Monthly Archives: June 2021

New research from Wharton sounds the alarm on the playground game of telephone in real life by revealing how news can become more biased as it is repeated from person to person. As information travels farther away from its original source, retellers tend to select facts, offer their own interpretations, and lean toward the negative, according to the study titled The Dynamics of Distortion: How Successive Summarization Alters the Retelling of News.

This paper started because I was interested initially in understanding how we end up with fake news, says Wharton marketing professor Shiri Melumad. But quickly I realized that this project was going to be about something much broader, and I think more interesting, which is how do original news stories become distorted as theyre retold sequentially across people.

Melumad co-authored the research along with Wharton marketing professor Robert Meyer and Wharton doctoral candidate Yoon Duk Kim. The scholars analyzed data from 11,000 participants across 10 experiments and concluded that news undergoes a stylistic transformation called disagreeable personalization as it is retold. Facts are replaced by opinions as the teller tries to convince the listener of a certain point of view, especially if the teller considers himself more knowledgeable on the topic than his audience.

The effect is amplified on social media. Followers dont always click on shared content to read the original work for themselves, yet they often accept the conclusion or opinion proffered by the person who posted it. Melumad said that finding is both consistent with previous research and pretty scary in its implications.

What were seeing is this increased polarization whereby anyone whos existing outside of my echo chamber, Im probably not going to really trust [as a] source of information, Melumad says. Again, I think social media is worsening this matter because its so easy to just operate within our respective echo chambers.

Another disturbing result the researchers found was the trend toward negativity, even if the original story was positive, and stories tend to become more negative with each reiteration.

The further removed a retelling is from the original sourceagain, think of the telephone gamethe more negative and more opinionated it becomes, Melumad says. Its really hard to turn this effect off, actually.

Read more at Knowledge@Wharton.

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From facts to fake news: How information gets distorted | Penn Today - Penn Today - Penn Today

This article was originally published here

J Exp Psychol Appl. 2021 Jun 10. doi: 10.1037/xap0000371. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Previous research has argued that fake news may have grave consequences for health behavior, but surprisingly, no empirical data have been provided to support this assumption. This issue takes on new urgency in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, and the accompanying wave of online misinformation. In this large preregistered study (N = 3,746), we investigated the effect of a single exposure to fabricated news stories about COVID-19 on related behavioral intentions. We observed small but measurable effects on some behavioral intentions but not others-for example, participants who read a story about problems with a forthcoming contact-tracing app reported a 5% reduction in willingness to download the app. These data suggest that one-off fake news exposure may have behavioral consequences, though the effects are not large. We also found no effects of providing a general warning about the dangers of online misinformation on response to the fake stories, regardless of the framing of the warning in positive or negative terms. This suggests that generic warnings about online misinformation, such as those used by governments and social media companies, are unlikely to be effective. We conclude with a call for more empirical research on the real-world consequences of fake news. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:34110860 | DOI:10.1037/xap0000371

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Quantifying the effects of fake news on behavior: Evidence from a study of COVID-19 misinformation - DocWire News

When we met as part of the British-American Parliamentary Exchange in 2019, we never imagined the gravity of the events we would face in public service.

The last year has seen great turbulence on both sides of the Atlantic, from Brexit to presidential elections and a global pandemic. These events, era-defining in and of themselves, have been underpinned by a creeping challenge to objective truth that poses a fundamental threat to our democracies.

The insurrection that gripped the United States Capitol building in January is seared into the minds of Americans and shocked audiences across the world. This assault on US democracy was the direct result of a baseless disinformation campaign perpetrated by the former president, Donald Trump, in the days after his legitimate defeat at the polls. That this attack took place in one of the beacons of democracy should leave us in no doubt about the serious threat disinformation poses.

A tide of disinformation is also rising in the UK, Europe and other democracies. The spreading of lies and misinformation about rare Covid-19 vaccine side effects had a real impact on vaccination rates across Europe and reports suggest that Russia and China have exploited this.

In the UK, thousands attended anti-lockdown protests, fronted by populists and predicated on the fiction that Covid restrictions were unnecessary. Even as recently as last month, we heard disturbing reports of Iran allegedly using disinformation to swing Scottish elections in favour of pro-independence parties, to destabilise the UK.

All these events confirm we now live in a world where truth is subjective.

