Glossary
Glossary
"Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect." Blaise Pascal
"The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they’ve been in." Dennis Potter
"The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they’ve been in." Dennis Potter
On this page there are over 150 words that we are likely to be seeing more of in the future. Some of the words are old, some are new, and some are old but with new meanings.
Page Content
1 Computing & Internet-Related Words / Phrases
• 4Chan
— anonymous forum for the alt right, where barriers to entry are low or non-existent and from where other users can pick up and share material on mainstream social media platforms.
• ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) — videos which are claimed to "induce a tingling feeling in the viewer". artially identify individual users or devices even when cookies are turned off.]
• ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) — videos which are claimed to "induce a tingling feeling in the viewer". artially identify individual users or devices even when cookies are turned off.]
•
Astroturfing
— practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (eg, political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by a grassroots participant(s). It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source's financial connection. (The term is derived from 'AstroTurf', a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to resemble grass, as a play on the word 'grassroots'. The implication is that there are no 'true' or 'natural' grassroots, only fake or artificial support.)
• Attack Surface — the sum of the different points of a software environment (the ‘attack vectors’) where an unauthorized user (the ‘attacker’) can try to enter data to or extract data from an environment. [Good security involves keeping the attack surface as small as possible.]
• Bot — a device or piece of software that can execute commands, reply to messages, or perform routine tasks, such as online searches, either automatically or with minimal human intervention.
• Botnet — a network of private computers infected with malicious software.
• Bot or Botnet Herder — an individual who controls and maintains a botnet by installing malicious software in numerous machines, putting these machines into his/her control; the 'herds' of bot machines, also called zombies, can then be used to attack or infect other machines.
• Breadcrumbs — graphical control element used as a navigational aid in user interfaces, allowing users to keep track of their locations within programs, documents or websites. [The term comes from the trail of bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the fairy tale of the same name.]
• Browser, Device or Machine Fingerprint — information collected about a remote computing device for the purpose of identification. [Fingerprints can be used to fully or partially identify individual users or devices even when cookies are turned off.]
• Attack Surface — the sum of the different points of a software environment (the ‘attack vectors’) where an unauthorized user (the ‘attacker’) can try to enter data to or extract data from an environment. [Good security involves keeping the attack surface as small as possible.]
• Bot — a device or piece of software that can execute commands, reply to messages, or perform routine tasks, such as online searches, either automatically or with minimal human intervention.
• Botnet — a network of private computers infected with malicious software.
• Bot or Botnet Herder — an individual who controls and maintains a botnet by installing malicious software in numerous machines, putting these machines into his/her control; the 'herds' of bot machines, also called zombies, can then be used to attack or infect other machines.
• Breadcrumbs — graphical control element used as a navigational aid in user interfaces, allowing users to keep track of their locations within programs, documents or websites. [The term comes from the trail of bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the fairy tale of the same name.]
• Browser, Device or Machine Fingerprint — information collected about a remote computing device for the purpose of identification. [Fingerprints can be used to fully or partially identify individual users or devices even when cookies are turned off.]
• Catfishing— the practice of using a fake online profile to lure someone into a relationship.
• Clearnet— name given to the regular web by users of the Dark Web due to its unencrypted nature.
• Clickbait — web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy. It relies on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching thumbnail pictures to attract click-throughs and encourage forwarding of the material over online social networks.
• Clearnet— name given to the regular web by users of the Dark Web due to its unencrypted nature.
• Clickbait — web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy. It relies on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching thumbnail pictures to attract click-throughs and encourage forwarding of the material over online social networks.
• Computational Propaganda
— the use of algorithms, automation, and human curation to purposefully distribute misleading information over social media networks; learning from and mimicking real people so as to manipulate public opinion.
• Content Farm — a website that contains very large quantities of content, typically of low quality or aggregated from other sites, generated solely to ensure that it appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
• CPM & CPC — CPM is ‘cost per thousand’ views or impressions (the ‘M’ is the Roman numeral); if your CPM is $1, you'll be charged $1 for every 1,000 views on your ad; CPC is ‘cost per click’, where you pay each time someone clicks on a link in an ad that takes them to your website.
• Cyberbullying — the use of cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites to harass, threaten or intimidate someone (often carried out by children).
• Cybergeddon — cataclysm resulting from a large-scale attack on critical national infrastructures involving sabotage of computerized networks, systems and activities; combination of cyberterrorism, cyberwarfare, cybercrime and hacktivism into widespread disruption and economic collapse.
• Cyberwarfare — actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption.
• Cyborg — a bot with some human involvement.
• Dark Ad — social media adverts targeted by political brands or campaigns with specific messages honed to the recipients personality using psychographic profiling and clever algorithms.
• Dark Pattern — a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick site visitors into doing things unknowingly when purchasing on line, such as buying insurance or signing up for recurring bills (a malign form of Persuasive Design).
• Dark Web — 'ebay for the underworld'; web content that exists on darknets (overlay networks which use the Internet but require specific software, configurations or authorization to access). It consists of hundreds of thousands of websites that use anonymity tools like Tor and I2P to hide their IP address.
• Data Broker — a business that collects personal information about consumers and sells it to other organizations.
• Data Obfuscation — a form of data masking where data is scrambled to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive materials. DO is also known as ‘data scrambling’ and ‘privacy preservation’.
• Data Poisoning — secretly accessing and manipulating someone’s data in such a way that the manipulation goes undetected and continues over time, potentially causing immense damage to the effective functioning and reputation of the institution (e.g. a bank).
• Deepfake —horrific AI-assisted face swapping app which takes someone’s face and places it on someone else's body.
• Deep Web — invisible/hidden parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard search engines. The content is hidden behind HTML forms. The deep web includes many very common uses such as web mail and online banking, but also paid for services with a paywall such as video on demand, and much more. (The opposite term to the deep web is the surface web.)
• Digital Insurgencies — using fake accounts to move online debate
• Digital Signature — a digital code which is attached to an electronically transmitted document to verify its contents and the sender's identity. This gives the recipient reason to believe that the message was created by the sender (authentication), that the sender cannot deny having sent it (non-repudiation), and that the message was not altered in transit (integrity). In some countries digital signatures have legal significance.
• Digital Sovereignty — the individual's rights and the authority over their presence and how they are represented in the digital world.
• Digital Wildfire — false rumour or sensitive information that spreads very rapidly in the online universe, typically through social media.
• Distributed Denial of Service — an attack in cyberspace which overwhelms networks or websites until they are unable to function.
Internet manipulation — manipulation of internet information for purposes of propaganda, discrediting/harming corporate or political competitors, improving personal or brand reputation, or just for the fun of it (trolling).
• DOF — Deliberate Online Falsehoods.
• Doxing or Doxxing — internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting private or identifiable information about an individual or organization (from dox, abbreviation of documents).
• Emoticon — graphical representation of the emotion of the writer; can be in the form of an image or made up of text characters.
• Fake News Websites— sites that publish hoaxes and disinformation for purposes other than news satire. Some use homograph spoofing attacks, typosquatting and other deceptive strategies to resemble genuine news outlets (a homograph is a word with the same form as another but a different meaning).
• Fancy Bear — cyber espionage group believed to be associated with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU; uses spear phishing emails, malware drop websites disguised as news sources; sometimes creates online personas to sow disinformation, deflect blame, and create plausible deniability for their activities.
• Content Farm — a website that contains very large quantities of content, typically of low quality or aggregated from other sites, generated solely to ensure that it appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
• CPM & CPC — CPM is ‘cost per thousand’ views or impressions (the ‘M’ is the Roman numeral); if your CPM is $1, you'll be charged $1 for every 1,000 views on your ad; CPC is ‘cost per click’, where you pay each time someone clicks on a link in an ad that takes them to your website.
• Cyberbullying — the use of cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites to harass, threaten or intimidate someone (often carried out by children).
