
Conspiracy theories, advertising, fake polls and unintentional YouTube censorship
Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
edited by Marco Nurra
- “How I became fake news: I witnessed a terrorist attack in Charlottesville. Then the conspiracy theories began.” Brennan Gilmore witnessed James Fields smash his car into a crowd of demonstrators, killing Heather Heyer and wounding 19 others. Although he immediately shared the footage with police on the scene, it took him a half-hour to decide to post it publicly. He was concerned about how the footage might be used by the “alt-right” and felt uncomfortable knowing that he had probably filmed someone’s death. Hours after, neo-Nazi commentators started posting about him on 4chan, Reddit and YouTube.
“These crack researchers bragged that they had discovered I worked for the State Department (it’s in my Twitter bio), that I have a connection to George Soros (he very publicly donated to the campaign of my former boss, Tom Perriello), and that I spent time in Africa working in conflict areas (information available in major news outlets). Desperate to lay blame on anyone besides the alt-right, they seized on these facts to suggest a counter-narrative to the attack, claiming there was no way that someone with my background just happened to be right there to take the video. They wrote that I was a CIA operative, funded by (choose your own adventure) George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the IMF/World Bank, and/or a global Jewish mafia to orchestrate the Charlottesville attack in order to turn the general public against the alt-right.”
- Why don’t we cover white supremacy the way we cover ISIS? It will not be difficult to find stories on this beat. A June 2017 report by the Anti-Defamation League found that more than half of active Ku Klux Klan groups were formed in the last three years, and instability within the groups meant most were short-lived. A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center showed there are 917 active hate groups in the United States. Trump won the white millennial vote, and we now know cultural anxiety played a significant role in Trump’s rise. These facts, paired with the rise of neo-Nazism among white millennials, all require closer examination.
- In an effort to purge extremist propaganda from its platform, YouTube has inadvertently removed thousands of videos that could be used to document atrocities in Syria, potentially jeopardizing future war crimes prosecutions, observers and rights advocates say. “When the conflict in Syria started, independent media broke down and Syrians themselves have taken to YouTube to post news of the conflict,” said Chris Woods, the director of Airwars, a London-based organization that tracks international airstrikes and their effect on civilians. “What’s disappearing in front of our eyes is the history of this terrible war.”
- The Tow Center for Digital Journalism has released an interactive timeline that collects platform developments since 2000. It provides an accessible resource for those seeking context for current developments, to identify trends, or to anticipate the significant shifts coming down the line. The timeline is focused, for now, on a handful of platform companies: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, Apple, and Amazon. You can search by platform, by year, or by category.
- Facebook just made it easier for users to tell news organizations apart. Facebook today added publisher logos next to articles in Trending and Search. Publishers can now upload multiple versions of their logos that will appear next to their content on Facebook.
- Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will add subscriptions for publishers, but not take a cut (for now). The update is another incentive for publishers to use Instant Articles rather than just share their links, which is crucial for some media outlets.
- Quartz plans to unveil a suite of Slack-based tools designed to simplify the process of creating bots to follow certain pages or data. With the tool, a local crime reporter could, for example, create a bot that monitors the local police department’s website and alerts them whenever there’s an update. Technology and finance reporters could do the same with bots that monitor SEC filings. Quartz is building the tools thanks to the $250,000 grant it got from the Knight Foundation in late 2016.
- Mexico-based Pictoline’s graphic explainers thrive on social media (and advertisers love them too). The majority of Pictoline’s revenue — it’s profitable and brought in $1 million last year — now comes from creating sponsored illustrations for advertisers.
- More than 600 global brands are advertising on fake news websites — and they don’t seem to care. French startup Storyzy spotted 644 brands on questionable sites ranging from hard-core fake or hyper-partisan news sites to clickbait venues hosting bogus content with no particular agenda except making a quick buck. By and large the advertising community’s response is simply appalling, writes Frederic Filloux.
- Brands are now blacklisting mainstream news sites, including Fox News. Political tensions have reached a point where some brands are perceiving mainstream news outlets as too controversial, leading media buyers to pull ads from those sites.
- The Washington Post brings artificial intelligence to its native ads. They have built an ad product called “Own” that lets brands use their own content but promises to improve its chances of being seen and read (or watched) with the aid of Heliograf, a news-writing bot the Post built for the editorial side. Own works by serving an ad to people based on their past reading/viewing behavior on the site. It uses Heliograf to generate a personalized welcome message. It’s a form of content recommendation, which the Post has done before with its customizable native ad units called Post Cards, but more personalized.
- A fake poll can have real influence. If you’re a political observer interested in polls or a journalist who writes about them, you need to be more careful than ever. As Adam Geller, a Republican pollster who worked on the Trump campaign, told FiveThirtyEight, public polls can create news because “they are easy stories to write.” But, he said, “there is far too little scrutiny on the methodology of the poll. To most journalists, a poll is a poll is a poll.” Public polls can also influence donors, Geller says. Donors don’t want to back a likely loser. Voters themselves can be influenced as well. For example, in a primary campaign where voters are trying to decide between ideologically similar candidates in a large field, voters may take into account who they think has the best chance of winning. A fake poll could affect that calculus.
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