The threats to our democracies are no longer limited to things we can see. Hostile activity can be undertaken more easily than ever, on a comparatively small budget and by nations or groups that do not measure up to conventional definitions of strength. Never before has the old maxim a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, been more apt.

The pace at which we respond to this change will shape the events of the next few decades. It should be considered one of the foremost geopolitical threats and a key objective in safeguarding our democracies.

Progressives have called for a coordinated global response to beat the pandemic. The UK should use its G7 presidency to define a similar approach to this contemporary battle.

Commitments made at the recent G7 foreign and development ministers meeting to bolster the groups Rapid Response Mechanism are welcome. This now needs to become a comprehensive global instrument that systematically exposes and combats disinformation. Ongoing commitments to Nato, undermined by former president Trump, will also be essential to developing multilateral efforts to combat organised falsehoods.

Individual governments, social media companies, and even the press all have a role to play too. Ensuring domestic investment in cyber security that matches the scale of the challenge will be important, as will making sure social media companies are responsible for rooting out deceit.

Perhaps most fundamentally, it will require world leaders particularly those of G7 nations to have the courage of their convictions and defend facts, science, and democracy when it matters most.

That is why we must continue to place a high premium on the character and qualities of our political leaders.

Ultimately, this is not about policing free speech, or an attempt to deny anyone the right to express their view in a reasoned argument. It is a call to recognise a clear and present danger to our countries and to democracies around the world.

The commitment to democracy is a foundational part of the relationship between the UK, the US and the rest of the G7. It has been at the centre of challenges we have faced together in the past. As we emerge from the pandemic, that same commitment must be the basis on which we face the challenges of the future.

Representative Colin Allred is the Democratic Congressman for Texas 32nd congressional district and a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Stephen Morgan is the MP for Portsmouth South and shadow armed forces minister

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In the wake of Trump and Covid-19 fake news, the G7 nations have to step up and fight disinformation - The Independent

One high-profile theory of why people share fake news says that they arent paying sufficient attention. The proposed solution is therefore to nudge people in the right direction. For example, accuracy primes short reminders intended to shift peoples attention towards the accuracy of the news content they come across online can be built into social media sites.

But does this work? Accuracy primes do not teach people any new skills to help them determine whether a post is real or fake. And there could be other reasons, beyond just a lack of attention, that leads people to share fake news, such as political motivations. Our new research, published in Psychological Science, suggests primes arent likely to reduce misinformation by much, in isolation. Our findings offer important insights into how to best combat fake news and misinformation online.

The concept of priming is a more or less unconscious process that works by exposing people to a stimulus (such as asking people to think about money), which then impacts their responses to subsequent stimuli (such as their willingness to endorse free-market capitalism). Over the years, failure to reproduce many types of priming effects has led Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman to conclude that priming is now the posterchild for doubts about the integrity of psychological research.

The idea of using it to counter misinformation sharing on social media is therefore a good test case to learn more about the robustness of priming research.

We were asked by the Center for Open Science to replicate the results of a recent study to counter COVID-19 misinformation. In this study, two groups of participants were shown 15 real and 15 false headlines about the coronavirus and asked to rate how likely they were to share each headline on social media on a scale from one to six.

Before this task, half of the participants (the treatment group) were shown an unrelated headline, and asked to indicate whether they thought this headline was accurate (the prime). Compared to the control group (which was not shown such a prime), the treatment group had significantly higher truth discernment defined as the willingness to share real headlines rather than false ones. This indicated that the prime worked.

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To maximise the chance of a successful replication, we collaborated with the authors on the original study. We first collected a sample large enough to reproduce the original studys findings. If we didnt find a significant effect in this first round of data collection, we had to collect another round of data and pool it together with the first round.

Our first replication test was unsuccessful, with no effect of the accuracy prime on subsequent news sharing intentions. This is in line with replication results of other priming research.

For the pooled dataset, which consisted of almost 1,600 participants, we did find a significant effect of the accuracy prime on subsequent news sharing intentions. But this was at about 50% of the original studys intervention effect. That means that if we picked a person at random from the treatment group, the likelihood that they would have improved news sharing decisions compared to a person from the control group is about 54% barely above chance. This indicates that the overall effect of accuracy nudges may be small, consistent with previous findings on priming. Of course, if scaled across millions of people on social media, this effect could still be meaningful.

We also found some indication that the prime may work better for US Democrats than for Republicans, with the latter appearing to barely benefit from the intervention. There could be a variety of reasons for this. Given the highly politicised nature of COVID-19, political motivations may have a large effect. Conservatism is associated with lower trust in mainstream media, which may lead some Republicans to evaluate credible news outlets as biased.