• Cybergeddon — cataclysm resulting from a large-scale attack on critical national infrastructures involving sabotage of computerized networks, systems and activities; combination of cyberterrorism, cyberwarfare, cybercrime and hacktivism into widespread disruption and economic collapse.
• Cyberwarfare — actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption.
• Cyborg — a bot with some human involvement.
• Dark Ad — social media adverts targeted by political brands or campaigns with specific messages honed to the recipients personality using psychographic profiling and clever algorithms.
• Dark Pattern — a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick site visitors into doing things unknowingly when purchasing on line, such as buying insurance or signing up for recurring bills (a malign form of Persuasive Design).
• Dark Web — 'ebay for the underworld'; web content that exists on darknets (overlay networks which use the Internet but require specific software, configurations or authorization to access). It consists of hundreds of thousands of websites that use anonymity tools like Tor and I2P to hide their IP address.
• Data Broker — a business that collects personal information about consumers and sells it to other organizations.
• Data Obfuscation — a form of data masking where data is scrambled to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive materials. DO is also known as ‘data scrambling’ and ‘privacy preservation’.
• Data Poisoning — secretly accessing and manipulating someone’s data in such a way that the manipulation goes undetected and continues over time, potentially causing immense damage to the effective functioning and reputation of the institution (e.g. a bank).
• Deepfake —horrific AI-assisted face swapping app which takes someone’s face and places it on someone else's body.
• Deep Web — invisible/hidden parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard search engines. The content is hidden behind HTML forms. The deep web includes many very common uses such as web mail and online banking, but also paid for services with a paywall such as video on demand, and much more. (The opposite term to the deep web is the surface web.)
• Digital Insurgencies — using fake accounts to move online debate
• Digital Signature — a digital code which is attached to an electronically transmitted document to verify its contents and the sender's identity. This gives the recipient reason to believe that the message was created by the sender (authentication), that the sender cannot deny having sent it (non-repudiation), and that the message was not altered in transit (integrity). In some countries digital signatures have legal significance.
• Digital Sovereignty — the individual's rights and the authority over their presence and how they are represented in the digital world.
• Digital Wildfire — false rumour or sensitive information that spreads very rapidly in the online universe, typically through social media.
• Distributed Denial of Service — an attack in cyberspace which overwhelms networks or websites until they are unable to function.
Internet manipulation — manipulation of internet information for purposes of propaganda, discrediting/harming corporate or political competitors, improving personal or brand reputation, or just for the fun of it (trolling).
• DOF — Deliberate Online Falsehoods.
• Doxing or Doxxing — internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting private or identifiable information about an individual or organization (from dox, abbreviation of documents).
• Emoticon — graphical representation of the emotion of the writer; can be in the form of an image or made up of text characters.
• Fake News Websites— sites that publish hoaxes and disinformation for purposes other than news satire. Some use homograph spoofing attacks, typosquatting and other deceptive strategies to resemble genuine news outlets (a homograph is a word with the same form as another but a different meaning).
• Fancy Bear — cyber espionage group believed to be associated with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU; uses spear phishing emails, malware drop websites disguised as news sources; sometimes creates online personas to sow disinformation, deflect blame, and create plausible deniability for their activities.
• Flash Crash
— a very rapid, deep, and volatile fall in security prices occurring within an extremely short time period often stemming from black-box combined with high-frequency trading, whose speed and interconnectedness can result in the loss and recovery of billions of dollars in a matter of minutes and seconds.
• FNRP — a term used by Facebook to denote a Fake, Not Real Person [1]
• Geek — an expert or enthusiast, or someone obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit; generally pejorative (a peculiar, unfashionable, or socially awkward person, perhaps someone who is interested in a subject for its own sake).
• Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) — a type of artificial intelligence algorithm used in unsupervised machine learning, implemented by a system of two neural networks competing against each other in a zero-sum game framework. [The technique can generate photographs that look authentic to human observers.]
• Going Dark — military lingo for the sudden termination of communication. The term used to describe a scenario in which communication appears to have ceased, but in reality has just moved from a public communication channel, where it could be monitored, to a private communication channel that prevents eavesdropping.
• Hackathon — an event in which a large number of people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming; typically lasts several days.
• Hacktivist — person who gains unauthorized access to computer files or networks in order to further social or political ends.
• Hashtag Poisoning —a method of spamming a popular hashtag in order to disrupt criticism or other unwanted conversations by flooding it with unrelated or opposing tweets.
• Hurtcore —hidden forums on the dark web dedicated to sharing images and videos of rape, torture, paedophilia and degradation (e.g. where victims are forced to lick toilet seats, eat dog food, and worse.)
• Hyper-targeting — the ability to deliver advertising messages to specific interest-based segments in a network; a step towards precision performance marketing.
• Immune Technology — artificial immune systems are a class of intelligent, rule-based machine learning systems inspired by the principles and processes of the vertebrate immune system, including learning and memory for use in problem-solving.
• Infographics — graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly and our ability to see patterns and trends.
• Information Laundering — the process of placing and spreading disinformation online in a way that disguises its origins and authorship.
• Internet of things — network of internet-connected vehicles, buildings and other ‘smart’ devices with embedded electronics, software, sensors, actuators (network connectivity enables these devices to collect and exchange data).
• Internet Research Agency — Russian troll factory based in St Petersburg. [The IRA was shut down in Dec 2016, but is said to have been replaced by Glavset, which is based at the same address.]
• Machine-learning (ML) — a statistical and data-driven approach to creating artificial intelligence (AI), for example when a computer program learns from data to improve its performance in completing a task.[2]
• Malware — umbrella term for malicious software which is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain authorized access to computer system or mobile operations, gather sensitive information or display unwanted advertising; comes in a variety of forms, including computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, adware, scareware and other malicious programs.
• Man-in-the-Middle Attack (MITM) — an attack in which the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the communication between two parties who believe they are directly communicating with each other.
• Mash-up — a web page or application created by combining data or functionality from different sources; could involve enhancing content or changing it to suggest or imply something different. (Origins in British - West Indies slang meaning to be intoxicated.)
• Multi-Factor Authentication — security system that requires more than one method of authentication to verify the user's identity for a login or other transaction.
• Net Neutrality — the principle that ISPs should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites.
• Netizen — citizen of the internet / cybercitizen; a person actively involved in online communities or regular user of the Internet. The term implies an interest and active engagement in improving the Internet, making it an intellectual and a social resource.
• Onionland — the Tor Dark Web (a reference to the network's top level domain suffix .onion and the traffic anonymization technique of onion routing).
• Panda, Penguin & Hummingbird — Google has multiple named parts of the algorithm that influence search rankings. Google Panda is concerned with the quality of site content, Penguin, the quality of links, and Hummingbird, handling conversational search queries accurately. Sites that have purchased links or acquired low-quality links with eg low-quality directories, blog spam, link badges or infographics could find their sites no longer ranking for search terms.
• Patent Troll — a company that obtains the rights to one or more patents in order to profit by means of licensing or litigation, rather than by producing its own goods or services.
• FNRP — a term used by Facebook to denote a Fake, Not Real Person [1]
• Geek — an expert or enthusiast, or someone obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit; generally pejorative (a peculiar, unfashionable, or socially awkward person, perhaps someone who is interested in a subject for its own sake).
• Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) — a type of artificial intelligence algorithm used in unsupervised machine learning, implemented by a system of two neural networks competing against each other in a zero-sum game framework. [The technique can generate photographs that look authentic to human observers.]
• Going Dark — military lingo for the sudden termination of communication. The term used to describe a scenario in which communication appears to have ceased, but in reality has just moved from a public communication channel, where it could be monitored, to a private communication channel that prevents eavesdropping.
• Hackathon — an event in which a large number of people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming; typically lasts several days.
• Hacktivist — person who gains unauthorized access to computer files or networks in order to further social or political ends.
• Hashtag Poisoning —a method of spamming a popular hashtag in order to disrupt criticism or other unwanted conversations by flooding it with unrelated or opposing tweets.
