Excerpt: "The difficulty of unmasking and eliminating fake news is due also to the fact that many people interact in homogeneous digital environments impervious to differing perspectives and opinions. Disinformation thus thrives on the absence of healthy confrontation with other sources of information that could effectively challenge prejudices and generate constructive dialogue; instead, it risks turning people into unwilling accomplices in spreading biased and baseless ideas. The tragedy of disinformation is that it discredits others, presenting them as enemies, to the point of demonizing them and fomenting conflict. Fake news is a sign of intolerant and hypersensitive attitudes, and leads only to the spread of arrogance and hatred. That is the end result of untruth”
Full text from Libreria Editrice Vaticana
A project of the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center.
Fights mis- and disinformation through field work, research and education. Began in 2015 to "raise awareness, perform research and address changes relating to trust and truth in media in the digital age."
Public Data Lab and First Draft collaborated last year to develop a free, open-access guide to help students, journalists and researchers investigate misleading and viral content, memes and trolling practices online. Freely available for download under Commercial Commons license - click book cover.
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"research institute focusing on the social & cultural issues arising from data-centric and automated technologies"
Research Study Publications - available to download - example: "Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online" Wise Ed.Review, March 2018
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"The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News"
The Atlantic, March 2018
Discussion of MIT study below
"The Spread of True and False News Online"
MIT study published in Science, March 2018 (see Mrs. Owens for full text)
"Americans Believe They Can Detect Fake News, Studies Show They Can't"
Forbes, December 2016
Confirmation Bias
Content Overload
Cognitive Overload
Recent studies:
"Everyone Is Too DIstracted to Stop Sharing Fake News", Study Shows" PBS News Hour summary of 2017 research study released by Nature Human Behavior: "Limited Individual Attention and Online Virality of Low-Quality Information"
"Misinformation Overload"
Medium
defines it really well:
"Fake news is news, stories or hoaxes created to deliberately misinform or deceive readers."
3 principle methods are "mistrust, misinformation, manipulation." Source
Why the rise of fake news?
Social media thrives on novelty, speed, shareability.
Primary Motivations?
Profit (advertising revenue, paid provocateurs, data mining)
Ideology (belief systems, political views)
Chaos (bringing down systems & power structures)
| Fake news takes many forms: | Common techniques |
|
Parody /satire sites |
Entertainment Instill fear to generate clicks, spread conspiracy theories Deliberately mislead, promote biased viewpoint Distorted, sensationalist. attention-grabbing headlines |
"We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs. Here's What We Learned"
The transcript of a November 2016 story on NPR's All Tech Considered, first broadcast on All Things Considered.
:"PolitiFact's Guide to Fake News Websites and What They Peddle" March 2017
PolitFact deconstructs bogus websites that peddle fake news. Working with Facebook, they debunked websites that deliberately loaded false stories into people's newsfeeds.
Click to open full sized worksheet
provided by ProQuest
Developed by Newseum ED
Sign up for free account to see full sized copy
Lesson plan
Additional resources from NewsMuseum
(sign up for free account)
Patterns of Deception
How to "spot and debunk slippery moves in politics"
See a detailed breakdown
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Civic Online Reasoning
Media assessment
2017: The Year in Fauxtography
Infographic: Fake News 2017
"circulated online, all false - source: snopes.com"
posted on informationisbeautiful.net
data source - fakest news 2017
Developed by Andrea Owens (Media Services) and Nathan Gabriel (Fine Arts).
