Africa Check “resurrects” Mr. Bean

 One of the many great joys of deaning is getting to meet amazing alums. I recently had lunch with Tom Gehring ('79) and was spellbound to hear about how Tom has fused Pepperdine's twin pillars of excellence and faith in his 42-year career as embodied in his two books:

Settle It! ... And Be Blessed:

There comes a time in your life when you have to settle it. Be done with it. It’s time. Do not let things drag on. Weigh you down. Stop you from progressing. Stop you from proceeding with your mission in life. It’s not worth it. It never is. It never will be. You, who are reading this, are a precious person. Your potential is real. Your potential is unfathomable. You have much to give. Whatever it is in your life that you need to settle, a lawsuit, a dispute with a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a business partner, a personal problem, a bad habit, an addiction—do it now. You will be blessed if you do. And you will be a blessing to others. Settle It! Now. And get back to your blessing.

Sea lion opens gate to crash fisherman’s interview about a ‘plague of sea lions’ BBC

The Clothed Home. Tuning in to the Seasonal Imagination exhibition London Design Biennale2021

A Star Is Born Lapham’s Quarterly

GERMANY KNIFE ATTACK: Three killed were all women.

Naturally, it takes BBC 14 paragraphs and a map showing where the city of Würzburg is located in Germany to get to this minor detail: “A witness reported that the suspect shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ during the attack, said [Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim] Herrmann.”

Articles of Note

In the West, we confine dreams to the realms of superstition and metaphysics. But in other societies, dream-sharing is a serious business   ... more »

New Books

In recent novels by Lauren Oyler and Patricia Lockwood, deceit, conspiracy theories, and dumb jokes thrive online. Tell us something we don’t know... more »

Essays & Opinions

New Black satire. The Dave Chappelle fatalism of the early 2000s has given way to sincerity and demands for action   ... more »

Cats and the Good Life Los Angeles Review of Books

Journalists Hit New Low by Betraying Source Real Clear Politics 

 

• In this edition you will find: • Highlights of a few automated fact-checking projects   • Africa Check “resurrects” Mr. Bean   • Agência Lupa recognized for visualizing the pandemic

 

The bots are back in town

 

By Lucky clover/shutterstock

 

Wednesday’s IFCN Talk highlighted the work of the Duke Reporters’ Lab’s automated fact-checking project, Squash, but as director Bill Adair noted, it’s far from the only fact-checking project using automation to fight falsehoods.  Argentine fact-checking network Chequeado launched its automated fact-checking bot Chequeabot in 2018, which uses scans of transcripts from media organizations to help identify claims for fact-checkers. A 2019 Poynter article found that roughly one of five fact checks written by Chequado started from a claim detected by its chatbot.  British fact-checking organization Full Fact, which has collaborated with Chequado on a number of automated fact-checking projects, has been researching this technology since 2015. In addition to detection, Full Fact has used automation to keep track of how many times a false claim has been repeated, and help fact-checkers respond to claims in real time. In 2019, a collaboration between Full Fact, Chequeado and Africa Check was recognized by Google’s AI Impact challenge out of a field of 2,600 applicants.  More recently, Spanish fact-checker Maldita.es has used automation to both speed up responses to fact-checking requests from its audience, and detect potential patterns in the types of falsehoods most commonly spread. This was especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic when requests for fact-checking skyrocketed on Maldita.es’ WhatsApp tipline.  Aos Fatos in Brazil has had similar success using automation to both detect falsehoods and disseminate fact-checks.  But for automation to really work, fact-checkers need help both in growing their ranks and in growing their audience. Adair identified the need for more fact checks and more fact-checkers as a limiting factor on the effectiveness of Squash’s detection powers. In Spain, Maldita.es co-founder and CEO Clara Jiménez Cruz said her organization’s chatbot is only as powerful as its audience since it requires user submissions to pick up on patterns of falsehoods. That’s why media literacy has been so crucial, with organizations like Chequeado, MediaWise and a host of other fact-checkers around the world putting an emphasis on training the public on the basics of fighting online falsehoods. Automation can enhance fact-checkers’ work, but only public buy-in can defeat disinformation.

 

 

Interesting fact checks

 

Photo by Jonathan Short/Invision/AP

 

• Africa Check: "Social media keeps killing Rowan Atkinson – but he’s still not dead" (in English) • Africa Check chronicled the various attempts to virtually shuffle off the British comedian’s mortal coil to no avail. He was first pronounced virtually dead in 2012. Africa Check completed its debunk by referencing an AFP fact check where Atkinson’s talent management confirmed he’s not dead.   • ColombiaCheck: "The message stating that 'WhatsApp changed its privacy without prior notice' is false" (in Spanish) • A message went viral stating (falsely) that WhatsApp had changed its privacy settings to allow users to be added to group messages without their consent or knowledge. ColombiaCheck and Spanish fact-checker Newtral discovered the opposite was true. In April 2019, WhatsApp gave users the option to limit who can add them to group messages to just their contacts.

 

Quick hits

 

Screenshot from the June 24th IFCN Talk

 

From the news:

 

• “Fiverr’s jobbing actors play a starring role in Pakistan’s fake news business,” from Coda Story. Users of the freelancer directory are being recruited to act like broadcast journalists for fake news programs used to spread pro-Pakistani propaganda.   • “Fact-checkers face obstacles to bring news to Gazans during wartime,” from Al-Monitor. The Palestinian Observatory for Verification and Media Professionalism said lack of open records laws and distrust from some in the Israeli public hampered its fact-checking work during the recent Gaza conflict.   • “Hamburgers, Fauci and election fraud: How Biden World combats disinformation,” from Politico. Advocacy groups and the Democratic National Committee are taking a more active role in monitoring and debunking mis- and disinformation.

 

From/for the community:

 

• “‘We need more troops’ — automated fact-checking needs more volume to succeed,” from Poynter. The team from the Duke Reporters’ Lab shared lessons from their automated fact-checking program, Squash, at Wednesday’s IFCN Talk.   • “Facebook expands fact-checking in India, adds health-specialist partner amid Covid concerns,” from ANI News. The Healthy Indian Project is joining Facebook’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program to help fight health related misinformation on the platform.    • Agência Lupa from Brazil won a Sigma Award for its multimedia project No Epicentro (At the epicenter). Its project helps users understand the pandemic by visualizing the number of people who’ve died as a radius from the user’s address.