Priming effects are also known to disappear rapidly, usually after a few seconds. We explored whether this is also the case for accuracy primes by looking at whether the treatment effect occurs disproportionately in the first few headlines that study participants were shown. It appears that the treatment effect was no longer present after participants rated a handful of headlines, which would take most people no more than a few seconds.

So whats the best way forward? Our own work has focused on leveraging a different branch of psychology, known as inoculation theory. This involves pre-emptively warning people of an impending attack on their beliefs and refuting the persuasive argument (or exposing the manipulation techniques) before they encounter the misinformation. This process specifically helps confer psychological resistance against future attempts to mislead people with fake news, an approach also known as prebunking.

In our research, we show that inoculating people against the manipulation techniques commonly used by fake news producers indeed makes people less susceptible to misinformation on social media, and less likely to report to share it. These inoculations can come in the form of free online games, of which weve so far designed three: Bad News, Harmony Square and Go Viral!. In collaboration with Google Jigsaw, we also designed a series of short videos about common manipulation techniques, which can be run as ads on social media platforms.

Other researchers have replicated these ideas with a related approach known as boosting. This involves strengthening peoples resilience to micro-targeting ads that target people based on aspects of their personality by getting them to reflect on their own personality first.

Additional tools include fact-checking and debunking, algorithmic solutions that downrank unreliable content and more political measures such as efforts to reduce polarisation in society. Ultimately, these tools and interventions can create a multi-layered defence system against misinformation. In short: the fight against misinformation is going to need more than a nudge.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Sander van der Linden consults for and receives funding from Google Jigsaw, EU Commission, Facebook, Edelman, ESRC, and the UK Government.

Jon Roozenbeek receives funding from the ESRC, Google Jigsaw, and the UK Cabinet Office.

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Fake news: a simple nudge isnt enough to tackle it here's what to do instead - Yahoo Eurosport UK

With a new wave of COVID-19, a new surge of fake news also washed over India. A scientific study carried out by doctors from Rochester, New York, and Pune, India, and published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Internet Research gives some insights into the behaviour of Indian internet users during the pandemic on one of the prime sources of COVID-19 misinformation in the country, WhatsApp.

The survey found that around 30% of Indians used WhatsApp for COVID-19 information, and just about as many fact-checked less than 50% of messages before forwarding them. 13% of respondents even said that they never fact-checked messages before forwarding on WhatsApp. According to the report, a minority of users were responsible for the bulk of forwarding, however. Only 14% forwarded three or more messages a day, and only 5% forwarded nine or more.

Also Read: Social Media Companies Fail to Deal With Rampant COVID-19 Misinformation in Hindi

The survey also looked at age groups and found that those over the age of 65 were more likely to receive misinformation and were also more likely to believe and act on it, while this was least likely for those under the age of 25. As a result, between 24 and 27% of respondents said they had considered using herbal, ayurvedic or homeopathic COVID-19 remedies. Between 7-8% said they had actually tried them, while 12% had experimented with home remedies.

Three-quarters of Indians found that an attached link or mention of a source made a message more trustworthy even though this does not necessarily make a claim legitimate. Only a third of Indians said that they trusted messages from a known sender more than from an unknown one.

This article was first published on Statista.

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COVID-19 and WhatsApp Fuel Surge of Fake News in India - The Wire

Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon has instructed the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (DES) and security agencies to take tough action against those who spread fake news.

Gen Prawit ordered state agencies, including the Anti-Fake News Centre, the Royal Thai Police, the Justice Ministry and the DES, to work together to respond swiftly to the spread of fake news on social media platforms, and take legal action accordingly.

Fake news and false information had caused confusion among the public, affecting the government's disease control operations during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Maj Gen Patchasak Patirupanont, assistant spokesman to the deputy prime minister.

The Public Relations Department had also been told to issue accurate information to the public, he said.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has also instructed the Council of State, the government's legal advisory body, to study the laws and regulations, including those in foreign countries, dealing with the spread of fake news.

The council's findings will be presented to the cabinet and will be used to improve current laws, said government spokesman Anucha Burapachaisri, adding the existing legal process was slow to respond to fake news.

Fake news by contrast, spreads quickly and causes widespread damage. It is unclear which particular example of fake news has prompted the latest orders.