• Hurtcore —hidden forums on the dark web dedicated to sharing images and videos of rape, torture, paedophilia and degradation (e.g. where victims are forced to lick toilet seats, eat dog food, and worse.)
• Hyper-targeting — the ability to deliver advertising messages to specific interest-based segments in a network; a step towards precision performance marketing.
• Immune Technology — artificial immune systems are a class of intelligent, rule-based machine learning systems inspired by the principles and processes of the vertebrate immune system, including learning and memory for use in problem-solving.
• Infographics — graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly and our ability to see patterns and trends.
• Information Laundering — the process of placing and spreading disinformation online in a way that disguises its origins and authorship.
• Internet of things — network of internet-connected vehicles, buildings and other ‘smart’ devices with embedded electronics, software, sensors, actuators (network connectivity enables these devices to collect and exchange data).
• Internet Research Agency — Russian troll factory based in St Petersburg. [The IRA was shut down in Dec 2016, but is said to have been replaced by Glavset, which is based at the same address.]
• Machine-learning (ML) — a statistical and data-driven approach to creating artificial intelligence (AI), for example when a computer program learns from data to improve its performance in completing a task.[2]
• Malware — umbrella term for malicious software which is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain authorized access to computer system or mobile operations, gather sensitive information or display unwanted advertising; comes in a variety of forms, including computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, adware, scareware and other malicious programs.
• Man-in-the-Middle Attack (MITM) — an attack in which the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the communication between two parties who believe they are directly communicating with each other.
• Mash-up — a web page or application created by combining data or functionality from different sources; could involve enhancing content or changing it to suggest or imply something different. (Origins in British - West Indies slang meaning to be intoxicated.)
• Multi-Factor Authentication — security system that requires more than one method of authentication to verify the user's identity for a login or other transaction.
• Net Neutrality — the principle that ISPs should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites.
• Netizen — citizen of the internet / cybercitizen; a person actively involved in online communities or regular user of the Internet. The term implies an interest and active engagement in improving the Internet, making it an intellectual and a social resource.
• Onionland — the Tor Dark Web (a reference to the network's top level domain suffix .onion and the traffic anonymization technique of onion routing).
• Panda, Penguin & Hummingbird — Google has multiple named parts of the algorithm that influence search rankings. Google Panda is concerned with the quality of site content, Penguin, the quality of links, and Hummingbird, handling conversational search queries accurately. Sites that have purchased links or acquired low-quality links with eg low-quality directories, blog spam, link badges or infographics could find their sites no longer ranking for search terms.
• Patent Troll — a company that obtains the rights to one or more patents in order to profit by means of licensing or litigation, rather than by producing its own goods or services.
• Patriotic Trolling
— the digital assassination of someone’s character
• Public-key cryptography (PKC) — an encryption technique that uses a paired public and private key algorithm for secure data communication. A message sender uses a recipient's public key to encrypt a message. To decrypt the sender's message, only the recipient's private key may be used.
• Sandbox — a testing environment that isolates untested or experimental code changes from the production environment or repository.
• Scam — a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
• Scam-baiting — the practice of eliciting attention from scammers by feigning interest and pretending to be duped, making perpetrators waste their own time and/or money, and where possible exposing them to the long arm of the law or public ridicule. Can be dangerous.
• Shruggie — internet slang for an emoticon denoting a shrug, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [Indicates acceptance that something’s wrong on the Internet and there's nothing you can do about it!]
• Social bot (or socbot) — a type of chatterbot that automatically generates messages / tweets on social media networks or advocates ideas/supports campaigns either by acting as a ‘follower’ or even as a fake account that gathers followers itself.
• Sock Puppet Software — software that creates fake online identities to enable propaganda to be spread anonymously eg to counter extremist groups or unsettle or damage governments.
• Snopes.com — a website for validating and debunking urban legends, internet rumours, e-mail forwards and other stories of unknown or questionable origin. It is organized by topic and includes a message board where stories and pictures of questionable veracity can be posted. The site receives hundreds of thousands of visits a day.
• Superspreader —term applied to some social media sites with large audiences (originally, a person infected with a bacterium, virus, or other microorganism who transmits it to an unusually large number of other people).
• Tag Suggestions Technology — software (e.g. on Facebook) that spots users' friends in uploaded photos. [The software first tries to detect faces in a photo; it then standardizes and aligns these for size and direction; and then, for each face, it computes a face signature (a mathematical representation of the face); finally, these face signatures are run through a stored database of user face templates to look for matches.]
• Tribal Epistemology — where the truth or falsity of a statement is seen to depend on whether the person making it is deemed ‘one of us’ or ‘one of them’.
• Troll — a person who starts arguments or deliberately upsets people by posting inflammatory or extraneous messages in an online community (newsgroup, chat room, blog etc.) to provoke an emotional response from readers or disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
• Turing Test — a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from that of a human. If the interrogator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human the machine is said to have passed the test. The test, which was developed by Alan Turing in 1950, does not check the ability to give correct answers to questions, only how closely answers resemble those a human would give. (The conversation is limited to a text-only channel so that the result is not be dependent on the machine's ability to render words as speech.)
• Twitter Bot — software trained to post tweets and retweets autonomously on the microblogging site. [Some bots are programmed to retweet any tweets containing specific keywords or hashtags; more complicated bots are trained to mimic humans by creating and posting tweets and ‘liking’ and retweeting others; the most advanced bots, cyborg accounts, are closely controlled by a human and tweet a mixture of manmade and automated posts.]
• Twitterstorm — sudden spike in activity surrounding a certain topic on the Twitter social media site. It can happen when recipients reuse the original Twitter hashtag with subsequent tweets and retweets.
• Typosquatting — a form of cybersquatting, and possibly brandjacking, which relies on mistakes made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a browser. This may lead the victim to a different website, possibly one owned by a cybersquatter. [The victim may want ‘example.com’ but type instead ‘exemple.com’, or ‘examlpe.com’, or ‘examples.com’, or ‘example.org’.] Once in the typosquatter's site, the user may be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real site, through the use of copied or similar logos, website layouts or content.
• UGC (user-generated content) — videos, blogs, posts, images, audio files, and other forms of media created by end-users of an online system and publically available to others consumers.
• Virtual Private Network (VPN) — extends a private network across a public network enabling users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. VPNs create a secure, encrypted connection between one’s computer and the VPN service provider.)
• Vlogger — a blog that features mostly videos rather than text or images.
• Warez — software that has been pirated (illegally copied) and made available via the Internet, often after deactivation of anti-piracy measures.
• Whaling — a highly targeted phishing attack aimed at senior executives; digitally enabled fraud.
• Wikihacking — manipulating content on Wikipedia in order to manage reputation, promote some interests or other, affect page rank/link traffic, or simply to cause harm.
• Zero-Day Bug —a glitch in a software system that has never been found before.
• Zero-Day Exploits — an exploit that takes advantage of a security vulnerability on the same day that the vulnerability becomes generally known.
• Phishing
— the attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. (It is comparable to fishing and using a bait to lure the victim.) When directed at specific individuals or companies it is known as ‘spear phishing’.
• Platform Criminality
— a new form of cyber-enabled crime which mirrors the disruptive platform-based business models popularised by the likes of Uber and Amazon, with data as its key commodity.
• POPS
— privately owned public spaces (used to refer to big techs like Google, Facebook & Twitter, ‘private superpowers’).• Public-key cryptography (PKC) — an encryption technique that uses a paired public and private key algorithm for secure data communication. A message sender uses a recipient's public key to encrypt a message. To decrypt the sender's message, only the recipient's private key may be used.
• Sandbox — a testing environment that isolates untested or experimental code changes from the production environment or repository.
• Scam — a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
• Scam-baiting — the practice of eliciting attention from scammers by feigning interest and pretending to be duped, making perpetrators waste their own time and/or money, and where possible exposing them to the long arm of the law or public ridicule. Can be dangerous.
