Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight
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Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight
Social marketing, PR insight & thought leadership - from The PR Coach
Curated by Jeff Domansky
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Facebook Says Its Fake News Label Helps Reduce the Spread of a Fake Story By 80%

Facebook Says Its Fake News Label Helps Reduce the Spread of a Fake Story By 80% | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

BuzzFeed News obtained an email sent by a Facebook executive to its fact-checking partners that for the first time shared internal data about the program.

 

A news story that's been labeled false by Facebook's third-party fact-checking partners sees its future impressions on the platform drop by 80%, according to new data contained in an email sent by a Facebook executive and obtained by BuzzFeed News.

 

The message also said it typically takes "over three days" for the label to be applied to a false story, and that Facebook wants to work with its partners to speed the process....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Do you think Facebook's "Fake News" label is working?

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Facebook takes down data and thousands of posts, obscuring reach of Russian disinformation

Facebook takes down data and thousands of posts, obscuring reach of Russian disinformation | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

Social media analyst Jonathan Albright got a call from Facebook the day after he published research last week showing that the reach of the Russian disinformation campaign was almost certainly largerthan the company had disclosed. While the company had said 10 million people read Russian-bought ads, Albright had data suggesting that the audience was at least double that — and maybe much more — if ordinary free Facebook posts were measured as well.

 

Albright welcomed the chat with three company officials. But he was not pleased to discover that they had done more than talk about their concerns regarding his research. They also had scrubbed from the Internet nearly everything — thousands of Facebook posts and the related data — that had made the work possible.

 

Never again would he or any other researcher be able to run the kind of analysis he had done just days earlier.

 

“This is public interest data,” Albright said Wednesday, expressing frustration that such a rich trove of information had disappeared — or at least moved somewhere the public can’t see it. “This data allowed us to at least reconstruct some of the pieces of the puzzle. Not everything, but it allowed us to make sense of some of this thing.”...

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Facebook said it squashed “a bug.” Researchers say it is hiding crucial information. Talk about covering your ass. Fakebook is the only way to describe this move.

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How a Paper Supporting Colonialism Hacked Academic Metrics - MediaShift

How a Paper Supporting Colonialism Hacked Academic Metrics - MediaShift | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

Two weeks ago, development studies journal Third World Quarterly published an article that, by many common metrics used in academia today, will be the most successful in its 38-year history. The paper, in a few days, achieved a higher Altmetric Attention Score than any other TWQ paper. By the rules of modern academia, this is a triumph. The problem is, the paper is not.


Academic articles are now evaluated according to essentially the same metrics as Buzzfeed posts and Instagram selfies.


The article, “The case for colonialism,” is a travesty, the academic equivalent of a Trump tweet, clickbait with footnotes. Its author, Bruce Gilley, a professor at the Department of Political Science at Portland State University, sets out to question the “orthodoxy” of the last 100 years that has given colonialism a bad name.

 

He argues that western colonialism was “as a general rule, both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate,” and goes on to say that instead of taking a critical view of colonial and imperial history, we should be “recolonising some areas” and “creating new Western colonies from scratch”.


So how did this article rise to such prominence and apparent success? Arguments for colonialism have been made in academia before; however, Gilley’s article contributes no new evidence or datasets, and discussing its empirical shortfalls and blindness to vast sections of colonial history would go far beyond the scope of this post. 

Jeff Domansky's insight:

We've gone from fake news to fake academia in a very short time and it's not good news. Interesting post! Recommended reading.  9/10

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Analysis | Fighting falsehoods around the world: A dispatch on the growing global fact-checking movement

Analysis | Fighting falsehoods around the world: A dispatch on the growing global fact-checking movement | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

MADRID — “Nos encanta la verdad.” We love the truth.


Political fact-checking has existed in the United States for many years. FactCheck.org was established in 2003, and The Washington Post Fact Checker and PolitiFact were launched in 2007.


In recent years, this movement representing a new form of accountability journalism has exploded around the globe. Now, there are 126 fact-checking organizations in 49 countries. Clearly, voters in many countries care about and want to know the truth.


About 190 fact-checkers from 54 countries attended the fourth annual Global Fact-Checking Summit, July 5-7, 2017. The International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter Institute hosted the summit. The first meeting of fact-checkers from around the world took place in 2014, with 50 fact-checkers. Now the community has grown so much that we needed a “speed meeting” session for introductions....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Political fact checking is exploding around the world.

