Quartz: “…As Putin and his allies have claimed, falsely, that Ukraine is committing genocide, controlled by Nazis, developing nuclear weapons, or launching attacks on pro-Russian civilians, the US has worked to “prebunk” these narratives, Harding says, arguing that “the final accounting is going to show that the strategy made Russia’s life much harder.” Our theory… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Social Media
How many people died believing vaccine misinformation?
Washington Post Opinion: “…In a just-published nationwide survey of 18,782 people across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the Covid States Project asked about four vaccine misinformation claims, asking respondents whether they were “true” or “false” or if a respondent was “not sure.” Five percent said they thought that vaccines contained microchips; 7… Continue Reading
Is Reddit a better search engine than Google?
Fast Company: “A new story anticipating the decline and fall of Google Search comes out about every month, but a blog post Tuesday, called “Google Search is Dying” by the blogger DKB was different. The blog shot up to the top of Hacker News on Tuesday, and is already the 11th most upvoted post on… Continue Reading
Study – Social media echo chambers spread vaccine misinformation
Source: Bjarke Mønsted et al, Characterizing polarization in online vaccine discourse—A large-scale study, PLOS ONE (2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263746 “Vaccine hesitancy is currently recognized by the WHO as a major threat to global health. Recently, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a growing interest in the role of social media in the propagation of… Continue Reading
If Russia Invades Ukraine, TikTok Will See It Up Close
Wired: “On the snowy roads near Kursk, tanks and military equipment stop traffic. Videos from around the Russian city—roughly 100 miles from the border with Ukraine—show cars waiting in line to cross train tracks being used to transport tanks from one place to the next. Dozens of military vehicles have been filmed parked together. And… Continue Reading
Employers may have a trove of data on job candidates. Here’s how workers can control the narrative.
Washington Post: “How much an employer can find on an employee is entirely dependent on the company, the services they use, the time they’re investing and what they consider to be important. Assume employers know everything and be prepared to shape the narrative, business experts said. An employer might just double check to make sure… Continue Reading
How to critically evaluate scientific claims before pursuing a story
Nieman Lab: “Our inboxes are full of them — press releases, pitches, and other media calling some scientific event “a breakthrough,” “a game-changer,” or “a paradigm-shifter.” Scientists, investors, and analysts flood our Twitter feeds, cheerleading a preprint or singing some company’s praises, even when there is little to no data to back up those claims.… Continue Reading
Google to overhaul ad tracking on Android phones used by billions; French watchdog says Google Analytics poses data privacy risks
Washington Post: “Google announced it will begin the process of getting rid of long-standing ad trackers on its Android operating system, upending how advertising and data-collection work on phones and tablets used by more than 2.5 billion people around the world. Right now, Google assigns special IDs to each Android device, allowing advertisers to build… Continue Reading
Social Media Law
Bogdan, Varvara, Social Media Law (December 10, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3982602 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3982602 “Social media law is a new direction for scientific research. Users of various social networking websites around the world are concerned about the protection and preservation of their personal data, the protection of copyright for content, including after the death of… Continue Reading
There Is Nothing Normal about One Million People Dead from COVID
Scientific American: “Sometime in the next few weeks, the official death toll for the two-year COVID pandemic in the U.S. will reach one million. Despite being the wealthiest nation on the planet, the U.S. has continued to have the most COVID infections and deaths per country, by far, and it has the highest per capita… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 12, 2022
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 12, 2022 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly… Continue Reading
Researchers warn that social media may be ‘fundamentally at odds’ with science
TechCrunch: “A special set of editorials published in today’s issue of the journal Science argue that social media in its current form may well be fundamentally broken for the purposes of presenting and disseminating facts and reason. The algorithms are running the show now, they argue, and the systems priorities are unfortunately backwards. In an… Continue Reading
