Searching for "fake news"

Hoaxy

Interview with the Creators of Hoaxy® from Indiana University

Interview with the Creators of Hoaxy® from Indiana University

Falsehoods are spread due to biases in the brain, society, and computer algorithms (Ciampaglia & Menczer, 2018). A combined problem is “information overload and limited attention contribute to a degradation of the market’s discriminative power” (Qiu, Oliveira, Shirazi, Flammini, & Menczer, 2017).  Falsehoods spread quickly in the US through social media because this has become Americans’ preferred way to read the news (59%) in the 21st century (Mitchell, Gottfried, Barthel, & Sheer, 2016). While a mature critical reader may recognize a hoax disguised as news, there are those who share it intentionally. A 2016 US poll revealed that 23% of American adults had shared misinformation unwittingly or on purpose; this poll reported high to moderate confidence in one’s ability to identify fake news with only 15% not very confident (Barthel, Mitchell, & Holcomb, 2016).

Hoaxy® takes it one step further and shows you who is spreading or debunking a hoax or disinformation on Twitter.

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

web site evaluation

A Game, a Video, and a Framework for Teaching Website Evaluation

In this age of fake and misleading news being spread through social media, it is more important than ever to teach students how to view websites with a critical eye. Here are three good resources

The RADCAB website offers short explanations of each of the aspects of evaluation and why they are significant. The site also provides a rubric (link opens PDF) that you can download and print for your students to use to score the credibility of a website.

Website Evaluation Explained by Common Craft teaches viewers to think like an editor when reviewing the claims made in articles on websites.

http://factitious.augamestudio.com/#/

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

Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online

A Review of ‘Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online’

In Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online, Marwick and Lewis (2017) of the Data & Society Research Institute described the agents of media manipulation, their modus operandi, motivators, and how they’ve taken advantage of the vulnerability of online media. The researchers described the manipulators as right-wing extremists (RWE), also known as alt-right, who run the gamut from sexists (including male sexual conquest communities) to white nationalists to anti-immigration activists and even those who rebuke RWE identification but whose actions confer such classification. These manipulators rally behind a shared belief on online forums, blogs, podcasts, and social media through pranks or ruinous trolling anonymity, usurping participatory culture methods (networking, humor, mentorship) for harassment, and competitive cyber brigades that earn status by escalating bullying such as the sharing of a target’s private information.

Marwick and Lewis reported on how RWE groups have taken advantage of certain media tactics to gain viewers’ attention such as novelty and sensationalism, as well as their interactions with the public via social media, to manipulate it for their agenda. For instance, YouTube provides any individual with a portal and potential revenue to contribute to the media ecosystem. The researchers shared the example of the use of YouTube by conspiracy theorists, which can be used as fodder for extremist networks as conspiracies generally focus on loss of control of important ideals, health, and safety.

One tactic they’re using is to package their hate in a way that appeals to millennials. They use attention hacking to increase their status such as hate speech, which is later recanted as trickster trolling all the while gaining the media’s attention for further propagation

SHARED MODUS OPERANDI

Marwick and Lewis reported the following shared tactics various RWE groups use for online exploits:

  • Ambiguity of persona or ideology,
  • Baiting a single or community target’s emotions,
  • Bots for amplification of propaganda that appears legitimately from a real person,
  • “…Embeddedness in Internet culture… (p. 28),”
  • Exploitation of young male rebelliousness,
  • Hate speech and offensive language (under the guise of First Amendment protections),
  • Irony to cloak ideology and/or skewer intended targets,
  • Memes for stickiness of propaganda,
  • Mentorship in argumentation, marketing strategies, and subversive literature in their communities of interest,
  • Networked and agile groups,
  • “…Permanent warfare… (p.12)” call to action,
  • Pseudo scholarship to deceive readers,
  • “…Quasi moral arguments… (p. 7)”
  • Shocking images for filtering network membership,
  • “Trading stories up the chain… (p. 38)” from low-level news outlets to mainstream, and
  • Trolling others with asocial behavior.

teenagers in Veles, Macedonia who profited around 16K dollars per month via Google’s AdSense from Facebook post engagements

a long history of mistrust with mainstream media

If you’re a college instructor of communications or teach digital literacy as a librarian, see the corresponding syllabus for this article. It provides discussion questions and assignments for teaching students about media manipulation. To teach your students how to combat fake news online, see my post on Navigating Post-Truth Societies: Strategies, Resources, and Technologies.

