S. Shyam Sundar, Pennsylvania State University In recent weeks, the amount of online fake news that circulated during the final months of the presidential race is coming to light, a disturbing revelation that threatens to undermine the country’s democratic process. We’re already seeing some real-world consequences. After fake news stories […] Read more »
19 Things We Learned from the 2016 Election
OK, we can all agree that the November election result was a shocker. According to news reports, even the Trump campaign team was stunned to come up a winner. So now seemed like a good time to go over various theories floating around in political science and political reporting and […] Read more »
Why Do People Buy #Pizzagate?
Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory started by alt-right Twitter which alleged that John Podesta‘s emails exposed some members of the Democratic party as being part of a DC pizzeria-based child-sex ring, has made its way into Russian social networks. Now some people are convinced of the existence of pedophile lobby that […] Read more »
Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says
Fake news headlines fool American adults about 75% of the time, according to a large-scale new survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs for BuzzFeed News. The survey also found that people who cite Facebook as a major source of news are more likely to view fake news headlines as accurate […] Read more »
Google, democracy and the truth about internet search
… Google is search. It’s the verb, to Google. It’s what we all do, all the time, whenever we want to know anything. We Google it. … And 20 years ago it didn’t even exist. When Tony Blair became prime minister, it wasn’t possible to Google him: the search engine had […] Read more »
Covering politics in a ‘post-truth’ America
For the last two decades, the rules of political reporting have been blown up. And I’ve cheered at every step along the way. Not for me the mourning over the dismantling of the old order, all those lamentations about the lost golden era of print newspapers thudding on doorsteps and […] Read more »