Fake news. It's complicated. – First Draft News – Medium What can we do? We all play a crucial part in this ecosystem. Every time we passively accept information without double-checking, or share a post, image or video before we’ve verified it, we’re adding to the noise and confusion. The ecosystem is now so polluted, we have to take responsibility for independently checking what we see online. In the weeks after the US election, we saw journalists track down fake news creators. One consistent element was that creators talked about trying to create news that would fool people on the Left and how they failed. But liberal debunking primacy was short lived. Craig Silverman was a guest on the “On The Media” radio show and talked about the need for emotional skepticism. In the same way that you’re told to wait 20 minutes before you reach for a second helping of food, because you need to wait for your brain to catch up with your stomach, the same is true with information. This is a crucial time. If you are interested in this topic.
Trump "Considering" Intriguing New Way to Lie With Statistics aluxum/iStock Oh FFS: The Trump administration is considering changing the way it calculates U.S. trade deficits, a shift that would make the country’s trade gap appear larger than it had in past years, according to people involved in the discussions. The leading idea under consideration would exclude from U.S. exports any goods first imported into the country, such as cars, and then transferred to a third country like Canada or Mexico unchanged, these people told The Wall Street Journal. Economists say that approach would inflate trade deficit numbers because it would typically count goods as imports when they come into the country but not count the same goods when they go back out, known as re-exports. While we're at it, let's change our new jobs report to show all the people who have gained a job but not the ones who have lost a job.
Did Trump inherit a mess? 8 charts show otherwise In his address to a joint session of Congress, President Donald Trump revived a theme he had unveiled less than two weeks earlier, when he said at a marathon press conference that he’d inherited "a mess" from his predecessor, Barack Obama. Speaking in the House chamber on Feb. 28, Trump offered a series of statistics that collectively painted a dire picture of the U.S. economy. To be sure, there are shortcomings in the economy. But while Trump had a point with some of these assertions, many of the talking points on his list leave out crucial context, gloss over nuance, or both. At most, the list of economic shortcomings that Trump offered in the House chamber provides a partial portrait of the economy — a portrait carefully crafted, in the reverse of the old song lyrics, to accentuate the negative and eliminate the positive. What Trump said "More than one in five people in their prime working years are not working. There definitely is a downside to today’s economy. Employment Bankruptcies
Filterbubblor och falska nyheter – Digidelat – Medium Foto: bubbles by frumbert Licens: CC BY 2.0 Vi som vuxna behöver också förstå hur internet, sociala medier och spel fungerar, allt för att vi själva vara mer medvetna om eller när vi eller våra barn blir påverkade. Vi behöver precis som barnen kunna skilja fakta från åsikter eller känslor, för det är skillnad. Vi som föräldrar kan inte nöja oss med att låta skolan lära ut källkritik, vi behöver också ta vårt ansvar, och lära oss själva och våra barn att vara kritiska mot de källor som de tar del av. Kristina AlexanderssonChef, internet i skolan/Webbstjärnan, InternetstiftelsenKälla: I kölvattnet av Brexit och det amerikanska presidentvalet har intresset ökat för det försämrade hälsotillståndet på Internet. Den 13 mars har Viralgranskaren utsett till Källkritikens dag, och SSB kommer att uppmärksamma dagen bl.a. med intervjufilmer och publika aktiviteter. PLATSRunda rummet, Asplundhuset VÄLKOMMEN!
Ambiguity and self censorship An ambiguous public statement, of course, can serve as a dog-whistle to your supporters while giving you plausible deniability. Ambiguous orders are even more useful: they put all of the details of what the orders actually mean in the hands of ground-level enforcers. This has several important benefits for autocrats: When rules are explicit, people can obey them. When rules are vague but penalties are harsh, people censor themselves: they keep far away from anything which might violate the rules.When rules are explicit, they can be used as defenses. If deporting someone requires a court finding that they are in the country illegally, for example, then there are suddenly lawyers involved, there is a burden of proof to be met, and the process is slow and deliberate, in much the way you would expect a legal process which is capable of taking away someone’s home, work, family, and country all at once would be. I am sad to say that this essay seems more relevant with each passing month.
