WRTG 105: The Underground Railroad (Professor Behrend): Fake News Workshop, Part 2, February 19, 2018

The Miseducation of Dylan Roof.

"From Headline to Photograph, A Fake News Masterpiece," by Scott Shane, NYT, Jan. 18, 2017

Fake News and the Psychology of the Brain, Circulating Ideas episode 116: Laura Lauzen-Collins

Image by Slideshare

Identifying euphemisms, hyperbole, doublespeak, allusion.

Review the BLARE article analysis method above. Carefully read through the article assigned to your group, and mark each sentence or paragraph with B, L, A, R, and E as applicable. Feel free to write other notes as well!

"The Left has a Post-Truth Problem Too. It's Called Comedy."  By Stephen Marche, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 6, 2017.

"Stewart put himself in an ideal position—he was moral arbiter who could determine what was hurting America while he took absolutely no responsibility himself. He knew better than the journalists but he was not subject to their rules. He was just an entertainer."

Satire

Satirical Sites deliberately distort reality for a variety of reasons, such as making a political point or entertaining the reader. It is important to remember these sources because any news story from them can and should be disregarded as a direct source of information. Satire should be funny, call attention to an issue by distorting reality, and be clearly marked as satire. Anything else is dangerous to the common good.

Olivia Solon and Sam Levin, "How Google's Search Algorithm Spreads False Information With a Rightwing Bias," The Guardian, Dec. 16, 2016.

"To Stir Discord in 2016, Russians Turned Most Often to Facebook," by Sheera Frankel and Katie Brenner, February 17, 2018, The New York Times

Facebook considers these "signals" when trying to figure out how interested you may be in a certain story:

Who posted a story

• Frequency of posts from that person / publisher
• Previous negative feedback on an author

Engagement

• Average time spent on content
• Overall engagement a post already has

• Friend tags
• A recent comment from a friend

Story type

• Completeness of page profile
• Posted from a friend or page
• How informative the post is

Facebook then uses these signals to help make predictions and calculate the probability of certain outcomes; for example, how likely you are to comment on a story, share a story, spend time reading a story, and so forth; the aim is to increase the likelihood:

• to click.
• to spend time with a story.
• to like, comment, and share.
• you’ll find it informative.

This results in a relevance score, and thus a news feed that’s unique to every person on Facebook.
Source: "The Facebook Algorithm Demystified: How to Optimize for News Feed Exposure," by Paul Ramondo, May 31, 2017

Can You Spot the Hoaxes?

Fake Video

"Researchers Have Figured out How to Fake News Video with AI," by Karen Hao, Quartz, July 2017