#Misinformation#FactChecking#Disinformation#Propaganda#News#Media#Democracy: "If you think people are gullible, misinformation is rampant, and misinformation is the leading cause of troubling beliefs and behaviour in society, it makes sense to try to design interventions that teach people to be more paranoid about misinformation. However, if you think—as seems to be the case—that people are already highly suspicious of manipulation and low-quality misinformation is relatively rare in their information diet, you will realise there is a high chance such interventions will backfire, exacerbating problems of distrust that lie at the root of many profound epistemic problems in society.
It also illustrates why it is appropriate to hold misinformation researchers and misinformation interventions to very high standards. Even if expert classifications and research are not being used to censor, there is a risk that faulty and highly subjective assumptions will shape popular, well-funded interventions that either achieve little of value or worsen the problems they aim to fix."
#Journalism#Media#News#OSINT#FactChecking: "Bellingcat’s trajectory tells a scathing story about the nature of truth in the 21st century. When Higgins began blogging as Brown Moses, he had no illusions about the malignancies of the internet. But along with journalists all over the world, he has discovered that the court of public opinion is broken. Hard facts have been devalued; online, everyone can present, and believe in, their own narratives, even if they’re mere tissues of lies. Along with trying to find the truth, Higgins has also been searching for places where the truth has any kind of currency and respect—where it can work as it should, empowering the weak and holding the guilty accountable.
The year ahead may be the biggest of Bellingcat’s life. In addition to tracking conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, its analysts are being flooded with falsified artifacts from elections in the US, the UK, India, and dozens of other countries. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also the specter of artificial intelligence: still too primitive to fool Bellingcat’s experts but increasingly good enough to fool everyone else. Higgins worries that governments, social media platforms, and tech companies aren’t worrying enough and that they’ll take the danger seriously only when “there’s been a big incident where AI-generated imagery causes real harm”—in other words, when it’s too late."
"[N ]ewsrooms across #India have been trying to build out a process for #deepfake detection. (...) [T]his often requires building relationships with academic researchers, #disinformation-focused nonprofits, and developers behind commercial AI detection tools (...). A coalition of Indian #factchecking organizations (...) launched a WhatsApp hotline in March (...) to try and centralize this work of authenticating political media across the country."
#MediaLiteracy#FactChecking#Disinformation#Misinformation: "When it comes to not falling for misinformation, being aware of our human fallibilities, such as our quickness to believe what we want to believe, is a good first step. Research shows that even being more reflective in general can "inoculate" us against believing fake news.
But it's not the only thing that we can do. In particular, researchers have found there are several simple, concrete strategies that we all can (and should) use, especially before we're tempted to share or repeat a claim, to verify its accuracy first.
One of my favourites comes with a nifty acronym: the Sift method. Pioneered by digital literacy expert Mike Caulfield, it breaks down into four easy-to-remember steps."