Launched: the Trust Project
Coming soon to your Facebook, The Trust Project is like nutrition labels for your news feed, letting you know where a story comes from, what that news organization’s ethical standards are, background about the story’s author, and more.
Sally Lehrman, creator of the program housed at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, is organizing a growing and long list of major international media organizations. They’re writing trust indicators into their backend coding, enabling search engines and social media sites such as Google, Facebook, Bing, and Twitter to find and display this crucial information.
- See the Trust Project at work on BBC News, The Globe and Mail, La Stampa, and more.
- Read the NiemanLab report on the launch and this account by Adam Smith, deputy community editor for The Economist, on why the magazine is joining in.
How disordered is your information?
Exit “fake news,” enter information disorder.
Worth a deep dive, the 100+-page report, Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking, written for the Council of Europe by Claire Wardle and Hussein Derakhshan, provides a comprehensive, systemic look at the many types and and means by which misinformation enters our lives. Jettisoning the term “fake news” is a first step: it is “woefully inadequate to describe the complex phenomena of mis- and dis-information.”
- Read the executive summary or full report, along with list of recommendations for tech companies, governments, media organizations, philanthropy and more.
- Wardle presented at the first meeting of the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy in October.
Twitter isn’t just for clicks
Newsrooms should harness social media to fight misinformation — but many don’t even know where to start.
A new survey of 59 U.S. newsrooms shows that they give short shrift to the potential for countering misinformation as part of their social media strategy: “dealing with misinformation was next-to-last,” on the list of newsroom’s social media strategy. Instead, newsrooms are stuck in old modes of click-seeking, writes Jane Elizabeth, the director of the Accountability Journalism Program for the American Press Institute.
- Read the full report, including practical recommendations and links to resources.
What are practical ways to harness social media and online search engines to help fight misinformation?