Asked if the Computer Crime Act was sufficient to deal with fake news on social media, Mr Anucha said legal proceedings under the law could not curb the damage speedily enough.

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Prawit tells officials to clamp down on fake news - Bangkok Post This link opens in a - Bangkok Post

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Opinion: Leger survey 24per centof British Columbiansindicatethey can't tell the difference between real and fake COVID-19 news.

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This pandemic is a health crisis, an economic crisis and a social crisis and we are all seeking assurance on what we should do to protect ourselves, as well as anticipating what we can expect in future.

Every online search that includes the phrase COVID-19 delivers mountains of information, including credible information and misinformation. At first blush, they look largely the same. A recent Leger survey showed that 76 per cent of British Columbians feel they can differentiate between real and fake COVID news.

Fake news generally circulated via social-media channels is misleading claims deliberately designed to feel like legitimate news. Almost more confusing, the phrase fake news is also used to delegitimize credible news stories that individuals like Donald Trump disagree with. Both flavours of fake news can increase anxiety.

Legitimate news can be identified based on the presence of a few key elements: media outlets with a balanced editorial staff, credible sources and/or empirical data such as public opinion polls. Our survey asked 1,002 British Columbians to look at several COVID-19 statements and tell us if they were true or false.

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Looking at the results, we noted that two groups are significantly more likely to believe the false statements: people with children in their household and men between ages 18 and 34.

Of all the statements we shared, not one was so obviously fake that no respondents called it true in fact, three per cent of British Columbians told us they believe that injecting bleach can kill COVID-19. Other examples of false statements B.C.ers identified as true include: COVID-19 death rates are inflated (19 per cent); if youre fully vaccinated, you can travel anywhere you want (13 per cent); the increased cost of lumber is a result of toilet-paper hoarding (10 per cent); and COVID-19 isnt real (four per cent).

As for the true statements we tested: 92 per cent of us know that COVID-19 is caused by a virus, not bacteria; 84 per cent know that all British Columbians 12-years-and-older can book a vaccine appointment and 65 per cent of us know that most people who die of COVID-19 are older.

This pandemic story is one that is still unfolding and what we know to be true today may change as our governments and respected health groups share new information. This shifting landscape means we all must think critically about when we can and should accept something as fact.

A constant dynamic during the pandemic is that what we knew to be true yesterday isnt necessarily still true today. In recent weeks, the previous fake COVID lab leak theory was shared as a possible truth by credible sources, including the WHO. When we asked respondents about the statement COVID-19 was started in a lab, 25 per cent said its true. Thats a fair answer, given that we didnt have a maybe option.

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Thirty per cent of people also checked the true box for the statement: Facebook is monitoring all posts to ensure that COVID-19 news is real. While the larger social-media platforms are doing a lot to remove false information, they cant do it all for us. As individuals, its our responsibility to seek relevant information to navigate this complex time. One of the best things we can do to is make efforts to ensure that the information we trust is true today.

Heather Owen and Jason Allsopp are both vice-presidents in Legers Vancouver office. The survey data is from Legers B.C. Omnibus Study, conducted from May 21-23 among 1,002 British Columbians. For more information, visit leger360.com.

Leger invites you to participate in future public opinion surveys herehttps://special.legeropinion.com/index.asp?L=EN&AffCode=SDIOHB&AffSub=june2021&utm_campaign=postmedia_june2021

Letters to the editor shouldbe sent tosunletters@vancouversun.com.The editorial pages editor is Hardip Johal, who can be reached athjohal@postmedia.com.

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Heather Owen and Jason Allsopp: Fake news clouds an already cloudy time - Vancouver Sun

In the past few years, people have witnessed how deceiving and harmful fake news can be. With the rise in the number of online news portals and a race to be on top of everyone, fake news finds a way to get inside the minds of people. By the time people start to analyze whether news being reported is factual or based on lies, fake news makes it across the globe. American author Mark Twain had therefore rightly said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." Many online portals today often deliver fake news and cause a ruckus among the masses. However, there are a few online portals such as The UBJ & Casey Weekly that believe in delivering nothing but straight-up facts.

The UBJ and Casey Weekly are online news and media portals that have gained significant popularity among the masses. Started about two years ago, the portals have maintained their pace to deliver factual news daily. The portals strictly follow one rule set by their founder - No Propaganda, Straight Up Facts. In a digital era, when people are surrounded by clouds of fake and agenda-driven news, The UBJ and Casey Weekly are providing a ray of hope with their transparent and fact-based news.

