This week…
We observed the fifth International Fact-Checking Day on April 2nd.
“It makes sense to name the day on April 2nd because fact-checkers just wanted to remind the public of the importance of reliable and accurate information the day after April Fools’ Day,” said the director at the International Fact-Checking Network, Baybars Örsek, in his opening remark at the IFCN Talks on the state of fact-checking.
How to stop misinformation before it gets shared
“What social media needs is some old-fashioned friction,” argue Renee DiResta and Tobias Rose-Stockwell for Wired:
As we reimagine a more trustworthy social web, we can rethink the relationship between velocity and virality. Low-velocity content can still go viral: a good book we share with our friends, say, or a word-of-mouth recommendation for a film. One way in which we might do this is having a system in which rapidly or broadly spreading content is temporarily throttled by platforms to allow fact-checkers time to assess it. This need not apply to all viral content; it could be tailored topics that are most likely to cause harm: politics, health, or breaking news. It’s a model that other industries use—Wall Street exchanges, for example, use circuit breakers to help the public appropriately digest emerging information to avoid stocks going haywire.
When journalists put tweets in news stories, do they transfer too much power to Twitter?
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor for Nieman Lab:
Now what we see is a feedback loop: As Twitter becomes embedded in journalistic routine, journalists turn to it during news events. This leads journalists to use tweets in their stories, granting tweets markers of authority. It increases the likelihood that elites will use Twitter for future information releases, the likelihood that journalists will return to receive them, and the likelihood that audiences will become accustomed to seeing tweets as key aspects of news stories.
Mitigating medical misinformation: A whole-of-society approach to countering spam, scams and hoaxes
Disinformation expert Joan Donovan and colleagues put together a report with some key messages that include how manipulation campaigns “thrive when timely, relevant, local, and redundant information is not available” and to consider to “triage misinformation as it moves across platforms.” Also in the report are a response matrix and case studies. Excellent read.
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading philosopher Mary Margaret McCabe’s essay published on Psyche about how we must establish the meaning of falsehood to find the truth.
I’m watching Lindsay Ellis’ video essay on why Borat works better in 2020. “Borat gets people to say the quiet part out loud,” she says.
I’m listening to CIGI’s Big Tech podcast where Taylor Owen speaks with Mutale Nkonde of AI for People on how biased tech design and racial disparity intersect.
Chart of the week
Just a reminder: