Lawrence W. Reed, a resident of Newnan, is president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education. His most recent book is “Was Jesus a Socialist?” He can be reached at lreed@fee.org .
How QAnon is spreading during the pandemic — and more lessons on fake news – The Washington Post
How QAnon is spreading during the pandemic — and more lessons on fake news – The Washington Post
The material comes from the project’s newsletter, the Sift, which takes the most recent viral rumors, conspiracy theories, hoaxes and journalistic ethics issues and turns them into timely lessons with discussion prompts and links. The Sift, which is published weekly during the school year, has more than 10,000 subscribers, most of them educators.
The News Literacy Project also offers a program called Checkology, a browser-based platform designed for students in grades 6 through 12 that helps prepare the next generation to easily identify misinformation. Now, during the coronavirus pandemic, the project is offering access to Checkology Premium at no cost to educators and parents in the United States. More than 1,100 educators and parents in 49 states and D.C. have registered to use the platform with as many as 90,000 students.
You can learn more about the News Literacy Project and all of the educational resources it provides in this piece, but here is a rundown:
Founded more than a decade ago by Alan Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the Los Angeles Times, the News Literacy Project is the leading provider of news literacy education.
It creates digital curriculums and other resources, and works with educators and journalists to teach middle school and high school students how to recognize news and information
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Machines are mimicking human writing and generalising fake news. Can AI lead the fightback? – Economic Times
Machines are mimicking human writing and generalising fake news. Can AI lead the fightback? – Economic Times
Machines can only replace jobs with numbers, they said. Until machines wrote what the masses read. Last week, The Guardian published an article, written by a robot, trying to convince the readers that robots have arrived with friendly intentions. Yes, a machine wrote an article. The robot was OpenAI’s language generator, GPT-3, which uses machine learning to produce human-like text. The tool is creating generated text, indistinguishable from
Need to check fake news business – The Times of India Blog
Need to check fake news business – The Times of India Blog
Undoubtedly, social media has given a run for the money to the traditional media and destroyed the reputation of many journalists who could in their hey days get away easily manipulating or hiding the truth to help one or the other political party. The social media has also given an avenue to billions to express themselves, exchange views and learn from each others experiences. It has surely dented the ability of some mischievous journalists who thought that they could manipulate the perception of the people.
Notwithstanding the above, social media has also led to a problem of fake news and misinformation which in my opinion is now fast reaching dangerous proportions and if it is not checked now, it can someday create mayhem in the society.
People unabashedly are circulating Fake data to tarnish the image of Government, circulating photo shopped pictures of political rivals, great personalities to vilify their characters, spreading fake messages to whip up communal sentiments- instigate riots and violence, , create panic amongst masses like the one we witnessed during lockdown at Bandra railway station and Anand Vihar Bus station. There are numerous examples one can give ;
One. Muzzafarnagar riots of 2013: fake video fuelled communal passions.
Two. Pic showing Gandhiji pleading Nathuram Not to shoot.
Three. Pic showing Nehruji dancing with a damsel.
Four. A pic showing an old couple tied to a tree by the owners of Private company who are grabbing the land of this poor couple ; to prove How Mr Modi’s policies are
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Kicking around the ‘fake news’ tag | Opinion | fergusfallsjournal.com – Fergus Falls Daily Journal
Kicking around the ‘fake news’ tag | Opinion | fergusfallsjournal.com – Fergus Falls Daily Journal
I bet you didn’t know I, Joel Myhre, used to be a kicker in the Canadian Football League. I played for the Toronto Argonauts from 1989 to 1992. We actually won the CFL championship in 1991. I set the CFL record by making 32 consecutive field goals that year.
None of this is true, of course. But I am writing this because this column will be uploaded to the internet. So I thought I would experiment to see if my bold-faced lie will actually be turned into truth somewhere in cyberland.
I bring this up because the other day, while entering Walmart, while wearing a Mr. Rogers T-shirt, someone told me that Mr. Rogers, the long-time children’s show host, was covered in tattoos from his days serving as a U.S. Navy Seal in Vietnam, with more than 25 confirmed kills to his name.
Like my
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Election officials in Bihar told to fact check, call out fake news – Hindustan Times
Election officials in Bihar told to fact check, call out fake news – Hindustan Times
Tackling the menace of fake news has emerged one of the top concerns of the state election department in Bihar, which has introduced a fact check concept where district magistrates and district election officers have been directed to post correct updates on the official websites immediately after detection of any fake news or rumours on various media platforms, especially social media.
A template has also been attached with the letter sent by the election department to DMs for fact checking.
“The idea of ‘fact check’ is to provide correct information about any development in case there is false news circulating in the social media. This is the first time such a system will be implemented during assembly polls in Bihar,” said an election officer.
State’s additional chief electoral officer Ranjita said, “Checking fake news is one of the priority areas. Immediate action would be taken against those indulging in such activities.”
The state election department has also started the process of shadow zone area mapping of booths to assess whether booths, especially located in rural and remote areas, have good mobile connectivity or not.
Sources said telecom service providers would be asked to make necessary arrangements in areas of poor connectivity or provision would be made for satellite phones. Officials said the increased focus on checking the mobile connectivity near booths this time is because of the stress on digital mode of communication with polling personnel in view of the Covid-related safeguards.
