Loved it! 😍

Bias is All Around You is an excellent introduction to media literacy and how to hone your critical thinking skills.

Synopsis

Bias Is All Around You! Can you separate fact from fiction to safeguard your mental health? Let our handbook be your guide for inspecting all the information you are exposed to in social media today. If you cannot properly assess information bias it could:

1. Lead you to follow a false cause
2. Leave you feeling foolish
3. Tarnish your credibility
4. Attract the wrong people
5. Create undue stress
6. Compromise your values
7. Harm your mental health

These undesirable outcomes need not occur! For it’s time to read between the lines and assess bias now! Together, we can chart a new discourse, one that uses information wisely, with prudence, and goodwill.

Join Erik Bean as he takes you on a rigorous yet introspective journey to snuff out bias, to understand algorithms that affect internet and social media information and provide you simple assessment tools that allow you to be more confident if you use the information and share it. Foreword written by Tim Vos, Ph.D., Director, School of Journalism, Michigan State University. Award-Winning Illustrator Gail Gorske provides relevant and brilliant handcut paper images.

The concepts of fake news and media bias have been hot topics since the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. While many articles and books have been written about their dangers, they can be difficult to follow because they don't provide readers a proper background on what critical thinking is and how to use it. The basic concepts of bias and fallacy are simple enough, but how can one recognize bias or identify specific types of fallacies? In Bias is All Around You, Erik Bean uses both his master degree in Journalism and doctorate in Education to create an in-depth but still easy-to-read guide on the subject.

Bean provides a crash course in basic rhetoric, giving relevant, modern examples of Aristotle’s modes of persuasion (ethos, logos, and pathos). He also covers lesser known concepts (such as kairos and mythos) and how these can easily be used to determine the credibility and motives of news sources.

Bean also helpfully explains and provides examples of logical fallacies often used to persuade the average reader of information that may not be true. Understanding fallacies like The Strawman and Begging the Question help readers define when someone is trying to present their opinions as facts.

There is an also interesting, if not fully developed, mental health component to the book. Much of the book discusses the values of transparency, and Bean stays true to this by being transparent about the mental health focus of his non-profit organization and the book's publisher. Bean explains that, if readers avoid using their critical thinking skills and even openly read and share information they know to be false, it can lead to cognitive dissonance. He states that this dissonance can damage readers' mental and physical health, but does not really elaborate on what these effects can be. There’s no reason to disbelieve Bean’s claims, but providing fleshed-out examples like he did with the modes of persuasion and logical fallacies would have been illuminating.

Bias is All Around You is an excellent introduction to media literacy and how to hone your critical thinking skills. It would be an invaluable read for anyone who wants to improve their skills at spotting fake news but don’t know where to begin. With its well-rounded descriptions of many rhetoric concepts, it could also be a helpful resource for any first year journalism and communication students.

Reviewed by

I'm a poet working in the publishing industry; through these roles, I'm constantly discovering small presses, new authors, and cool projects that often don't receive the attention they deserve. A good, objective review is maybe the best advertising that a book can receive and something I can offer.

Synopsis

1. Lead you to follow a false cause
2. Leave you feeling foolish
3. Tarnish your credibility
4. Attract the wrong people
5. Create undue stress
6. Compromise your values
7. Harm your mental health

Introduction

INTRODUCTION “A life worth living is a life well led,” as the famous saying goes. We need to take the lead in all aspects of our lives and that includes how we assess and interact with information. Inspecting information can improve your mental health. We are inundated with a barrage of seemingly unending and conflicting data. Information should be based on facts and designed to enrich our lives.

However, information can be misleading and contrived. The internet, television, radio, and social media networks provide us with minute-by-minute access to millions upon millions of bytes of data. And let’s not forget to mention newspapers and magazines. We are also exposed to websites, blogs, podcasts, videos, and online libraries, and all of these avenues should increase our knowledge and provide us with a sense of direction. However, our comprehension of this information can be clumsy or simply inept.

If we do not properly inspect information, we can make hasty generalizations. We can thenmanipulate this material to our advantage without understanding the ramifications of sharing false narratives in the form of rumors and innuendo. Worse, we could possibly end up following a false cause because we were duped with misinformation. We are often unaware that much of the information we have access to is derived by social media manipulation and corporate digital algorithms. Also, online purchases we make influence the information that comes our way (Bean, 2018).

What can you do to mitigate poor critical thinking since Bias is All Around You? Read this book! We will inform you about 7 bias sources of information and the 10 most popular fallacies that can compromise your ability to properly vet all the data you are exposed to each day. You can start to better filter bias and fallacies that can otherwise:

1. Lead you to follow a false cause

2. Leave you feeling foolish

3. Tarnish your credibility

4. Attract the wrong people

5. Create undue stress

6. Compromise your values

7. Harm your mental health

In the end, following information with little or no critical thinking can lead to hostile discussions and perpetuate conspiracy theories. But none of these potentially debilitating results need occur! For it’s time to read between the lines and curtail bias now! Together, we can chart a new heartfelt civil discourse, one that uses information more wisely, with prudence and goodwill. So, let’s get started.

Sincerely,

Erik Bean, Ed.D.

July 4th, 2021

Discover → Education & Reference

Bias is All Around You: A Handbook for Inspecting Social Media & News Stories

Loved it! 😍

Synopsis

Reviewed by

Synopsis

Introduction

Comments

About the author

Reviewed by

Enjoyed this review?

Menu

Loved it! 😍

Synopsis

Reviewed by

Synopsis

Introduction

Comments

About the author

Reviewed by

Enjoyed this review?

Discover more books like Bias is All Around You: A H...

Create your free account to help this book get discovered and decide on the bestselling stories of tomorrow.

You'll need an account for that!

Menu