FarmerJohn
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Vogue model Liskula Cohen took Google to court – and sashayed into a new social science: the theory of lies, writes Aditya Chakrabortty
Nine months ago, Vogue model Liskula Cohen stumbled across her own personal character assassination. She was the subject of an anonymous blog calling her an "old hag", a "ho" and "a psychotic, lying, whoring … skank".
Vile stuff, you'll agree, but hardly uncommon on the web. Better known people get more, and worse, electronic abuse, and usually let it pass. Not Cohen. The model took Google, hosts of the site, to a New York supreme court to reveal the blogger's identity, claiming the insults had caused "mental anguish and damage to [her] reputation." Last month she won. The bully has now been outed as fashion student Rosemary Port – and she faces a suit for defamation.
As befits a combination of fashion, the web and lawyers, the case had its ludicrous aspects, such as the internet "skank-off" poll over which of the "lovely litigious ladies" was "hotter". But in pointing out the harm done by online falsehoods, the model has sashayed into a fast-developing branch of social science: the theory of lies.
In a new book called On Rumours, the legal theorist Cass Sunstein argues that falsehoods are far more damaging and longer lasting than courts and governments allow. The conventional cliches about a "marketplace of ideas" in which "the truth will out" are, he says, almost as false as those internet claims that 9/11 was an inside job.
What Sunstein says matters. Co-author of the bestseller Nudge, he's also Obama's nomination for US regulation tsar. Going by this book, he'll make a fierce watchdog. His argument is that whether we give credence to any story depends on our original beliefs.What about evidence – or the quality of the source? Both matter less than we might hope. In a 2004 study, American liberals and conservatives were shown two articles: one in which George Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the other a CIA report that denied Iraq had any WMD. The study's amazing and depressing finding was that conservatives presented with the CIA denial were even more likely to believe that Iraq did have WMD. Yes, confronted with official fact they preferred to fall back on prejudice.
Rumours have been around as long as language, but on the internet they spread faster than ever. And right now US rightwing websites are attacking Sunstein as "an enemy to every news organisation and blogger". They don't like this dangerous liberal and they don't believe his evidence. But then, that's the good professor's point.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/sep/08/brain-food-google-aditya-chakrabortty
Nine months ago, Vogue model Liskula Cohen stumbled across her own personal character assassination. She was the subject of an anonymous blog calling her an "old hag", a "ho" and "a psychotic, lying, whoring … skank".
Vile stuff, you'll agree, but hardly uncommon on the web. Better known people get more, and worse, electronic abuse, and usually let it pass. Not Cohen. The model took Google, hosts of the site, to a New York supreme court to reveal the blogger's identity, claiming the insults had caused "mental anguish and damage to [her] reputation." Last month she won. The bully has now been outed as fashion student Rosemary Port – and she faces a suit for defamation.
As befits a combination of fashion, the web and lawyers, the case had its ludicrous aspects, such as the internet "skank-off" poll over which of the "lovely litigious ladies" was "hotter". But in pointing out the harm done by online falsehoods, the model has sashayed into a fast-developing branch of social science: the theory of lies.
In a new book called On Rumours, the legal theorist Cass Sunstein argues that falsehoods are far more damaging and longer lasting than courts and governments allow. The conventional cliches about a "marketplace of ideas" in which "the truth will out" are, he says, almost as false as those internet claims that 9/11 was an inside job.
What Sunstein says matters. Co-author of the bestseller Nudge, he's also Obama's nomination for US regulation tsar. Going by this book, he'll make a fierce watchdog. His argument is that whether we give credence to any story depends on our original beliefs.What about evidence – or the quality of the source? Both matter less than we might hope. In a 2004 study, American liberals and conservatives were shown two articles: one in which George Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the other a CIA report that denied Iraq had any WMD. The study's amazing and depressing finding was that conservatives presented with the CIA denial were even more likely to believe that Iraq did have WMD. Yes, confronted with official fact they preferred to fall back on prejudice.
Rumours have been around as long as language, but on the internet they spread faster than ever. And right now US rightwing websites are attacking Sunstein as "an enemy to every news organisation and blogger". They don't like this dangerous liberal and they don't believe his evidence. But then, that's the good professor's point.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/sep/08/brain-food-google-aditya-chakrabortty
