Archive of ‘Twitter’ category

social media circuit breakers

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/22/915676948/can-circuit-breakers-stop-viral-rumors-on-facebook-twitter

Critics of Facebook and Twitter — and even some people inside the companies — say dramatic action is needed to counter the way the platforms supercharge false, and sometimes dangerous, claims.

On social media, it is easy for rumors to go viral, while efforts to fact check or correct those rumors often lag behind.

Part of the reason these claims spread so widely on Facebook, in particular, is that the world’s biggest social network rewards engagement. Posts that get lots of shares, comments and likes get shown to more people, quickly amplifying their reach.

Facebook is well aware of its power to make stories go viral. As the fire rumors proliferated, the company put warnings on some posts its fact checkers had found false and reduced their distribution.

But that wasn’t enough to quell the rumors.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/25/916782712/civil-rights-groups-say-if-facebook-wont-act-on-election-misinformation-they-wil
+++++++++++++
more on social media in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+media

police surveillance social media

Leaked documents show how police used social media and private Slack channels to track George Floyd protesters from r/technology

https://www.businessinsider.com/blueleaks-how-cops-tracked-george-floyd-protesters-on-social-media-2020-6

Police monitored RSVP lists on Facebook events, shared information about Slack channels protesters were using, and cited protesters’ posts in encrypted messaging apps like Telegram.

How police used social media to track protesters

warning sent to police departments on June 6, the FBI says it’s been tracking “individuals using Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram” who post about organizing protests.

+++++++++++++++++++
more on surveillance in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=surveillance

Twitter Saudi

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-saudi-arabia-infiltrated-twitter

Tik Tok students and teachers

How Teens on TikTok Drew National Attention to a Teachers’ Labor Issue

Although the TikTok was intended exclusively for students in the Clark County School District, it ended up going viral, in large part because it was shared on Twitter by social media producer and podcaster Klaudia Amenabar. As of publication, it has racked up more than 36,000 likes and 780 comments, and has prompted other CCSD students on TikTok to join Sullivan’s call to strike.

+++++++++++
more on Tik Tok in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=tik+tok

retweets search

RUSSIAN TROLLS USED MEME WARFARE

HOW RUSSIAN TROLLS USED MEME WARFARE TO DIVIDE AMERICA

NICHOLAS THOMPSON AND Issy Lapowsky 12.17.18

https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ira-propaganda-senate-report/

THERE’S A MEME on Instagram, circulated by a group called “Born Liberal.”  “Born Liberal” was a creation of the Internet Research Agency, the Russian propaganda wing

Conversations around the IRA’s operations traditionally have focused on Facebook and Twitter, but like any hip millennial, the IRA was actually most obsessive about Instagram.

the IRA deployed 3,841 accounts, including several personas that “regularly played hashtag games.” That approach paid off; 1.4 million people engaged with the tweets, leading to nearly 73 million engagements. Most of this work was focused on news, while on Facebook and Instagram, the Russians prioritized “deeper relationships,” according to the researchers. On Facebook, the IRA notched a total of 3.3 million page followers, who engaged with their politically divisive content 76.5 million times. Russia’s most popular pages targeted the right wing and the black community. The trolls also knew their audiences; they deployed Pepe memes at pages intended for right-leaning millennials, but kept them away from posts directed at older conservative Facebook users. Not every attempt was a hit; while 33 of the 81 IRA Facebook pages had over 1,000 followers, dozens had none at all.

The report also points out new links between the IRA’s pages and Wikileaks, which helped disseminate hacked emails from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta

Russian presence unrelated to the relatively small ad spend that Facebook executives pointed to as the story first unfolded, in what the report authors describe as an attempt to downplay the problem.

“While many people think of memes as “cat pictures with words,” the Defense Department and DARPA have studied them for years as a powerful tool of cultural influence, capable of reinforcing or even changing values and behavior.

“over the past five years, disinformation has evolved from a nuisance into high-stakes information war.” And yet, rather than fighting back effectively, Americans are battling each other over what to do about it.

++++++++++

memetic warfare:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetic_warfare

++++++++++

Is America Prepared for Meme Warfare?  Memes function like IEDs.

Jacob Siegel Jan 31 2017, 9:00am
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xyvwdk/meme-warfare
https://soundcloud.com/motherboard/meme-warfare

A year after the Meme Warfare Center proposal was published, DARPA, the Pentagon agency that develops new military technology, commissioned a four-year study of memetics. The research was led by Dr. Robert Finkelstein, founder of the Robotic Technology Institute, and an academic with a background in physics and cybernetics.

Finkelstein’s study of “Military Memetics” centered on a basic problem in the field, determining “whether memetics can be established as a science with the ability to explain and predict phenomena.” It still had to be proved, in other words, that memes were actual components of reality and not just a nifty concept with great marketing.

+++++++++

++++++++++
more on social media in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+media

1 2 3 4 9