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Memetics of Deception: Spreading Local Meme Hoaxes During COVID-19 1St Year
future internet Article Memetics of Deception: Spreading Local Meme Hoaxes during COVID-19 1st Year Raúl Rodríguez-Ferrándiz 1,* , Cande Sánchez-Olmos 1,* , Tatiana Hidalgo-Marí 1 and Estela Saquete-Boro 2 1 Department of Communication and Social Psychology, University of Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain; [email protected] 2 Department of Software and Computing Systems, University of Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] (R.R.-F.); [email protected] (C.S.-O.) Abstract: The central thesis of this paper is that memetic practices can be crucial to understanding deception at present when hoaxes have increased globally due to COVID-19. Therefore, we employ existing memetic theory to describe the qualities and characteristics of meme hoaxes in terms of the way they are replicated by altering some aspects of the original, and then shared on social media platforms in order to connect global and local issues. Criteria for selecting the sample were hoaxes retrieved from and related to the local territory in the province of Alicante (Spain) during the first year of the pandemic (n = 35). Once typology, hoax topics and their memetic qualities were identified, we analysed their characteristics according to form in terms of Shifman (2014) and, secondly, their content and stance concordances both within and outside our sample (Spain and abroad). The results show, firstly, that hoaxes are mainly disinformation and they are related to the pandemic. Secondly, despite the notion that local hoaxes are linked to local circumstances that are difficult to extrapolate, our conclusions demonstrate their extraordinary memetic and “glocal” capacity: they rapidly adapt Citation: Rodríguez-Ferrándiz, R.; other hoaxes from other places to local areas, very often supplanting reliable sources, and thereby Sánchez-Olmos, C.; Hidalgo-Marí, T.; demonstrating consistency and opportunism. -
The Great White Hoax
THE GREAT WHITE HOAX Featuring Tim Wise [Transcript] INTRODUCTION Text on screen Charlottesville, Virginia August 11, 2017 Protesters [chanting] You will not replace us! News reporter A major American college campus transformed into a battlefield. Hundreds of white nationalists storming the University of Virginia. Protesters [chanting] Whose streets? Our streets! News reporter White nationalists protesting the removal of a Confederate statue. The setting a powder keg ready to blow. Protesters [chanting] White lives matter! Counter-protesters [chanting] Black lives matter! Protesters [chanting] White lives matter! News reporter The march spiraling out of control. So-called Alt-Right demonstrators clashing with counter- protesters some swinging torches. Text on screen August 12, 2017 News reporter (continued) The overnight violence spilling into this morning when march-goers and counter-protesters clash again. © 2017 Media Education Foundation | mediaed.org 1 David Duke This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That's what we believed in. That's why we voted for Donald Trump. Because he said he's going to take our country back. And that's what we gotta do. News reporter A horrifying scene in Charlottesville, as this car plowed into a crowd of people. The driver then backing up and, witnesses say, dragging at least one person. Donald Trump We're closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia. We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides. -
IN AMERICAN POLITICS TODAY, EVEN FACT-CHECKERS ARE VIEWED THROUGH PARTISAN LENSES by David C
IN AMERICAN POLITICS TODAY, EVEN FACT-CHECKERS ARE VIEWED THROUGH PARTISAN LENSES by David C. Barker, American University What can be done about the “post-truth” era in American politics? Many hope that beefed-up fact-checking by reputable nonpartisan organizations like Fact Checker, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and Snopes can equip citizens with the tools needed to identify lies, thus reducing the incentive politicians have to propagate untruths. Unfortunately, as revealed by research I have done with colleagues, fact-checking organizations have not provided a cure-all to misinformation. Fact-checkers cannot prevent the politicization of facts, because they themselves are evaluated through a partisan lens. Partisan Biases and Trust of Fact Checkers in the 2016 Election In May of 2016, just a couple of weeks before the California Democratic primary, my colleagues and I conducted an experiment that exposed a representative sample of Californians to the statement: “Nonpartisan fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact rate controversial candidate statements for truthfulness.” We also exposed one randomized half of the sample to the following statement and image: “Each presidential candidate's current PolitiFact average truthfulness score is placed on the scale below.” The Politifact image validated the mainstream narrative about Donald Trump’s disdain for facts, and also reinforced Bernie Sanders’s tell-it-like-it-is reputation. But it contradicted conventional wisdom by revealing that Clinton had been the most accurate candidate overall (though the difference between the Clinton and Sanders ratings was not statistically significant). What did we expect to find? Some observers presume that Republicans are the most impervious to professional fact-checking. -
