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Understanding and Addressing the Disinformation Ecosystem

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Understanding and Addressing the Disinformation Ecosystem December 15-16, 2017 Annenberg School for Communication This workshop brings together academics, journalists, fact-checkers, technologists, and funders to better understand the challenges produced by the current disinformation ecosystem. The facilitated discussions will highlight relevant research, share best-practices, identify key questions of scholarly and practical concern regarding the nature and implications of the disinformation ecosystem, and outline a potential research agenda designed to answer these questions. This conference has been made possible through generous funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Table of contents Fake News in Context Michael Schudson (Columbia University) Barbie Zelizer (University of Pennsylvania) 1 Information Disorder: Definitions Hossein Derakhshan (MIT Media Lab and Harvard University Shorenstein Center) Claire Wardle (First Draft) 5 People Don’t Trust News Media – And This Is Key to the Global Misinformation Debate Richard Fletcher (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford) Rasmus Nielsen (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford) 13 Taking the Red Pill: Ideological Motivations for Spreading Online Disinformation Rebecca Lewis (Data & Society Research Institute) Alice Marwick (University of North Carolina) 18 The Minority Report on the Fake News Crisis: (Spoiler Alert: It’s the Real News) Duncan Watts (Microsoft Research) David Rothschild (Microsoft Research) 23 Personalized Information Environments and Their Potential Consequences for Disinformation Deen Freelon (University of North Carolina) 38 Making Sense of Information and Judging its Credibility Natalie Jomini Stroud (University of Texas) Emily Thorson (Syracuse University) Dannagal Young (University of Delaware) 45 Misinformation and Identity-Protective Cognition Dan Kahan (Yale University) 51 Using Behavioral Theory to Curb Misinformation Sharing Brian Southwell (RTI International) Vanessa Boudeywns (RTI International) 58 Assessing Current Efforts by the Platforms and their Effectiveness Claire Wardle (FirstDraft) 64 Information Operations and Democracy: What Role for Global Civil Society and Independent Media? Sarah Oh (University of California, Berkeley) 69 Why We Feel Woefully Under-Informed About How We Can Do Our Jobs Better Amy Sippett (Full Fact) 75 Field Notes: Observation from a School Library Michael Barker (Phillips Academy) 80 How Academics Can Help Platforms Tackle Disinformation Nic Dias (FirstDraft) 83 Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos Justis Theis (Technical University of Munich & University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) Michael Zollhöfer (Max-Planck Institute for Informatics) Marc Stamminger (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) Christian Theobalt (Max-Planck Institute for Informatics) Matthias Nießner (Technical University of Munich) 87 Schudson and Zelizer Fake News in Context Michael Schudson, Columbia University Barbie Zelizer, University of Pennsylvania “Fake news” landed in the US lexicon in for passersby, not unlike the rumor mongers 2016 as if it had arrived from Mars in a of today’s digital environment (Darnton flying saucer, without precedent, without 2017). lineage. Fears about its influence were widespread, anxieties about its origins, both Fake news lessened in centrality only in the foreign and domestic, were large and alarm late 1800s as printed news, particularly in bells were clamorous about its threat to Britain and the United States, came to center democracy. But now, with the initial panic on what Jean Chalaby called “fact-centered at least partially in remission, we may be discursive practices” and people realized able to put it in better perspective. that newspapers could compete with one another not simply on the basis of partisan In many ways, the noise created in response affiliation or on the quality of philosophical to fake news was predictable. From anti- and political essays but on the immediacy Semitic blood libel stories in 15th century and accuracy of factual reports (Chalaby Europe to church-supported missives of 1996). Until that point, few clear notions of divine retribution following the 1755 Lisbon journalistic ethics, balance or truth-telling Earthquake, fake news has been around a were around to inspire trust in the reliability long while. Dating back hundreds of years to of news. In the 1890s early journalism the invention of print and offering primarily textbooks could still recommend strict inflammatory and sensational accounts of accuracy about the “essential” facts of a the events of the day, there has been a long story while