• Shruggie — internet slang for an emoticon denoting a shrug, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [Indicates acceptance that something’s wrong on the Internet and there's nothing you can do about it!]
• Social bot (or socbot) — a type of chatterbot that automatically generates messages / tweets on social media networks or advocates ideas/supports campaigns either by acting as a ‘follower’ or even as a fake account that gathers followers itself.
• Sock Puppet Software — software that creates fake online identities to enable propaganda to be spread anonymously eg to counter extremist groups or unsettle or damage governments.
• Snopes.com — a website for validating and debunking urban legends, internet rumours, e-mail forwards and other stories of unknown or questionable origin. It is organized by topic and includes a message board where stories and pictures of questionable veracity can be posted. The site receives hundreds of thousands of visits a day.
• Superspreader —term applied to some social media sites with large audiences (originally, a person infected with a bacterium, virus, or other microorganism who transmits it to an unusually large number of other people).
• Tag Suggestions Technology — software (e.g. on Facebook) that spots users' friends in uploaded photos. [The software first tries to detect faces in a photo; it then standardizes and aligns these for size and direction; and then, for each face, it computes a face signature (a mathematical representation of the face); finally, these face signatures are run through a stored database of user face templates to look for matches.]
• Tribal Epistemology — where the truth or falsity of a statement is seen to depend on whether the person making it is deemed ‘one of us’ or ‘one of them’.
• Troll — a person who starts arguments or deliberately upsets people by posting inflammatory or extraneous messages in an online community (newsgroup, chat room, blog etc.) to provoke an emotional response from readers or disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
• Turing Test — a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from that of a human. If the interrogator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human the machine is said to have passed the test. The test, which was developed by Alan Turing in 1950, does not check the ability to give correct answers to questions, only how closely answers resemble those a human would give. (The conversation is limited to a text-only channel so that the result is not be dependent on the machine's ability to render words as speech.)
• Twitter Bot — software trained to post tweets and retweets autonomously on the microblogging site. [Some bots are programmed to retweet any tweets containing specific keywords or hashtags; more complicated bots are trained to mimic humans by creating and posting tweets and ‘liking’ and retweeting others; the most advanced bots, cyborg accounts, are closely controlled by a human and tweet a mixture of manmade and automated posts.]
• Twitterstorm — sudden spike in activity surrounding a certain topic on the Twitter social media site. It can happen when recipients reuse the original Twitter hashtag with subsequent tweets and retweets.
• Typosquatting — a form of cybersquatting, and possibly brandjacking, which relies on mistakes made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a browser. This may lead the victim to a different website, possibly one owned by a cybersquatter. [The victim may want ‘example.com’ but type instead ‘exemple.com’, or ‘examlpe.com’, or ‘examples.com’, or ‘example.org’.] Once in the typosquatter's site, the user may be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real site, through the use of copied or similar logos, website layouts or content.
• UGC (user-generated content) — videos, blogs, posts, images, audio files, and other forms of media created by end-users of an online system and publically available to others consumers.
• Virtual Private Network (VPN) — extends a private network across a public network enabling users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. VPNs create a secure, encrypted connection between one’s computer and the VPN service provider.)
• Vlogger — a blog that features mostly videos rather than text or images.
• Warez — software that has been pirated (illegally copied) and made available via the Internet, often after deactivation of anti-piracy measures.
• Whaling — a highly targeted phishing attack aimed at senior executives; digitally enabled fraud.
• Wikihacking — manipulating content on Wikipedia in order to manage reputation, promote some interests or other, affect page rank/link traffic, or simply to cause harm.
• Zero-Day Bug —a glitch in a software system that has never been found before.
• Zero-Day Exploits — an exploit that takes advantage of a security vulnerability on the same day that the vulnerability becomes generally known.
2 Psychology / Grabbing Our Attention
Some of the terms in this section are discussed on a separate page
in the context of how advertising agencies / internet companies work to grab our attention and keep us on-line.
• Backfire Effect— the finding that, given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly (when your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger).• Boomerang effect — the unintended consequences of an attempt to persuade others that results in their adopting an opposing position instead.
• Cognitive Dissonance
— the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change. (See here
for examples and practical applications.)
• Confirmation Bias
— the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively or interpret it in a biased way.
• Emotional Anaemia
— sense that what you’re getting from your online social group is emotion-light. [3]• FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out
• Gamify — to adapt a task so that it takes on the form of a game (to improve user engagement, organizational productivity, flow, learning, crowdsourcing, employee recruitment and evaluation, ease of use, usefulness of systems, physical exercise, traffic violations, voter apathy, and more)
• Gaslighting — a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt hoping to make targeted individual or members of a group question their recollections, perception or sanity. Proponents also use persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction and lying in their attempts to destabilize people and delegitimize their beliefs. [The term owes its origin to a 1938 play Gas Light.]
• Hyper-reality — an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies.
• Illusory Truth Effect — tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure. [4]
• Mesearch
— looking into a matter until you have found enough support for your own opinion. You then feel justified in imposing your opinion on others because you've mesearched it. Mesearch is superficial, self-indulgent and self-centred in a way that is somehow unseemly (it lacks the virtues of serious research, which is emotionally austere and other-directed). People who mesearch think that they ‘did their research’ whereas others recognize it as mesearch.
• Mind game— a course of psychologically manipulative behaviour intended to discomfit another person or gain an advantage over them.
• Mirroring — behaviour in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another; often occurs in social situations, particularly in the company of close friends or family.
• Nudging — where small stimuli are provided to influence people’s behaviour. [Nudges work at an individual level, but they are also used by companies.] [5]
• Mind game— a course of psychologically manipulative behaviour intended to discomfit another person or gain an advantage over them.
• Mirroring — behaviour in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another; often occurs in social situations, particularly in the company of close friends or family.
• Nudging — where small stimuli are provided to influence people’s behaviour. [Nudges work at an individual level, but they are also used by companies.] [5]
• Psychographics
— the study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria, especially in market research.
• Psychological Continuity — the right to psychological continuity would protect people from actions that could harm their sense of identity, or disrupt the sense of being the same person throughout their life.
• Psychometrics — a field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement; includes the objective measurement of skills and knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational achievement.
• Psychometric Profiling — an analytical procedure for measuring people’s interests, attitudes, abilities, mental capability, shopping habits, likely voting preferences (and much much more).
• Psychobabble — jargon used in popular psychology; trite or simplistic language derived from psychotherapy.
• Psychosphere— the sphere or realm of human consciousness (originally, now rare, the part of the biosphere inhabited by humans).
• Sledging — the practice of making taunting or teasing remarks to an opponent / opposing player in order to disturb their concentration.
• Sociopath— a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behaviour.
• Streisand Effect — where an attempt to hide, remove or censor a piece of information backfires catastrophically and ends up publicizing the information more widely.
• Truth Bias — People wanting to believe others despite evidence to the contrary; a phenomenon that allows society and commerce to run efficiently.
• Truthiness— the quality of seeming to be true according to one's intuition, opinion or perception without regard to logic, factual evidence or the like.
• Psychological Continuity — the right to psychological continuity would protect people from actions that could harm their sense of identity, or disrupt the sense of being the same person throughout their life.
• Psychometrics — a field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement; includes the objective measurement of skills and knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational achievement.
• Psychometric Profiling — an analytical procedure for measuring people’s interests, attitudes, abilities, mental capability, shopping habits, likely voting preferences (and much much more).
• Psychobabble — jargon used in popular psychology; trite or simplistic language derived from psychotherapy.
• Psychosphere— the sphere or realm of human consciousness (originally, now rare, the part of the biosphere inhabited by humans).
• Sledging — the practice of making taunting or teasing remarks to an opponent / opposing player in order to disturb their concentration.
• Sociopath— a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behaviour.
• Streisand Effect — where an attempt to hide, remove or censor a piece of information backfires catastrophically and ends up publicizing the information more widely.
