A Topic-Agnostic Approach for Identifying Fake News Pages

Fake news and misinformation have been increasingly used to manipulate popular opinion and influence political processes. To better understand fake news, how they are propagated, and how to counter their effect, it is necessary to first identify them. Recently, approaches have been proposed to automatically classify articles as fake based on their content. An important challenge for these approaches comes from the dynamic nature of news: as new political events are covered, topics and discourse constantly change and thus, a classifier trained using content from articles published at a given time is likely to become ineffective in the future. To address this challenge, we propose a topic-agnostic (TAG) classification strategy that uses linguistic and web-markup features to identify fake news pages. We report experimental results using multiple data sets which show that our approach attains high accuracy in the identification of fake news, even as topics evolve over time.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Companion Proceedings of the 2019 World Wide Web Conference (WWW'19 Companion). Presented in the 2019 International Workshop on Misinformation, Computational Fact-Checking and Credible Web (MisinfoWorkshop2019). 6 page

Celebrity, Democracy, and Epistemic Power

What, if anything, is problematic about the involvement of celebrities in democratic politics? While a number of theorists have criticized celebrity involvement in politics (Meyer 2002; Mills 1957; Postman 1987) none so far have examined this issue using the tools of social epistemology, the study of the effects of social interactions, practices and institutions on knowledge and belief acquisition. This paper will draw on these resources to investigate the issue of celebrity involvement in politics, specifically as this involvement relates to democratic theory and its implications for democratic practice. We will argue that an important and underexplored form of power, which we will call epistemic power, can explain one important way in which celebrity involvement in politics is problematic. This is because unchecked uses and unwarranted allocations of epistemic power, which celebrities tend to enjoy, threaten the legitimacy of existing democracies and raise important questions regarding core commitments of deliberative, epistemic, and plebiscitary models of democratic theory. We will finish by suggesting directions that democratic theorists could pursue when attempting to address some of these problems

Antecedents of Microblogging Users’ Purchase Intention Toward Celebrities’ Merchandise: Perspectives of Virtual Community and Fan Economy

Over the last few decades, cross-fertilization between marketing and fandom studies in a mediated world has been rare, hindering the knowledge development for marketing practitioners in the Chinese fan economy context. The purpose of this study is to find and establish a conceptual framework that includes Online Interaction (OI), Parasocial Relationships (PSR) and virtual fan communities on Weibo, and how these contributory factors embedded in the interplay process of digital fandom practices in terms of enhancing fans’ Purchase Intention (PI) and media consumption behaviours toward the celebrities’ merchandise. Using an online survey instrument, this research collected 294 completed responses from fans who had online interactions with celebrities and engagement of virtual fan communities on Weibo. Key results and findings provided a clear framework of four antecedents based on the conceptual model and indicated that the high intensity of OI led to higher levels of the perception of PSR and the Sense of Virtual Community (SOVC). Increased PSR and the SOVC can be seen as significant positive predictors of the PI (a part of consumer identity construction as a fan) also. This study revealed the underlying mechanism of an emerging marketing genre, also provide useful implications of audiences’ digital marketing practices for marketers, celebrities and policymakers

The effect of social media and celebrities on Millennials’ Consumers : the Pantene example

The present dissertation provides an overview of significant marketing related topics such as digital branding, digital marketing, targeting, positioning, social media as a marketing tool and the effectiveness of celebrity endorsers’ campaigns. These topics are discussed and analysed in a case study focused on the haircare industry, where Pantene takes the centre stage. The case study introduces this extremely competitive industry, whose dynamics have been shifting due to the price sensitivity of the average consumer. Additionally, consumers spend, nowadays, most of their free time connected to the online world; therefore, brands have now to establish a presence in the digital world, in order to connect with its target audience. The entire dissertation revolves around the huge potential of social media as a marketing instrument that must be capitalized in today’s fast moving world. The main dilemma this dissertation attempts to resolve and provide an answer to, focus on how can Pantene target a younger age segment of consumers. To this end, celebrity endorsers are also worthy of being highlighted, as they perform a crucial role in influencing millennials’ behaviours and perceptions. A market research is performed, afterwards, in order to clarify the issues raised above and from which, a set of recommendations was produced. To conclude, a Teaching Note summarizes the case study and provides indications on how to explore it in a classroom environment.A presente dissertação oferece uma visão geral de importantes temas na área do marketing, como marketing e branding digitais, targeting, posicionamento, redes sociais como instrumentos de marketing e a eficácia de campanhas protagonizadas por celebridades. Estes tópicos são discutidos e analisados num caso de estudo focado na indústria do cuidado capilar, onde a Pantene ganha um lugar de destaque. O caso de estudo introduz esta indústria extremamente competitiva, cujas dinâmicas têm sido alvo de alterações devido à sensibilidade do consumidor médio relativamente ao preço. Adicionalmente, os consumidores passam, nos dias de hoje, a maioria do seu tempo livre conectados ao mundo online; por isso mesmo, as marcas têm de estabelecer a sua presença no mundo digital, de modo a estarem ligadas às suas audiências. Esta dissertação concerne o grande potencial das redes sociais enquanto instrumento de marketing que tem de ser concretizado nos altamente mutáveis dias de hoje. O grande dilema a que esta dissertação pretende dar resposta é o seguinte: como pode a Pantene atrair um segmento jovem de consumidores? Com este objectivo em mente, focamo-nos nas celebridades visto que elas desempenham um papel crucial em influenciar os comportamentos e percepções da Geração Y. Subsequentemente, de modo a clarificar as questões levantadas anteriormente, é apresentando um estudo de mercado, a partir do qual foi produzido um conjunto de recomendações. Para concluir, uma Nota de Ensino resume o caso de estudo e fornece indicações de como explorá-lo num ambiente de aula