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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>March 21, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[worthy of our attention]<br>
<b>Nudging Social Media Users to Think Critically Helps Slow the
Spread of Fake News, Study Finds</b><br>
By Nick Cunningham • Friday, March 19, 2021<br>
Many people who share fake news online do so because they aren’t
paying close attention to what they’re sharing, according to a new
study. The research found that simply prompting people to think
about the accuracy of their news content helps curtail the spread of
falsehoods. <br>
<br>
“When deciding what to share on social media, people are often
distracted from considering the accuracy of the content,” the
authors, from the Hill/Levene Schools of Business at the University
of Regina and the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), wrote in the new paper published in
Nature.<br>
<br>
While the spread of inaccurate or false information and conspiracy
theories is nothing new — the climate denying disinformation
campaign by the fossil fuel industry dates back decades — the
study’s findings undercut the notion that there is a widespread
desire among the public to actively spread disinformation. Rather,
it adds further evidence showing how social media allows for fake
news to spread rapidly — and how to slow it down.<br>
<br>
Online disinformation seemed to hit a fever pitch in the past year,
with the spread of the violent QAnon conspiracy, Covid denial, 2020
election conspiracies, and pro-insurrection voices all intermingling
and cross-pollinating.<br>
<br>
But instead of the malign actors involved in creating disinformation
— such as the Koch-backed network of think tanks, charities and
politicians seeking to undermine climate science, or, more recently,
coordinated social media campaigns and troll farms, sometimes backed
by government intelligence agencies, aimed at undermining elections
around the world — the new Nature study looks at the much larger set
of everyday social media users who share this type of misinformation
online, often unwittingly, or at least not with malicious intent.
The results offer some reasons for hope, as well as some tools to
fight disinformation.<br>
<br>
The study surveyed thousands of U.S. Twitter and Facebook users. It
found that most people do not wish to spread fake news and, in fact,
they rate accuracy as an important principle. When asked about what
motivates sharing, participants rated accuracy higher than other
factors, such as whether a piece of news was interesting, funny, or
politically-aligned with their beliefs. Moreover, most people are
fairly good at identifying and distinguishing accurate news from
false news. In addition, most people do not share inaccurate news
for hyperpartisan reasons either...<br>
- -<br>
In other words, when asked about accuracy, people were good at
spotting accurate versus fake stories. But when asked about sharing,
people chose to share more stories, even fake ones. And they chose
to share stories that fit their political views at a much higher
rate (by 19 percentage points) than stories that went against their
political beliefs.<br>
<br>
That would seem to suggest an ideological or partisan motivation.
But the authors conducted another experiment, with over 5,000
participants on Twitter who had previously shared news from
Breitbart and Infowars, two sites professional fact-checkers have
rated as highly untrustworthy. The authors sent a private Twitter
message to the participants and asked them to judge whether or not a
single non-political headline was accurate.<br>
<br>
The researchers then monitored the participants’ subsequent sharing
behavior and found a significant improvement in sharing choices; in
the 24 hours after the prompt, participants shared relatively more
news from reliable outlets such as CNN and relatively less from
sources of inaccurate information like Infowars.<br>
<br>
The authors surmise that simply redirecting attention towards the
concept of accuracy helped cut down on sharing of false information.
“[W]e find that the single accuracy message made users more
discerning in their subsequent sharing decisions,” they wrote in
their study. “Relative to baseline, the accuracy message increased
the average quality of the news sources shared.”<br>
The researchers replicated these experiments with Covid-19
information and found a similar dynamic.<br>
The study shows that there is a disconnect between what people share
and what they consider to be accurate, suggesting that people share
content in which they themselves might not necessarily believe...<br>
- -<br>
The new study's authors concede that the research is limited to
sharing of political news among people in the United States. They
note that follow up research could examine the impact of subtle
accuracy nudges when coordinated disinformation campaigns are in
question, such as the climate denial or election fraud, which are
backed by groups actively working to promote a falsehood.<br>
<br>
In a recent analysis, DeSmog found that dozens of prominent climate
deniers supported the January 6 insurrection in Washington D.C. They
spread debunked claims about election fraud and in some cases
supported political violence. This is the type of campaign that was
then likely shared by many more people who, as the Nature study
illustrates, may have shared the content without taking time to
think about its accuracy.<br>
<br>
Experts have identified tools and methods for protection against
malicious disinformation campaigns, such as “prebunking,” which
involves learning about the tactics and tricks of bad actors before
you are exposed to them. However, such campaigns of weaponized
disinformation are potentially more challenging to combat when
compared to one-off fake news stories. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/DG_Rand/status/1372217700626411527">https://twitter.com/DG_Rand/status/1372217700626411527</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2021/03/19/social-media-slow-spread-fake-news-misinformation-study">https://www.desmogblog.com/2021/03/19/social-media-slow-spread-fake-news-misinformation-study</a>
<p>- -</p>
[source material]<br>
<b>Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online</b><br>
Gordon Pennycook, Ziv Epstein, Mohsen Mosleh, Antonio A. Arechar,
Dean Eckles & David G. Rand <br>
Nature (2021) - Published: 17 March 2021<br>
<b>Abstract</b><br>
In recent years, there has been a great deal of concern about the
proliferation of false and misleading news on social media.