• Truth Bias — People wanting to believe others despite evidence to the contrary; a phenomenon that allows society and commerce to run efficiently.
• Truthiness— the quality of seeming to be true according to one's intuition, opinion or perception without regard to logic, factual evidence or the like.
3 Information, Politics & Truth
• Agnoiology
— the study of ignorance, which determines its quality and conditions; the doctrine concerning those things of which we are necessarily ignorant.
• Agnotology — the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour [agnosis, neoclassical Greek word for ignorance or not knowing].
• Agnotology — the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour [agnosis, neoclassical Greek word for ignorance or not knowing].
•
Alt-Right
(Alternative Right) — people with far-right ideologies including neo-Nazis who reject mainstream conservatism; started in the United States but now applied more widely; described as a mix of racism, white nationalism and populism.
• Alternative Fact — something someone prefers to consider 'true' in contrast to information presented as having objective reality (ie a real fact).
• Anonymous — loosely organized hacktivist collective created to promote free speech, unimpeded access to information and transparency in government and corporate activities. (The collective's slogan 'We are Legion' refers to both the group's numbers and the anonymity of its members.)
• Bullshit — language, statistical figures, data graphics and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence.
• Business to consumer (B2C) — business or transactions conducted directly between a company and its consumers/end-users of products or services. As a business model B2C differs significantly from the business-to-business (B2B) model.
• Cargo Cult Science — practices that have the semblance of being scientific, but do not follow the scientific method (term coined by physicist Richard Feynman during his 1974 commencement address at the California Institute of Technology).
• Churnalism — a form of journalism in which press releases, stories provided by news agencies, and other forms of pre-packaged material are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media (instead of using reported news).
• Clashism — seeking confrontation with another culture / political position (Donald Trump has been described as “clashism’s honorary president.”)
• Cognitive Liberty — a person’s freedom to use, or refuse to use, brain stimulation and other techniques to alter their mental state.
• Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP) — a model of socio-economic production in which large numbers of people work cooperatively, usually over the Internet. [CBPP projects generally have less rigid hierarchical structures than those under more traditional business models.]
• Conspiracy theory — a belief that some effect, event or trend either did not happen in the way reported or as commonly understood; or that some powerful, covert and usually malevolent organization was responsible; or it didn't happen at all.
• Control-Alt-Delete Strategy — control the scientists in the federal agencies, alter science-based policies to fit their narrow ideological agenda, and delete scientific information from government websites.
• Cyberchondriac — person who obsessively searches the Internet for information about real or imagined symptoms of illness.
• Dark Social — when people share content through private channels, such as instant messaging programs, messaging apps, and email (which is not tracked by most web analytics programs). Dark social is big slice of the social media sharing pie.
• Dead Tree Press — printed newspapers, as opposed to digital ones
• De-anonymization — a strategy in data-mining in which anonymous data is cross-referenced with other sources of data to identify the anonymous data source.
• Deep State — a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.
• Denialism — a person's choice to deny reality, as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. [6]
• Disinformation — false information which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda released by a government organization to a rival power or the media.
• Dogpile — where large numbers of users abuse or harass an individual or group with critical or abusive comments.
• Alternative Fact — something someone prefers to consider 'true' in contrast to information presented as having objective reality (ie a real fact).
• Anonymous — loosely organized hacktivist collective created to promote free speech, unimpeded access to information and transparency in government and corporate activities. (The collective's slogan 'We are Legion' refers to both the group's numbers and the anonymity of its members.)
• Bullshit — language, statistical figures, data graphics and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence.
• Business to consumer (B2C) — business or transactions conducted directly between a company and its consumers/end-users of products or services. As a business model B2C differs significantly from the business-to-business (B2B) model.
• Cargo Cult Science — practices that have the semblance of being scientific, but do not follow the scientific method (term coined by physicist Richard Feynman during his 1974 commencement address at the California Institute of Technology).
• Churnalism — a form of journalism in which press releases, stories provided by news agencies, and other forms of pre-packaged material are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media (instead of using reported news).
• Clashism — seeking confrontation with another culture / political position (Donald Trump has been described as “clashism’s honorary president.”)
• Cognitive Liberty — a person’s freedom to use, or refuse to use, brain stimulation and other techniques to alter their mental state.
• Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP) — a model of socio-economic production in which large numbers of people work cooperatively, usually over the Internet. [CBPP projects generally have less rigid hierarchical structures than those under more traditional business models.]
• Conspiracy theory — a belief that some effect, event or trend either did not happen in the way reported or as commonly understood; or that some powerful, covert and usually malevolent organization was responsible; or it didn't happen at all.
• Control-Alt-Delete Strategy — control the scientists in the federal agencies, alter science-based policies to fit their narrow ideological agenda, and delete scientific information from government websites.
• Cyberchondriac — person who obsessively searches the Internet for information about real or imagined symptoms of illness.
• Dark Social — when people share content through private channels, such as instant messaging programs, messaging apps, and email (which is not tracked by most web analytics programs). Dark social is big slice of the social media sharing pie.
• Dead Tree Press — printed newspapers, as opposed to digital ones
• De-anonymization — a strategy in data-mining in which anonymous data is cross-referenced with other sources of data to identify the anonymous data source.
• Deep State — a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.
• Denialism — a person's choice to deny reality, as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. [6]
• Disinformation — false information which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda released by a government organization to a rival power or the media.
• Dogpile — where large numbers of users abuse or harass an individual or group with critical or abusive comments.
• Dog-whistle politics
— political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup; often used pejoratively because of the inherently deceptive nature of the practice and because dog-whistle messages are frequently distasteful to the general public.
• Dominionism— more a political phenomenon than a theological one; ‘soft’ dominionism has been defined as the belief that ‘America is a Christian nation’ (proponents oppose separation of church and state); ‘hard’ dominionism refers to Dominion Theology (the nation governed by Christians based on understandings of Biblical law) and Christian Reconstructionism (ie Christian equivalent of Islamic State philosophy).
• Dystopia — a state, real or imagined, in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.
• Echo Chamber — a situation in which information, ideas or belief is amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a defined system.
• Eye Candy — visual images that are superficially attractive and entertaining but intellectually undemanding.
• Factoid— an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.
• Fake News— fabricated stories/content designed to fool or deceive readers and be spread by news media and virally over the internet, and lately, news that President Trump doesn’t like.
• False equivalence — a logical fallacy in which two opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not.
• False Flag — covert operations designed to deceive in such a way that activities appear to have been carried out by individuals, groups or nations other than those who actually planned and executed them.
• Fauxtograph - a fake, staged, or doctored photograph, manipulated through photoshop or by some other means to change the information it conveys; a real photograph with false backstory.
• Fideist — person who sees faith as independent of reason and considers it superior in arriving at particular truths.
• Filter Bubble— results of a personalized search in which a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user (location, past click behaviour, search history, etc.).
• Fringe science — an inquiry in an established field of study which departs significantly from mainstream theories in that field and is considered to be questionable by the mainstream.
• Future shock — the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time. [Alvin Toffler]
• Generation Z — the demographic cohort after the Millennials (the Gen Z are also known as Post-Millennials, the iGeneration, Plurals or the Homeland Generation).
• Ghosting — the unpleasant practice of ending a special relationship with someone (usually, but not necessarily romantic) by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.
• Groupthink — a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. [6]
• Halo effect — the tendency for an impression created in one area to influence opinion in another area [by analogy to the religious concept of a glowing circle crowning the heads of saints in medieval paintings, bathing the saint's face in heavenly light]
• Homophily — ‘love of the same’, the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others who share their age, gender, class, belief, organizational role, etc. (‘birds of a feather flock together’). Can lead to “homophilous sorting” (like-minded people forming clusters).
• Hyper-partisan Websites — websites with an extreme biased in favour of a political party or ideology.
• Information Warfare — various activities and processes seeking to steal, plant, interdict, manipulate, distort or destroy information via such channels / methods as computers, smartphones, real or invented news media, statements by leaders or celebrities, trolling campaigns, text messages, vox pops by concerned citizens, YouTube videos, or direct approaches to individual human targets.
