Social Sciences
How information moves through a society — and, increasingly, how it gets corrupted on the way.
8 fields · 79 topics · 107 curated works
Evaluating claims — arguably the most valuable field in this entire index right now.
Foundations & Overviews · Source Evaluation · Lateral Reading · Fact-Checking Methods · Primary vs Secondary Sources
How false information spreads, and why corrections rarely catch up.
Foundations & Overviews · Rumour & Contagion · Coordinated Influence Operations · Propaganda Techniques · Conspiracy Theories
The practice, the economics and the failure modes.
Foundations & Overviews · Reporting Methods · Investigative Journalism · Source Protection · Editorial Standards
The oldest communication discipline, still the most useful.
Foundations & Overviews · Classical Rhetoric · Ethos, Pathos, Logos · Argument Structure · Logical Fallacies
What the medium does independently of the message.
Foundations & Overviews · Medium Theory · Agenda Setting · Framing Theory · Cultivation Theory
Platforms as the dominant information infrastructure.
Foundations & Overviews · Recommendation Algorithms · Engagement Optimisation · Filter Bubbles & Echo Chambers · Virality Mechanics
Paid and earned influence — targeting, brand and crisis communication, and the effectiveness research rarely cited.
Foundations & Overviews · Advertising History · Ad Targeting & Tracking · Brand Communication · Crisis Communication
Each information revolution and its social consequences.
Foundations & Overviews · Oral Tradition · The Printing Press · Newspapers & Mass Literacy · Radio
No prior grounding assumed.
Wireless Telegraphic Communication
Guglielmo Marconi · 1909
Recounts how progressively larger aerials and more sensitive detectors let signals cross the Atlantic reliably, arguing the working limit on wireless…
+21 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Propaganda
Edward Bernays · 1928
The founder of public relations arguing openly that manufacturing consent is necessary in a democracy — the field's most candid document.
+45 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Rhetoric
Aristotle · 350 BCE
The first systematic account of persuasion — ethos, pathos, logos — and still the framework everyone arguing in public is using unknowingly.
+38 more at this level
12 of 107 works
Guglielmo Marconi
Recounts how progressively larger aerials and more sensitive detectors let signals cross the Atlantic reliably, arguing the working limit on wireless range was engineering practice catching up, not any ceiling in the underlying physics.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Carnegie & Esenwein
Argues effective public speaking comes from preparation and genuine conviction rather than platform tricks, and drills control of voice, gesture and direct address as trainable skills.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Claude Hopkins
Argues advertising should be judged solely by whether it sells, not by whether it is admired, and that every claim and layout choice should be tested against results the way a salesman tests a pitch.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Claude Hopkins
Recounts how Hopkins built the reason-why, sampling and money-back-guarantee techniques that turned advertising copy into an experiment rather than an art, offering his own career as proof the method works.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Darrell Huff
Catalogues the standard tricks — the truncated graph, the biased sample, the unspecified average — by which real numbers are made to imply a false conclusion without anyone technically lying.
Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore
Restates McLuhan's claim that a medium reshapes perception ahead of anything said through it, in a deliberately fragmented, image-driven layout that performs the argument rather than just stating it.
McCombs & Shaw
Shows voters' sense of which issues matter tracks the emphasis of news coverage rather than the reverse, giving the press power to set the public agenda while claiming only to report it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Robert Cialdini
Identifies six principles — reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity — that professional persuaders exploit, each working by hijacking a mental shortcut that is usually adaptive.
Neil Postman
Argues television did not corrupt public discourse with bad content but restructured it entirely, making entertainment the standard everything — news, politics, religion — now has to meet to be heard at all.
John Perry Barlow
Declares cyberspace a self-governing space beyond the reach of national law, on the claim that governments derive their authority from consent and control of force, neither of which extends online — an argument the following decades of platform regulation have substantially undermined.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Kovach & Rosenstiel
Distils journalism's purpose to one obligation — verified truth in service of citizens' self-government — and derives its editorial standards from that obligation rather than professional custom.
Eli Pariser (TED)
Argues that personalised ranking quietly edits what each person can see and removes the shared material democracies argue over; later empirical work has found the effect weaker and more self-selected than claimed here.
link checked 17 Sept 2026