Monthly Archives: February 2022

Background reading on the state of disinformation in the United States. Many of these appeared around the time of the 2016 election, and we've included other more recent reports as well.

Fake news and the spread of misinformationFrom the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, links to peer-reviewed articles.

NiemanReports: Election '16: Lessons for JournalismFrom the Nieman Foundation at Harvard; several articles on fake news and news literacy

Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online ReasoningStanford University study on high school and college students' (lack of) news literacy

Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content: How News Websites Spread (and Debunk) Online Rumors, Unverified Claims and MisinformationReport from Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University

The Science of Fake NewsScience, March 9 2018 ($)Multi-author article on the science behind why disinformation campaigns are effective. Unfortunately, this is behind a paywall; the link will work for Harvard affiliates.

Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics(2018, Oxford University Press)A book from the Berkman Klein Center on media coverage of the 2016 US Presidential election; the online version is free of charge.

The Global Disinformation Order: 2019 Global Inventory of Organized Social Media ManipulationUniversity of Oxford report on the use of disinformation campaigns by national governments.

A Guide to Anti-Misinformation Efforts Around the World2018 report on stepscountries around the world are taking to combat disinformation campaigns.

Disinformation and the 2020 ElectionOne in a series of report from NYU's Stern Center on Business and Human Rights, on the role of social media in the 2020 election.

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Home - "Fake News", Disinformation, and Propaganda ...

Fake news, or fabricated content deceptively presented as real news, has garnered a lot of interest since the U.S. presidential election last fall.

Although hardly a new phenomenon, the global nature of the web-based information environment allows purveyors of all sorts of falsehoods and misinformation to make an international impact. As a result, we talk of fake news and its impact not only in the United States, but also in France, Italy and Germany.

Even though the rise of fake news in recent months is undeniable, its impact is a different story. Many argue that fake news, often highly partisan, helped Donald Trump get elected. There was certainly evidence of fake news stories getting a lot of traction on social media, at times even outperforming actual news stories.

However, a closer analysis shows even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans. And the persuasive effects of these stories have not been tested.

Its likely that they were shared primarily as a way to signal support for either candidate, and not as evidence of news consumers actually believing the content of the story. This raises questions about whether fake news has any real impact at all and whether we, as a society, should be worried about it.

The real impact of the growing interest in fake news has been the realization that the public might not be well-equipped to separate quality information from false information. In fact, a majority of Americans are confident that they can spot fake news. When Buzzfeed surveyed American high schoolers, they too were confident they could spot, and ignore, fake news online. The reality, however, is that it might be more difficult than people think.

I began to test that notion recently in a study I conducted on about 700 undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia.

The design was simple. I showed students a variety of screenshots of actual news website banners ranging from established news sources like the the Globe and Mail, more partisan sources like Fox News and the Huffington Post, online aggregators like Yahoo! News and social media outlets like Upworthy and asked them to rate their legitimacy on a scale of zero to 100.

I also included actual screenshots of fake news websites, some of which gained prominence during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. One of these fake news sources was a website called ABCnews.com.co, which is made to look like ABC News, and featured some false content that gained prominence after it was retweeted by Eric Trump. The others were the Boston Tribune and World True News.

The findings are troubling. Even though the sample group was mostly composed of politically sophisticated and engaged news consumers (by their own admission), the respondents attributed more legitimacy to fake news outlets like ABCnews.com.co or the Boston Tribune than to Yahoo! News, an actual news organization.

Although these results are preliminary and part of a larger study, they are consistent with other research: people, and especially young people, have a hard time separating good sources of information from questionable ones or determining whether a photograph is authentic or fabricated.

Furthermore, ideology seems to impact the assessment of news legitimacy to a troubling degree. Left-leaning students see no difference between an extremist source like Breitbart and Fox News, which, in addition to right-wing partisan commentary, also features news reporting that adheres to standard journalistic norms.

As a result, something that looks and feels real, like the Boston Tribune, is given more legitimacy than an actual news source that students are familiar with, but dislike for ideological reasons. In fact, something that looks and feels fake, like World True News, is given more legitimacy than a real news outlet.

