SATURDAY’s GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND
What people in other forums are saying about public policy Continue reading
- Coronavirus Facts Alliance — Poynter and the International Fact-Checking Network
Tools for a shifting debate
While
governments say they are relying on science to keep the public safe, they are
also watching sales and income taxes plummet and groups of protesters demand
more freedom.
This
week we’ve seen examples of how governments are trying to balance those
competing pressures.
President
Donald Trump announced in a tweet
Wednesday that the White House Coronavirus Task Force would continue its work
indefinitely, though its focus would be on, “safety and opening up our country
again.”
As India
begins to slowly open parts of its economy, The
New York Times is reporting fractures among different Indian states over
how to properly proceed.
In
the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing
ever louder calls to lift his country’s lockdown.
In the meantime, individuals still need reliable information to
help them make their own decisions about interacting with others. We want to
highlight a few resources that track the spread of COVID-19 locally.
- In early April, researchers at Harvard University
developed the How
We Feel app to crowdsource data about COVID-19 infections in the
United States. The app gives users anonymized data about how many people
in their town or city are not feeling well, and connects them to resources
for testing and ways to protect from the virus. It also gives users the
option to contribute data by asking for their zip code, asking how they
are feeling, as well as a few questions about possible symptoms of
COVID-19.
- Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus map has become a
mainstay of people tracking the pandemic, but it now also includes a tab
called “Critical
Trends” that gives the public detailed charts about how the virus
spreads, which states are collecting detailed data on how different racial
groups are affected by the virus, plus guidance on understanding the mass
of COVID-19 information.
- Instagram's co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Rt.live, a website that tracks the spread of COVID-19 in U.S. states. It uses a calculation called the Rt (pronounced R naught) to show the average number of people that COVID-19 carriers will infect. If the number is less than 1, that means the disease spread is currently declining. If it’s above 1, that means the disease is actively spreading.
Ultimately each person decides how much risk they can tolerate.
These resources can help avoid partisanship and misinformation.
– Harrison Mantas, IFCN
. . . technology
- Anti-quarantine protesters are moving their organizing efforts to MeWe after Facebook cracked down on coronavirus-related content, Business Insider reported.
o
MeWe,
a subscription-based social platform, is now hosting groups with names that are
iterations of some on Facebook. Some examples from the Business Insider story:
Ohioans Against Excessive Quarantine, Open Texas Now!, and #ReOpenFL, among
others.
·
Misinformation
researchers cited by Facebook are worried the company may have misinterpreted
their findings.
o
Stat
News reporter Erin Brodwin spoke with authors from two of three studies
cited by Facebook as key to the company’s approach on misinformation.
o
The
study authors suggested the company could label misinformation as false without
provoking a “backfire effect.”
. . . politics
- The debate over whether Americans should cast their votes through the mail during a pandemic is provoking online disinformation and conspiracy theories that could undermine trust in the results, The Associated Press reported.
o
Users
on social media “are already pushing grandiose theories casting doubt on the
method,” reported Eric Tucker and Amanda Seitz. They added that President Trump
has encouraged the doubts, saying recently that “a lot of people cheat with
mail-in voting.”
·
Press
freedom advocates and journalists in Singapore say that two laws designed to
block false news and criticism of the courts are being used to silence and
harass independent news outlets, the
Voice of America reported.
. . . science and health
·
What
kind of a person would share misinformation about the new coronavirus? Actually
there are seven types, the
BBC reported this week. Disinformation reporter Marianna Spring wrote that
she came up with the personas after investigating hundreds of misleading
stories during the pandemic.
·
Amid
a rash of conspiracy theories tying 5G wireless technology to the new coronavirus,
businesses are now running ads on social media to sell products that supposedly
“protect” against the electromagnetic waves. Media
Matters found five examples on Facebook.
Ever
since the coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the capital
of the Hubei province has been a fascination for the rest of the world. But
what does the place actually look like? A video circulating on social media
purports to show us. It features aerial shots of sophisticated skyscrapers and
other architectural wonders.
Except
it isn’t Wuhan. AFP’s fact-checking group, employing reverse-image search tools
and maps, isolated all the images in the video and determined
their actual locations. They were all in China, but not in Wuhan. One image
could not be pinpointed, prompting AFP to ask readers for help.
The
video, which has been shared widely on social media, is “actually a compilation
of aerial shots from across China and taken from multiple sources,” reported
AFP’s Robert
Barca in Slovakia. “Some of the footage was taken from the Chinese version
of the video-sharing platform TikTok, called Douyin, while other parts were
taken from Twitter or from years-old YouTube videos.”
What we liked: Barca’s fact-check shows extensive use
of verification tools to isolate and identify a broad range of images. He’s
also transparent that he couldn’t identify one image, so he turned to
crowd-sourcing to see if readers could contribute.
—
Susan Benkelman, API
1. The IFCN’s WhatsApp
chatbot is live. It connects users of the popular messaging service to the
over 5,000 fact-checks about COVID-19 compiled from fact-checking networks in
over 70 countries.
2. An analysis by the Reporters’ Lab at
Duke University found that nearly half of fact-checkers operate in places where
legal protections and the safety of the press are rated by the World Press
Freedom Index as “problematic,” “difficult” or “very serious,” Duke’s
Mark Stencel wrote for Poynter.
- Researchers with the Atlantic Council’s Digital
Forensics Lab found evidence of two separate coordinated misinformation
campaigns that used a network of Facebook groups to profit from
COVID-19 fears.
- A journalist who does visual investigations shared one of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes. Malachy Browne is on the New York Times team that won the international reporting prize for a series detailing Russia’s influence operations abroad, including bombings in Syria. For background, Browne’s team in December wrote about their verification process.
5. The Red Cross said it will collaborate
with social media influencers around the world to combat the spread of
misinformation surrounding the coronavirus, NBC
reported.
via
Harrison and Susan