2,285 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Tackling threats to informed decision-making in democratic societies: Promoting epistemic security in a technologically-advanced world
Access to reliable information is crucial to the ability of a democratic society to coordinate effective collective action when responding to a crisis, like a global pandemic, or complex challenge like climate change. Through a series of workshops we developed and analysed a set of hypothetical yet plausible crisis scenarios to explore how technologically exacerbated external threats and internal vulnerabilities to a society’s epistemic security – its ability to reliably avert threats to the processes by which reliable information is produced, distributed, and assessed within the society – can be mitigated in order to facilitate timely decision-making and collective action in democratic societies.
Overall we observed that preserving a democratic society’s epistemic security is a complex effort that sits at the interface of many knowledge domains, theoretical perspectives, value systems, and institutional responsibilities, and we developed a series of recommendations to highlight areas where additional research and resources will likely have a significant impact on improving epistemic security in democratic societie
Real or Fake? User Behavior and Attitudes Related to Determining the Veracity of Social Media Posts
International audienceCitizens and Emergency Managers need to be able to distinguish "fake" (untrue) news posts from real news posts on social media during disasters. This paper is based on an online survey conducted in 2018 that produced 341 responses from invitations distributed via email and through Facebook. It explores to what extent and how citizens generally assess whether postings are "true" or "fake," and describes indicators of the trustworthiness of content that users would like. The mean response on a semantic differential scale measuring how frequently users attempt to verify the news trustworthiness (a scale from 1-never to 5-always) was 3.37. The most frequent message characteristics citizens' use are grammar and the trustworthiness of the sender. Most respondents would find an indicator of trustworthiness helpful, with the most popular choice being a colored graphic. Limitations and implications for assessments of trustworthiness during disasters are discussed
Fighting Fake News
The book focuses on how different generations perceive fake news, including young and middle-age groups of people, multiple age groups, university students and adults in general, elementary students, children, and adolescents. It provides insights into the different methodologies available with which to research fake news from a generational perspective
Identifying Fake News from the Variables that Governs the Spread of Fake News
Several researchers have attempted to investigate the processes that govern and support the spread of fake news. This paper collates and identifies these variables. This paper then categorises these variables based on three key players that are involved in the process: Users, Content, and Social Networks. The authors conducted an extensive review of the literature and a reflection on the key variables that are involved in the process. The paper has identified a total of twenty-seven variables. Then the paper presents a series of tasks to mitigate or eliminate these variables in a holistic process that could be automated to reduce or eliminate fake news propagation. Finally, the paper suggests further research into testing the method in lab conditions
The Marketplace of Ideas Online
This Article surveys the severe problems in today’s online marketplace of ideas and the efforts that regulators—and the online platforms themselves—have recently adopted in an attempt to address such problems. In Part I, this Article examines the historical foundations of the “marketplace of ideas” model, as articulated in Holmes’s early opinions, as well as the Court’s eventual adoption of the marketplace model and, with it, the adoption of counterspeech, instead of censorship, as the default response to harmful speech. Part II then examines the scope and extent of the problems besieging the modern online marketplace of ideas, focusing on problems that have arisen especially in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and thereafter on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In Section III.A, this Article examines the sweeping regulatory efforts recently adopted by the European Union and by Germany in particular, and the ways in which the online platforms are striving to implement such regulations. In Sections III.B and III.C, the Article turns to an analysis of the self-regulatory efforts undertaken by leading social media platforms Facebook and Twitter, the likely efficacy of such measures in addressing the problems besieging the online marketplace of ideas, and the extent to which such measures are consistent with First Amendment values. In Section III.D, the Article examines the constitutionality and the likely efficacy of the recently proposed Honest Ads Act. In Section III.E, the Article examines the extent to which the defamation lawsuits brought by victims of false news, conspiracy theories, and online hoaxes are consistent with the First Amendment. A brief conclusion follows
- …