Author: Martha R. Villabona works at Subdirección General de Cooperación Territorial e Innovación Educativa of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, where she coordinates the area of multiple literacies. The seemingly unlimited possibilities of citizen participation in social networks are affected by the polarization of debate, the aggressive style of communication and the […]
A middle-aged white man raises his sword to the skies and roars to the gods. The results of his genetic ancestry test have just arrived in his suburban mailbox. His eyes fill with tears as he learns that he is “0.012% Viking”. These are the scenes from a video advertisement for the TV-series Vikings. This […]
The third person effect phenomenon was described by Davidson in 1983 . People tend to think that media influence other people more than themselves. This self reinforcement is a key mechanism to understand the different effects caused by the media on their audience, since people are motivated to maintain a positive image of themselves by […]
Preamble In the period 2015-2019, I was hired as a mathematician by a biology department in order to perform a research that eventually would become my doctoral thesis. This text is adapted from the last chapter of that thesis, “Cycles and interactions: A mathematician among biologists” (full text available here ). The symbiosis between mathematics […]
When we perform Google searches, most of us assume that we all see the same results and that the first ones to appear are the most relevant from links to other pages. However, this is not the case. Since 2009, Google’s algorithm has provided results that are better for you. This personalization of pre-selected and […]
Conspiracy theories are one of the mechanisms to manipulate information intentionally. They present fact-resistant theories and tell unsubstantiated stories that try to explain reality in an alternative way with false information. According to the media context of the second decade of the 21st century, these theories are more visible and have greater reach due to […]
Author: Martha Villabona works at Centro Nacional de Innovación e Investigación Educativa (CNIIE) of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, where she coordinates the area of multiple literacies. In the digital world, news are multiplying and causing readers to only choose those headlines that most interest them. This does not happen randomly or […]
2020 marks exactly half a century from the publication of one of the most important papers in the crossing of economics, philosophy, and political science (and, taking into account that it barely contained six skimpy pages, probably one of the most influential papers per page ever): Amartya Sen’s “The impossibility of a Paretian liberal”. It […]
Despite creative efforts to tackle it, belief in conspiracy theories, alternative facts and fake news show no sign of abating. This is clearly a huge problem, as seen when it comes to climate change, vaccines and expertise in general – with anti-scientific attitudes increasingly influencing politics. So why can’t we stop such views from spreading? […]
Scientific disinformation about climate change is having a great impact especially in countries like the United States (USA). Misinformation about this topic and about scientific issues in general, not only confuses the population and discredits scientific findings but also paralyzes evidence-based policies. Farrell et al (2019) provide a series of examples and strategies that can […]