When journalists start guessing whether or not sources are lying, though, they can introduce their own biases and preconceptions...

Many different projects currently try to improve audience’s trust in news. With many different names swirling around, it’s easy to get confused. Nieman Lab examines which projects exist and what sets them apart.

As newspapers die, so too does democracy.

Today the EU Commission released the final report from the High Level Expert Group on Fake News, entitled “A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Disinformation”.

When mistakes inevitably occur, they multiply across dozens or even hundreds of websites, seep into other reporting that’s built on wire stories and leave audiences with false impressions.

False information spreads much faster and farther than the truth on Twitter-and although it is tempting to blame automated “bot” programs for this, human users are more at fault.

“It’s easier to be novel and surprising when you’re not bound by reality.”
It’s not bots. It’s us.

Twitter bots are not to blame - people seem to respond more strongly to false information, which tends to be more novel.

Falsehoods almost always beat out the truth on Twitter, penetrating further, faster, and deeper into the social network than accurate information.

It has been life changing. Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins.

“In these times of growing nationalism, populism and fake news, protecting the core values of public media has never been so important.” Public Media Alliance CEO, Sally-Ann Wilson, issued a call to action in support of public media worldwide.

Laws meant to curb “fake news” may be well intentioned, but their implementation has been sloppy, with few mechanisms to ensure accountability, transparency, or reversibility. Governments are outsourcing censorship to the private sector, where maximizing shareholder value, not upholding journalistic freedom, drives decision-making.

About the recently published paper Bridging the Gap, Rebuilding Citizen Trust in Media.

This step-by-step guide explains how to do a reverse image search to check whether the photo you saw on social media is the real thing.

Rating news sources is a complicated task. But rating Facebook is especially hard, because of the way it’s designed. Here’s a look at several critical issues the company is facing.

Internet intermediaries are increasingly playing the role that publishers and editors once played. From selecting sources to curating trending news to deciding which news is real or fake, companies like Facebook and Google are at the forefront of how much of the world receives its news.

The social network’s increasing threat to journalism.

Experts say what they call “computational propaganda” doesn’t just piggyback on social platforms; it is baked into the DNA and the business model of companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. And it’s going to take more than an algorithm tweak to get rid of it.

For a young person, online conduct can make or break the future. If your teen is in college application mode, start a conversation with this checklist for cleaning up the digital footprint.

Relying on examples of antisemitism uncovered by @GetTrollsOut monitors, the Linguistic Self-Defence Guide Against Antisemitism teaches you the most common hidden linguistic mechanisms that you can come across in antisemitic speech. Here are a number of tricks to look out for in order to protect yourself and avoid falling victim to manipulation.

Fake news has taken the world and especially America by storm, and in this episode, LSE talks with two academics who are part of LSE’s effort to define and address this threat to society. LSE talks with Charlie Beckett and Sonia Livingstone about fake news: what it is and what we can do about it.

This episode features Professor Charlie Beckett, Director of Polis, the Media Policy Project and the LSE Truth, Trust & Technology Commission; and Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE, Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE.

We need a renaissance of thought leadership, advocacy, and investment in building critical thinking skills and especially critical information consumption skills. Emerging initiatives for building information literacy skills show promise but remain paltry and sporadic.

People are tired of bad news, but report on something going right and they tend to take notice.

Over the past two years the “echo chamber” of the social media feed has become a Frankenstein creation for the internet age, a digital monstrosity denounced as the cause of unprecedented societal division and the root cause of shock results at the ballot box.

The biggest obstacle to having an informed electorate isn’t fake news, but the profit-hungry media seeking clicks and eyeballs.

The debate on the rise and spread of hate speech has become more and more lively during the last few years, combining with other debates concerning the “post-truth era” and the rise of populism. But what do we mean exactly by “hate speech”? Is it really a phenomenon on the rise, especially because of the Internet and social networks? And what are the most effective strategies to counter it?

Deep political divides in many nations on satisfaction with news media; greatest is in the U.S. A cross-national survey of news media habits by Pew Research Center.

Americans agree that certain behaviors constitute online harassment, but they are more divided on others.

The first hard data on fake-news consumption has arrived. Researchers last week posted an analysis of the browsing histories of thousands of adults during the run-up to the 2016 election — a real-time picture of who viewed which fake stories, and what real news those people were seeing at the same time.

The transparency movement has finally come of age. Power has shifted to the users. Their trust has to be earned in different ways now.