How Trump’s White House Could Mess With Government Data Numbers and data are a backbone of modern life. We cite them buzzily at bars and soberly to bosses so often that “studies show” might as well be given its own entry in the dictionary. Much of what we cite comes from government data — weather patterns, the population or average income of a city, even honeybee activity — collected across innumerable departments, agencies and centers, then made public. Now, watchdogs are worried that a Donald Trump administration could erode the quality of government data collection and systems. More Politics Certain steps being taken by the president-elect’s transition team have raised alarm bells for some who worry that Trump’s glibness with the truth could take root in a more institutional form. Widespread government data tampering remains unlikely given the vast numbers of career bureaucrats working across agencies, according to Alex Howard, senior analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, an open government advocacy organization.
Fake news. It's complicated. - First Draft News This article is available also in Deutsch, Español, Français and العربية By now we’ve all agreed the term “fake news” is unhelpful, but without an alternative, we’re left awkwardly using air quotes whenever we utter the phrase. The reason we’re struggling with a replacement is because this is about more than news, it’s about the entire information ecosystem. And the term fake doesn’t begin to describe the complexity of the different types of misinformation (the inadvertent sharing of false information) and disinformation (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false). To understand the current information ecosystem, we need to break down three elements: The different types of content that are being created and sharedThe motivations of those who create this contentThe ways this content is being disseminated This matters. This is far more worrying than fake news sites created by profit driven Macedonian teenagers. The Different Types of Mis and Disinformation
Former ‘First Grandma’ Marian Robinson caught up in another fake news hoax Former First Grandma Marian Robinson just can’t catch a break from fake news. First Michelle Obama’s mother was wrongly accused in fake stories of drawing a federal pension for taking care of grandchildren Sasha and Malia. Now she’s the victim of a new round of false reports that claim she’s being charged with a crime for doing so since former President Barack Obama left office. "Obama’s mother-in-law charged with larceny and fraud," reads the headline on several Internet posts that started appearing on or after March 16, 2017. The story stokes reader ire by admonishing Robinson for attempting to take money she didn’t deserve. "While it may not have been her idea to ask for a $160K pension for being the Obama daughters’ ‘caretaker,’ she was the one who filled out the paperwork and signed her name," the posts read. Several of these links were flagged by Facebook users for being potentially fake, as part of the social media company’s efforts to prune fake news from readers’ news feeds.
NY Daily News Reveals Who Created Trump's Fake Twitter Followers - Get Ready Last month, shortly after he went on a massive blocking spree, an audit of President Trump’s Twitter account revealed that almost 50 percent of his followers are fake. On Saturday, the person who created those fake accounts was also exposed. According to the New York Daily News, the person behind the several million Twitter bots bolstering Trump’s ego is Robert Mercer, a “Republican mega-donor and staunch Trump supporter” who was once connected to IBM. Mercer is a former computer scientist who helped develop the technology at IBM that later led to the creation of the Watson super-computer. Experts told the Daily News that these bots could be “weaponized” to help spread fake and misleading stories that would distract from the White House’s scandals and paint Trump and his administration in a more positive light. ‘Fooling humans into doing things in the electronic realm turned out to be really easy.’ Crosby added:
[infographic] Fake news or real news? 10 tips to getting the facts for yourself - Stone Soup Creative I read a good article today on NPR’s All Tech Considered, Fake Or Real? How To Self-Check The News And Get The Facts. Except I figure people who aren’t schooled in figuring out the difference aren’t likely to be reading an NPR article. So I quickly put together this infographic based on the article and a link provided to a google doc, False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical “News” Sources, prepared by Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College. Is it helpful? Is it accurate? A clinical psychologist explains how Ayn Rand seduced young minds and helped turn the US into a selfish nation The ‘Atlas Shrugged’ author made selfishness heroic and caring about others weakness. Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society….To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.— Gore Vidal, 1961 Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The Seduction of Nathan Blumenthal
A neuroscientist explains what may be wrong with Trump supporters’ brains Audience member Robin Roy (C) reacts as U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets her at a campaign rally in Lowell, Massachusetts January 4, 2016. (BRIAN SNYDER / Reuters) There’s no doubt that Donald Trump has said many things that would have been political suicide for any other Republican candidate. The only thing that might be more perplexing than the psychology of Donald Trump is the psychology of his supporters. Senator John McCain, who has been a regular target for Trump during his campaign, has a simple explanation for his unwavering support. While the former Republican presidential nominee may be on to something, he doesn’t exactly provide a very satisfying scientific explanation. The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Some believe that many of those who support Donald Trump do so because of ignorance — basically they are under-informed or misinformed about the issues at hand. Hypersensitivity to Threat Terror Management Theory High Attentional Engagement