Starr Forum: Russia's Information War on America
MIT Center for Intnl Studies | Starr Forum: Russia’s Information War on America CAROL Welcome everyone. We're delighted that so many people could join us today. Very SAIVETZ: excited that we have such a timely topic to discuss, and we have two experts in the field to discuss it. But before I do that, I'm supposed to tell you that this is an event that is co-sponsored by the Center for International Studies at MIT, the Security Studies program at MIT, and MIT Russia. I should also introduce myself. My name is Carol Saivetz. I'm a senior advisor at the Security Studies program at MIT, and I co-chair a seminar, along with my colleague Elizabeth Wood, whom we will meet after the talk. And we co-chair a seminar series called Focus on Russia. And this is part of that seminar series as well. I couldn't think of a better topic to talk about in the lead-up to the US presidential election, which is now only 40 days away. We've heard so much in 2016 about Russian attempts to influence the election then, and we're hearing again from the CIA and from the intelligence community that Russia is, again, trying to influence who shows up, where people vote. They are mimicking some of Donald Trump's talking points about Joe Biden's strength and intellectual capabilities, et cetera. And we've really brought together two experts in the field. Nina Jankowicz studies the intersection of democracy and technology in central and eastern Europe. -
FAKE NEWS!”: President Trump’S Campaign Against the Media on @Realdonaldtrump and Reactions to It on Twitter
“FAKE NEWS!”: President Trump’s Campaign Against the Media on @realdonaldtrump and Reactions To It on Twitter A PEORIA Project White Paper Michael Cornfield GWU Graduate School of Political Management [email protected] April 10, 2019 This report was made possible by a generous grant from William Madway. SUMMARY: This white paper examines President Trump’s campaign to fan distrust of the news media (Fox News excepted) through his tweeting of the phrase “Fake News (Media).” The report identifies and illustrates eight delegitimation techniques found in the twenty-five most retweeted Trump tweets containing that phrase between January 1, 2017 and August 31, 2018. The report also looks at direct responses and public reactions to those tweets, as found respectively on the comment thread at @realdonaldtrump and in random samples (N = 2500) of US computer-based tweets containing the term on the days in that time period of his most retweeted “Fake News” tweets. Along with the high percentage of retweets built into this search, the sample exhibits techniques and patterns of response which are identified and illustrated. The main findings: ● The term “fake news” emerged in public usage in October 2016 to describe hoaxes, rumors, and false alarms, primarily in connection with the Trump-Clinton presidential contest and its electoral result. ● President-elect Trump adopted the term, intensified it into “Fake News,” and directed it at “Fake News Media” starting in December 2016-January 2017. 1 ● Subsequently, the term has been used on Twitter largely in relation to Trump tweets that deploy it. In other words, “Fake News” rarely appears on Twitter referring to something other than what Trump is tweeting about. -
Fact Or Fiction?
The Ins and Outs of Media Literacy 1 Part 1: Fact or Fiction? Fake News, Alternative Facts, and other False Information By Jeff Rand La Crosse Public Library 2 Goals To give you the knowledge and tools to be a better evaluator of information Make you an agent in the fight against falsehood 3 Ground rules Our focus is knowledge and tools, not individuals You may see words and images that disturb you or do not agree with your point of view No political arguments Agree 4 Historical Context “No one in this world . has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of plain people.” (H. L. Mencken, September 19, 1926) 5 What is happening now and why 6 Shift from “Old” to “New” Media Business/Professional Individual/Social Newspapers Facebook Magazines Twitter Television Websites/blogs Radio 7 News Platforms 8 Who is your news source? Professional? Personal? Educated Trained Experienced Supervised With a code of ethics https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp 9 Social Media & News 10 Facebook & Fake News 11 Veles, Macedonia 12 Filtering Based on: Creates filter bubbles Your location Previous searches Previous clicks Previous purchases Overall popularity 13 Echo chamber effect 14 Repetition theory Coke is the real thing. Coke is the real thing. Coke is the real thing. Coke is the real thing. Coke is the real thing. 15 Our tendencies Filter bubbles: not going outside of your own beliefs Echo chambers: repeating whatever you agree with to the exclusion of everything else Information avoidance: just picking what you agree with and ignoring everything else Satisficing: stopping when the first result agrees with your thinking and not researching further Instant gratification: clicking “Like” and “Share” without thinking (Dr. -
A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Success in Framing Contests
