FT’s “Six Degrees”

Disinformation dilemmas, contextualisation, memes and paywalls

Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

edited by Marco Nurra

💡 How about participating in #ijf18 with your ideas? Last call.

• At least 42 journalists killed in the line of duty worldwide in 2017, representing the second consecutive decline from record highs early this decade. Fewer journalists died covering Middle East conflicts and the number of journalists murdered in reprisal for reporting eased, except in Mexico. A CPJ special report.
• Disinformation gets worse. “Governments around the world will continue to hold “fake news” inquiries, and some will pass knee-jerk, ill-informed regulation that will do little — or worse, suppress free speech.”
  🔔 Claire Wardle will be a #ijf18 speaker
• Study: Educating news consumers about the media can curb conspiracy theory appeal. “News literacy tends to focus on content, trying to critically read an article, but we believe that people need to understand the industry side and the larger relationship between news structure and democracy.”
• Facebook is replacing its “Disputed Flags” with “Related Articles” in News Feed to help give people more context about the story. “Academic research on correcting misinformation has shown that putting a strong image, like a red flag, next to an article may actually entrench deeply held beliefs — the opposite effect to what we intended. Related Articles, by contrast, are simply designed to give more context, which our research has shown is a more effective way to help people get to the facts. Indeed, we’ve found that when we show Related Articles next to a false news story, it leads to fewer shares than when the Disputed Flag is shown.”
• The Financial Times has developed an interactive tool that lets readers see connections between people featured in stories they’ve read. Its name is “Six Degrees” and it’s still in beta.
• Memes and visuals come to the fore. “What concerns me more than the fact that memes and visuals spread misinformation is the idea that the media industry as a whole may be falling behind agents of disinformation when it comes to fluency with the norms and practice of internet culture. This leaves many journalists and audiences vulnerable to new forms of manipulation. In 2018, we should start tackling this challenge urgently and in earnest. It would meme a lot.”
  🔔 An Xiao Mina will be a #ijf18 speaker
• Dealing with the disinformation dilemmas: a new agenda for news media. “To counter misinformation we need good journalism, but reinvented journalism. We need to make journalism part of the emotional as well as material lives citizens now lead online. Journalists must become more literate about the information systems that are evolving around us. But they must also be more emotionally literate about how people feel about and socialise the information they consume.”
  🔔 Charlie Beckett will be a #ijf18 speaker
• Working together toward sustainable solutions. "I predict that 2018 may be the year in which readers use the power of their hive-mind to ask tough questions and hold reporters’ feet to the fire, acting as an essential stress test for good journalism. This starts with understanding how to identify credible news sources. I think people want to be effective news consumers, and they’ll take on the responsibility to become highly media literate. People don’t like being conned or lied to, but to a great extent, that’s what’s happened over the last year, particularly by disreputable sources that were amplified on social media."
  🔔 Craig Newmark will be a #ijf18 speaker
• Why paywalls don’t work. “Publications that hope to survive online are left with a challenge: Can we subsist on advertising, and all the perverse incentives that come with it? Or can we actually produce something that’s valuable, meaningful and different? That’s the only way to build a responsible wall, asking readers to pay in advance instead of soliciting them when they’ve clicked too much. It’s an old-school proposal, and it’s scary. It means being judged by quality instead of clicks, by honesty instead of eyeballs. It also might just make the Internet a healthy place to read the news,” writes Rob Howard.
• Pivot to tomorrow. “In 2018, publishers will begin to make room for tomorrow’s reality, in which new AI-driven technologies upend the way consumers seek, discover, consume, and share news and information. Over the next few years, advances in natural language processing, voice recognition, augmented reality, and automation will change consumer behavior to the point that some people predict the end of smartphones as we know them today.”
  🔔 Vivian Schiller will be a #ijf18 speaker

International Journalism Festival is the biggest annual media event in Europe. It’s an open invitation to interact with the best of world journalism. All sessions are free entry for all attendees, all venues are situated in the stunning setting of the historic town centre of Perugia.