “xuanchuan”, i.e., flooding conversational spaces with positive messages or attempts to change the subject).
  • Organizational concerns (forged science and misinterpretation of data).
  • Case studies from broad selections of disciplines (politics, civics, health insurances, etc.)
  • Methodological advancements in prevention, detection and deterrence.
  • Text analytics for information verification.
  • Best practices, guidelines, workflows and polices.
  • Special cases: practitioners in education, libraries, news production, law enforcement.

Methods of Evaluation (Subject to Change and Refinement)::

  1. Critical analysis short paper (10%)
  2. In-class presentation (10%)
  3. Case study paper (15%)
  4. Suggested guidelines for content verification strategies (15%)
  5. Poster presentation (15%)
  6. Final paper (25%)
  7. Participation (10%)

Sample Readings/References:

Rubin, V. L. (2022). Misinformation and Disinformation:  Detecting Fakes with the Eye and AI. Springer Nature, Switzerland https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95656-1 [Free Chapter:  Introduction | definitions | problem statement | literacy tips]

Fox, Christopher (1983). Information and Misinformation. An Investigation of the Notions of Information, Misinformation, Informing, and Misinforming. Greenwood Publishing Group.

Levine, Timothy R., ed. (2014) Encyclopedia of Deception. Los Angeles, Sage Reference.

Rubin, Victoria L.; Chen, Yimin; Conroy, Nadia J. (2015) Deception Detection for News: Three Types of Fakes. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 52. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pra2.2015.145052010083/full

Jack, Caroline (2017). Lexicon of Lies: Terms for Problematic Information. Data&Society. https://datasociety.net/pubs/oh/DataAndSociety_LexiconofLies.pdf


Showcasing Previous Course Outcomes

2023 End-of-Course Digital Wall: “Cautionary Tales of Disinformation

2022 Digital Wall: “Misinformation and Disinformation Case Studies: How to Curb the Infodemic?

2020 Digital Wall of Iconographics: “Strategies for Prevention, Deterrence, or Detection of Mis-/Disinformation”