Since they were set up, the two portals have garnered thousands of viewers and have demonstrated what is meant by top-notch journalism. They began as local news portals initially, however, as the number of viewers increased, the two morphed into global news websites in a short time. The fields that they provide news about include business, politics, science and technology, Hollywood, sports, and entertainment.

The main objective of setting up the two portals to deliver facts and nothing else became widely appreciated by the people. The reason probably was the fact that too much fake news had caused them to be in a state of distress and disbelief. They were tired to see iterations of single news on multiple online portals. The UBJ and Casey Weekly made things much simpler for them because of which the popularity charts started to show an upward trend.

The news portals have managed to hit the sweet spot of one special group of readers which is the Corporates. The UBJ and Casey Weekly regularly provide business and information technology-related news due to which such readers feel connected with them. Through impartial journalism and fact-based news, The UBJ and Casey Weekly have been constantly proving The courage in journalism is sticking up for the unpopular and not for the popular.

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.We, however, have a request.

As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.

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The UBJ and Casey Weekly Are Emerging As A Popular Face Of Fact-Based Journalism Globally - Business Standard

When Times of Malta cartoonist Professor or Mallia sat down to compose his latest in a series of cartoons about COVID-19, he decided to take aim at the spread of false news online.

His tongue-in-cheek offering depicted an agitated man musing on whether COVID-19 was a scam and questioning his own reality as a comic strip character.

But when he posted it on Facebook on Wednesday, the journalism lecturer was surprised that the cartoon was removed from his page for spreading "false information about COVID-19 that could contribute to physical harm".

Mallia, whose epp cartoons are published twice-weekly on Times of Malta,has been focusing on the pandemic in his 'new normal' series.

He said it was the first time that he had ever had a post banned by Facebook.

My epp strip from today satirises fake news about COVID-19... as it has done in all its 119 strips, but according to Facebook I am the one spreading fake news about COVID-19," he said.If you want to see today's strip you'll need to go to the Times' website to do so."

He said Facebook's fake news algorithm was "ridiculously hopeless" to claim it safeguards the well being of its users, "and yet all the actual fake news gets through!"

After saying he might no longer post his cartoon strip on Facebook, one commenter suggested he post on Twitter instead.

Other satirists have previously fallen foul of the social media giant's community standards, which are supposed to clamp down on misinformation.

The company's artificial intelligence systems and its human moderators have difficulty separating false news from satire and irony.

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Facebook doesn't get the joke: satirical cartoon censored as 'fake news' - Times of Malta

Media criticism sometimes involves reading between the lines, assessing the layered meanings of journalistic rhetoric, or considering whats left unsaid in a given conversation. But we shouldnt be numb to all the times media problems hit you like a sock in the jaw.

That was the case when readers opened the Washington Post online recently to find a full page native adthats the kind designed to look like newsfrom Amazon (Jacobin, 5/27/21). Whose owner Jeff Bezos owns the Post and soon MGM (Washington Post, 5/26/21), among much else.

Blended in with the Posts banner and Democracy Dies in Darkness tagline, readers got text about how Amazon supports a raise in the federal minimum wage and has been paying its workers $15 an hour since 2018. A big picture showed an African-American employee and her child talking about how Amazons generosity is allowing them to move to a bigger home.

Never mind that, as many could tell you, the company was dragged kicking and screaming to that wage increase (Jacobin, 10/2/18); that they continue to fund groups that strenuously oppose a $15 minimum wage (Jacobin, 5/27/21), like the US Chamber of Commerce; that they have vigorously and vehemently opposed union organizing (New York Times, 3/16/21)and that no wage can justify the dangerous and degrading conditions Amazon is reported to subject many of its workers to (Intercept, 3/25/21).

Just as it was selling Post readers on the notion that its lifting folks to a better life, Amazon was being cited by OSHA for a rate of serious workplace injuries nearly double that at other employers (CNBC, 6/1/21). A front-page, truthy-looking ad about corporate benevolence is surely designed to deflect from such troubling realities.

It didnt prevent the paper (6/1/21) from reporting on the OSHA findings, though that story contained another kind of weirdness weve come to take for granted: a summary statement that Amazon declined to make any executives available for interviews on its workplace injury data.

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Jeff Bezos' Fake News in the Newspaper He Really Owns - Common Dreams