+++++++++
more on fake news in this iMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=fake+news

Digital Literacy for SPED 405

Digital Literacy for SPED 405. Behavior Theories and Practices in Special Education.

Instructor Mark Markell. mamarkell@stcloudstate.edu Mondays, 5:30 – 8:20 PM. SOE A235

Preliminary Plan for Monday, Sept 10, 5:45 PM to 8 PM

Introduction – who are the students in this class. About myself: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/faculty Contact info, “embedded” librarian idea – I am available to help during the semester with research and papers

about 40 min: Intro to the library: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/bi/
15 min for a Virtual Reality tours of the Library + quiz on how well they learned the library:
http://bit.ly/VRlib
and 360 degree video on BYOD:
Play a scavenger hunt IN THE LIBRARY: http://bit.ly/learnlib
The VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) component; why is it important?
why is this technology brought up to a SPED class?
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/11/18/immersive-journalism/
autism: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/09/10/sound-and-brain/
Social emotional learning
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/05/31/vr-ar-sel-empathy/
(transition to the next topic – digital literacy)

about 50 min:

  1. Digital Literacy

How important is technology in our life? Profession?

https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/08/20/employee-evolution/

Do you think technology overlaps with the broad field of special education? How?
How do you define technology? What falls under “technology?”

What is “digital literacy?” Do we need to be literate in that sense? How does it differ from technology literacy?
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=digital+literacy

Additional readings on “digital literacy”
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2017/08/23/nmc-digital-literacy/

Digital Citizenship: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/10/19/digital-citizenship-info/
Play Kahoot: https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/e844253f-b5dd-4a91-b096-b6ff777e6dd7
Privacy and surveillance: how does these two issues affect your students? Does it affect them more? if so, how?  https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/08/21/ai-tracks-students-writings/

Social Media:
http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/lib290/. if you want to survey the class, here is the FB group page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LIB290/

Is Social Media part of digital literacy? Why? How SM can help us become more literate?

Digital Storytelling:
http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/lib490/

How is digital storytelling essential in digital literacy?

about 50 min:

  1. Fake News and Research

Syllabus: Teaching Media Manipulation: https://datasociety.net/pubs/oh/DataAndSociety_Syllabus-MediaManipulationAndDisinformationOnline.pdf

#FakeNews is a very timely and controversial issue. in 2-3 min choose your best source on this issue. 1. Mind the prevalence of resources in the 21st century 2. Mind the necessity to evaluate a) the veracity of your courses b) the quality of your sources (the fact that they are “true” does not mean that they are the best). Be prepared to name your source and defend its quality.
How do you determine your sources? How do you decide the reliability of your sources? Are you sure you can distinguish “good” from “bad?”
Compare this entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fake_news_websites
to this entry: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eA5-mCZLSS4MQY5QGb5ewC3VAL6pLkT53V_81ZyitM/preview to understand the scope

Do you know any fact checking sites? Can you identify spot sponsored content? Do you understand syndication? What do you understand under “media literacy,” “news literacy,” “information literacy.”  https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2017/03/28/fake-news-resources/

Why do we need to explore the “fake news” phenomenon? Do you find it relevant to your professional development?

Let’s watch another video and play this Kahoot: https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/21379a63-b67c-4897-a2cd-66e7d1c83027

So, how do we do academic research? Let’s play another Kahoot: https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/5e09bb66-4d87-44a5-af21-c8f3d7ce23de
If you to structure this Kahoot, what are the questions, you will ask? What are the main steps in achieving successful research for your paper?

