Covid-19, Free Speech, Hate Speech: Implications for Journalism Teaching
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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. -
Can Communication Strategies Combat COVID-19 Vaccine
Article Can Communication Strategies Combat COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy with Trade-Off between Public Service Messages and Public Skepticism? Experimental Evidence from Pakistan Qiang Jin 1, Syed Hassan Raza 2 , Muhammad Yousaf 3 , Umer Zaman 4,* and Jenny Marisa Lim Dao Siang 5 1 Intercultural Communication Research Center, Hebei University, Baoding 071000, China; [email protected] 2 Department of Communication Studies, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan 66000, Pakistan; [email protected] 3 Centre for Media and Communication Studies, University of Gujrat, Gujrat 50700, Pakistan; [email protected] 4 Endicott College of International Studies, Woosong University, Daejeon 34606, Korea 5 Department of Business Administration, School of Management, National Central University, Taoyuan City 32001, Taiwan; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic may have reached a turning point as the World Health Organiza- tion and the global community of nations step up plans for mass vaccination campaigns. However, the COVID-19 vaccine-related conspiracy theories (e.g., falsehoods about birth control, women infer- tility, surveillance, and microchip humanity, etc.) have built new momentum for vaccine hesitancy. To this end, several nations worldwide, including Pakistan, are struggling to boost public trust Citation: Jin, Q.; Raza, S.H.; Yousaf, and enthusiasm to get vaccinated, especially in an anxious and complicated atmosphere propelled M.; Zaman, U.; Siang, J.M.L.D. Can by multiple, new -
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. -
Do You Know of a Colleague And/Or Student Who Would Be Interested in Receiving These Bulletin Boards? Please Forward to Them
Do you know of a colleague and/or student who would be interested in receiving these Bulletin Boards? Please forward to them. A quick email to [email protected] with the word “subscribe” in the subject line and the email address will be added to the listing. Geoscience Bulletin Board – 16 November 2020 – compiled by Elaine J. Hanford In Memoriam: Will Harrison (1936- 2020) – raffish glacial scientist • https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/science/2020/11/07/saying-goodbye-to-a-raffish-glacier- scientist/ Understanding Jökulhlaup - glacial lake floods • https://www.techexplorist.com/long-standing-mystery-glacial-lake-floods-solved/36039/ Distinct slab interfaces within mantle transition zone beneath western Pacific • https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/caos-dsi110920.php New model for predicting speed of earthquake propagation • https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/idrp-anm110920.php Dust in sediment cores from South Pacific reflect Ice Age climate history • https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uoo-had110920.php Dotsero volcano in Colorado erupted roughly 4,200 years ago – phreatomagmatic eruption • https://coloradosun.com/2020/11/09/dotsero-volcano-colorado-active/ San Cristobal Verapaz deadly landslide triggered by heavy rains from Hurricane Eta in Guatemala • https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2020/11/09/san-cristobal-verapaz/ Somalia heralding new oil & gas exploration • https://www.theafricareport.com/49364/somalia-the-new-oil-and-gas-frontier/ Drones measuring carbon dioxide emissions from Manam -
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. -
Coronaconspiracy: Conspiracy Theories on Twitter and Youtube in the Age of Coronavirus Author: Sam Dodd // Institution: City, U
#Coronaconspiracy: Conspiracy Theories on Twitter and YouTube in the Age of Coronavirus Author: Sam Dodd // Institution: City, University of London // Academic Year: 2019-2020 “When you have a situation where something defies explanation, people want better explanations than they’re getting, and that’s where conspiracy theories come from, that’s where they’ve always come from. People need to bring order to chaos” (VICE, 2020, 4:35). This essay will examine the most popular conspiracy theories circulated on Twitter and YouTube about the 2019-20 global pandemic COVID-19 (coronavirus), in the English language, for the one-week time frame 5th May 2020 – 11th May 2020, then examine news coverage originating from UK-based outlets related to those conspiracy theories for the two month period preceding this time frame, for background and context. It will ask what the roles of the law and regulators, the platforms themselves, and the information professional could be in this context. ~ Terminology The way that ‘most popular’ is measured is explained in ‘Twitter and YouTube Data Analysis: Research Parameters’ further on. The term ‘conspiracy theory’ is defined as: “the theory that an event or phenomenon occurs as a result of a conspiracy between interested parties; a belief that some covert but influential agency (typically political in motivation and oppressive in intent) is responsible for an unexplained event” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2020). This essay will explore what interested parties or influential agencies conspiracy theorists claim exist; and the motivation or intent that these agencies allegedly have. Background ‘COVID-19’, known also as ‘SARS-CoV-2’ and ‘Coronavirus Disease’, is a respiratory tract virus first identified in December 2019 in Hubei, a province of China. -
AN ETHICO-EPISTEMIC PERSPECTIVE on COVID-19 Jude I. Onebunne* Abstract the Chequered History of Humanity Is Reckoned with Diseas
AN ETHICO-EPISTEMIC PERSPECTIVE ON COVID-19 Jude I. Onebunne* Abstract The chequered history of humanity is reckoned with diseases and has recorded outbreaks of dangerous and contagious diseases often referred to as plagues otherwise pandemics. These disease outbreaks ravage humanity interfering greatly in the course of history and at times, signaling the end of an entire civilization in other to reintroduce a complete new world order. At the dawn of Anno Domino 2020, amidst great expectations of pomp and pageantries of a promising new year, we woke up to the confusing news of COVID-19, the brouhaha of the novel Coronavirus disease. Like a joke amidst inherent confusion on its nature, structure and curative status, COVID-19 started spreading geometrically and like a wild fire with corresponding death tolls. This paper tries to critically view and review the whole episode surrounding COVID-19 Pandemic while at the same time appreciates the role of philosophy in the proper and effective handling of COVID- 19 that has come to stay like other pestilences of the past. Keywords: Philosophy, Ethics, Epistemic, COVID-19, Epidemic, Pandemic Introduction Humanity has over the time experienced deadly and brutal outbreak of virulent diseases. They were simply vicious and vile killers in human history. Epidemics, endemics, plagues and pandemics are all part and parcel of human existence that has to do with ill state or poor health of man. Most often, what may be regarded as worrisome as epidemic turns out to be mere sickness in other parts of the world like the dreaded Malaria and scary typhoid fever. -
