- Alternative facts
- Information that is provided to challenge the narrative created by facts that are hostile to one’s preferred beliefs.
- Backfire effect
- Psychological phenomenon where the presentation of true information that conflicts with someone’s mistaken beliefs causes them to hold those beliefs even more strongly.
- Cognitive dissonance
- Psychological state wherein we simultaneously believe two things that are in conflict with one another, which creates psychic tension.
- Confirmation bias
- Tendency to give more weight to information that confirms one of our preexisting beliefs.
- Dunning–Kruger effect
- Psychological phenomenon wherein our lack of ability causes us to vastly overestimate our actual skill.
- Fake news
- Disinformation that is deliberately created to look like actual news in order to have a political effect.
- False equivalence
- To suggest that there is equal value between two points of view, when it is obvious that one is much closer to the truth. Often used to avoid accusations of partisan bias.
- Information silo
- Tendency to seek information from sources that reinforce our beliefs and cut off sources that do not.
- Motivated reasoning
- Tendency to seek out information that supports what we want to believe.
- Postmodernism
- Any of a set of beliefs associated with a movement in art, architecture, music, and literature that tend to discount the idea of objective truth and a politically neutral frame of evaluation.
- Post-truth
- Contention that feelings are more accurate than facts, for the purpose of the political subordination of reality.
- Prestige press
- The “mainstream” newspapers in America, normally thought to include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.