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NASA Denies That It’s Running a Child Slave Colony on Mars

NASA Denies That It’s Running a Child Slave Colony on Mars | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

A report on Alex Jones’ InfoWars claiming child sex slaves have been kidnapped and shipped to Mars is untrue, NASA told The Daily Beast on Thursday.


“There are no humans on Mars. There are active rovers on Mars. There was a rumor going around last week that there weren’t. There are,” Guy Webster, a spokesperson for Mars exploration at NASA, told The Daily Beast. “But there are no humans.”


On Thursday’s program, the InfoWars host welcomed guest Robert David Steele onto The Alex Jones Show, which airs on 118 radio stations nationwide, to talk about kidnapped children he said have been sent on a two-decade mission to space....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Speaking of fake news... On Thursday, nutbar Alex Jones welcomed a guest to talk about how kidnapped children have been sent on a two-decade mission to space. NASA now denies the interplanetary conspiracy.

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Fake News Isn't New; History Offers A Way To Fight It - MediaShift

Fake News Isn't New; History Offers A Way To Fight It - MediaShift | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

Imagine opening your morning newspaper (itself a novelty these days) and finding a story about, not just life, but entire civilizations on another planet, attributed to one of the world’s foremost astronomers. Would you believe it, or might you suspect that some “alternative facts” had found their way to your doorstep?


Back in 1835, many readers in New York ended up believing just such a tale. The New York Sun, then one of the city’s leading newspapers, printed an elaborate six-part series about exotic animals living on the moon (including human-like creatures with wings), purportedly discovered through a gigantic newfangled telescope. The source of the information was Sir John Herschel, who was an actual real-life astronomer but had nothing whatsoever to do with the Sun’s scoop.


Rough image of lithograph of “ruby amphitheater” described in the New York Sun newspaper in August 1835.


Public domain image.Somebody at the Sun (just who remains something of a mystery) made the whole thing up, in an effort to goose its circulation. The hoax did eventually unravel, although the newspaper never retracted the story.


Today, of course, we are battling similarly fake news, found not only in dark corners of the Internet but in mainstream venues such as Facebook. Yet, even in our “post-truth” world, it is still virtually unthinkable that a major newspaper in a major U.S. city would publish information that it knew to be demonstrably false....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Fake news has a "storied" history in journalism and Rich Shumate shares a great example from the New York Sun in 1835. Recommended reading! 10/10

Lezen over media's curator insight, May 22, 2017 8:11 AM
Leven op de maan - nepnieuws uit 1835.
rodrick rajive lal's curator insight, May 22, 2017 10:07 PM
Fake News is certainly not new! Joseph Goebells used fake news combined with propaganda techniques to spread deliberate miss-information. Socialist Governments in the Pre-Berlin wall era used fake news to keep the 'herd' together. 
 
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Exclusive: Even Pokémon Go used by extensive Russian-linked meddling effort

Exclusive: Even Pokémon Go used by extensive Russian-linked meddling effort | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

Russian efforts to meddle in US politics didn't end at Facebook and Twitter. The tentacles of one campaign extended to YouTube, Tumblr and even Pokémon Go!

 

One Russian-linked campaign posing as part of the Black Lives Matter movement used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and Pokémon Go and even contacted some reporters in an effort to exploit racial tensions and sow discord among Americans, CNN has learned.

 

The campaign, titled "Don't Shoot Us," offers new insights into how Russian agents created a broad online ecosystem where divisive political messages were reinforced across multiple platforms, amplifying a campaign that appears to have been run from one source -- the shadowy, Kremlin-linked troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency.

 

A source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN that the Don't Shoot Us Facebook page was one of the 470 accounts taken down after the company determined they were linked to the IRA. CNN has separately established the links between the Facebook page and the other Don't Shoot Us accounts....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

It's like Alice in Wonderland, ain't it? Curiouser and curiouser.

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40% of Americans won’t believe accurate news stories about Hillary Clinton

40% of Americans won’t believe accurate news stories about Hillary Clinton | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

We may already be living in a truthless dystopia.

It’s no secret that the professional media is in crisis. But what if the situation is even worse than those of us in the industry thought?

What if vast swaths of the public no longer believe the news on controversial political stories, even when it comes from established media outlets?

What if the public ascribes no value to professional news organizations?

That situation may sound terrifying to journalists and media owners, but we may be heading there quickly.

Researchers at Yale University have found that 40% of the public are now willing to dismiss perfectly accurate stories, regardless of the source. What may be even more disturbing is that articles sourced to a top news brand are perceived to have no more credibility than articles sourced to a joke brand, or none at all.