All of this suggests that even though we have been fairly lucky in Canada to avoid the spread of fake news which has plagued recent elections in other developed nations, it doesnt mean were immune to the phenomenon. In many ways, the foundation has been already laid.

According to research done by my colleague, Eric Merkley, Canadians are increasingly polarized along ideological lines, and this affective polarization tends to trigger motivated reasoning an unconscious, biased way of processing information which makes even smart people believe in falsehoods that support their ideological and partisan predispositions.

Additionally, the fragmentation and digitization of the news media landscape is not an American phenomenon, but a global one. According to the most recent study, nearly 80 per cent of Canadians get their news online, and nearly 50 per cent get news on social media, a platform that greatly contributed to the spread of misinformation in the United States. Taken together, the conditions are ripe for fake news to take off in Canada.

Sadly, theres no easy fix to the problem. Tweaking algorithms something Facebook and Google are trying to do can help, but the real solution must come from the news consumers. They need to be more skeptical and better-equipped to rate the quality of information that they encounter.

A crucial part of that strategy should involve media literacy training and equipping news consumers with tools that will allow them to gauge the legitimacy of the news source, but also become aware of their own cognitive biases.

The problem will only get worse without proper action as more people get their news online and politics becomes more tribal and polarized.

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The real consequences of fake news - The Conversation

Autism rates through the roofwhy doesnt the Obama administration do something about doctor-inflicted autism. We lose nothing to try.

9:19 AM - 22 Oct 2012

Starting in 2012, Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed his personal belief that autism is linked to childhood vaccinations, saying it in interviews, on Twitter, and even during a Republican debate.

On the show Fox & Friends in April 2012, Mr. Trump was asked about the rising number of children with autism diagnoses and said, I have a theory and its a theory that some people believe in, and thats the vaccinations. Later in the segment, one host noted most doctors disagree and that studies do not show a link, which Mr. Trump acknowledged, adding, Its also very controversial to even say, but I couldnt care less. He said he had seen changes in children firsthand to support his belief.

Plenty of studies, including a recent one that involved almost 100,000 children, have shown there is no scientific evidence linking vaccinations to autism, and that there is no benefit to delaying vaccinations. Instead, children who are not vaccinated on the regular schedule can be at risk for infectious diseases for a longer period. One doctor told Scientific American that misinformation on the internet often frightens parents away from following the vaccination schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the only one endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. In 2015, a measles outbreak in California, which started at Disneyland, was partly attributed to diseases spread by children who were not vaccinated.

In October 2012, Mr. Trump took to Twitter to ask why President Obamas administration was not intervening. He then wrote in March 2014, If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one time massive shots that a small child cannot take - AUTISM.

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10 Times Trump Spread Fake News - The New York Times

Americas fake news problem is getting worse, not better.

According to an analysis released by NewsGuard and first reported by Axioss Sara Fischer on Tuesday, websites that provide unreliable news increased their share of social media interactions this year. In 2019, 8 percent of engagement with the 100 top-performing news sources on social media was dubious. In 2020, that number more than doubled to 17 percent.

NewsGuard, which rates news websites according to reliability, found that people are engaging in a lot more news this year than they were last year. Engagement with the top 100 US news sources (meaning likes, shares, and comments on Facebook and Twitter) went from 8.6 billion reactions to 16.3 billion reactions between 2019 and 2020. That makes sense given, well, everything that has happened in 2020. There has been a lot of news, and due to pandemic-related factors such as unemployment and lockdowns, people have a lot of time on their hands to read stuff online.

But an increasing amount of the news people are seeing is problematic, inaccurate, or suspicious. And thats something to worry about. The analysis found that the Daily Wire, the outlet founded by right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro, saw 2.5 times more interactions this year than last.

The blossoming of false and unreliable news on the internet is a cultural, political, and technological phenomenon thats hard to get your head around, let alone tackle. Conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation run rampant on the internet, and its often difficult for people to tell what is true and whats not. Social media companies are not exactly doing a bang-up job of addressing the problem, either.