The vulnerability mapping of booths to identity polling stations where there is
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‘Fake news’ did not trigger India’s worst migrant crisis. Government apathy did – Scroll.in
‘Fake news’ did not trigger India’s worst migrant crisis. Government apathy did – Scroll.in
Going by the government’s response to questions in Parliament, there was no migrant crisis triggered by a nationwide lockdown declared at four hours’ notice by the prime minister on March 23.
In reply to a question on why the lockdown to contain the coronavirus had been declared at such short notice, Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai replied it was to “stop the untraceable movement of people from one place to another within the country”. Rai added that the government ensured all basic amenities – food, water, medical care – would be provided. Misinformation that such amenities would run out might have sent some migrant workers scattering home in a panic, he surmised.
Yet, a large number of migrant journeys have slipped through the cracks of government records. According to Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar’s replies on September 14, about 10 million migrants went home during the lockdown and the Centre could not account for about four million. Gangwar could only say that 63.07 lakh people had been transported home on Shramik trains where food and water were provided free of cost. On the number of non-Covid deaths during lockdown, on the compensation promised for the families of lockdown victims, on jobs lost during lockdown, the government had no data.
The replies either misrepresent the realities of the lockdown or leave vital gaps in information.
To begin with, fears that basic amenities
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No, antifa supporters aren’t setting fires in the West — and more lessons on fake news about covid-19, Trump and Biden – The Washington Post
No, antifa supporters aren’t setting fires in the West — and more lessons on fake news about covid-19, Trump and Biden – The Washington Post
The material comes from the project’s newsletter, the Sift, which takes the most recent viral rumors, conspiracy theories, hoaxes and journalistic ethics issues and turns them into timely lessons with discussion prompts and links. The Sift, which is published weekly during the school year, has more than 10,000 subscribers, most of them educators.
The News Literacy Project also offers a program called Checkology, a browser-based platform designed for students in grades six through 12 that helps prepare the next generation to easily identify misinformation. Now, during the coronavirus pandemic, the project is offering access to Checkology Premium at no cost to educators and parents in the United States. More than 1,100 educators and parents in 49 states and D.C. have registered to use the platform with as many as 90,000 students.
You can learn more about the News Literacy Project and all of the educational resources it provides in this piece, but here is a rundown:
Founded more than a decade ago by Alan Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the Los Angeles Times, the News Literacy Project is the leading provider of news literacy education.
It creates digital curriculums and other resources and works with educators and journalists to teach middle school and high school students how to recognize news and information
Source…
Generation Z Beats Boomers in Spotting Fake News – Voice of America
Generation Z Beats Boomers in Spotting Fake News – Voice of America
Members of so-called Generation Z are less – not more – likely to fall for the spread of misinformation and fake news, according to recent studies and polls published by news outlet Axios.
A recent study published in Science Advances found that Americans older than 65 – also known as baby boomers – are more likely to share fake news links on Facebook than younger Americans born after 1996 (Generation Z).
Survey data from 2016 showed that boomers shared nearly seven times as many fake news articles on Facebook than younger Americans between the ages of 18 and 29.
“Our most robust and consistent finding is that older Americans were more likely to share articles from fake news domains,” stated the study. “This relationship holds even when we condition on other factors, such as education, party affiliation, ideological self-placement, and overall posting activity.”
Among Gen Z college students, 83% receive most of their news from online news sites and social media, Axios reported from a College Reaction poll of 868 students.
Social media and online content play a huge role as Gen Z’s source of information. According to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey focused on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, “95% of 13- to 17-year-olds have access to a smartphone, and a similar share (97%) use at least one of seven major online platforms.”
But only 7% of Gen Z college students found social media to be the most trustworthy news source. Instead, more than 50% of Gen Z students
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Kazakh Activist’s ‘Fake News’ Conviction Upheld – The Diplomat – The Diplomat
Kazakh Activist’s ‘Fake News’ Conviction Upheld – The Diplomat – The Diplomat
A court in Kazakhstan has upheld the conviction of Alnur Ilyashev, who was found guilty of spreading “false information” amid the coronavirus pandemic. The “false information” was his opinions about the Kazakh government’s handling of the pandemic. The case underscores the flexibility of “fake news” laws and illustrates their general use to quash dissent.
In June, Ilyashev was found guilty of the “dissemination of knowingly false information that threatens public order during the state of emergency.” Kazakhstan’s state of emergency ran from March 16, after the country recorded its first COVID-19 case, to May 11.
Ilyashev was sentenced to three years of restricted freedom and banned from social or political activism for five years.
As I wrote in June:
What false information landed Ilyashev in so much trouble? Simply his opinion, stated online. In late March, Ilyashev made a series of Facebook posts critical of the government’s pandemic responses. He criticized First President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s appeal for businessmen to pool funds to fight the virus. “A mountain gave birth to a mouse,” he quipped, noting that Kazakhstan’s richest had only managed to put together $41 million. In another post, he called Nur Otan — Kazakhstan’s ruling party, founded and run still by Nazarbayev — a party of “crooks and thieves.”
On April 17, Ilyashev was arrested. The authorities alleged that his online statements “endangered public order” during the state of emergency. (Kazakhstan’s state of emergency ran from March 16 to May
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