background preloader

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

Related:  FAKE NEWS

Students Reject 'Fake News' To Write Footnoted, Neutral Wikipedia Entries : NPR Ed Fake news has been, well, in the news a lot lately. But for the world's largest crowdsourced encyclopedia, it's nothing new. "Wikipedia has been dealing with fake news since it started 16 years ago," notes LiAnna Davis, deputy director of the Wiki Education Foundation. To combat misinformation, Wikipedia has developed a robust corps of volunteer editors. Anyone can write new entries and scrutinize existing ones for adherence to Wikipedia's rules on sourcing and neutrality. While it's not free of errors or pranks, what results is a resource that 50 million people turn to daily on hundreds of thousands of topics in a few dozen languages. Today, educators are among those more concerned than ever with standards of truth and evidence and with the lightning-fast spread of misinformation online. This spring, 7,500 students are expected to participate. Since the program began six years ago, Davis says, students have collectively added more than 25 million words of content to Wikipedia.

Knowledge community | Jean-Philippe Cointet Escape your search engine Filter Bubble! I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me I'm a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards, studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students. Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. Not, like, in a person-by-person sense, but students in general. What it was like before In early 2009, I was an adjunct, teaching a freshman-level writing course at a community college. The video stopped, and I asked whether the students thought it was effective. "What about Fannie and Freddie?" The rest of the discussion went on as usual. The next week, I got called into my director's office. My director rolled her eyes. Now boat-rocking isn't just dangerous — it's suicidal (Shawn Rossi) This is terrifying.

Commentary: It’s Facebook’s algorithm vs. democracy, and so far the algorithm is winning — NOVA Next Over the last several years, Facebook has been participating—unintentionally—in the erosion of democracy. The social network may feel like a modern town square, but thanks to its tangle of algorithms, it’s nothing like the public forums of the past. The company determines, according to its interests and those of its shareholders, what we see and learn on its social network. The result has been a loss of focus on critical national issues, an erosion of civil disagreement, and a threat to democracy itself. Facebook is just one part—though a large part—of the Big Data economy, one built on math-powered applications that are based on choices made by fallible human beings. Facebook's algorithm—driven in part by likes and shares—has upended civil discourse. In 2008, when the economy crashed, I witnessed the power of these “Weapons of Math Destruction” firsthand from my desk at a hedge fund in New York City. In many cases, WMDs define their own reality to justify their results.

Les premières pistes d’innovation d’Alléger la Ville Après plusieurs mois de travail, la Fing publie les premières pistes d’innovation de l’expédition Alléger la Ville. Alors que ¾ de l’humanité sera urbaine dans les décennies à venir, les villes ont l’obligation d’innover, parce qu’elles font face à des défis sans précédent, mais aussi parce que les leviers habituels de l’action publique ne suffisent plus : contrainte budgétaire, exigences et autonomie croissante des citoyens, limites des partenariats public-privé… La “Smart City” est une réponse séduisante mais insuffisante, qui apparaît souvent comme un projet "d’en haut", très technique - et difficile à saisir par les habitants, par les PME locales, voire par les élus. L’expédition a creusé pendant quelques mois 4 territoires d’innovation, autant d’orientations pour "Alléger la Ville" : Plug-in City : la ville à continuer La Ville agile Micro-local-partiel : la ville des microcoordinations légères Une frugalité souhaitable Conception Graphique : collectif BAM - www.collectifbam.fr

How to Burst the "Filter Bubble" that Protects Us from Opposing Views The term “filter bubble” entered the public domain back in 2011when the internet activist Eli Pariser coined it to refer to the way recommendation engines shield people from certain aspects of the real world. Pariser used the example of two people who googled the term “BP”. One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm. This is an insidious problem. This is the filter bubble—being surrounded only by people you like and content that you agree with. And the danger is that it can polarise populations creating potentially harmful divisions in society. Today, Eduardo Graells-Garrido at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona as well as Mounia Lalmas and Daniel Quercia, both at Yahoo Labs, say they’ve hit on a way to burst the filter bubble. They found over 40,000 Twitter users who had expressed an opinion using the hashtags such as #pro-life and #pro-choice.

Computers and Composition | Vol 35, Pgs 1-140, (March 2015) ScienceDirect is phasing out support for older versions of Internet Explorer on Jan 12, 2016. For the best product experience, we recommend you upgrade to a newer version of IE or use a different browser: Firefox or Chrome. For additional information please see the ScienceDirect Blog page. Close for Schools | AllSides Preparing students to participate thoughtfully in democracy - and in life. Students need to learn how to sort through mass media and social networks, think critically about the issues, and engage with each other in a healthy and positive way, even when there are differences in opinions and backgrounds. AllSides for Schools helps educators teach these valuable lessons and skills. Let's teach the next generation how to see diverse perspectives, value differences and benefit from everyone’s best ideas. Contact Us to Sign-Up See Overview of School Program Elections and Relationships The climate for elections and political issues is so divisive, how can classrooms discuss hot-button issues effectively and with mutual understanding? Relationships First Introduces students to civil dialog and appreciating others even when we disagree Dictionary Term Lesson Plan 1 or multiple day program that uses the Dictionary term of your choosing to teach about differences in opinion and perspective Election Issues

The polymath blog | Massively collaborative mathematical projects

Related: