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News on Credibility and Trust
On February 27, a few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, radio journalist Valerii Nechay returned to St. Petersburg from a trip to the North Caucasus to find three men in his apartment. Wearing masks to disguise their features, they told him that if he wanted his mother to be left unharmed, he should leave the […]
By Peter GuestIn West Africa, fact-checkers are cooperating to expand their influence on local, national and international levels to curb misinformation about vaccines. Organizations are banding together, forming alliances with intergovernmental groups and creating cross-continent task forces to elevate health knowledge across Africa. “I think the most important thing is to highlight how fact-checkers leverage collaboration to […]
By Seth SmalleyThe chaotic Chinese social network Douban never looked for fame; it was designed for people with niche obsessions and an urge to talk about them. It was founded in Beijing in 2005, the same year that two University of Virginia roommates were busily coding the system that would become Reddit, a year before Jack Dorsey […]
By Viola ZhouWhile trust in political institutions rapidly deteriorates and the technology and media companies that we rely on repeatedly fail to meet our information needs, the public still overwhelmingly trusts libraries. That’s because librarians fulfill a service mission as community information stewards–long serving as the only place people can go for free internet access, computer instruction, […]
The NITRD NCO and the NSF, as part of an interagency working group on information integrity, request input from interested parties on a range of questions pertaining to Federal priorities for research and development efforts to address misinformation and disinformation. The purpose of this RFI is to understand ways in which the Federal Government might […]
By Federal RegisterNew investments flooding partisan media platforms are starting to restructure America’s internet business around the nation’s deepening political divide. Why it matters: For years, internet theorists have warned of the “splinternet,” a breakup of the global internet into regions governed by different rules and laws. Something like that is now starting to happen within the U.S., […]
By Sara Fischer and Scott RosenbergIn mid-March, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine crept into its third week, an unusual video started making the rounds on social media and was even broadcast on the television channel Ukraine 24 due to the efforts of hackers. The video appeared to show Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stilted with his head moving and his […]
By Jackson CoteTwenty years ago, when I set up the Science Media Centre, researchers were notably absent from the nation’s airwaves. Frenzies about Frankenstein foods, designer babies and MMR may have gripped the media but most scientists put their heads down and tried to avoid controversy. The price was the British public’s rejection of GM technologies and levels of […]
By Fiona FoxAs war envelops Ukraine, Russian sources have strived to create a miasma of disinformation about the invasion. Among ample efforts to distort reality, the Russian Ministry of Defense asserted recently that U.S.-backed labs in Ukraine have been developing bioweapons. Outlandish as this falsehood may be, Fox’s Tucker Carlson gave it credence by arguing that the […]
By David Robert GrimesThe Social Media Summit @ MIT (SMS @ MIT) brings together the world’s leaders in social technology to examine one of the most critical and compelling issues of our time – the impact of social media on our democracies, our economies, and our public health — with a vision to craft meaningful solutions to the […]
Today we rarely recall Roosevelt’s early assertions of “neutrality” or his categorical pronouncements of what the American military would not do when faced with a war of aggression and conquest in Europe. (Given his own , President Joe Biden seems to have forgotten some of this history.) We have also forgotten that, as the Nazis […]
By Rory Finnin and Jon Rozenbeek