Estimating Fact-checking's Effects: Evidence From a Long-term Experiment During Campaign 2014

This study reports the first experimental estimates of the longitudinal effects of exposure to fact-checking. We also conduct a comprehensive panel study of attitudes toward fact-checking and how they change during a campaign.Our results are generally encouraging. The public has very positive views of fact-checking and, when randomly exposed to it, comes to view the format even more favorably. Moreover, randomized exposure to fact-checks helps people become better informed, substantially increasing knowledge of the issues under discussion.We also document several important challenges facing fact-checkers, however. Most notably, interest in the format is skewed towards more educated and informed members of the public. Republicans also have less favorable views of the practice than Democrats. Continued growth of the medium will depend on broadening its appeal to these groups

The Diffusion of Fact-checking: Understanding the Growth of a Journalistic Innovation

How and why is political fact-checking spreading across journalism? The research presented in this report suggests that the challenge of disseminating the practice is significant -- mere proximity does not appear to be sufficient to drive adoption. However, we find that factchecking can be effectively promoted by appealing to the professional values of journalists.Our first study considers whether journalists might emulate their colleagues in emphasizing fact-checking, following the practices of professional peers in the way that other journalistic innovations have disseminated. However, the practice does not appear to diffuse organically within a state press corps. While fact-checking coverage increased dramatically during the 2012 campaign, these effects were concentrated among outlets with dedicated fact-checkers. We find no evidence that fact-checking coverage increased more from 2008 to 2012 among outlets in states with a PolitiFact affiliate than among those in states with no affiliate.However, it is possible to effectively promote fact-checking. In a field experiment during the 2014 campaign, we find that messages promoting the genre as a high-status practice that is consistent with journalistic values significantly increased newspapers' fact-checking coverage versus a control group, while messages emphasizing audience demand for the format did not (yielding a smaller, statistically insignificant increase). These results suggest that efforts to create or extend dedicated fact-checking operations and to train reporters are the most effective way to disseminate the practice of fact-checking. While audience demand is an important part of the business case for the practice, newsrooms appear to respond most to messages emphasizing how fact-checking is consistent with the best practices and highest aspirations of their field

It is time to address the Public Communication of DH

This introduction addresses two facets of the communication of Digital Humanities (DH) that have framed this special edition of DHQ. I begin by discussing a number of articles about DH that have relatively recently appeared in mainstream newspapers. I then observe that a number of these articles not only show an impoverished understanding of the field’s frame of reference but also misrepresent various aspects of it, for example, its interrelationship with the Humanities. Given that many academic publications on the question "what is DH?" have appeared in recent years, yet DH is, nonetheless, misrepresented in this way, I propose that the field must look again at the communication of its activities "in the round." Now that DH is arguably moving from the margins to the mainstream I propose that the time has come to address what we might call the "Public Communication of DH" so that we can better communicate to the general public and academics working in other disciplines what it is that we do. As the nature of DH’s relationship to the Humanities is one that is frequently misrepresented in the mainstream media I propose that this would be an important area for endeavours in the "Public Communication of DH" to address and explore as early as possible. The articles included in this special edition enrich and expand ongoing conversations about the nature of this relationship. In doing so they make available a wealth of case studies, arguments and insights that can, in due course, be drawn on to further the "Public Communication of DH.

The Nowhere Man: When the Miracle Turned to Mush

He didn \u27t steal money, go to jail, become embroiled in a personal scandal, or appoint a pack of thieves to high office, as other Massachusetts politicians have on occasion. But his fall was as dramatic as if he had done any or all of the above. From winning reelection in 1986 with 69 percent ofthe vote, then capturing the Democrats\u27 presidential nomination, his fortunes sank like a stone. Michael Stanley Dukakis, the stoic son of Greek immigrants, became a figure of ridicule in his third term. Thanks to the regional economy\u27s sharp recession and the lingering effects of the negative radiation he absorbed in the presidential campaign, Dukakis plummeted in public esteem. From the wand-waver of the Massachusetts Miracle to the dehumanized and demonized Nowhere Man of 1990, the governor and his travails are traced by a newspaper columnist who has chronicled his career. This saga of sadness and remorse says something about Dukakis, the defining figure of Massachusetts politics over the past two decades. But it says something more about the state we are in, and the state it is in. And that, by and large, is not very complimentary

Comics: A Better Means to an Artistic End

If a line of symmetry were to be drawn down the center of the paper, it would seem that each character rests within his environment about to collide with the other. Even without words, a vivid story begins to formulate in my mind, and hopefully I share the artist\u27s vision. Sean Nyhan wrote Comics as a freshman enrolled in GWRIT 102D: I am currently studying in the school of media arts and design at James Madison University, and hope to work for Marvel or DC Comics some day. I can\u27t help thinking I\u27m not good enough to get published so I look for all the help I can get. Two yeas ago I hadn\u27t picked up a comic book for years, but then I became engulfed in a new exciting genre of writing. My teachers always reminded me that I should read as much as possible, but they were talking about newspapers and novels. My point is, don\u27t throw out a medium because it is culturally taboo, and keep searching until one of those mediums fits well enough to write a decent essay about