taking a tolerant attitude toward history of journalistic hoaxes, scandals, lies, pure invention when it came to “non- satire and exaggerations. In the US Thomas essentials” (Shuman 1894) And fakery in Jefferson complained in 1807 to a friend that photography and news photography early in “the man who never looks into a newspaper the 20th century was widely accepted as just is better informed than he who reads them; a part of the game (Tucher 2017). inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with So even then fake news persisted. It falsehoods & errors” (Jefferson 1807). Fake remained consonant with the sensationalism news produced antebellum stories of of the tabloids: The exaggerations and lies in African-Americans turning white or tales of the run-up to the Spanish-American War alien populations on the moon, and it helped make yellow journalism profitable. prevailed, according to Robert Darnton, in But attempts to rein in fabrication appeared the pasquinades of 16th century Italy, the soon thereafter, notably through norms of canards of 17th century Paris and the media truthfulness and formal codes of “paragraph men” and nouvellistes of London ethics, beginning with the Kansas State and Paris respectively who turned 18th Editorial Association in 1910. Reactions century coffeehouse gossip into printed or against Wilson administration propaganda to handwritten papers left on public benches whip up support for World War I and 1 Schudson and Zelizer against the rapid rise of public relations after discredited accounts of purportedly reliable the war led more news organizations and information. associations of journalists to adopt ethical codes, taking shape nationally with the Different forms of fake news easily spread formation of the American Society of across the media. I ts adaptable shapes— Newspaper Editors that in 1923 adopted a where it can appear as honest error, code of journalistic ethics (Samuel 2016). misreporting, conspiracy theories, clickbait, In the 1920s journalists adopted the ideal of unsubstantiated gossip, junk science and “objectivity” in news reporting as a flag they downright false news—underscore the would salute (Schudson 1978). hospitable nature of current circumstances, where its dissemination is readily facilitated Fake news echoed around the world during by many features. They include algorithmic World War I, where longstanding practices formulae that generate news feeds without of propaganda and disinformation fostered regard for accuracy; a news environment the deliberate creation of false news by driven not only by journalists; access to official or quasi-official agencies intent on instantaneous and g lobal dissemination; destabilizing the public or shaping public populist political currents that invoke the opinion. Latent and manifest attempts at label of fake news as a weapon; low disinformation used both covert and occupational esteem and failing business conventional channels, making it difficult to models across journalism; journalistic know what was true or fake in an ecosystem resistance to embracing perspectival forms that accommodated both: British of information favored by many beyond the disinformation efforts during World War II, news—blogs, podcasts, crowd-sourcing, capped by journalist Sefton Delmer’s so- listicles, gifs and memes; and populations called “Black Propaganda” campaign across who distrust the media while lacking the Nazi territory, coexisted alongside Allied media literacy skills to discern or understand military efforts at publicizing true but hard- signs of journalistic bias, subtle agendas, or to-believe news of the concentration camps distinctions between news and (Zelizer 1998). Fake news intensified during advertisement. While today’s fake news the Cold War, where the Russian practice of builds on longstanding journalistic, dezinformatsiya and similar US efforts vied technological, political, social, cultural, with each to produce accounts damaging to economic and legal contours that for the the other side; portraying JFK’s most part preceded the contemporary assassination as a CIA plot was among them landscape, they nonetheless suit its current (Zelizer 1992). Today some argue that spread particularly well. notions of propaganda aptly describe the contemporary information efforts of many To act as if today’s fake news environment online actors and activists (Jack 2017). is fundamentally different from that of earlier times misreads how entrenched fake Fake news, then, has proliferated in various news and broader attitudes toward fakery ways. No surprise that the fake news of one have been. Today we readily accept fakery situation is not the fake news of another. in many forms: reality television that is Variations in detail, degree and intensity more staged than real, message manipulation
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