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Conspiracy in the Time of Corona: Automatic detection of Emerging Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories in Social Media and the News
Abstract
Rumors and conspiracy theories thrive in environments of low confi- dence and low trust. Consequently, it is not surprising that ones related to the Covid-19 pandemic are proliferating given the lack of scientific consensus on the virus’s spread and containment, or on the long term social and economic ramifications of the pandemic. Among the stories currently circulating are ones suggesting that the 5G telecommunication network activates the virus, that the pandemic is a hoax perpetrated by a global cabal, that the virus is a bio-weapon released deliberately by the Chinese, or that Bill Gates is using it as cover to launch a broad vaccination program to facilitate a global surveillance regime. While some may be quick to dismiss these stories as having little impact on real-world behavior, recent events including the destruction of cell phone towers, racially fueled attacks against Asian Americans, demonstrations espousing resistance to public health orders, and wide-scale defiance of scientifically sound public mandates such as those to wear masks and practice social distancing, countermand such conclusions. Inspired by narrative theory, we crawl social media sites and news reports and, through the application of automated machine-learning methods, discover the underlying narrative frame- works supporting the generation of rumors and conspiracy theories. We show how the various narrative frameworks fueling these stories rely on the alignment of otherwise disparate domains of knowledge, and consider how they attach to the broader reporting on the pandemic. These alignments and attachments, which can be monitored in near real-time, may be useful for identifying areas in the news that are particularly vulnerable to reinterpretation by conspiracy theorists. Understanding the dynamics of storytelling on social media and the narrative frameworks that provide the generative basis for these stories may also be helpful for devising methods to disrupt their spread
Blogs as a Means of Preservation Selection for the World Wide Web
Currently, there is not a strong system of selection in place when looking at preserving content on the Web. This study is an examination of the blogging community for the possibility of utilizing the decentralized and distributed nature of link selection that takes place within the community as a means of preservation selection. The purpose of this study is to compare the blog aggregators, Daypop, Blogdex, and BlogPulse, for their ability to collect content which is of archival quality. This study analyzes the content selected by these aggregators to determine if any content which is linked to most frequently for a given day is of archival quality. Archival quality is determined by comparing the content from the aggregator lists to criteria assembled for the study from a variety of archival policies and principles
Understanding the Participatory News Consumer
Analyzes survey findings on the impact of social media and mobile connectivity on news consumption behavior by demographics and political affiliation. Examines sources; topics; participation by sharing, commenting on, or creating news; and views on media
Need for speed onto Internet clashes with journalistic values
Interviews with U.S. newspaper journalists reveal
that along with online initatives, newsroooms are
experiencing organizational transformation. Young
journalists are driving it and have adopted the online
initiatives as older journalists continue to struggle
What Is (Fake) News? Analyzing News Values (and More) in Fake Stories
‘Fake news’ has been a topic of controversy during and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Much of the scholarship on it to date has focused on the ‘fakeness’ of fake news, illuminating the kinds of deception involved and the motivations of those who deceive. This study looks at the ‘newsness’ of fake news by examining the extent to which it imitates the characteristics and conventions of traditional journalism. Through a content analysis of 886 fake news articles, we find that in terms of news values, topic, and formats, articles published by fake news sites look very much like traditional—and real—news. Most of their articles included the news values of timeliness, negativity, and prominence; were about government and politics; and were written in an inverted pyramid format. However, one point of departure is in terms of objectivity, operationalized as the absence of the author’s personal opinion. The analysis found that the majority of articles analyzed included the opinion of their author or authors
The Whore and the Holy Woman: How Christianity and Islam Slandered Their Leading Ladies
Mary Magdalene and Aisha Bint Abi Bakr—women hailing from the early days of Christianity and Islam respectively—are household names among adherents to each of those religions, but most know surprisingly little about who the women were. Both were independent, highly influential women, but their legacies have been corrupted by associations with repentance for deviation from traditional gender roles as well as with sexual immorality. This paper examines the biography of each women and puts it in conversation with her legacy in order to demonstrate a theme of strong women being erased from religious narratives—a theme which we must reverse in order to recover true, God-given gender roles and empower today’s women in both traditions
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