{"id":864819,"date":"2020-07-30T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T06:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/?post_type=articles&p=864819"},"modified":"2020-10-30T12:05:22","modified_gmt":"2020-10-30T11:05:22","slug":"true-or-false-fiction-and-disinformation","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/articles\/true-or-false-fiction-and-disinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"True or False, Fiction and (Dis)information"},"featured_media":865185,"template":"","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[]},"schools":[29,30,32,33,35],"areas":[20,22,24],"subjects":[419,421,422],"class_list":["post-864819","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","schools-business-school","schools-executive-education","schools-global-and-public-affairs","schools-human-sciences-and-technology","schools-university","areas-human-behavior","areas-sales-marketing","areas-strategy","subjects-global-affairs","subjects-humanities","subjects-innovation-and-technology"],"custom-fields":{"wpcf-article-summary-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-summary":["The true roots of fake news\u2014now a highly debated topic\u2014date back to the 16th<\/sup> century, or what we call the early modern era. A review of various historical documents and literature from this period reveals the existence of narratives with clear disinformative intentions. We should not be surprised that a society separated from us by nearly 500 years not only reflects, but even anticipates our own fears concerning the truth. After all, early modernity was marked by the birth of globalization, and with it, massive paradigm shifts."],"wpcf-article-leadin":["Disinformation, fake news, and the feeling of being overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information\u2014these are not new problems. We can trace their origins to the 16th<\/sup> century, or what we call the early modern era."],"wpcf-article-body":["We should not be surprised that a society separated from us by nearly 500 years not only reflects, but even anticipates our own fears concerning the truth. After all, early modernity was marked by the birth of globalization<\/a>, and with it, massive paradigm shifts.\r\n\r\nGlobalization<\/a>, in essence, shattered reality for a Western world that moved from nec plus ultra <\/em>to plus ultra<\/em>\u2014a complete negation of a known truth. Since antiquity, the Pillars of Hercules, located outside of modern-day C\u00e1diz, had designated the border of the known world. It was common knowledge that this was the westernmost extremity of the inhabitable world. Exploration and circumnavigation of the globe challenged this very certitude.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThe boundaries of truth<\/strong>\r\n\r\nWe can think of the so-called discovery of the Americas as a rediscovery of the boundaries of truth. With exploration came confirmation, although still highly debated, that the world was indeed round, and proof beyond argument or doubt that much of the legacy of the ancient world was open to question.\r\n\r\nIn the archives, we see evidence of the effects of this major paradigm shift in the way that individuals gathered information. Intellectuals and noblemen who had previously clung to erudite or more \u201cacademic\u201d texts began to complement their scholarship with a business that was starting to gain ground: early modern \u201cnewspapers\u201d or gazettes. Early newsletters, printed once a week or bimonthly, offered brief reports, 1-12 pages in length, from other cities.\r\n\r\nThere were also handwritten manuscripts, with less circulation, for a more elite circle that could pay larger sums of money for what was seen as more trustworthy news. Often these manuscripts offered the material source for the printed gazettes, but\u2014because of time and space issues\u2014with excerpts and what we would now call \u201csoundbites\u201d of the original longer texts. So widely read were these documents that in 1632, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger even penned a poem placing himself among a group of people listening to gazettes.\r\n
Intellectuals and noblemen who had previously clung to erudite or more \u201cacademic\u201d texts began to complement their scholarship with a business that was starting to gain ground: early modern \u201cnewspapers\u201d or gazettes.<\/blockquote>\r\nEarliest subscribers<\/strong>\r\n\r\nMembers of European courts were the earliest subscribers to manuscripts, newsletters, and other written and printed news, and the first to complain of their veracity. For example, in 1610, an early journalist writing from Venice to the Duke of Urbino shortly after the death of Henry IV explained<\/a> that many believed that other European kings and even the Pope may be dead or dying. So problematic was the spread of fake news that in 1573, Pope Gregory XIII threatened all news writers and anyone who read, copied, or transmitted \u201clibelous pamphlets.\u201d\r\n\r\nThis questioning or blurring of truth trickled into all aspects of society. From the top of the feudal system pyramid, Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli\u2019s The<\/em> Prince <\/em>(1532) was a how-to manual for governance that appeared less than 20 years after Columbus reached Hispaniola. In Chapter\u00a018, Machiavelli argues that a prince\u2019s word should not be fixed, but instead be quite malleable. He then underlines the importance of dissimulation in governance \u201cso that the deceiver can always find someone he can deceive.\u201d Here, the boundaries of the truth are stretched to their limits through dissimulation and the questioning of an authentic self in leadership.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nHistorical text or fiction?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nIn Don Quixote <\/em>(1605), Cervantes made it clear from the first line that the text would raise many questions about veracity. The narrator is open about his desire to keep information from us. Perhaps he could tell us where this place in La\u00a0Mancha is, but he chooses not to.\r\n\r\nAfter the episode with the windmills, Don Quixote comes to blows with a Basque gentleman. In the middle of their fight, the narrative stops. The reader is informed that they have been reading the transcription of a text written by a \u201cfirst author,\u201d who has compiled information regarding Don Quixote. So, the reader, especially a 17th<\/sup>-century reader, would have asked, is this a historical text or is this fiction?\r\n\r\nAnother \u201csecond author\u201d explains his finding of yet another manuscript that continues the narration originally written in Arabic, by a historian named Cide Hamete Benengeli, which has then been translated by a bilingual morisco <\/em>into Castilian. The endless versions, translations, and interpretations, filtered through multiple authors, translators, historians, and characters, closely resemble our present-day information overload.\r\n\r\nIn 1526, the painter and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens wrote<\/a> to the French scholar Pierre Dupuy in Paris, seeking \u201cCopies of public newssheets of the better sort,\u201d in order to inform himself as best he could, since there was \u201cno shortage of storytellers and charlatans who publish in print.\u201d Rubens was both gaining access to more reputable news outlets and also applying good humanistic critical thinking to the deluge of \u201cother\u201d sources of information and disinformation that was distributed by fake news propagators.\r\n
Within this constant flow of information, going viral\u2014until very recently, the aspiration of YouTubers and businesses alike\u2014has gone back to its original semantic roots.<\/blockquote>\r\nCritical thinking<\/strong>\r\n\r\nIt is no surprise, then, that critical thinking was first introduced during this time period. In fact, it was the essence of the new learning, called humanism, that opposed the antiquated scholasticism, or old learning. Humanism is a rationalist outlook or system of thought that attaches prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. The humanists not only read texts, but also questioned and interpreted the language that they were written in.\r\n\r\nIn his Method <\/em>(1637), Descartes questions the veracity of all disciplines\u2014from poetry to history and mathematics\u2014and concludes that there are no absolute truths, so we must be our own guides.\r\n\r\nWithin this constant flow of information, going viral\u2014until very recently, the aspiration of YouTubers and businesses alike\u2014has gone back to its original semantic roots. So, follow Descartes and be your own humanistic and critical guide.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\u00a9 IE Insights."],"wpcf-article-extract-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-extract":["By Goretti Gonz\u00e1lez<\/strong>. Disinformation, fake news, and the feeling of being overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information\u2014these are not new problems. We can trace their origins to the 16th<\/sup> century, or what we call the early modern era."]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/864819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"schools","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/schools?post=864819"},{"taxonomy":"areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/areas?post=864819"},{"taxonomy":"subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subjects?post=864819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}