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Daily Archives: April 22, 2021

The impact of online misinformation on U.S. COVID-19 vaccinations

Cornell University – arXiv – The impact of online misinformation on U.S. COVID-19 vaccinations. Francesco Pierri, Brea Perry, Matthew R. DeVerna, Kai-Cheng Yang, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer, John Bryden. arXiv:2104.10635 [cs.SI]

“Widespread uptake of COVID-19 vaccines is necessary to achieve herd immunity. However, surveys have found concerning numbers of U.S. adults hesitant or unwilling to be vaccinated. Online misinformation may play an important role in vaccine hesitancy, but we lack a clear picture of the extent to which it will impact vaccination uptake. Here, we study how vaccination rates and vaccine hesitancy are associated with levels of online misinformation about vaccines shared by 1.6 million Twitter users geolocated at the U.S. state and county levels. We find a negative relationship between recent levels of misinformation and daily vaccination rates. Consistently, negative opinions toward vaccines are correlated with misinformation. Vaccine hesitancy is also strongly associated with Republican vote share, but the association between vaccine outcomes and misinformation remains significant when accounting for political as well as demographic and socioeconomic factors. Hesitancy levels in Democratic counties with high misinformation match those in Republican counties. These results suggest that addressing online misinformation must be a key component of interventions aimed to maximize the effectiveness of vaccination campaigns. “

No one wants to pay $200 for a textbook

EdScoop -“No one wants to pay $200 for a textbook, and soon no one will have to, because the $200 textbook may be disappearing. Like other technological trends that were plodding along before COVID-19, the use of digital resources and freely licensed learning materials — known as open educational resources, or OER — exploded in 2020.… Continue Reading

8 Search Engines That Rocked Before Google Even Existed

MakeUseOf: “Google wasn’t always the king. These nostalgic search engines paved the way and we’ll never forget them. Though the web became publicly available in 1990, the first web search engine didn’t arrive until 1993. Up until then, all websites were manually tracked and indexed by people. And while we now recognize Google as the… Continue Reading

How Many Plants

“How Many Plants was built by a particularly passionate houseplant obsessive, but it’s here for all plant parents, seasoned enthusiasts and first-timers alike. By cutting through the disparate and often contradictory advice that seems to grow like weeds around all corners of the internet, HMP strives for clarity. With confidence-boosting plant guides and deep dives… Continue Reading

Investigation and prosecution of Capitol Attack will likely be one of the largest in American history

Case 1:21-cr-00303-ABJ Filed 04/22/21 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA UNITED STATES OF AMERICA vs MICHAEL JOSEPH RUSYN, Defendant “…The investigation and prosecution of the Capitol Attack will likely be one of the largest in American history, both in terms of the number of defendants prosecuted and the nature and volume of… Continue Reading

The Return to Public Library Investment

The Returns to Public Library Investment – Gregory Gilpin, Ezra Karger, and Peter Nencka, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, April 2021. “Local governments spend over 12 billion dollars annually funding the operation of 15,000 public libraries in the United States. This funding supports widespread library use: more than 50% of Americans visit public libraries each… Continue Reading