Review Pollution: Pedagogy for a Post-Truth Society

Consumer reviews on platforms like Amazon are summarized into star ratings, used to weight search results, and consulted by consumers guide purchase decisions. They emblematic of the interactive digital environment that has purportedly transferred power from marketers ‘regular people,’ yet they represent infiltration promotional concerns online information, as occurred in social media content. Consumers’ ratings do work for brands—not just products but host reviews—that money can’t always buy. Gains quickly met with new strategies control companies who depend reputational capital. Focusing ecommerce giant Amazon, this article examines complexities reviews, where individual efforts provide product feedback help others make choices become transformed an information commodity vehicle. It acknowledges ambiguous nature due rise industries business practices influence or fake a strategy. In response other platform policies aiming better consumers, protect image punish ‘bad actors’ competitive markets. The complexity production, regulation, manipulation illustrates how high stakes attention spaces create fertile ground disinformation, which only emphasizes users inhabit ‘post-truth’ reality online.