How to fight fake news on WhatsApp, fake tweeters and news media bias
Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
Published in
3 min readOct 6, 2017
edited by Marco Nurra
But first of all, how about participating in #ijf18 with your ideas?
- Here’s why fighting fake news is harder on WhatsApp than on Facebook. “With WhatsApp, you have no idea how many people are reading what you’re putting in there. It’s like a black box,” said Juan Esteban Lewin, a journalist at La Silla Vacía in Colombia — one of the first fact-checking organizations to start debunking hoaxes on WhatsApp.
- Facebook’s new anti-fake news feature will offer more context about articles which users see in the News Feed. Facebook users will soon start seeing a small information button on news articles that appear in the News Feed. When users click the button, they’ll see a panel with information from the source site’s Wikipedia page, content related to the article in question, and details about where and how the article is being shared.
- Algorithms are screwing us over with fake news but could also fix the problem. In this era of ‘new proximity’ people like Aine Kerr and mark little are hoping to use AI to fight fake news. “News you can trust comes at a price, and conscious news seekers get this. We see the rise of a generation conditioned to pay for quality content on Netflix and Spotify. In this past momentous year, the most dramatic increase in paid news consumption has been among the youngest Americans adults.”
- Online hoaxes about the Catalan referendum concentrated on police action in Barcelona. Misinformation shared on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp in the past several days includes old images depicting bloodied protesters and false stories about dead police officers.
- The ultimate guide to bust fake tweeters. This extraordinary tip sheet takes you into the shadowy world of bot farms.
- How to use Tweetdeck and advanced search to make Twitter useful again. By combining features from Twitter Advanced Search and Tweetdeck, journalists can quickly comb through hundreds of billions of tweets from people all over the globe to find the best tweets.
- Gaming + journalism on the Gig Economy: that’s The Uber Game offered by The Financial Times.
- How can collaborations between ethnic and mainstream outlets serve communities in the digital age? A Nigerian chief, a Chinese activist, and a Muslim Republican shared their perspectives on the hotly contested 2017 New Jersey governor’s race.
- How bias can shape news coverage. Many news reports have dubbed the horrific massacre in Las Vegas “the deadliest shooting in American history.” The only problem with the dramatic superlative? It isn’t true. “Please avoid hyperbolic language … don’t describe this as the worst ever; there are plenty of things in our history that were worse,” implored Bryan Pollard, a Cherokee who is president of the Native American Journalists Association.
- Journalists should avoid simple explanations after mass shootings. You can’t just point to violent movies or the political climate and find a motivation. Instead, experts say, the motive is often a collection of many factors from mental illness to problems with public assimilation. Mass shooters often see themselves as insignificant or having been rejected by society.
- Pew’s analysis of early Trump coverage: plenty of polarization, and a focus on personality over policy. Over 70 percent of the stories Pew analyzed framed stories this way, compared to 26 percent of stories that focused on the policy agenda.
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.
