The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web (WWW) also allows for the rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses.
PDF here: http://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554.full.pdf
via Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Emergent is a real-time rumor tracker. It’s part of a research project with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University that focuses on how unverified information and rumor are reported in the media. It aims to develop and best practices for debunking misinformation…
Alex Madrigal (of The Atlantic) on his recipe for countering misinformation on the viral web:
…I decided to do the only thing that seemed likely to help, in some small way:Â create content that would A) counter the misinformation, B) have authority, and C) be as viral as the bad information.
See his results as he wrestles with the fake photos going viral, post Sandy.
Be forewarned, you seekers of information…
Earlier this month, hackers took over one of Reuters’s Twitter accounts and sent out eight fake tweets, including “Obama signs executive order banning any further investigation of 9/11” and “White house spokesperson says financial and technical support given to #AlQaeda operatives in #Syria.” The account was shut down. Hackers then broke into the agency’s blogging platform on two separate occasions and posted short, realistic “reports” of fake news that favored the Syrian government in its ongoing clashes with the rebel Free Syrian Army.
Hijacking the news: how hackers are manipulating the press from the inside out | The Verge.