Navigating Information Sources in a Time of Fake News and Alternative Facts

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1 Navigating Information Sources in a Time of Fake News and Alternative Facts Kimberly Pendell Social Work & Social Sciences Librarian kpendell@pdx.edu

2 Overview & Examples of Fake News

3 Fwd: GUTLESS AMERICA'S GOVERNMENT GONE WILD!!!!!!!!!!!

4 (Very Brief) History of Fake News in the U.S. Historical manifestations: Propaganda Hoaxes ¹ Yellow journalism Transmitted via: Pamphlets Newspapers

5 (Very Brief) History Continued Contemporary Definitions: Satire/parody False/misleading articles ² News that is unfavorable to the Administration Transmitted via: Social networks Websites

6 Examples

8 Motivations behind Fake News $$$ from Google and Facebook ad services ³ ⁴ Advancing an ideology Spreading conspiracy theories Perpetrating a hoax

9 Our Ideological & Technological Filters

10 Role of Social Media Social media allows us to build our own information network of friends ⁵ Facebook tailors our news feed based on our profile, our friends, and engagement data We share links to articles that we don t read ⁶

11 Wall St. Journal s Blue Feed, Red Feed

12 Alternative Facts

13 Examples of Alternative Facts Inaugural crowd size Illegal voting Immigrants as violent criminals Paid protestors

15 Alt Fact Fact As suggested by the term alt-right, purveyors of alt-facts confront established facts with extreme alternatives. Alt-facts, and the alt-truth they support, attempt to gain popular adherence by denouncing consensual facts. Consensual facts are discredited as products of a privileged establishment, whose views are sustained through groupthink and exercises of domination. ⁷ -- Michael Lynch, Professor, Department of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University

16 Evaluation of Information Sources

17 What is Authority? Authority is constructed via methodologically collected evidence Authority is contextual via social agreements, acknowledging distinctions between office and expertise

18 Journalism s Defining Attributes: VIA ⁸ Verification: a process establishing accuracy, utilizing direct evidence and indirect evidence Independence: free of influence and focused on informing the public Accountability: reporters identified with bylines, corrections and retractions issued quickly and responsibly

19 Evaluate Information Sources with RADAR ⁹ Rationale: why did the author write it? Authority: does the author have expertise in the field? Date: is the information current? Accuracy: is there evidence cited? Relevance: does it address your information need?

20 Fact Checking Sites FactCheck.org A nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. Politifact PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics. Snopes Reference source for urban legends, news, rumors, and misinformation.

21 Recommendations Critically evaluate news articles Be wary of articles that appeal strongly to emotion or easily fit ideological narratives Model the sharing of credible news and information on social media Step outside of your filter bubble for diverse perspectives Support ($) independent journalism and hold news media accountable

22 References Mulford, C. (2008). Benjamin Franklin's savage eloquence: Hoaxes from the press at Passy, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 152(4) Gillin, J. (2017, January 27). Fact-checking fake news reveals how hard it is to kill pervasive nasty weed online. Politifact.com. Silverman, C. & Alexander, L. (2016, November 3). How teens in the Balkans are duping Trump supporters with fake news. Buzzfeed News. Silverman (2017, February 27). This is how your hyperpartisan political news gets made. Buzzfeed News. Pew Research Center. (2014) Political Polarization and Media Habits. Retrieved from: Gabielkov, M., Ramachandran, A., Chaintreau, A., Legout, A. (2016). Social clicks: What and who gets read on Twitter? ACM SIGMETRICS / IFIP Performance 2016 Conference, Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France. Lynch, M. (2017) Post-truth, alt-facts, and asymmetric controversies (Part I): Between liars and truthers [Blog post]. First 100 days: Narratives of normalization and disruption. Retrieved from: Digital Resource Center, Stony Brook Center for News Literacy (2017). News Literacy [Course Pack]. Retrieved from: Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4),

23 Small Group Discussion Do you think fake news should be curtailed and by whom? Google and Facebook have begun to filter sites they have identified as fake news. Do you agree with this strategy? Technology capable of falsifying video and audio is growing more powerful and accessible. Fake news, propaganda, and hyper-partisanship has made productive political discourse more difficult. Are there ways to improve communication across political division?

Explaining the Spread of Misinformation on Social Media: Evidence from the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.

Explaining the Spread of Misinformation on Social Media: Evidence from the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Pablo Barberá Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science London School of Economics