• Dominionism— more a political phenomenon than a theological one; ‘soft’ dominionism has been defined as the belief that ‘America is a Christian nation’ (proponents oppose separation of church and state); ‘hard’ dominionism refers to Dominion Theology (the nation governed by Christians based on understandings of Biblical law) and Christian Reconstructionism (ie Christian equivalent of Islamic State philosophy).
• Dystopia — a state, real or imagined, in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.
• Echo Chamber — a situation in which information, ideas or belief is amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a defined system.
• Eye Candy — visual images that are superficially attractive and entertaining but intellectually undemanding.
• Factoid— an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.
• Fake News— fabricated stories/content designed to fool or deceive readers and be spread by news media and virally over the internet, and lately, news that President Trump doesn’t like.
• False equivalence — a logical fallacy in which two opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not.
• False Flag — covert operations designed to deceive in such a way that activities appear to have been carried out by individuals, groups or nations other than those who actually planned and executed them.
• Fauxtograph - a fake, staged, or doctored photograph, manipulated through photoshop or by some other means to change the information it conveys; a real photograph with false backstory.
• Fideist — person who sees faith as independent of reason and considers it superior in arriving at particular truths.
• Filter Bubble— results of a personalized search in which a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user (location, past click behaviour, search history, etc.).
• Fringe science — an inquiry in an established field of study which departs significantly from mainstream theories in that field and is considered to be questionable by the mainstream.
• Future shock — the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time. [Alvin Toffler]
• Generation Z — the demographic cohort after the Millennials (the Gen Z are also known as Post-Millennials, the iGeneration, Plurals or the Homeland Generation).
• Ghosting — the unpleasant practice of ending a special relationship with someone (usually, but not necessarily romantic) by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.
• Groupthink — a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. [6]
• Halo effect — the tendency for an impression created in one area to influence opinion in another area [by analogy to the religious concept of a glowing circle crowning the heads of saints in medieval paintings, bathing the saint's face in heavenly light]
• Homophily — ‘love of the same’, the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others who share their age, gender, class, belief, organizational role, etc. (‘birds of a feather flock together’). Can lead to “homophilous sorting” (like-minded people forming clusters).
• Hyper-partisan Websites — websites with an extreme biased in favour of a political party or ideology.
• Information Warfare — various activities and processes seeking to steal, plant, interdict, manipulate, distort or destroy information via such channels / methods as computers, smartphones, real or invented news media, statements by leaders or celebrities, trolling campaigns, text messages, vox pops by concerned citizens, YouTube videos, or direct approaches to individual human targets.
• Informivore
— an inveterate seeker after and consumer of information (also spelled informavore).
• Intersectionality — a neo-Marxist theory that maintains that social oppression does not simply apply to single categories of identity, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc., but to all of them in an interlocking system of hierarchy and power.
• Infotainment — broadcast material which is intended both to entertain and to inform.
• Junk Science — scientific data, research or analysis considered to be spurious or fraudulent.
• Kompromat — Russian term for compromising materials about someone which can be used to create negative publicity for blackmail or to ensure loyalty. It can be acquired from security services or forged. Widespread use of Kompromat has been a characteristic feature of politics in Russia and other post-Soviet states.
• Listicle — a piece of writing or other content presented wholly or partly in the form of a list.
• Maven (also Mavin) — a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. [In Yiddish, the word maven means ‘accumulator of knowledge’.]
• Mathiness — the misuse of mathematics in economic analyses
• Mental Privacy — the right to mental privacy is intended to plug a gap in existing legal and technical safeguards that do nothing to prevent someone from having their mind read without consent.
• Mental Integrity — the right to mental integrity aims to defend against hackers who seek to interfere with brain implants, either to take control of these devices or to feed spurious signals into victim’s brains.
• Misinformation — false or incorrect information, spread intentionally or unintentionally without realizing it is untrue.
• Modernism — modern character or quality of thought, expression or technique which differs markedly from classical and traditional forms; a movement towards modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the Roman Catholic Church.
• Mythographer — one who writes, records, narrates or comments on myths.
• Mythomaniac — psychiatric term for somebody diagnosed with mythomania or pseudologia fantastica; an individual who compulsively tells lies and recounts experiences that are nothing but fantasies.
• Noble Lie — a myth or untruth, often but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. The concept originated with Plato in the Republic.
• Non-truthiness — something that sounds untrue but is actually true.
• Open Society — a society characterized by a flexible structure, freedom of belief, and wide dissemination of information. [8]
• Pious Fiction — a narrative (generally in religion) that is presented as true by the author, but is considered by others to be fictional albeit produced with an altruistic motivation.
• Pluralism — a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization; a concept, doctrine, or policy advocating this state.
• Populism — style of action that seeks to mobilize a large alienated element of a population against a government (which is seen as controlled by an out-of-touch/closed elite that acts in its own interests). The underlying ideology can be left, right or centre. Its goal is to unite the uncorrupt, unsophisticated 'little man' against the corrupt dominant elites and their camp followers (usually the rich & intellectuals). Politicians often use the term a pejorative sense to demonise their opponents.
• Post-Fact / Truth— applied to politics this denotes circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than simplistic argument and appeals to raw emotion and personal belief.
• Intersectionality — a neo-Marxist theory that maintains that social oppression does not simply apply to single categories of identity, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc., but to all of them in an interlocking system of hierarchy and power.
• Infotainment — broadcast material which is intended both to entertain and to inform.
• Junk Science — scientific data, research or analysis considered to be spurious or fraudulent.
• Kompromat — Russian term for compromising materials about someone which can be used to create negative publicity for blackmail or to ensure loyalty. It can be acquired from security services or forged. Widespread use of Kompromat has been a characteristic feature of politics in Russia and other post-Soviet states.
• Listicle — a piece of writing or other content presented wholly or partly in the form of a list.
• Maven (also Mavin) — a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. [In Yiddish, the word maven means ‘accumulator of knowledge’.]
• Mathiness — the misuse of mathematics in economic analyses
• Mental Privacy — the right to mental privacy is intended to plug a gap in existing legal and technical safeguards that do nothing to prevent someone from having their mind read without consent.
• Mental Integrity — the right to mental integrity aims to defend against hackers who seek to interfere with brain implants, either to take control of these devices or to feed spurious signals into victim’s brains.
• Misinformation — false or incorrect information, spread intentionally or unintentionally without realizing it is untrue.
• Modernism — modern character or quality of thought, expression or technique which differs markedly from classical and traditional forms; a movement towards modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the Roman Catholic Church.
• Mythographer — one who writes, records, narrates or comments on myths.
• Mythomaniac — psychiatric term for somebody diagnosed with mythomania or pseudologia fantastica; an individual who compulsively tells lies and recounts experiences that are nothing but fantasies.
• Noble Lie — a myth or untruth, often but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. The concept originated with Plato in the Republic.
• Non-truthiness — something that sounds untrue but is actually true.
• Open Society — a society characterized by a flexible structure, freedom of belief, and wide dissemination of information. [8]
• Pious Fiction — a narrative (generally in religion) that is presented as true by the author, but is considered by others to be fictional albeit produced with an altruistic motivation.
• Pluralism — a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization; a concept, doctrine, or policy advocating this state.
• Populism — style of action that seeks to mobilize a large alienated element of a population against a government (which is seen as controlled by an out-of-touch/closed elite that acts in its own interests). The underlying ideology can be left, right or centre. Its goal is to unite the uncorrupt, unsophisticated 'little man' against the corrupt dominant elites and their camp followers (usually the rich & intellectuals). Politicians often use the term a pejorative sense to demonise their opponents.
• Post-Fact / Truth— applied to politics this denotes circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than simplistic argument and appeals to raw emotion and personal belief.
• Postmodernism
— a late 20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture and criticism characterized by the use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories.
