Internet and Ideology - Assignment Example

Article Lewandowsky, Stephan; Oberauer, Klaus; and Gignac, Gilles E. “NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science.” Psychological Science. 24.5 (2013): 622-633. Summary Scientific evidence is not enough to convince some people that carbon dioxide emissions are changing climate. Climate science is openly questioned on the Internet. Survey of climateblog visitors revealed that endorsement of free-market economics estimated climate science rejection along with rejection of the cause-and-effect relationship between HIV and Aids, and between smoking and cancer.

Endorsement of conspiracy theories’ cluster also predicted rejection of climate science and a range of scientific findings. Results empirically support the notion that conspiratorial thinking causes science’s rejection. By contrast science’s acceptance was objectively linked with the perception of agreement among the scientists. Article 2Lewandowsky, Stephan; Cook, John; Oberauer, Klaus; and Marriott, Michael. “Recursive fury: conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation.

” Frontiers in psychology. 4.73 (2013): 1-15. Summary Rejection of scientific propositions repeatedly implicates conspiracist ideation even without insufficient empirical evidence. Lewandowsky et al. analyzed the response of climate blogosphere to LOG12 publication and followed the hypotheses surfacing in response to LOG12. The multi-phased search involved sampling of LOG12-related Internet activity and deriving six criteria to permit hypotheses’ classification pertaining to potentially conspiracist LOG12.

Use of established criteria showed how many hypotheses reflected counterfactual thinking and conspiratorial material. Conspiracist ideation possibly has a role in the rejection of science. Article 3Wood, Michael J., and Douglas, Karen M. ““What about building 7?” A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories.” Frontiers in psychology. 4.409 (2013): 1-9. Summary To explore the relative importance of projecting alternative explanations in contrast to rejecting conventional explanations for events, Wood and Douglas studied conspiracist and conventionalist comments on news websites.

They found conspiracist commentators having greater tendency to argue against opposing interpretation and lesser tendency to argue for their own interpretation or to put forth an account explicitly whereas conventionalist commenters demonstrated the reverse trend. Research led to identification of a range of differences between conspiracists and conventionalists.