  • Research using social media

what is social media (examples). why is called SM? why is so popular? what makes it so popular?

use SM tools for your research and education:

– Determining your topic. How to?
Digg http://digg.com/, Reddit https://www.reddit.com/ , Quora https://www.quora.com
Facebook, Twitter – hashtags (class assignment 2-3 min to search)
LinkedIn Groups
YouTube and Slideshare (class assignment 2-3 min to search)
Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest for visual aids (like YouTube they are media repositories)

Academia.com (https://www.academia.edu/Academia.edu, a paper-sharing social network that has been informally dubbed “Facebook for academics,” https://www.academia.edu/31942069_Facebook_for_Academics_The_Convergence_of_Self-Branding_and_Social_Media_Logic_on_Academia.edu

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/

– collecting and managing your resources:
Delicious https://del.icio.us/
Diigo: https://www.diigo.com/
Evernote: evernote.com OneNote (Microsoft)

blogs and wikis for collecting data and collaborating

– Managing and sharing your information:
Refworks,
Zotero https://www.zotero.org/,
Mendeley, https://www.mendeley.com/

– Testing your work against your peers (globally):

Wikipedia:
First step:Using Wikipedia.Second step: Contributing to Wikipedia (editing a page). Third step: Contributing to Wikipedia (creating a page)  https://www.evernote.com/shard/s101/sh/ef743d1a-4516-47fe-bc5b-408f29a9dcb9/52d79bfa20ee087900764eb6a407ec86

– presenting your information


please use this form to cast your feedback. Please feel free to fill out only the relevant questions:
http://bit.ly/imseval

blockchain fixes

187 Things the Blockchain Is Supposed to Fix

Erin Griffith 

https://www-wired-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.wired.com/story/187-things-the-blockchain-is-supposed-to-fix/amp
 
Blockchains, which use advanced cryptography to store information across networks of computers, could eliminate the need for trusted third parties, like banks, in transactions, legal agreements, and other contracts. The most ardent blockchain-heads believe it has the power to reshape the global financial system, and possibly even the internet as we know it.
 
Now, as the technology expands from a fringe hacker toy to legitimate business applications, opportunists have flooded the field. Some of the seekers are mercenaries pitching shady or fraudulent tokens, others are businesses looking to cash in on a hot trend, and still others are true believers in the revolutionary and disruptive powers of distributed networks.
 
Mentions of blockchains and digital currencies on corporate earnings calls doubled in 2017 over the year prior, according to Fortune. Last week at Consensus, the country’s largest blockchain conference, 100 sponsors, including top corporate consulting firms and law firms, hawked their wares.
 
Here is a noncomprehensive list of the ways blockchain promoters say they will change the world. They run the spectrum from industry-specific (a blockchain project designed to increase blockchain adoption) to global ambitions (fixing the global supply chain’s apparent $9 trillion cash flow issue).
 

