factoid
- 1. A piece of unverified information that. advertised as factual, becomes accepted as true because of frequent repetition.
- 2. A brief, somewhat interesting fact.
- 3. An inaccurate statement or statistic believed true because of widespread citation by the media.
Norman Mailer coined the term "factoid" in his 1973 book, Marilyn: A Biography, in which he described "factoids" as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper",[5] and formed the word by combining fact and the ending -oid to mean "similar but not the same". The press soon described Mailer's new word as referring to "something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact".
Modern media possess the power to generate factoids on scales that are culturally epochal, like the " Energy Crisis" of the 1970's.
However, as their existence is perceptual and metaphysical rather than concrete, factoids, once created, or inflated, may swiftly become their own antitheses. After precipitating a recession, and bringing down an incumbent American President, Jimmy Carter, the "Energy Crisis" morphed into the "Oil Glut" of the early 1980's.
By 1993 factoids had become thingy enough to merit mention in William Safire's New York Times survey of common misconceptions and urban legends. In it, he identified several contrasting senses of factoid:
- "factoid: accusatory: misinformation purporting to be factual; or, a phony statistic."
- "factoid: neutral: seemingly though not necessarily factual"
- "factoid: (the CNN version): a little-known bit of information; trivial but interesting data."
According to the Wikipedia,
" this new sense of a factoid as a trivial but interesting fact was popularized by the CNN Headline News TV channel, which, during the 1980s and 1990s, often included such a fact under the heading "factoid" during newscasts. BBC Radio 2 presenter Steve Wright used factoids extensively on his show as well."
A few decades later, American scholars rediscovered the once obscure Soviet art of Dezinformatsia, and factoids soon grew into a academic cottage industry with specialized journals focusing on echo chamber acoustics and the dark arts of justifying behavioral engineering and social entrepreneurship.
Inevitably, one soon discovered that political interest in the subject was somewhat less than symmetrical :
Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review
July 2023, Volume 4, Issue 4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-119
Research Article
A survey of expert views on misinformation: Definitions, determinants, solutions, and future of the field
Sacha Altay (1), Manon Berriche (2), Hendrik Heuer (3), Johan Farkas (4), Steven Rathje (5)
We surveyed 150 academic experts on misinformation and identified areas of expert consensus. Experts defined misinformation as false and misleading information, though views diverged on the importance of Intentionality and what exactly constitutes misinformation.
The most popular reason why people believe and share misinformation was partisanship, while lack of education was one of the least popular reasons.
Experts were optimistic about the effectiveness of interventions against misinformation and supported system-level actions against misinformation, such as platform design changes and algorithmic changes...
Experts leaned strongly toward the left of the political spectrum:
Very right-wing (0), Fairly right-wing fairly right-wing (0), Slightly right-of-center (7), Center (15), Slightly left-of-center (43), Fairly left-wing (62), Very left-wing (21).
The misinformation experts represent a broad range of scientific fields. Experts specialized in
psychology (39), communication and media science (32), political science (22), computational social sciences (17), computer science (9), sociology (8), journalism (8), philosophy (5), other (4), medicine/other (2), linguistics (2), history (1), physics (1).
