Fake News

Articles for Further Exploration

Articles for Further Exploration

The world is awash in bullshit, and we're drowning in it. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. These days, calling bullshit is a noble act. Based on Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West's popular course at the University of Washington, Calling Bullshit is a modern handbook to the art of skepticism. Bergstrom, a computational biologist, and West, an information scientist, catalogue bullshit in its many forms, explaining and offering readers the tools to see through the obfuscations, deliberate and careless, that dominate every realm of our lives. -- Carl T. Bergstrom & Jevin D. West.
 
False information about the pandemic is rampant; here’s how experts say you can identify what news to trust and what might be faulty -- Lila Thulin, SmithsonianMag.com, April 9, 2020
 
​In the long history of misinformation, the current outbreak of fake news has already secured a special place... But the concoction of alternative facts is hardly rare, and the equivalent of today’s poisonous, bite-size texts and tweets can be found in most periods of history, going back to the ancients. -- Robert Darnton, NYR Daily, Feb. 14, 2017
 

​Abstract: So-called “fake news” has renewed concerns about the prevalence and effects of misinformation in political campaigns. Given the potential for widespread dissemination of this material, we examine the individual-level characteristics associated with sharing false articles during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign... One of the most discussed phenomena in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election was the spread and possible influence of “fake news”—false or misleading content intentionally dressed up to look like news articles, often for the purpose of generating ad revenue. -- Andrew Guess, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua Tucker, ScienceAdvances, Jan. 9, 2019

​The politically aware, digitally savvy and those more trusting of the news media fare better; Republicans and Democrats both influenced by political appeal of statements. A new Pew Research Center survey of 5,035 U.S. adults examines a basic step in that process: whether members of the public can recognize news as factual – something that’s capable of being proved or disproved by objective evidence – or as an opinion that reflects the beliefs and values of whoever expressed it. -- Amy Mitchell, Jeffrey Gottfried, Michael Barthel, and Nami Sumida, Pew Research Center June 18, 2018

Most Americans like their choices in today’s information-saturated world, but 20% feel overloaded. Tensions occur when institutions place high information demands on people...Since the 1970s, the term “information overload” has captured society’s anxiety about the growth in the production of information having potentially bad consequences for people as they struggle to cope with seemingly constant streams of messages and images. The advent of the internet, it was thought, would only exacerbate this, with the onset of ubiquitous connectivity turning information overload into something even more debilitating. -- John Horrigan, Pew Research Center, Dec. 7, 2016

​     As a long-time academic librarian, I have spent a good part of my career teaching college students to think critically about information. And the fact is that I watch many of them struggle with the challenges of discovering, internalizing, evaluating and applying credible information. For me, the recent spate of stories about large segments of the population falling for fake news stories was no surprise.
     Making sense of information is hard, maybe increasingly so in today’s world. So what role have academic libraries played in helping people make sense of world bursting at the seams with information?  -- Donald Barclay, PBS NewsHour, Jan. 6, 2017

    Discerning fact from fiction in news and online content has never been more challenging. From “pizzagate”—false reports of a child sex ring operating in a DC pizza parlor—and creepy clown attacks to retweeted election headlines touting events that never happened, fake news is rampant. Twenty-three percent of Americans say they have shared fabricated reports, knowingly or not, according to a December Pew Research Center report.
    Librarians have an opportunity to take leadership in the current crisis. As proven authorities on information literacy, library professionals can help students analyze news authenticity. It’s time to step up to the plate.
    That requires expertise—and perseverance. While school librarians are updating lessons on news literacy, a recent study from researchers at Stanford University underscored the challenges of media and social media education for kids. Students’ ability to evaluate information on the Internet is “bleak,” according to the report. -- Linda Jacobson, Library School Journal, Jan. 1, 2017

    The Big Picture: When thousands of students respond to dozens of tasks there are endless variations. That was certainly the case in our experience. However, at each level—middle school, high school, and college—these variations paled in comparison to a stunning and dismaying consistency. Overall, young people’s ability to reason about the information on the Internet can be summed up in one word: bleak. Our “digital natives” may be able to fit between Facebook and Twitter while simultaneously uploading a selfe to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to evaluating information that fows through social media channels, they are easily duped -- STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP, Nov. 22, 2016

​     Fake news comes in many flavors, like satire or intentional hoaxes, but computer scientist Filippo Menczer said sensational news and social media campaigns filled with mistruths — like the PizzaGate story — started to surge on the internet around 2010.
     Blaming readers for spreading fake news from a cognitive perspective is somewhat equivalent to blaming a baby for soiling itself. They can’t help it...Trending news stories, both fake and real, buy into what’s called the attention economy, whereby “if people pay attention to a certain topic, more information on that topic will be produced.” -- Nsikan Akpan, PBS NewsHour, Dec. 5, 2016

​News literacy is complicated. In our attempts to discern truth, we are confounded by a 24/7 news cycle. News hits us across media platforms and devices, in a landscape populated by all degrees of professional journalists and citizen journalists and satirists and hoaxers and folks paid or personally moved to write intentionally fake news. All of this is compounded by the glories and the drawbacks of user-generated content, citizen journalism, and a world of new news choices. -- Joyce Valenza, School Library Journal, Nov. 26, 2016

​How News Websites Spread (and Debunk) Online Rumors, Unverified Claims and Misinformation. News organizations are meant to play a critical role in the dissemination of quality, accurate information in society. This has become more challenging with the onslaught of hoaxes, misinformation, and other forms of inaccurate content that flow constantly over digital platforms. Journalists today have an imperative—and an opportunity—to sift through the mass of content being created and shared in order to separate true from false, and to help the truth to spread. -- Craig Silverman, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Feb. 10, 2015

Librarians, especially public librarians, are often asked whether libraries are still relevant due to the accessibility of the Internet. These questions aren’t necessarily mean-spirited; many are genuinely curious why anyone still needs a library if they can access limitless information on their smartphone or computer. The truth is, access to the Internet means nothing if someone is unable to discern between fact and conspiracy theory. Librar­ians can help patrons learn to make that distinction. Essentially, without the appropriate information and media literacy skills, the Internet cannot always meet the needs of the user. -- Barbara Alvarez, Public Libraries Online, Jan. 11, 2017

This article explores belief in political rumors surrounding the health care reforms enacted by Congress in 2010. Refuting rumors with statements from unlikely sources can, under certain circumstances, increase the willingness of citizens to reject rumors regardless of their own political predilections. Dr. Berinsky referenced this research published in the British Journal of Political Science in the Washington Post article. This article is available through Open Access on the Cambridge University Press site. -- Adam J. Berinsky, British Journal of Political Science, Apr. 2017

Describes the findings of a recent study on the number of fake news stories viewed by participants both during and after the 2016 election. Fake news evolved from seedy internet sideshow to serious electoral threat so quickly that behavioral scientists had little time to answer basic questions about it, like who was reading what, how much real news they also consumed and whether targeted fact-checking efforts ever hit a target. -- Benedict Carey, The New York Times, Jan. 2, 2018