[Pdf] Plandemic: Exposing the Greed, Corruption, and Fraud Behind the COVID-19 Pandemic
[Pdf] Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic Dr. Bruce Fife - pdf free book Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic PDF, Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic PDF Download, Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic Download PDF, Free Download Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic Ebooks Dr. Bruce Fife, Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic Full Collection, Free Download Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic Full Popular Dr. Bruce Fife, Free Download Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic Full Version Dr. Bruce Fife, free online Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic, online free Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic, online pdf Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic, Download PDF Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic, Download Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic E-Books, Read Online Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic E-Books, Plandemic: Exposing The Greed, Corruption, And Fraud Behind The COVID-19 Pandemic Ebooks Free, Plandemic: Exposing -
Regular Expressions for Fast-Response COVID-19 Text
Regular Expressions for Fast-response COVID-19 Text Classification Igor L. Markov Jacqueline Liu Adam Vagner [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Facebook Inc., Facebook Inc., Facebook Inc. Menlo Park, CA Menlo Park, CA Menlo Park, CA ABSTRACT Checking entire posts calls for more subtlety than short-text Text classifiers are at the core of many NLP applications and use a categories, due to a broader vocabulary and longer phrases. The variety of algorithmic approaches and software. This paper intro- ability to handle many content types well sets our work apart from duces infrastructure and methodologies for text classifiers based much of prior art [2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14]. on large-scale regular expressions. In particular, we describe how Multilingual support and obstacles to using NLP tools. The Facebook determines if a given piece of text — anything from a global reach of Facebook-family products mandates support for the hashtag to a post — belongs to a narrow topic such as COVID-19. world’s many languages, from Amharic to Vietnamese, and their To fully define a topic and evaluate classifier performance we em- diversity brings additional challenges; examples include Unicode ploy human-guided iterations of keyword discovery, but do not support, complications of right-to-left languages, and the lack of require labeled data. For COVID-19, we build two sets of regular sufficient data to automatically train classifiers in all languages. Au- expressions: (1) for 66 languages, with 99% precision and recall tomatic language detection is challenged by mixed-language con- >50%, (2) for the 11 most common languages, with precision >90% tent and short examples in related languages (Russian, Ukrainian and recall >90%. -
Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis CONTENTS
Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis CONTENTS Executive Summary ....................................................... 1 What Techniques Do Media Manipulators Use? ....... 33 Understanding Media Manipulation ............................ 2 Participatory Culture ........................................... 33 Who is Manipulating the Media? ................................. 4 Networks ............................................................. 34 Internet Trolls ......................................................... 4 Memes ................................................................. 35 Gamergaters .......................................................... 7 Bots ...................................................................... 36 Hate Groups and Ideologues ............................... 9 Strategic Amplification and Framing ................. 38 The Alt-Right ................................................... 9 Why is the Media Vulnerable? .................................... 40 The Manosphere .......................................... 13 Lack of Trust in Media ......................................... 40 Conspiracy Theorists ........................................... 17 Decline of Local News ........................................ 41 Influencers............................................................ 20 The Attention Economy ...................................... 42 Hyper-Partisan News Outlets ............................. 21 What are the Outcomes? .......................................... -
Snopes Digest
View in Your Browser MEMBERS ONLY Snopes Digest April 28, 2020 • Issue #9 1 2 Behind the Snopes Doreen Marchionni, vice president of editorial, explains why our investigations share a particular theme. 3 In Case You Missed It The most popular and most important stories on Snopes.com lately. 4 Snopes-worthy Reads Good stories we’ve shared amongst ourselves recently. Issue #9 edited by Brandon Echter and Bond Huberman 1. Misinformation at Scale brandonechter, we here at Snopes have sussed out thousands of dubious claims, some shared innocuously and others pushed for more nefarious reasons. But some of the most puzzling we’ve seen are those distributed by practitioners who know how to make it seem like there’s a crowd where there is none. Whether it’s fake accounts inflating Facebook groups or outlets creating new accounts to get around bans, the use of bots, automation, and impersonation for the sake of fraud is widespread on the internet. It’s called coordinated inauthentic behavior, and you don’t have to look far for examples. In this issue of the Snopes Digest, we’re shining a light on the tactics employed to push political agendas, scam unsuspecting users, and manipulate people — and until the platforms hosting this activity put a stop to it, Snopes will be there to track them down. Stay vigilant, Team Snopes We Want to Hear from You What have you experienced during the coronavirus pandemic? How are you holding up? We want to hear how our readers are living through this crisis. Tell Us Your Story Snopes-tionary Speak like an insider! Each newsletter, we’ll explain a term or piece of fact- checking lingo that we use on the Snopes team.