Jeff Domansky's insight:

No easy wins in a world of the fake news and low media credibility.

Keith Ramos's curator insight, September 29, 2017 9:03 PM
This article is interesting because it points out how Americans are causing major credibility issues to news sources. The claim of the study is that Americans are beginning to not believe the news, even from top news brands and another percentage of people are even believing fake news. An online study of 7500 people conducted by Yale found that 40% of the public are now willing to dismiss perfectly accurate stories, regardless of the source, even when provided with credible new from a reliable source such as NPR. In contrast to this, a fake news article about President Trump was believed by 17% of those participants. This study essentially indicates that even real news is subject to a major credibility problem and that if these trends increase so will the problem. 

R- The article is reputable because it provides a well known and credible source (Yale University), as well as provides precise statistics and evidence from the study that was conducted

A- The article provides a good ability to observe because it is based on a study that observes/analyzes the response of the subjects in the survey.

V- There doesn't appear to be any vested interests in the article, and it only provides awareness of the issues at hand.

E- There is expertise in this article, and it comes from Yale’s David Rand, an associate professor of psychology, management and economics, and postdoctoral fellow Gordon Pennycook who are responsible for conducting the study.

N- The survey in the article may be somewhat biased because the questions asked were about Clinton/Trump, so the answers may be affected due to the fact that some side with Trump while others side with Clintom.
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The fake news machine: Inside a town gearing up for 2020

The fake news machine: Inside a town gearing up for 2020 | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

There's a whole industry dedicated to producing fake US news in Macedonia – and it's getting ready for 2020.

 

Veles used to make porcelain for the whole of Yugoslavia. Now it makes fake news.

 

This sleepy riverside town in Macedonia is home to dozens of website operators who churn out bogus stories designed to attract the attention of Americans. Each click adds cash to their bank accounts.

 

The scale is industrial: Over 100 websites were tracked here during the final weeks of the 2016 U.S. election campaign, producing fake news that mostly favored Republican candidate for President Donald Trump....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

The Macedonian town that pushed a big share of fake news is the subject of an excellent CNN profile news story. Absolutely recommended reading!  10/10

Philippe Coll's curator insight, September 20, 2017 11:17 AM
La Macédoine contre les Etats-Unis. Cela rappelle furieusement le roman de Vargas Llosa "Tante Julia et le scribouillard" : l'histoire d'un pays littéralement pris en otage par un créateur de feuilleton radio qui réussit même à créer des manifs contre ses têtes de turc : les "Albanais" (dans la version portée à l'écran). Sauf qu'ici, c'est le contraire : ce sont les Albanais (les Macédoniens) qui inventent les histoires. Et le feuilleton radio est remplacé par les fake news.
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Trump loves to say media companies are 'failing' — here's how they're actually performing

Trump loves to say media companies are 'failing' — here's how they're actually performing | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

President Donald Trump often labels media companies as "failing." He's taken shots at BuzzFeed during press conferences. He's repeatedly pounded on CNN, and particularly enjoyed that network's recent journalism stumble.


And of course, Trump has hammered the MSNBC show "Morning Joe" this week, causing a political firestorm that has stretched across both parties.


If you follow the advertising business, you'd not be surprised to hear that traditional media business models are under a lot of pressure as consumer consumption habits are going through rapid changes driven by technology.


But here's an ongoing question: are the media companies Trump refers to as "failing" actually failing? Here's a look at how these companies are performing from an audience and financial perspective....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

President Trump has labeled a slew of media companies, including the New York Times and CNN, as 'failing,' Here's a look at how they are really performing. Just the facts!

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'Daily Beast' Argues Fighting Fake News Is Good Business

'Daily Beast' Argues Fighting Fake News Is Good Business | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

I’m here to preach the gospel of quality news, and to talk about how combating fake news and hate news can not only be good journalism, but… good business.”


Thus, Daily Beast editor-in-chief and managing director John Avlon opened MediaPost's Publishing Insider Summit, with a keynote addressing the hot-button issue that has come to symbolize America’s dysfunction and threaten its democracy — while mapping a way forward.


Avlon began by acknowledging the decline of trust in media, pointing to a number of trends, including the rise of partisan media, which was an “attempt to balance implicit bias on the part of mainstream media with explicit bias,” as well as the fragmentation of the broader media environment....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Daily Beast Editor John Avlon and the fight against fake news.

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