Real News About Fake News
The growing stream of reporting on and data about fake news, misinformation, partisan content, and news literacy is hard to keep up with. This weekly roundup offers the highlights of what you might have missed.
Laura Hazard OwenMay 20, 2021
Plus: “Partisanship turned out to be the strongest predictor of Americans’ knowledge, even surpassing education,” and how local news organizations fought Covid-19 misinformation in their communities.
Laura Hazard OwenFebruary 12, 2021
Plus: Twitter’s Birdwatch is pretty useless so far.
Laura Hazard OwenFebruary 5, 2021
Plus: A thorough report on why social media is not biased against conservatives, and TikTok takes new steps to reduce the spread of unverified videos.
Laura Hazard OwenJanuary 8, 2021
“While enforcing their rules on the president may help prevent him from egging on his followers further, the rush to delete videos posted by those very followers may end up making them harder to hold accountable. “
Laura Hazard OwenDecember 4, 2020
Plus: Cut the CRAAP, and Facebook’s Oversight Board announces the first cases it will take on.
Laura Hazard OwenOctober 30, 2020
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Mike Lee says fact-checking is a form of censorship, and Wikipedia explains how it plans to fight Election Day misinformation.
Laura Hazard OwenOctober 9, 2020
“Crowdsourcing is a promising approach for helping to identify misinformation at scale.”
Laura Hazard OwenOctober 2, 2020
Plus: How Trump’s 2016 digital campaign sought to suppress the Black vote, and people on both sides of the political spectrum are vulnerable to misinformation about mail dumping.
Laura Hazard OwenSeptember 18, 2020
“Conspiracies are flourishing with virtually no response from credible Spanish-language media outlets.”
Laura Hazard OwenSeptember 4, 2020
“Even when companies are handed misinformation on a silver platter, they fail to act.”
Laura Hazard OwenAugust 21, 2020
“The more often participants had heard a statement, the more likely they were to attribute it to Consumer Reports rather than the National Enquirer.”
Laura Hazard OwenAugust 7, 2020
Plus: All misinformation is local; a very specific kind of Covid-19 misinformation in Facebook parent groups; and “religious clickbait.”
Laura Hazard OwenJuly 31, 2020
And what about Trump’s hydroxychloroquine and bleach proclamations?
Laura Hazard OwenJuly 17, 2020
Plus what happens when climate facts get treated as climate opinions.
Laura Hazard OwenJuly 10, 2020
Plus: How a fake news headline came to be (there are no “Obama-Soros Antifa Supersoldiers”) and trends in Covid-19 misinformation.
