Make 601 read this for the bullshit assignment.

Nice companion to the bullshit assignment.

Report blames Facebook’s prioritization of engagement over all else.

FFS FACEBOOK

Set of exercises aimed at helping people avoid common cognitive fallacies (e.g. correlation vs. causation).

Crowdsourcing fact-checking of news stories can work about as effectively as using professional fact-checkers, according to a study co-authored by Professor David Rand and PhD student Jenny Allen of the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Until recently, a small Wikipedia edition said Dianne Feinstein was San Francisco's mayor. This project could help avoid that sort of out of date info.

American democracy is in trouble. According to Freedom House, “the United States’ aggregate Freedom in the World score has declined by 11 points,” from 94 to 83

The project brought the world one step closer to live automated fact-checking, but it still has a ways to go

College students lack fact-checking skills, which may lead them to accept information at face value. We report findings from an institution participating in the Digital Polarization Initiative (DPI), a national effort to teach students lateral reading strategies used by expert fact-checkers to verify online information. Lateral reading requires users to leave the information (website) to find out whether someone has already fact-checked the claim, identify the original source, or learn more about the individuals or organizations making the claim. Instructor-matched sections of a general education civics course implemented the DPI curriculum (N = 136 students) or provided business-as-usual civics instruction (N = 94 students). At posttest, students in DPI sections were more likely to use lateral reading to fact-check and correctly evaluate the trustworthiness of information than controls. Aligning with the DPI’s emphasis on using Wikipedia to investigate sources, students in DPI sections reported greater use of Wikipedia at posttest than controls, but did not differ significantly in their trust of Wikipedia. In DPI sections, students who failed to read laterally at posttest reported higher trust of Wikipedia at pretest than students who read at least one problem laterally. Responsiveness to the curriculum was also linked to numbers of online assignments attempted, but unrelated to pretest media literacy knowledge, use of lateral reading, or self-reported use of lateral reading. Further research is needed to determine whether improvements in lateral reading are maintained over time and to explore other factors that might distinguish students whose skills improved after instruction from non-responders.

A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform

The researchers found overlap among users connected to QAnon conspiracy theories

The company’s AI algorithms gave it an insatiable habit for lies and hate speech. Now the man who built them can't fix the problem.

Read the full report here. Executive Summary The January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol demonstrated how online disinformation can have severe offline consequences. For some time, the problems and possible impacts on democracy caused by online mis- and dis-information have dominated public policy discussions and thus research about these topics has developed rapidly in […]

On deprogramming Qs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced college students to spend more time online. Yet many studies show that college students struggle to discern fact from fiction on the Internet. A small body of research suggests that students in face-to-face settings can improve at judging the credibility of online sources. But what about asynchronous remote instruction? In an […]

They are a very particular form of deception that can build solidarity within groups