• Predatory Publishing — an exploitative open-access publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not).[9]
• Prosumer — a person who consumes and produces media [coined by Futurist Alvin Toffler]
• Prosumer Law — law which recognises the changing nature of individuals in the digital world and seeks measures to better prepare them for the fierce digital economy. [In principle, prosumer law solutions could come from the following fields of law: competition law, data protection law & consumer protection law.]
• Pseudoscience— a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.
• Quote Mining — the deceitful tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner's viewpoint or to make the comments of an opponent seem more extreme or hold positions they don't in order to make their position easier to refute / demonize. It's a way of lying.
• Reality TV — television programmes in which ordinary people are continuously filmed, designed to be entertaining rather than informative.
• Red Pill — the red pill and its opposite, the blue pill, are popular cultural symbols representing the choice between: knowledge, mental freedom, adversity and the brutal truth of reality (red pill) and falsehood, security, material freedom and the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue pill). Originated in classic sci-fi movie The Matrix.
• Reflexive Control — a means of conveying to a partner or opponent specially prepared information to incline him to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action.
• Relativism — a theory that knowledge is relative to the limited nature of the mind and the conditions of knowing; a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them.
• Ressentiment — an intense mix of envy, humiliation and powerlessness [French word for resentment].
• Revanchism — a policy of seeking to retaliate, especially to recover lost territory [from the French: revanche, 'revenge']
• Slow News — news that explains the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ of news.
• Smart mob — a group whose coordination and communication abilities have been empowered by digital communication technologies. [10]
• Snowflake— an overly sensitive person, incapable of dealing with any opinions that differ from their own.
• Useful Idiots— a term born of the Cold War which describes people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.
• Vulgarian — an uncouth, unrefined person, especially one whose vulgarity is the more conspicuous because of wealth, prominence or pretensions to good breeding.
• Whataboutism — attempting to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. [also known as whataboutery][11]
• Yellow Journalism/Press — a style of journalism that uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers with little or no background research to substantiate claims.
• Predatory Publishing — an exploitative open-access publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not).[9]
• Prosumer — a person who consumes and produces media [coined by Futurist Alvin Toffler]
• Prosumer Law — law which recognises the changing nature of individuals in the digital world and seeks measures to better prepare them for the fierce digital economy. [In principle, prosumer law solutions could come from the following fields of law: competition law, data protection law & consumer protection law.]
• Pseudoscience— a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.
• Quote Mining — the deceitful tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner's viewpoint or to make the comments of an opponent seem more extreme or hold positions they don't in order to make their position easier to refute / demonize. It's a way of lying.
• Reality TV — television programmes in which ordinary people are continuously filmed, designed to be entertaining rather than informative.
• Red Pill — the red pill and its opposite, the blue pill, are popular cultural symbols representing the choice between: knowledge, mental freedom, adversity and the brutal truth of reality (red pill) and falsehood, security, material freedom and the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue pill). Originated in classic sci-fi movie The Matrix.
• Reflexive Control — a means of conveying to a partner or opponent specially prepared information to incline him to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action.
• Relativism — a theory that knowledge is relative to the limited nature of the mind and the conditions of knowing; a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them.
• Ressentiment — an intense mix of envy, humiliation and powerlessness [French word for resentment].
• Revanchism — a policy of seeking to retaliate, especially to recover lost territory [from the French: revanche, 'revenge']
• Slow News — news that explains the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ of news.
• Smart mob — a group whose coordination and communication abilities have been empowered by digital communication technologies. [10]
• Snowflake— an overly sensitive person, incapable of dealing with any opinions that differ from their own.
• Useful Idiots— a term born of the Cold War which describes people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.
• Vulgarian — an uncouth, unrefined person, especially one whose vulgarity is the more conspicuous because of wealth, prominence or pretensions to good breeding.
• Whataboutism — attempting to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. [also known as whataboutery][11]
• Yellow Journalism/Press — a style of journalism that uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers with little or no background research to substantiate claims.
• Airstrip One — country where Orwell’s novel is set; formerly Great Britain
•
Bellyfeel — blind, enthusiastic acceptance of an idea.
•
Big Brother
— the leader / symbolic figurehead of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling Party wields total power ‘for its own sake’ over the inhabitants (the maxim ‘Big Brother is watching you’ is ubiquitously on display). Today, synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to mass surveillance and civil liberties.
• Crimestop
— to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts that interfere with conforming to the ideology of the Party ideology
• Doublethink
— the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts (different from cognitive dissonance in that the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction)
• Duckspeak — to speak without thinking (literal meaning ‘to quack like a duck’).
• Equal — used to describe only physical equality (height, weight, etc.)
• Facecrime — a facial expression that indicates a person is guilty of thoughtcrime
• Free — indicates the absence of something (eg ‘This dog is free from lice’).
• Goodthink — orthodox thought.
• Joycamp — forced labour camp.
• Malquoted — misquotation of the Party and of Big Brother in the press.
• Miniluv — Ministry of Love, the headquarters of the secret police.
• Minitrue — Ministry of Truth, responsible for propaganda, historical revisionism, culture and entertainment.
• Newspeak — ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda
• Oldthink — ideas inspired by the events and memories of the time before the Revolution.
• Pornosec — Pornography section of the Minitrue Fiction Department that produces pornography for proletarian consumption.
• Prolefeed — popular culture entertainment produced to occupy the proletarians of Oceania.
• Recdep — Records Department; Minitrue Department for the rectification of records to concord with the Party’s current policies.
• Rectify — a Minitrue euphemism for the re-writing of the historical records of Oceania.
• Telescreen — television screen used to continuously observe and continually control the citizens of Oceania.
• Thinkpol — Thought Police.
• Thoughtcrime — an illegal thought; sometimes used to describe some theological concepts such as disbelief or idolatry.
• Unperson — someone who has been ‘vaporized’, not only killed by the state, but erased from existence.
• Upsub — Submit to higher authority, e.g. Winston Smith is instructed to rectify a record (alter an historical document) to conform with the current Party line. [Top of the Page]
• Duckspeak — to speak without thinking (literal meaning ‘to quack like a duck’).
• Equal — used to describe only physical equality (height, weight, etc.)
• Facecrime — a facial expression that indicates a person is guilty of thoughtcrime
• Free — indicates the absence of something (eg ‘This dog is free from lice’).
• Goodthink — orthodox thought.
• Joycamp — forced labour camp.
• Malquoted — misquotation of the Party and of Big Brother in the press.
• Miniluv — Ministry of Love, the headquarters of the secret police.
• Minitrue — Ministry of Truth, responsible for propaganda, historical revisionism, culture and entertainment.
• Newspeak — ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda
• Oldthink — ideas inspired by the events and memories of the time before the Revolution.
• Pornosec — Pornography section of the Minitrue Fiction Department that produces pornography for proletarian consumption.
• Prolefeed — popular culture entertainment produced to occupy the proletarians of Oceania.
• Recdep — Records Department; Minitrue Department for the rectification of records to concord with the Party’s current policies.
• Rectify — a Minitrue euphemism for the re-writing of the historical records of Oceania.
• Telescreen — television screen used to continuously observe and continually control the citizens of Oceania.
• Thinkpol — Thought Police.
• Thoughtcrime — an illegal thought; sometimes used to describe some theological concepts such as disbelief or idolatry.
• Unperson — someone who has been ‘vaporized’, not only killed by the state, but erased from existence.
• Upsub — Submit to higher authority, e.g. Winston Smith is instructed to rectify a record (alter an historical document) to conform with the current Party line. [Top of the Page]
Notes
1 It has been reported that Facebook reviews more than 6.5 million reports a week relating to potentially fake accounts.
2 Machine learning is variously characterized as either a sub-field of AI or a separate field, and refers to the development of digital systems that improve their performance on a given task over time through experience.
