A new promo campaign from the conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group is raising concerns about the message the company is promoting through the 173 local stations it owns or operates. … Sinclair is the largest owner of local TV stations in the US, but it’s not just its size that makes […] Read more »
The next war
It’s natural for people to fight the last war. And sometimes it’s absolutely necessary. Understanding how to limit the penetration and impact of fake news is critical. Preventing hacking into American political assets by Russia or other nefarious actors is vital. But we can’t let the last war blind us […] Read more »
One Thing Donald Trump Would Like Is Freedom From the Press
More than any president in living memory, Donald Trump has conducted a dogged, remorseless assault on the press. He portrays the news media not only as a dedicated adversary of his administration but of the entire body politic. These attacks have forced the media where it does not want to […] Read more »
The spread of true and false news online
We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking […] Read more »
What if Republicans Win the Midterms?
A sizable portion of the American population has been convulsing with outrage at President Trump for more than a year. Millions of people who previously took only mild interest in politics have participated in protests, fumed as they stayed riveted to news out of Washington and filled social media accounts […] Read more »
The Perils of Truth Decay: Q&A with Three RAND Leaders
“Truthiness” was still a punchline when Merriam-Webster named it the word of the year in 2006. Comedian Stephen Colbert had coined the term as an eye-roll at the march of bias and opinion over facts. There’s less to laugh at now: the Oxford word of the year for 2016 was […] Read more »