Right-wing content, in particular, thrives on platforms such as Facebook. But just because someone sees certain content doesnt necessarily mean they are particularly influenced by it, and figuring out just how powerful certain messages are can be complicated. Over the summer, Kevin Roose at the New York Times reported on what he described as a parallel media universe of super-conservative content on Facebook, noting that right-leaning pages and posts on the platform consistently get more interactions and shares than more liberal and mainstream ones. (Though just because someone likes a news post doesnt mean they actually read it.)

As Recodes Rebecca Heilweil pointed out at the time, its hard to know whats happening on Facebook just by engagement:

Theres now a running debate among academics, analytics experts, and observers like Roose around what we know about whats happening on Facebook and why. Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan recently argued that likes, comments, and shares are just a small part of what people actually see on Facebook, and that its difficult to draw conclusions from these interactions alone or to know what they might mean for an election.

Still, the trend is concerning. Social media is making political polarization worse in America, and its often the case that people no longer agree on even basic facts. What people consume shapes what they see basically, someone clicks on a certain article and algorithms start to predict what else they might like in alignment with that. And the further down the rabbit hole they go, the more they begin to seek out that media, often winding up in an information bubble.

Republicans have spent years complaining that social media companies are biased against them and that their content is being censored and removed. President Donald Trump has often lashed out against tech companies with unfounded claims of bias. He and his administration have also attempted to undercut and scrap Section 230, a law that basically says social media companies are allowed to police their platforms however they want and arent liable for the content third parties post on them. (Recodes Sara Morrison has a full explainer on Section 230.)

Rather than bias toward a certain political leaning, social media algorithms are often biased toward outrage they push content that people have an emotional reaction to and are likely to engage with. The NewsGuard data and other research shows that people are increasingly being drawn to unreliable content and often, unreliable content that has a conservative bent. And that content can influence all sorts of attitudes and cause confusion on even basic facts.

The New York Times recently took a look at Georgia and how misinformation and unreliable news is playing a role in the US Senate runoffs there. A conservative local news network called Star News Group announced it would launch the Georgia Star in November, and NewsGuards analysis found that the website has published misleading information about the presidential election and the Senate races. One story making false claims about Georgias presidential election results reached up to 650,000 people on Facebook.

Combating fake and misleading news would require efforts from multiple stakeholders. Yet Facebook recently rolled back changes to its algorithm that would promote news from reliable sources. Given the pace at which the problem is growing, the matter is likely to worsen without intervention.

Read more:

Americas growing fake news problem on social media, in ...

Disinformation has become a prominent, even dominant component of every political crisis. Fabricated images, AI bot, and troll farms make the headlines today and struggling to understand disinformations impacts has become an

Disinformation has become a prominent, even dominant component of every political crisis. Fabricated images, AI bots, and troll farms constantly make headlines today. The struggle to understand disinformations impacts has become an essential topic of inquiry.

From polling, data research or scientific analysis, here are some of the most important recent studies about disinformation.

1) Remember the fake news campaign that brought disinformation into the mainstream discussion? Yes, that one: Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. This research from 2018 by Oxford Universitys Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a leading computer network analysis firm, for the United States Senate was, at the time, the most comprehensive analysis of Russian meddling. The researchers analyzed millions of posts and reactions online and determined how the notorious troll farm, the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency, tailored different messages to galvanize individual Trump supporters and discourage non-supporters from casting votes at all. The focus had been on Facebook and Twitter; these researchers unraveled how the Internet Research Agency used YouTube in their campaign and also uncovered their sloppiness, like cases of them paying for political ads with Russian rubles.

2) How were scientists in different disciplines discussing fake news before disinformation went literally everywhere? In 2018, as fake news became a catch-all buzz term, a group of 16 political scientists, psychologists, computer scientists, media experts, historians, and journalists led by Harvard professors David Lazer and Matthew Baum teamed up to publish a paper about the science of fake news, looking at how it works on an individual and societal level.