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1363-254X.htm JCOM 15,4 Framing expertise: a cross-cultural analysis of success in framing contests 368 Viorela Dan and Øyvind Ihlen Department of Communication, Culture and Languages, Oslo, Norway Received December 2010 Revised May 2011 Accepted July 2011 Abstract Purpose – This article seeks to analyse the skills and knowledge that have a positive impact on the reproduction of the core frames of social actors in the mass media. Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical discussion is accompanied by a cross-cultural case study of the debate surrounding the leaked e-mail correspondence between climate researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2009. First, the authors analysed the framing work of the three main actors with their respective views, namely UEA and the blogs “Real climate”, “Climate audit” and “The air vent”. Second, they conducted an analysis of the media coverage of the issue in the UK, the USA, Germany and Norway, focusing on the importance of cultural factors, psychological biases and conformity to journalistic needs. Findings – The literature review came to the conclusion that public relations practitioners stand good chances to succeed with their framing when they are able to conceive a message in a way that: is resonant with the underlying culture; appeals to psychological biases; and conforms to journalistic needs. The authors use “framing expertise” as an umbrella term for the knowledge and the skills related to these aspects when designing and promoting frames. In the case study, these theoretical assumptions were tested. -
The Spread of True and False News Online
MIT INITIATIVE ON THE DIGITAL ECONOMY RESEARCH BRIEF THE SPREAD OF TRUE AND FALSE NEWS ONLINE By Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral FALSE NEWS IS BIG NEWS. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS Barely a day goes by without a new development about the veracity of social media, foreign We investigated the differential diffusion of all the meddling in U.S. elections, or questionable science. verified, true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise Adding to the confusion is speculation about what’s approximately 126,000 cascades of news stories behind such developments—is the motivation spreading on Twitter, tweeted by about 3 million deliberate and political, or is it a case of uninformed misinformation? And who is spreading the word people over 4.5 million times. online—rogue AI bots or agitated humans? We classified news as true or false using information These were among the questions we sought to from six independent fact-checking address in the largest-ever longitudinal study of organizations that exhibited 95% -98% agreement on the spread of false news online. Until now, few the classifications. large-scale empirical investigations existed on the diffusion of misinformation or its social origins. Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, Studies about the spread of misinformation were and more broadly than the truth in all limited to analyses of small, ad hoc samples. categories. The effects were most pronounced for But these ad hoc studies ignore two of the most false political news than for news about important scientific questions: How do truth and falsity diffuse differently, and what factors related terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or to human judgment explain these differences? financial information. -
Disinformation, and Influence Campaigns on Twitter 'Fake News'
Disinformation, ‘Fake News’ and Influence Campaigns on Twitter OCTOBER 2018 Matthew Hindman Vlad Barash George Washington University Graphika Contents Executive Summary . 3 Introduction . 7 A Problem Both Old and New . 9 Defining Fake News Outlets . 13 Bots, Trolls and ‘Cyborgs’ on Twitter . 16 Map Methodology . 19 Election Data and Maps . 22 Election Core Map Election Periphery Map Postelection Map Fake Accounts From Russia’s Most Prominent Troll Farm . 33 Disinformation Campaigns on Twitter: Chronotopes . 34 #NoDAPL #WikiLeaks #SpiritCooking #SyriaHoax #SethRich Conclusion . 43 Bibliography . 45 Notes . 55 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This study is one of the largest analyses to date on how fake news spread on Twitter both during and after the 2016 election campaign. Using tools and mapping methods from Graphika, a social media intelligence firm, we study more than 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to more than 600 fake and conspiracy news outlets. Crucially, we study fake and con- spiracy news both before and after the election, allowing us to measure how the fake news ecosystem has evolved since November 2016. Much fake news and disinformation is still being spread on Twitter. Consistent with other research, we find more than 6.6 million tweets linking to fake and conspiracy news publishers in the month before the 2016 election. Yet disinformation continues to be a substantial problem postelection, with 4.0 million tweets linking to fake and conspiracy news publishers found in a 30-day period from mid-March to mid-April 2017. Contrary to claims that fake news is a game of “whack-a-mole,” more than 80 percent of the disinformation accounts in our election maps are still active as this report goes to press. -
Book Review Hoax Springs Eternal: the Psychology Of
