As voters and activists try to make sense of the enormous Democratic primary field, Twitter, where real-time “analysis” flows 24-7, has emerged as a go-to news portal. But the narrative that is emerging there may be missing the larger story of the 2020 campaign, at least up to now. CONT. […] Read more »
Fake news: source ratings and better user interface design help us see deception
Deception has been a long-running problem on the Internet, and it rose to global attention in 2016 with the Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election, when “fake news” was deliberately created and spread through social media as part of a disinformation campaign to influence voting. More than 50 per […] Read more »
Poll Hub: Conformity
In an era where political divisions and hyper partisanship are the norm, Cass R. Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard and author of the new book Conformity, sets out to explain the manifestation of this intense tribalism. On this episode of Poll Hub, Sunstein describes how conformity aligns […] Read more »
Trolls target online polls following first Democratic presidential debate
Users from pro-Trump communities on 4chan and Reddit implored fellow members to vote for lower-polling candidates in online polls, specifically Tulsi Gabbard and Bill de Blasio, in the hours after Wednesday’s Democratic debate — a sign that digital manipulation efforts related to U.S. politics and elections remain very much alive. […] Read more »
New Stanford research shows difference in language used by Republicans and Democrats
New Stanford linguistics research has analyzed how Republicans and Democrats use different language when discussing mass shootings on social media and found that Republicans talk more about the shooter and Democrats focus more on the victims. Focusing on posts shared on the social media platform Twitter, the researchers found that […] Read more »
Watching the Democratic debate tonight — with Twitter on the little screen? Keep this in mind.
As the Democrats debate tonight and tomorrow, many people — journalists included — will be watching two screens: on one, the debates themselves, and on the other, Twitter’s stream of hot takes. Recent reports remind us that Twitter does not mirror the world at large. Yet journalists’ reliance on it […] Read more »