3) In 2020 EU DisinfoLab published Indian Chronicles, an exhaustive research project uncovering a 15-year long international pro-India and anti-Pakistan disinformation campaign run by the New Delhi-based Srivastava Group, mainly targeting the UN and EU. Fake and resurrected think tanks and NGOs lobbied the European Parliament, spoke at sessions, and convinced parliamentarians to write pro-India and anti-Pakistan op-eds for over 750 of their fake media outlets across 119 countries. Reportedly, ANI, South Asias leading news agency, played a major role in spreading content from these websites, giving them credibility. Srivastava Group was also the organizer of controversial trips to Kashmir in 2019, when a couple dozen far-right European Parliamentarians visited the Indian-controlled disputed regions in Kashmir.

4) In 2020 QAnon, a conspiracy theory about how a global child trafficking ring is ruling the world, conquered every other outlandish conspiracy theory and went global. It infiltrated politics, public health, yoga groups, the hip-hop scene and disrupted the personal lives of thousands of people in the U.S. and abroad. Huge numbers of disinformation stories in the past year had something to do with QAnon, and this poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core published last May made clear just how far QAnon has traveled. In the U.S. alone, 30 million people believe at least some QAnon tenets, ranking QAnon next to major religions.

5) Last spring, amid Covid-19 vaccine rollouts, an international non-profit research organization, The Center for Countering Digital Hate, investigated Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for harmful, Covid-19 related disinformation. They uncovered the Disinformation Dozen the influencers who accounted for 65% of Covid-19 related misinformation online. The list includes notorious anti-vaccine campaigners like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., alternative medicine practitioners like Christiane Northrup and the leading pseudoscientific influencer-physician Joseph Mercola. Mercola, who has been profiting from his misinformation, also made our list of top business owners profiting off bad science. He will continue to express his professional opinions and defend his freedom of speech, his representative told Coda when approached for a comment.

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These 5 disinformation studies changed the way we think about fake news - Coda Story

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) From miracle cures for COVID-19 to numbers that lie, weve been busting myths and misinformation about the pandemic.

Nearly two years into it, a question: Are we going about it the wrong way?

A new paper co-authored by a Triangle expert on fake news points out a few things we can all do better.

Perhaps the way we check facts deserves a fact-check of its own.

Theres more we could be doing to work together to try to get through this collectively together, said Brian Southwell, a senior research scientist at RTI International and an expert in human behavior.

Its easy to shame people who fall for misinformation and share the things they see on social media with others.

But that might be the wrong approach, Southwell said.

I think its really easy to blame people that are falling prey to it, and saying, Well, theyre, really causing a lot of our problems, he said. I dont think thats entirely fair. I think we need more empathy and sympathy, and to recognize that were all vulnerable to misinformation. And that we probably need to be thinking a little bit differently about it.

A better question might be why those people look to those inaccurate sources of information instead of trusting the people doctors, health care providers and others in public health who do have the right answers.

He points out that misinformation-spreaders might not have the relationships with those in health care and fill that void with fake news.

If youve got a situation which people are lacking trust, then they might well turn to other sources of information as alternatives, he said.

So whats the solution?

They argue in the paper that it comes down to people involved in health care being accessible and doing the hard, shoe-leather work, saying they could consider on-the-ground trust-building efforts as a path forward.

They also point to resource-limited settings, such as a Native American reservation where investment in local networks and local resources rather than simply tracking myths appearing online can be useful.

One key: Doing so in a way that convinces the misinformed that they have their best interests in mind, he said.

If I dont think you care if I live or die, I may not be willing to trust you, even though I think youre a smart guy, he said.

It also means paying attention to the way we set the record straight.

That means not blaming them for being vulnerable or gullible, Southwell said.

Diplomatically pointing out that there is a set of facts that they ought to be paying attention to is an important way to go about it, he said. I do think that people depend on news outlets for credible information, and theres a great service that youre providing there, and helping to clarify.

But its also important, probably, to make sure that were were doing that in a way that leaves the door open for people to rejoin the conversation and to recognize that, Well, I might have been mistaken about that yesterday, but thanks for pointing that out, he continued. And I think people will be more open to being corrected if they didnt feel shamed by it.