Book Review Hoax Springs Eternal: The Psychology of Cognitive Deception, by Peter Hancock, Cambridge University Press, New York, USA, 2015, pp. 254, £20.99, Paperback (ISBN 978-1- 107-41768-7 What struck me first with this book was the clever titular pun, but what lured me into its pages were the words Cognitive Deception. They have a certain rhythm with the “shun” owning an iambic quality that feels rather like a palate cleanser. Reading this book, I was perpetually refreshing my mouth after consuming a glut of syllables. Hoax Springs Eternal is all about understanding the sleights of mind woven into the fabric of our world, and the key aspects of our cognition that induce us into accepting them. The ideas are strategically sewn throughout the book around a unified theoretical framework of cognitive deception. Hancock explains how such deceptions are an intrinsic part of the human behavioral repertoire and how we as receptacles and suggestible creatures are wired up to (dis)believe them. The subject matter of this book is not only relevant for those who identify as “ergonomists,” but for people of any disciplinary persuasion. Flicking through the pages may have the effect of deterring would be readers though, and I make specific reference to the connective chapters; you may see Hancock’s spiral models of human information processing and assume the book to be heavy, overly complicated, or filled with gobbledygook not worth your time, but that would be inaccurate—and foolish. You see, the book provides historic and concrete artefacts (or McGuffins if you will) as exemplars for cognitive deception in a way that eases the reader into its technical content. -
“If This Account Is True, It Is Most Enormously Wonderful”: Interestingness-If-True and the Sharing of True and False News A
“If this account is true, it is most enormously wonderful”: Interestingness-if-true and the sharing of true and false news Sacha Altay, Emma de Araujo, Hugo Mercier Published in Digital Journalism Altay, S., de Araujo, E. & Mercier, H. (2021) “If this account is true, it is most enormously wonderful”: Interestingness-if-true and the sharing of true and false news. Digital Journalism. DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1941163 Abstract Why would people share news they think might not be accurate? We identify a factor that, alongside accuracy, drives the sharing of true and fake news: the ‘interestingness-if-true’ of a piece of news. In three pre-registered experiments (N = 904), participants were presented with a series of true and fake news, and asked to rate the accuracy of the news, how interesting the news would be if it were true, and how likely they would be to share it. Participants were more willing to share news they found more interesting-if-true, as well as news they deemed more accurate. They deemed fake news less accurate but more interesting-if-true than true news, and were more likely to share true news than fake news. As expected, interestingness- if-true differed from interestingness and accuracy, and had good face validity. Higher trust in mass media was associated with a greater ability to discern true from fake news, and participants rated as more accurate news that they had already been exposed to (especially for true news). We argue that people may not share news of questionable accuracy by mistake, but instead because the news has qualities that compensate for its potential inaccuracy, such as being interesting-if-true. -
Covid-19, Free Speech, Hate Speech: Implications for Journalism Teaching
COVID-19, FREE SPEECH, NEWS REPORTING 1 Running head: COVID-19, FREE SPEECH, NEWS REPORTING Covid-19, Free Speech, Hate Speech: Implications for Journalism Teaching Jerry Crawford1, Anastasia Kononova2, Mia Moody-Ramirez3 and Carolyn Bronstein4 Abstract The essay stems from conversations and research from AEJMC’s “Recommended EthicaL ProfessionaL Freedom & ResponsibiLity GuideLines.” It is from this perspective that we address the handling of free speech during the Covid-19 pandemic and how threats to free speech, particularly during raciaLLy charged periods, may affect teaching in journaLism and mass communication programs. Further, we discuss instances in which free speech is used during a crisis to contribute to raciaL and ethnic stereotypes and exacerbate sociopoliticaL divisions. We incLude background and context on the pandemic and how the media covered it; implications of misinformation and free speech; sourcing and citizen journaLism; and various types of hate speech. 1 Associate Professor at William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication, The University of Kansas 2 Assistant Professor in the Department of Advertising + Public Relations, Michigan State University 3 Professor in the Department of Journalism, PuBlic Relations & New Media, Baylor University 4 Professor of Media Studies in the College of Communication, DePaul University COVID-19, FREE SPEECH, NEWS REPORTING 2 The year into the current Covid-19 pandemic has brought irreversible changes to the globaL community. This pandemic presents an important opportunity for journaLism and communication educators to consider the interplay among misinformation, free speech, hate speech and cLassroom teaching – whether in-person or virtuaL. The pandemic is not only a heaLth concern, but it is aLso a politicaLLy divisive topic that has been debated from various perspectives.