Top 10: What We’ve Been Reading and Sharing, October 2020

Each day Sourcefabric shares on social media a wide range of stories affecting the converging worlds of journalism and technology. If you haven’t had the opportunity, be sure to follow us on Twitter (@Sourcefabric), Facebook (Sourcefabric), YouTube (Sourcefabric), LinkedIn (sourcefabric) and, of course, here on Medium.

Our monthly Top 10 list is based upon the number of impressions each story received on Twitter.

1. Why did @Facebook finally take down QAnon, ban holocaust denials, and flag Trump for calling his followers his “army”? Probably because of the self-appointed watchdog group led by @carolecadwalla, according to @suehalpernVT. https://j.mp/2IusX73 via @NewYorker
2. The Electronic Frontier Foundation looks at how targeted disinformation campaigns are being used on @Facebook in the run-up to the US presidential election, calling out the platform for not being transparent about these ads. https://j.mp/2JhulKZ by @NaomiGilens @doctorow @EFF
3. Denise Lievesley, the former director of statistics at @UNESCO, leads this recent online @risj_oxford seminar: A Guide to Statistics for Journalists, the Battle Against Misinformation. https://j.mp/34cwsro
4. ICYMI: All of the sessions from @OpenSourceOrg’s first #stateofthesource summit are up and ready for viewing on their YouTube channel: “Now, more than ever, is the time to foster global connections, knowledge exchange and cross-border collaboration.” https://j.mp/370uwns
5. Local and regional newspapers in Europe have learned to scale back their reliance on @Facebook to achieve algorithmic reach, instead using it to strategically promote subscriptions, connect with targeted groups, and reach new audiences. https://j.mp/2Hy7IkA via @risj_oxford
6. Could Algorithmic Editor be a top journo job of the future? Requirements: Comfortable with tech and its possibilities while being aware of its limitations; communicates fluently with data models at the core of machine learning. https://j.mp/35lZTXd @CharlieBeckett @PolisLSE
7. Ignore science at your own peril: @SaraSchurmann urges journalists on every continent to cover the climate seriously, and look at the big picture of new temperature records, stronger hurricanes, droughts, fires, floods, and species going extinct. https://j.mp/34wMf33 via @GIJN
8. What’s the state of journalism in the world’s largest democracy? “Protest and journalism are criminal acts, Parliament is irrelevant, duties supersede rights, and profanity flows from the ordinary”, writes @samar11. https://j.mp/3dwwTjr via @scroll_in
9. Time to double down on fact-checkers: With the US presidential election just days away, newsrooms are bracing themselves for a torrent of misinformation and conspiracy theories. https://j.mp/34Tsinl by @Jamie_Wiseman_via @journalismnews
10. The Journalist Studio from @Google is a suite of tools for journalists powered by AI and machine learning technologies. Their latest free tools include Pinpoint, for managing large data sets, and Common Knowledge Project for charting and visualising data. https://j.mp/3dxGmXm