A rather curious place to spend some time.
from the FAQ
What is Disinfopedia?Disinfopedia is a project that uses "Wiki"-based collaborative editing to produce a free, comprehensive guide to the public relations firms, front groups, and industry-friendly experts that attempt to manipulate public opinion. A number of individuals and organizations have previously attempted to compile similar guides and directories, but the sheer number of ever-changing PR campaigns and front groups has prevented anyone from developing a comprehensive list. The goal of Disinfopedia is to create the largest and most up-to-date guide in history, both in terms of breadth and depth. We also want Disinfopedia to become a reliable resource. It is an ambitious goal, and it may take many years to achieve it.
What is "disinformation"?
Like all good questions, very hard to answer. It may be easier to ask and answer questions like "at what point does opinion or advocacy become disinformation?", "can history or ideology remain simplified without being disinforming?", and "what conceptequals what other concept in this opinion, advocacy, history, or ideology?" Such distinctions are studied in the fields of conceptual metaphor, information warfare, psychological operations, scientific method, historical method and the sociology of knowledge. One distinction that most students of these topics accept is that someone with an economic self-interest is rarely a neutral observer.
Is disinformation just lying?
No. The word "lying " usually implies an awareness of spreading untruths. Long study in psychology, e.g. false memory syndrome,groupthink, suggests that honest advocates of a view can rarely tell when they have accepted some questionable premise or evidence along with the valid evidence for that view. This suggests a constructive role for their opponents in 'culling' that evidence and moderating extreme points of view among front groups, and industry experts. Such views may reflect not a desire to disinform, but rather a biased mind-set or paradigm where some central dogma has become accepted as true.
Why are PR firms a threat?
Public relations, the profession that trades in influence and in altering mind-sets and conceptual metaphors in public life, often has both economic self-interest and a commitment to a point of view. Thus an extreme scrutiny on activities and ethical codes of such professions is advised: the statements it produces must usually be considered disinformation by definition, at least by opponents, until proven otherwise.
How can the public fight back?
When such activities are genuinely against the public interest, wise members of the public seek tools to regain mindshare for what they see as 'truth'. Holding disinforming groups up to scrutiny is an ongoing process, a process far more important than labeling any particular point of view, or metaphor, or idea, as "disinforming". It is a cornerstone of any democracy.
What is this project's role in increasing public scrutiny?
Because of its global scope and experience with prior projects like Wikipedia and others by PRwatch, hopefully a project likeDisinfopedia can support the public scrutiny process more effectively than was possible with prior methods. If not, then also hopefully, that will become obvious and a more effective successor that will serve public purposes better can evolve, learning from this project's flaws and successes. So this project will likely serve as it is, and inspire successors. Our hope is based on use of very open and simple tools that have proven capable of attracting mass public participation:
I had not opened a copy of Wired in about 5 years, but I did read the interview with bill Joy. He has interesting things to say about security and Linux and windows.
Posted by: Steve Cisler | December 02, 2003 at 07:53