Academics and practitioners alike have asked why people share such
misinformation, and sought solutions to reduce the sharing of
misinformation. Here, we attempt to address both of these questions.
First, we find that the veracity of headlines has little effect on
sharing intentions, despite having a large effect on judgments of
accuracy. This dissociation suggests that sharing does not
necessarily indicate belief. Nonetheless, most participants say it
is important to share only accurate news. To shed light on this
apparent contradiction, we carried out four survey experiments and a
field experiment on Twitter; the results show that subtly shifting
attention to accuracy increases the quality of news that people
subsequently share. Together with additional computational analyses,
these findings indicate that people often share misinformation
because their attention is focused on factors other than
accuracy—and therefore they fail to implement a strongly held
preference for accurate sharing. Our results challenge the popular
claim that people value partisanship over accuracy, and provide
evidence for scalable attention-based interventions that social
media platforms could easily implement to counter misinformation
online.<br>
<b>Conclusion</b><br>
Together, these studies suggest that when deciding what to share on
social media, people are often distracted from considering the
accuracy of the content. Therefore, shifting attention to the
concept of accuracy can cause people to improve the quality of the
news that they share. Furthermore, we found a dissociation between
accuracy judgments and sharing intentions that suggests that people
may share news that they do not necessarily have a firm belief in.
As a consequence, people’s beliefs may not be as partisan as their
social media feeds seem to indicate. Future work is needed to more
precisely identify people’s state of belief when not reflecting on
accuracy. Is it that people hold no particular belief one way or the
other, or that they tend to assume content is true by default?<br>
download PDF -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03344-2.pdf">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03344-2.pdf</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03344-2">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03344-2</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
[Trained journalist gives video comment on Congressional duplicity]<br>
<b>Emily Atkin on Calling Climate BS</b><br>
Mar 20, 2021<br>
greenmanbucket<br>
Emily Atkin is a climate journalist, and editor of the Heated
newsletter<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://heated.world">http://heated.world</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpuvHErrBKg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpuvHErrBKg</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[Wildfire Today PBS video of controversy]<br>
<b>PBS film explores issues around the largest fire ever in
California</b><br>
March 20, 2021<br>
Last year the Creek Fire burned 379,895 acres<br>
From PBS. Afterburn – The Start of the Creek Fire.<br>
Jeff Aiello, a producer from Fresno, California, created a 26-minute
film for PBS about the Creek Fire northeast of Fresno, California
that last year burned 379,895 acres to become the largest single
fire in the recorded history of the state.<br>
<br>
“Afterburn — The Creek Fire Debate” includes opposing points of view
about fire and forest management — for example from a fire ecologist
and a forester. You might find yourself picking sides, or not
agreeing with either side.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/03/20/pbs-film-explores-issues-around-the-largest-fire-ever-in-california/">https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/03/20/pbs-film-explores-issues-around-the-largest-fire-ever-in-california/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[humor, politics, history, Antarctica, video]<br>
<b>Who Owns Antarctica?</b><br>
Mar 15, 2021<br>
<blockquote>T-t-t-oday we're asking<br>
Who does Antarctica b-b-belong to?<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg1ScKoBnHA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg1ScKoBnHA</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
March 21, 2007 </b></font><br>
<p>March 21, 2007 • In her CBSNews.com "Notebook" segment, Katie
Couric observes:<br>
<br>
"The last time Al Gore came to Capitol Hill--six years ago--he was
there to certify the electoral college results that made George
Bush president.<br>
<br>
"But today it was a triumphant return, this time as a private
citizen, to declare that the world faces a 'planetary emergency'
over climate change. And now, a lot of his skeptics agree that
Gore makes a powerful point.<br>
<br>
"The scientific consensus is clear, and Gore urged Congress to
listen to scientists, not special interests. He pushed for an
immediate freeze on greenhouse gases, as well as cleaner power
plants, more efficient cars, and stronger conservation efforts.<br>
<br>
"Gore said 'a few years from now...the kinds of proposals we're
talking about today are going to seem so small compared to the
scale of the challenge.'<br>
<br>
"Here's hoping Congress puts partisanship aside, and comes
together to act boldly on global warming."<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://youtu.be/sYpj2ZYfS3M">http://youtu.be/sYpj2ZYfS3M</a><br>
<br>
(In his remarks to Congress, Gore famously states: "The planet has
a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the
doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I
read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If
the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame
retardant. You take action." Also, at this hearing, former House
Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican, states, "I believe the
debate over global warming is over"--an idea that would be
considered heresy throughout the entire GOP just two years later.)<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032100945.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032100945.html</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11437-al-gore-rallies-us-congress-over-climate.html#.UvtuMKa9LCQ">http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11437-al-gore-rallies-us-congress-over-climate.html#.UvtuMKa9LCQ</a>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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