Things Blockchain Technology Will Fix

  • Bots with nefarious intent
  • Skynet
  • People not taking their medicine
  • Device storage that could be used for bitcoin mining
  • Insurance bureaucracy
  • Electronic health record accessibility
  • Health record storage security
  • Health record portability
  • Marine insurance risk
  • Cancer
  • Earning money on personal data
  • Pensions
  • The burden of car ownership
  • Inability to buy anything with cryptocurrency
  • Better marketplaces for nautical shipping services
  • Better ways to advertise to your friends
  • Better ways to trade forex with your friends
  • Ownership shares in ancient sunken treasures
  • Poverty
  • Complying with Know Your Customer laws
  • Complying with Anti-Money-Laundering laws
  • Complying with securities laws in token sales
  • Censorship
  • A use for QR codes
  • Rewards for buying alcohol by subscription
  • Tracing water supplies
  • Dearth of emergency responders
  • High cost of medical information
  • Improved digital identity authentication
  • Managing real estate workflow
  • International real estate purchases
  • Physical branches for crypto banking
  • Physical branches for crypto exchanges
  • Private equity
  • Venture capital
  • AIDS, also online sales of classic Japanese domestic cars
  • Efficiency and transparency at nonprofits
  • Incorporating local preferences in decentralized banking options
  • Boosting sales for local businesses
  • A digital-only investment bank
  • Containers to transport sensitive pharmaceuticals and food
  • Protecting consumer information on mobile
  • Helping mobile phone users monetize their data
  • Not enough interconnection in the world
  • Complexity and risk in the crypto market
  • Expensive AI research
  • Counterfeit goods
  • Connecting “innovation players” and “knowledge holders”
  • Movie industry’s slow and opaque accounting practices
  • Global supply chain’s $9 trillion cash flow issue
  • Trust in the global supply chain
  • Economic crisis
  • Cash flow problems at small and medium-sized businesses
  • Improving the use of data in the transportation and logistics industries
  • Poverty among African farmers
  • Transparency in the food supply chain
  • Ad fraud
  • Fake news
  • False news
  • Settling payments faster
  • Speeding transactions
  • The unbanked
  • The underbanked
  • The bidding process in art and collectibles markets
  • Assessing the value of collectibles
  • Diamond industry’s high banking and forex fees
  • The illicit diamond trade
  • Availability of digital games
  • Currency for eSports
  • Currency for eSports betting
  • Currency for sports betting
  • Storing scholarly articles
  • Health insurance providers billing processes
  • Currency for healthcare providers
  • Shortage of workers with advanced tech skills
  • Lack of diversity in tech
  • Elder care
  • Rights management for photographers
  • Content rights management
  • Simplifying the logo copyrighting process
  • Ticketing industry’s “prevalent issues”
  • Crowdsourcing for legal dispute resolution
  • Securing financial contracts
  • Paper
  • Automation
  • Control of personal data
  • Control of personal credit data
  • No way to spend crypto
  • Advertising for extended reality environments
  • Human suffering
  • Security for luxury watches
  • Authenticity in cannabis sales
  • Crypto rewards for cannabis-focused social media site
  • Crypto payments for rating cryptoassets
  • Crypto payments for taking surveys, watching videos and clicking links
  • Crypto rewards for video game skills
  • Crypto rewards for time spent playing video games
  • Buying, selling and trading your social media friends
  • Crypto rewards for social media sharing
  • Free mobile data for watching ads
  • Crypto rewards for watching entertainment content
  • Gold-backed cryptocurrency
  • Crypto-backed gold
  • Metals-backed cryptocurrency
  • Precious metals-based cryptocurrency
  • “Tokenizing” real world items
  • Nashville apartment buildings
  • Monaco real estate
  • Financial infrastructure for trading within video games
  • Checking ID for purchases like alcohol
  • “Uber for alcohol” on blockchain
  • Inefficiencies in cargo delivery
  • Branded tokens for merchants to reward customers
  • Fraud and corruption among non-profits
  • Better transparency at non-profits
  • Better transparency around impact investing
  • Bitcoin mining uses too much energy
  • Home appliances mining for bitcoin while not in use
  • Bitcoin mining using hydropower
  • Large corporations’ carbon footprints
  • “Decarbonizing” electricity grids
  • Climate change
  • Trust in governments
  • Trust in corporations
  • Trust in social networks
  • Trust in media
  • Universal billing system for travel industry
  • Decentralized Uber and Lyft
  • Online gambling not fair
  • Online gambling sites take commission
  • Helping retailers hurt by Amazon
  • Online retail fraud
  • Paying for things with your face
  • Streamlining interactions among shoppers, retailers and brands
  • Linking content across computers, tablets and phones
  • Ranking apps by their value
  • Aligning creativity and recognition for content creators
  • Improving payments for artists on Spotify and Pandora
  • Online piracy
  • Improving the technology of the Russian gas industry
  • A blockchain equivalent of Amazon, Groupon and Craigslist
  • Too many non-value-added costs
  • Unregulated prison economies
  • Standardizing the value of advertisements
  • Advertising not transparent enough
  • Old real estate practices
  • Free public information from silos
  • Speeding the rendering of animated movies
  • Selling items for crypto instead of regular money
  • Borders
  • Man-in-the-middle hacks
  • Security sacrifices that come with innovation
  • Scams, fraud and counterfeits
  • Tools to build decentralized apps
  • Blockchain infrastructure
  • Removing barriers separating blockchains
  • Safety in buying and selling blockchain tokens
  • Improving privacy in online file storage
  • ICO projects could benefit from the “wisdom of the crowd”
  • Improving privacy of blockchain
  • Decentralized database for decentralized technologies
  • Improving trust and confidence in blockchain system
  • More cohesive user experiences across blockchain and the cloud
  • Democratizing gold trading
  • Giving investors more control of their assets
  • Simplifying the cryptocurrency transaction process
  • Trading indexes as tokens
  • Improving crypto safekeeping solutions
  • Simplifying ICO investment, trading and cryptocurrency
  • Improving institutional-grade crypto asset management
  • “Painstakingly slow” manual crypto wallet process
  • More open global markets
  • Easier way to invest in real estate
  • Easier way to invest in Swiss real estate
  • Easier way to combine smart contracts with crowdfunded home loans
  • Easier way to borrow against crypto holdings
  • Faster porn industry payment options
  • Lower porn industry payment fees
  • Identifying and verifying users in online dating
  • Improving traditional banking services for crypto world
  • Cryptocurrency based on Game Theory, IBM’s Watson, and other theories
  • Better social network + blockchain + AI + human touch
  • Improving content streaming on the blockchain
  • Supply chain transparency
  • Increasing public sector trust of cryptocurrencies
  • Education around blockchain technology
  • Blockchain not mainstream enough
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
more on blockchain in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=blockchain