3 The term ‘emotional anaemia’ was proposed by Aleks Krotoski in her book ‘Untangling the Web’, where she recalled psychologist Robin Dunbar’s1998 ‘Social Brain Hypothesis”, which suggested that humans can only maintain 150 meaningful relationships — not 500 or more ‘friends’ that people today may have on social media.
4 The Illusory Truth Effect is also known as the ‘Truth Effect’, the ‘Illusion-of-Truth Effect’, the ‘Reiteration Effect’, the ‘Validity Effect’, and the ‘Frequency-Validity Relationship’ It has in equated by some with the concept of ‘truthiness’, a term coined by American comedian Stephen Colbert. One science writer has explained it as follows: "Why are so many people convinced that we only use 10% of our brains, or that Eskimos have no words for snow...?" The answer is the truth effect. (Wikipedia)
5 Nudge theory proposes positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions to try to achieve non-forced compliance to influence the motives, incentives and decision making of groups and individuals. The theory claims to be at least as effective, if not more effective, than direct instruction, legislation or enforcement. Nudges can be effective because they give people control while also giving them useful information. Ultimately the recipient of the nudge still decides whether to use the feedback provided. Nudges don’t feel coercive, rather, potentially empowering.
6 With groupthink, members of the group try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences. Groupthink requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking. The dysfunctional group dynamics of the ‘in-group’ produces an ‘illusion of invulnerability’ (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the ‘in-group’ significantly overrates its own abilities in decision-making and significantly underrates the abilities of its opponents (the ‘out-group’).
7 Denialists typically employ one or more of the following tactics in order to maintain the appearance of legitimate controversy: dismissing the data or observation by suggesting opponents are involved in ‘a conspiracy to suppress the truth’ (conspiracy theories); selecting an anomalous critical paper supporting their idea, or using outdated, flawed, and discredited papers in order to make their opponents look as though they base their ideas on weak research (cherry picking); paying an expert in the field, or another field, to lend supporting evidence or credibility (false experts); dismissing evidence presented in response to a specific claim by continually demanding some other (often unfulfillable) piece of evidence (moving the goalpost); using false analogy, appealing to consequences, or setting up a straw man or using red herrings (logical fallacies).
8 The concept of an open society was originally suggested in 1932 by the French philosopher Henri Bergson and subsequently developed by Karl Popper, who defined the open society as one "in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions". He considered that only democracy provides an institutional mechanism for reform and leadership change without the need for bloodshed, revolution or coup d'état. Open society is founded on the separation of powers, free speech and human rights, and cultural and religious pluralism, and transparent and flexible political mechanisms, with government expected to be responsive and tolerant. George Soros has argued that sophisticated use of powerful techniques of subtle deception borrowed from modern advertising and cognitive science casts doubt on Popper's original conception of open society. The fact that the electorate's perception of reality can easily be manipulated, means that democratic political discourse does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of reality. Soros argues that besides the requirements for the separation of powers, free speech, and free elections, we also need to make explicit a strong commitment to the pursuit of truth. "Politicians will respect, rather than manipulate, reality only if the public cares about the truth and punishes politicians when it catches them in deliberate deception." (adapted from Wikipedia)
9 The characteristics of predatory publishing include: accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review or quality control, including hoax and nonsensical papers; notifying academics of article fees only after papers are accepted; aggressively campaigning for academics to submit articles or serve on editorial boards; listing academics as members of editorial boards without their permission, and not allowing academics to resign from editorial boards; appointing fake academics to editorial boards; mimicking the name or web site style of more established journals; misleading claims about the publishing operation, such as a false location; improper use of ISSNs; fake or non-existent impact factors. [Wikipedia]
10 Smart mobs are known for their ability to mobilize quickly; “people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities." Smart mobs are open to manipulation by those who have the contact list and the means to forward instant messages to a group.
11 Whataboutism is often associated with Russian propaganda. When criticisms were levelled at Russia the response would be "What about..." followed by an event in the Western world.
12 George Orwell (1949), ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’
2 Machine learning is variously characterized as either a sub-field of AI or a separate field, and refers to the development of digital systems that improve their performance on a given task over time through experience.
3 The term ‘emotional anaemia’ was proposed by Aleks Krotoski in her book ‘Untangling the Web’, where she recalled psychologist Robin Dunbar’s1998 ‘Social Brain Hypothesis”, which suggested that humans can only maintain 150 meaningful relationships — not 500 or more ‘friends’ that people today may have on social media.
4 The Illusory Truth Effect is also known as the ‘Truth Effect’, the ‘Illusion-of-Truth Effect’, the ‘Reiteration Effect’, the ‘Validity Effect’, and the ‘Frequency-Validity Relationship’ It has in equated by some with the concept of ‘truthiness’, a term coined by American comedian Stephen Colbert. One science writer has explained it as follows: "Why are so many people convinced that we only use 10% of our brains, or that Eskimos have no words for snow...?" The answer is the truth effect. (Wikipedia)
5 Nudge theory proposes positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions to try to achieve non-forced compliance to influence the motives, incentives and decision making of groups and individuals. The theory claims to be at least as effective, if not more effective, than direct instruction, legislation or enforcement. Nudges can be effective because they give people control while also giving them useful information. Ultimately the recipient of the nudge still decides whether to use the feedback provided. Nudges don’t feel coercive, rather, potentially empowering.
6 With groupthink, members of the group try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences. Groupthink requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking. The dysfunctional group dynamics of the ‘in-group’ produces an ‘illusion of invulnerability’ (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the ‘in-group’ significantly overrates its own abilities in decision-making and significantly underrates the abilities of its opponents (the ‘out-group’).
7 Denialists typically employ one or more of the following tactics in order to maintain the appearance of legitimate controversy: dismissing the data or observation by suggesting opponents are involved in ‘a conspiracy to suppress the truth’ (conspiracy theories); selecting an anomalous critical paper supporting their idea, or using outdated, flawed, and discredited papers in order to make their opponents look as though they base their ideas on weak research (cherry picking); paying an expert in the field, or another field, to lend supporting evidence or credibility (false experts); dismissing evidence presented in response to a specific claim by continually demanding some other (often unfulfillable) piece of evidence (moving the goalpost); using false analogy, appealing to consequences, or setting up a straw man or using red herrings (logical fallacies).
8 The concept of an open society was originally suggested in 1932 by the French philosopher Henri Bergson and subsequently developed by Karl Popper, who defined the open society as one "in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions". He considered that only democracy provides an institutional mechanism for reform and leadership change without the need for bloodshed, revolution or coup d'état. Open society is founded on the separation of powers, free speech and human rights, and cultural and religious pluralism, and transparent and flexible political mechanisms, with government expected to be responsive and tolerant. George Soros has argued that sophisticated use of powerful techniques of subtle deception borrowed from modern advertising and cognitive science casts doubt on Popper's original conception of open society. The fact that the electorate's perception of reality can easily be manipulated, means that democratic political discourse does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of reality. Soros argues that besides the requirements for the separation of powers, free speech, and free elections, we also need to make explicit a strong commitment to the pursuit of truth. "Politicians will respect, rather than manipulate, reality only if the public cares about the truth and punishes politicians when it catches them in deliberate deception." (adapted from Wikipedia)
9 The characteristics of predatory publishing include: accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review or quality control, including hoax and nonsensical papers; notifying academics of article fees only after papers are accepted; aggressively campaigning for academics to submit articles or serve on editorial boards; listing academics as members of editorial boards without their permission, and not allowing academics to resign from editorial boards; appointing fake academics to editorial boards; mimicking the name or web site style of more established journals; misleading claims about the publishing operation, such as a false location; improper use of ISSNs; fake or non-existent impact factors. [Wikipedia]
10 Smart mobs are known for their ability to mobilize quickly; “people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities." Smart mobs are open to manipulation by those who have the contact list and the means to forward instant messages to a group.
11 Whataboutism is often associated with Russian propaganda. When criticisms were levelled at Russia the response would be "What about..." followed by an event in the Western world.
12 George Orwell (1949), ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’