CBS 17sJoedy McCrearyhas been tracking COVID-19 figures since March 2020, compiling data from federal, state,and local sources to deliver a clear snapshot of what the coronavirus situation looks like now and what it could look like in the future.

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Fact-checking the way we check facts, and finding better ways to smack down fake news - CBS17.com

By Arlene Mukoko, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) Radio, it is generally agreed, is the most useful medium of social communication for humanity. Radio waves go beyond borders, reaching everybody everywhere, and being a very affordable receiver compared to other forms of media. We remember the pioneers who contributed to the great invention of the radio.

Distinguished researchers such as Heinrich Hertz of Germany, Alexander Popov of Russia, Edouard Branley of France, the American of Serbian origin Nicola Tesla, the Italian Guglielmo Marconi, the British Oliver Lodge's, the Spanish Cervera Baviera, and the Indian Chandra Bose.

This year's World Radio Day theme has been divided into three sub-themes namely Trust in radio journalism, Trust and accessibility, and Trust and viability of radio stations

Acknowledging radio's ability to reach a wide audience, UNESCO sees it as a critical force to shape humanity, diversity and democratic discourse. With this year's celebration coming on the heels of a global pandemic where timely information is critical, radio can be invaluable. In Africa, for example, content in the area of health and safety as well as information that can help to frame and provide structure that can work for the benefit of many can be key.

Radio was first proposed by the Spanish Radio Academy in September 2010. This Spanish initiative had the unanimous support of the international radio industry and many important institutions from different countries. So, after a long debate held on Sept. 29, 2011 within the UNESCO Executive Board, the date was finally set for Feb. 13, which corresponds to the birth of the UN radio in 1946.

The special thing about radio is how relevant it still is in our daily lives. During those long drives for vacation or maybe to work, the radio is still with us, keeping us singing and keeping us informed. Its like a great friend and neighbor, one whos always there and never lets you down except radio will never borrow your weed whacker and forget to return it.

Sadly, recent world events have eroded trust in the media, fueled by the circulation of false content rapidly spreading on social media.

Still, radio continues to be one of the most trusted and used media in the world.

If we look at history, radio dates back to the mid-19th century in the world. It worked with the help of sound waves and signals which transmitted the messages to a specified bandwidth. In India, Radio arrived in the early 20th century. However, it took several years before it became the popular medium of mass media.

Radio met the need for information dissemination, especially for those citizens unable to read newspapers; Those who were unable to read advertisements and newspapers were able to listen and understand things after the emergence of radio. Among member states that include, Nigeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, many stations have worked to keep communities abreast of the latest developments during the COVID-19 crisis.

In Ghana, with a population of over *32 million (*data from Worldmeters.info), radio is the most prevalent medium according to Media Ownership Monitor with 481 stations across the country and 354 of them active providing key content for communities also in the area of sports and the arts. Meanwhile in Gabon with a population of over 2.2 million, according to Logfm.com, there are 14.

The power of radio has been no better demonstrated than during the coronavirus crisis, where, among other things, the medium has made it possible to ensure the continuity of learning, and to fight against misinformation, read the statement.

Even as much of the global media landscape appears to be dominated by visual and online services, the importance of radio is proved by the continued popularity of all genres of radio programming.UNESCO wrote: "Radio continues to be one of the most trusted and used media in the world, according to different international reporters." In cultivating this, they are charging member states to accomplish this through building Trust in Radio Journalism by cultivating independent and high-quality content, in the face of, "the present high-tempo digital age," with "verifiable information that is shared in the public interest."

Finally, UNESCO wants radio station to thrive and grow and so theyve included a third category called, Trust and Viability of Radio Stations which looks to see them survive a financial crisis impacting the medium while transforming loyal audience engagement into financial sustainability. [IDN-InDepthNews 20 February 2022]

Image source: UNESCO

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In The Age of Fake News, Radio Aims for Trust and Accountability - IDN InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters