President Donald Trump’s estranged former lawyer acknowledged Thursday that he paid a technology company to rig Trump’s standing in two online polls before the presidential campaign. Michael Cohen tweeted that “what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of” Trump. CONT. Associated Press Read more »
Troll Watch: Study Shows Older Americans Share The Most Fake News
NPR’s Sarah McCammon speaks with Andy Guess of Princeton University about a new study that finds that older Americans are more likely to share fake news than their younger counterparts. NPR News Read more »
Why Fighting Fake News With the Facts Might Not Be Enough
“Alternative facts”: The term manages to be tedious, ridiculous and perilous at once — a real sign of the times. For anyone who doesn’t remember, Kellyanne Conway introduced it in early 2017 to defend the White House’s falsehoods about attendance numbers at Donald Trump’s inauguration the week before. … Her […] Read more »
Who was most likely to share fake news in 2016? Seniors.
This week, the New York Times broke the news that Democratic activists posted misleading Facebook pages and Twitter feeds during the 2017 U.S. Senate race in Alabama. That’s just the latest iteration in the ongoing saga of online disinformation and “fake news” since the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Researchers have […] Read more »
Secret campaign to use Russian-inspired tactics in 2017 Alabama election stirs anxiety for Democrats
A secret effort to influence the 2017 Senate election in Alabama used tactics inspired by Russian disinformation teams, including the creation of fake accounts to deliver misleading messages on Facebook to hundreds of thousands of voters to help elect Democrat Doug Jones in the deeply red state, according to a […] Read more »
Declining confidence in election results may be depressing voter turnout
Perhaps the most disturbing new trend in US electoral politics has been the increase in high-profile candidates and officials claiming that our elections are rife with fraud. This concern may seem misplaced given the disturbing allegations of absentee ballot fraud this fall in North Carolina and what the Justice Department’s […] Read more »