Dr. Art Hunter, Canadian Club of Rome Board of Directors, explains his smell test for authenticity of an article. “Is this link a conspiracy theory, fake news, propaganda or a clear statement of dire concern?” https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-coming-collapse/ It passed my smell test. One of the main reasons I shared this link that is highly critical of […]
How the oil industry pumped Americans full of fake news
The world has known about the dangers of climate change for decades — so why are oil and gas companies still drilling for crude as if there’s no tomorrow? There’s no simple answer. But any explanation would have to give some credit to the wizards of public relations. For more than a century, these spinmasters […]
Cory Doctorow: Fake News Is an Oracle
What is it that makes some people vulnerable to anti-vax messages? I think it’s the trauma of living in a world where there is ample evidence that our truth-seeking exercises can’t be trusted. That’s a genuinely scary idea, because if the truth is open to the highest bidder, then we are facing a future of […]
Media Manipulation, Strategic Amplification, and Responsible Journalism
This is a crib of a talk (30 min read) that Data & Society Founder and President danah boyd gave at the Online News Association conference in Austin, Texas on September 13, 2018. Well worth the read for anyone interested in a great analysis of our current media situation. Media manipulators have developed a strategy with three parts that […]
Would Twitter Ruin Bee Democracy?
Simple-majority democracy is used by many animals. But they don’t have social media. Did the ancient Athenians invent democracy? Or did bugs have it way earlier than the Greeks? Cornell entomologist Tom Seeley knows which option he’s voting for. Honeybees regularly split from their mother colony. Seeley wondered, with tens of thousands of bees in […]