February 2021 archive

Sky News conspiracy theories

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/24/sky-news-australia-is-tapping-into-the-global-conspiracy-set-and-its-paying-off

Jones uses segments from Sky News Australia in his program, particularly those from Sky’s Outsiders program, as “evidence” from mainstream media organisations to support his conspiracy theories.

The bite-sized videos carry advertising – and Sky shares the revenue with platforms like YouTube.

Last November, tech journalist Cam Wilson revealed in Business Insider that Sky News Australia had successfully built a Fox News-like online operation in Australia that dwarfs its terrestrial audience numbers. On YouTube, their videos have been viewed more than 500m times, more than any other Australian media organisation.

Wilson also reported that Sky’s Facebook posts had more total interactions in October than the ABC News, SBS News, 7News Australia, 9 News and 10 News First pages, and more shares than all of them combined.

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

digital primary sources in teaching and research

UKSG webinar – The importance and use of digital primary sources in teaching and research
#UKSGWebinar

poll: do scholars in your institution have access to internal support or training for digital primary source research and teaching

primary sources poll

fascilitatorsPeter Foster with Wiley, facilitator
Hugh Murphy, Head of Collections and Content, Maynooth Univesity Library, Ireland
@hughtweet

what is a primary source.
Functionality (ability to access)
U collections as part of a larger U ecosystem. Conceptional change for Special Collections
Teaching Learning and Research: “digitally-enabled and technology-supported learning” – strategic planning
Research: digital humanties dhlag.yale.edu/project/vogue
Open Access (publishers ARE business). For a small country (university), how much will a publisher pay attention? Will a standard pay attention to OCR a 16th century document.

Sarah Evans, Research and Collections Engagement Manager, Royal Geographical Society with IBG

https://www.rgs.org/about/our-collections/
Collaborative Doctoral Program
WDA Research Fellowships

Kathryin Simpson, Lecturer in Information Studies, U of Glasgow
Hidden Voices: Using the digital archive to critically negotiate histories

digital environment is not just a PDF, but a whole new environment.
record open and accessible by these docs from Africa

Q&A: does the access to primary sources demand different approach to critical thinking.

Nreal XR

Nreal (Finally) Expanding to the US This Spring

https://arpost.co/2021/02/22/nreal-finally-expanding-to-the-us-this-spring/amp/

The China-based company announced the Nreal Light smart glasses in May of 2019. The surprisingly sleek and powerful consumer glasses with a $500 price tag

They’ve had huge success in China, but China is a pretty unique market. In late 2019, they expanded to Korea
the company is partnered with Deutsche Telekom and LG Uplus in Germany and Korea respectively, so it’s not too far a stretch to wager that the US branches of those carriers (T-Mobile and LG Electronics) will form at least part of their US distribution channels.

Finch Technologies makes body-tracking wearable devices to serve as controllers for XR applications and experiences including the recently announced FinchRing (this is the promised cherry on top).
The finger-worn hand tracker is designed to enable convenient and discreet 6-degree-of-freedom controls.

  • Tagesschau 2025 – an application based on a German news program that will present, among other features, holographic weather forecasts;
  • A virtual basketball game called DunkaAR;
  • An MR mode for the in-browser MMORPG Dragon Awaken;
  • An augmented reality football streaming application from Magenta Sport.

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

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

QAnon France

The QAnon phenomenon has emerged in France – prompting President Emmanuel Macron’s government to order a multiagency inquiry on conspiracist movements scheduled to report back at the end of February from r/worldnews

‘Stakes are high’ as QAnon conspiracy phenomenon emerges in France

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210220-stakes-are-high-as-qanon-conspiracy-phenomenon-emerges-in-france

The French state agency responsible for tackling sectarian movements, MIVILUDES, has received some 15 reports over recent weeks raising the alarm about the rise of QAnon in France, Le Figaro reported.

The DéQodeurs website offers links to “information” including articles relaying fake news based on QAnon tropes – such as the baseless claim that in 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about to release documents proving the existence of a massive paedophile ring in Washington DC.

While it tends to eschew such lurid narratives, anti-vaccine sentiment is relatively widespread in France. An Ipsos poll published in November found that 46 percent of French adults said they would refuse to receive a Covid-19 vaccine – compared to 21 percent in the UK. A 2019 Gallup poll found that one in three French people thought all vaccines are dangerous – the highest proportion of respondents to say so in 144 countries surveyed.

QAnon’s French sympathisers are far more ideologically heterogenous than those in the US, St Denny observed: “QAnon in France is definitely not the monopoly of far-right sympathisers as it might be in the US. Its anti-government underpinnings have made the conspiracy theory attractive to a very disparate collection of groups and individuals including established conspiracy theorists, some fringes of the Yellow Vests movement, and some of the more conspiracy-oriented among the alternative health movement.”

 

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more on QAnon in this iMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=qanon

immersive and goggles

The tech industry is looking to replace the smartphone — and everybody is waiting to see what Apple comes up with

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/20/apple-facebook-microsoft-battle-to-replace-smartphone-with-ar.html

Apple’s working on solving this problem, too, according to a report in Nikkei Asia. The newspaper says that Apple is working with TSMC, its primary processor manufacturer, to develop a new kind of augmented reality display that’s printed directly on wafers, or the base layer for chips.

If Apple does eventually reveal a big leap forward in AR display technology — especially if the technology is developed and owned by Apple instead of a supplier — Apple could find itself with multi-year head-start in augmented reality as it did when the iPhone vaulted it to the head of the smartphone industry.

Apple is also adding hardware to its iPhones that hint at a headset-based future. High-end iPhones released in 2020 include advanced Lidar sensors embedded in their camera.

Microsoft has invested heavily in these kind of technologies, purchasing AltspaceVR, a social network for virtual reality, in 2018. Before it launched Hololens, it paid $150 million for intellectual property from a smartglasses pioneer.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks the most in public about his hopes for augmented reality. Last year, he said, “While I expect phones to still be our primary devices through most of this decade, at some point in the 2020s, we will get breakthrough augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology.”

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

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