Introduction to (the scholarly study of) Bullshit
2 What to do about bullshit…
The question of how one can determine who is telling the truth or what is accurate information is a murky one. “If propaganda is often described as misinformation, misleading manipulation, or bullshit … when do we have enough information to evaluate any instance of rhetoric as essentially or predominantly deceptive” (Henderson and Brian, 2016, p. 4)? What, indeed, are we to do about so much manipulative language about, both asking for our attention and pulling the metaphorical wool over our eyes at the same time?
Detection
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Resistance
Making sense of Macnamara’s argument about the post-communication era, Mills notes that responsibility “does not lie in the hands of a few manipulative and exploitative media oligopolies but rather needs to be distributed across many parties with the result that reforms are required at three levels: top-down (e.g. regulation and legislation); bottom-up (e.g. improved media literacy); and increased attention to ethics and standards by advertising and marketing professionals, public relations consultants, government and political communicators, and journalists” (2021, p. 3).
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Work cited
Henderson, G. L., & Braun, M. J. (2016).Introduction: A call for renewed attention to propaganda in writing studies and rhetoric. In G. L. Henderson et al. (Eds.), Propaganda and Rhetoric in Democracy: History, theory, analysis (pp. 1-25). Southern Illinois University Press.
Mills, , C. E. (2021). Navigating good news, bad news, and no news: issues associated with public and private communication online. Communication Research and Practice, 7(1), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2021.1894702
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