automated Twitter bots

twitter bots

To identify bots, the Center used a tool known as “Botometer,” developed by researchers at the University of Southern California and Indiana University.

Previous studies have documented the nature and sources of tweets regarding immigration news, the ways in which news is shared via social media in a polarized Congress, the degree to which science information on social media is shared and trusted, the role of social media in the broader context of online harassment, how key social issues like race relations play out on these platforms, and the patterns of how different groups arrange themselves on Twitter.

It is important to note that bot accounts do not always clearly identify themselves as such in their profiles, and any bot classification system inevitably carries some risk of error. The Botometer system has been documented and validated in an array of academic publications, and researchers from the Center conducted a number of independent validation measures of its results.8

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

bots, big data and the future

Computational Propaganda: Bots, Targeting And The Future

February 9, 201811:37 AM ET 

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/02/09/584514805/computational-propaganda-yeah-that-s-a-thing-now

Combine the superfast calculational capacities of Big Compute with the oceans of specific personal information comprising Big Data — and the fertile ground for computational propaganda emerges. That’s how the small AI programs called bots can be unleashed into cyberspace to target and deliver misinformation exactly to the people who will be most vulnerable to it. These messages can be refined over and over again based on how well they perform (again in terms of clicks, likes and so on). Worst of all, all this can be done semiautonomously, allowing the targeted propaganda (like fake news stories or faked images) to spread like viruses through communities most vulnerable to their misinformation.

According to Bolsover and Howard, viewing computational propaganda only from a technical perspective would be a grave mistake. As they explain, seeing it just in terms of variables and algorithms “plays into the hands of those who create it, the platforms that serve it, and the firms that profit from it.”

Computational propaganda is a new thing. People just invented it. And they did so by realizing possibilities emerging from the intersection of new technologies (Big Compute, Big Data) and new behaviors those technologies allowed (social media). But the emphasis on behavior can’t be lost.

People are not machines. We do things for a whole lot of reasons including emotions of loss, anger, fear and longing. To combat computational propaganda’s potentially dangerous effects on democracy in a digital age, we will need to focus on both its howand its why.

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

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

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

Big Tech in schools

Former Google Design Ethicist: Relying on Big Tech in Schools Is a ‘Race to the Bottom’

By Jenny Abamu     Feb 7, 2018

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-02-07-former-google-design-ethicist-relying-on-big-tech-in-schools-is-a-race-to-the-bottom

Common Sense Media recently partnered with the Center for Humane Technology, which supports the development of ethical technological tools, to lay out a fierce call for regulation and awareness about the health issues surrounding tech addiction.

Tristan Harris, a former ethicist at Google who founded the Center for Humane Technology

To support educators making such decisions, Common Sense Media is taking their “Truth about Tech” campaign to schools through an upgraded version of their current Digital Citizenship curriculum. The new updates will include more information on subjects such as:

  • Creating a healthy media balance and digital wellness;
  • Concerns about the rise of hate speech in schools, that go beyond talking about cyberbullying; and
  • Fake news, media literacy and curating your own content

What Does ‘Tech Addiction’ Mean?

In a recent NPR report, writer Anya Kamenetz, notes that clinicians are debating whether technology overuse is best categorized as a bad habit, a symptom of other mental struggles (such as depression or anxiety) or as an addiction.

Dr. Jenny Radesky, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at the American Academy of Pediatrics, notes that though she’s seen solid evidence linking heavy media usage to problems with sleep and obesity, she hesitated to call the usage “addiction.”

Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist who studies hormones at the University of Southern California disagreed, noting that parents have to see the overuse of technology as an addiction.

1 8 9 10 11 12 13