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The New York Times – “Of the flood of misinformation, conspiracy theories and internet falsehoods about the coronavirus, one common thread stands out: President Trump. That is the conclusion of researchers at Cornell University who analyzed 38 million articles about the pandemic in English-language media around the world. Mentions of Mr. Trump made up nearly …
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 26, 2020 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss, highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly …
Greene, Ciara, and Gillian Murphy. “Can Fake News Really Change Behaviour? Evidence from a Study of COVID-19 Misinformation.” PsyArXiv, 24 July 2020. Web. “Previous research has argued that fake news may have grave consequences for health behaviour, but surprisingly, no empirical data have been provided to support this assumption. This issue takes on new urgency …
“Where News Organizations and Independent Producers Thrive Side by Side – Americans are as likely to often turn to independent channels as they are to established news organization channels; videos from independent news producers are more likely to cover subjects negatively, discuss conspiracy theories Most Americans use YouTube, the massive, Google-owned video-sharing website where users …
How Work Became an Inescapable Hellhole – This story is adapted from Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, by Anne Helen Petersen. “Instead of optimizing work, technology has created a nonstop barrage of notifications and interactions. Six months into a pandemic, it’s worse than ever. I’m equally ashamed and exhausted writing that description …
The Verge – ‘Face with spiral eyes’ is how we are all feeling: “This year has been hard. Wildfire smoke has engulfed the West Coast, hundreds of thousands are dead from an ongoing pandemic, and the US government is deadlocked to the point of illegitimacy, incapable of taking action against the economic, political, ecological, and …
Google Blog: “More than one billion people turn to Google Maps for essential information about how to get from place to place–especially during the pandemic when safety concerns are top of mind. Features like popular times and live busyness, COVID-19 alerts in transit, and COVID checkpoints in driving navigation were all designed to help you …
Misinformation more likely to use non-specific authority references: Twitter analysis of two COVID-19 myths – “This research examines the content, timing, and spread of COVID-19 misinformation and subsequent debunking efforts for two COVID-19 myths. COVID-19 misinformation tweets included more non-specific authority references (e.g., “Taiwanese experts”, “a doctor friend”), while debunking tweets included more specific and …
The Markup:”…An array of free website-building tools, many offered by ad-tech and ad-funded companies, has led to a dizzying number of trackers loading on users’ browsers, even when they visit sites where privacy would seem paramount, an investigation by The Markup has found. Some load without the website operators’ explicit knowledge—or disclosure to users. Website …
“The nonprofit MapLight launched new, free tools today aimed at combating the spread of false and deceptive election-related information ahead of the 2020 election, including a browser plug-in called the Election Deception Tracker as well as a Text-to-Report line for people to report misleading information. The new tools allow anyone to quickly and easily report …
Vox/Recode: “…Your social feeds are most shaped by who you follow, so following reputable sources of information and news is probably your best bet. Unfollowing known sources of misinformation, even if that includes close friends and family, is probably worth considering as well. If you want to get ahead on fact-checking, you might consider following …
CNET – Election officials and the FBI say it’s almost impossible to pull off fraud via mail-in ballots. Spreading disinformation about voting-by-mail is much easier. “Millions of Americans have voted by mail securely for more than 150 years, with fraud historically being so rare that election officials wouldn’t even consider it significant enough to be …
