American Psychological Association (APA) latest Stress in America™ poll revealed a populace dealing with multiple stressors as the country braces for the 2024 U.S. presidential election. In the new survey, conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of APA, the most commonly reported sources of stress centered on the election or were political in nature.… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Social Media
Fact check: Debunking weather modification claims
As the southeastern United States reels from the impact of two historic hurricanes, a large amount of disinformation about nonexistent weather manipulation technology is spreading across the internet, particularly on social media platforms. Below, NOAA identifies some of the inaccurate claims circulating online and provides science-based facts and information in response. Continue Reading
Online Talk About ‘Civil War’ Could Inspire Real-World Violence, DHS Warns Cops
Wired [unpaywalled]: “The agency also cautioned that it’s unable to get a grasp on the full scale of the threat, due to extremists increasingly using encrypted chat tools…Last month, the agency’s intelligence office emphasized in a report that “perceptions of voter fraud” had risen to become a primary “trigger” for the “mobilization to violence.” This… Continue Reading
Musk and the federal government
Via Next Draft: What’s in it for Musk (and a handful of other billionaires funding the entire Trump operation)? Well, let’s narrow the answer down to this: Everything. Franklin Foer in The Atlantic( Gift Article): What Elon Musk Really Wants. “Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the… Continue Reading
Media Monitoring Guide Everything You Need to Know
Muck Rack – Media monitoring is the practice of listening, watching, and tracking media coverage and conversation about your organization, your industry, your competition, and topics that relate to your industry. Table of contents What media monitoring means in PR Why is media monitoring so hard? What to monitor and where to start What functionality… Continue Reading
How to find helpful content in a sea of made-for-Google BS
HouseFresh: “Uncovering the tactics used by big media content farms, SEO pattern makers, content thieves and AI slop creators to fool Google’s enshittified algorithm (so you don’t fall for them, too). At the beginning of 2024, we said Google was killing independent sites with its bias towards established media outlets, even in cases where these… Continue Reading
How the Malleus maleficarum fueled the witch trial craze
Ars Technica: “Between 1400 and 1775, a significant upsurge of witch trials swept across early-modern Europe, resulting in the execution of an estimated 40,000–60,000 accused witches. Historians and social scientists have long studied this period in hopes of learning more about how large-scale social changes occur. Some have pointed to the invention of the printing… Continue Reading
How rational inference about authority debunking can curtail, sustain, or spread belief polarization
Setayesh Radkani, Marika Landau-Wells, Rebecca Saxe. How rational inference about authority debunking can curtail, sustain, or spread belief polarization. PNAS Nexus, 2024; 3 (10) DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae393 In polarized societies, divided subgroups of people have different perspectives on a range of topics. Aiming to reduce polarization, authorities may use debunking to lend support to one perspective… Continue Reading
How social media distorts perceptions of norms
Claire E. Robertson, Kareena S. del Rosario, Jay J. Van Bavel, Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms, Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 60, 2024, 101918, ISSN 2352-250X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101918. “The current paper explains how modern technology interacts with human psychology to create a funhouse mirror version of social norms. We… Continue Reading
What If Google’s Biggest Problem Isn’t AI?
New York – Intelligencer [unpaywalled]: “Let’s say you represent the most powerful government on Earth and would like to convey some information to the citizens of your country in a moment of crisis. We’re talking pretty basic stuff: How to apply for federal assistance after a series of massive natural disasters, the general state of… Continue Reading
What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.
The Atlantic [no paywall]: ” I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis. By Charlie Warzel. The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton… Continue Reading
FTC Findings on Commercial Surveillance Can Lead to Better Alternatives
EFF: “On September 19, the FTC published a staff report following a multi-year investigation of nine social media and video streaming companies. The report found a myriad of privacy violations to consumers stemming largely from the ad-revenue based business models of companies including Facebook, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter) which prompted unbridled consumer surveillance practices.… Continue Reading
