Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: December 10, 2020

As trust in news falls around the world Reuters Institute report looks at trade-offs involved in trying to regain and retain it

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford – What we think we know and what we want to know: perspectives on trust in news in a changing world – “Trust in news has eroded worldwide. According to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2020, fewer than four in ten people (38%) across 40 markets say they typically trust most news (Newman et al. 2020). While trust has fallen by double digit margins in recent years in many places, including Brazil and the United Kingdom (Fletcher 2020), in other countries more stable overall trends conceal stark and growing partisan divides. Why is trust eroding, how does it play out across different contexts and different groups, what are the implications, and what might be done about it? These are the organising questions behind the Trust in News Project. This report is the first of many we will publish from the project over the next three years. Because trust is a relationship between trustors and trustees, we anticipate focusing primarily on audiences and the way they think about trust, but we begin the project by taking stock of how those who study journalism and those who practice it think about the subject. We want to be informed by their experiences and for our research to engage with how professional journalists and the news media approach trust so that it can be more useful in their work. Combining an extensive review of existing research on trust in news (including nearly 200 interdisciplinary publications) and original interviews on the subject (including 82 with journalists and other practitioners across several countries), we summarise some of what is known and unknown about trust, what is contributing to these trends, and how media organisations are seeking to address them in increasingly competitive digital environments…”

Legal Terms of Use and Public Genealogy Websites

Contreras, Jorge L. and Schultz, Kyle and Teerlink, Craig and Maness, Tim and Meyer, Laurence and Cannon-Albright, Lisa, Legal Terms of Use and Public Genealogy Websites (November 8, 2020). Journal of Law and the Biosciences, lsaa063, 1-24 (Nov. 2020), University of Utah College of Law Research Paper No. 407, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3726977 – “Public… Continue Reading

The UN released a stark new climate report

Mashable: “The UN released a stark climate report on Wednesday [December 9, 2020]. The Emissions Gap Report 2020 is an assessment of a wide chasm: the gap between where human-created carbon emissions are expected to be in 2030 versus the cuts actually needed to substantially limit global warming. The latest report underscores that the coronavirus… Continue Reading

How Will You Know If Your Neighbors Have Gotten the Vaccine?

Lifehacker: “…Experts agree the government is highly unlikely to mandate civilians get a COVID vaccination. So how do we get enough people to take it to functionally end the pandemic? A least 70 percent of the population will likely need get the vaccine before we reach herd immunity, the point at which person-to-person spread becomes… Continue Reading

Google Adds Knowledge Panels in Search Results for Covid-19 Vaccines to Counter Misinformation

Gizmodo: “Google plans to counter vaccine conspiracy theories and misinformation by tacking on new knowledge panels to search results when people look up information about covid-19 vaccines. The feature’s launching first in the UK, where health authorities began rolling out the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine—the first of its kind approved in the West—this week. Google intends to… Continue Reading

Block specific websites in Google Search and other search engines with the uBlacklist extension for Firefox and Chrome

ghacks: “One of the biggest problems with search engines is their accuracy. Google is good for the most part, but sometimes you may find that the results are irrelevant, clickbait, and generally not what you were looking for. There are a few ways to tailor the result settings to your needs. Maybe you dislike a… Continue Reading

Brave browser-maker launches privacy-friendly news reader

Ars Technica – By design, Brave Today doesn’t let the company or third parties build user profiles – “Brave Software, maker of the Brave Web browser, is introducing a news reader that’s designed to protect user privacy by preventing parties—both internal and third party—from tracking the sites, articles, and story topics people view. Brave Today,… Continue Reading

Gmail Will Now Let You Edit Office Documents Directly From Email Attachments

The Verge: “Google is making it even easier to work with Microsoft Office files, with the company now allowing users to directly edit attached Office files in Gmail, much like it already allows with Google Docs or Sheets files. Google Workspace (the recently rebranded G Suite, which encompasses Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and Calendar)… Continue Reading

Estimates of the Initial Priority Population for COVID-19 Vaccination by State

KFF: “On December 1, 2020, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC), issued an initial recommendation, adopted by the CDC director, that health care personnel and residents of long-term care facilities should be the first to be offered a COVID-19 vaccine once it is authorized or… Continue Reading