Academic Infomercial

I expect that a few of us reading this know what an infomercial is. An advert that is designed to look like a magazine article, or a news story, that tries to use (in some cases) pseudoscience or ‘statistics’ (notice the quotation marks…) to sell a product through swaying the reader. Well, I come across something this morning that was an infomercial designed to look like an academic article. These may have been around a while, but I only came across it by accident and a quick search found a few more.

These articles were designed to sell a product, normally an online application with a paywall, and the argument was obviously flawed. But what if my student had seen this and considered it fact? I could see it was not as it appeared, from the nuances with the presentation and the writing style. But it was convincing. I am sure if one of my students saw the articles they would accept them as fact. The same way in which wikis are sometimes accepted as fact, and referenced, without a thought to what a wiki actually is.

How can this be mitigated against? With social media, it’s easy to discredit the rigour of the presented arguments. But when the pseudoarticle is presented in a style that appears to be academic (but in more accessible language, which may heighten it’s appeal) how would you be able to confirm it’s rigour? These infomercials were not intended for an academic audience, but with search engines not discriminating that it is intended for those who have a use for the product and would not necessarily interpret the information as incorrect it is easily found by those seeking legitimate information.

The way in which technology is influencing aspects of our lives in a post-digital society, and its impact on learning in higher education, maybe we need to have a more in-depth consideration what constitutes academic and graduate skills. I have already published on digital literacy in health academia and the need for digital literacy development to be more overt. But when I come across something like an infomercial pretending to be a journal article I realise it is only my experience and gained knowledge that I have grown that allows me to realise what it is; and that this is something that the students may easily consider fact.