In a four-week period spanning October and November, about 20 companies ran more than 2,100 ads on Facebook and Instagram that described benefits of prescription drugs without citing risks, promoted drugs for unapproved uses or featured testimonials without disclosing whether they came from actors or company employees, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of…
Tag: misinformation
Vaccine Data Deficits: Oct. 13, 2022
Data Deficit: Are Covid-19 vaccines safe for men under age 40? Challenge: On October 7, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo announced that he recommends males aged 18-39 not receive the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine, citing concern of increased risk of cardiac-related death. This recommendation is based on a study of Florida residents that suggested,…
Fossil Fuel Companies Are ‘Talking Green but Acting Dirty,’ Harvard Researchers Find
Harvard researchers published a report last week analyzing how European fossil fuel, car, and airline companies use social media to market their work as environmentally friendly. Geoffrey J.S. Supran, a research fellow in the Department of History of Science, led the project in collaboration with the Algorithmic Transparency Institute. The research was commissioned by the…

Three Shades of Greenwashing
Download the Full Report We report the results of a pilot study as a first step towards establishing a major new research initiative that will monitor, analyze, and expose digital climate discourse and deception. This initiative will be directed by Dr. Geoffrey Supran at the University of Miami in collaboration with computer scientists at the…
Vaccine Misinformation Is Spreading Among Kids, Too — Especially On Social Media
TikTok is, in some ways, primed to take advantage of that peer influence, said Cameron Hickey, director of the Algorithmic Transparency Institute at the National Conference on Citizenship, who studies and writes about TikTok. “The messages that are the most potent and the most impactful when we are at that age are the ones coming from the…
ProPublica’s Electionland: The State of Election Day 2020
One post said the incident “should scare voters,” suggesting local officials can’t be trusted to count the duplicates correctly. That and other examples were collected by Junkipedia, a repository that gathers misinformation online. Electionland from Propublica | November 2020, Caroline Chen, Jack Gillum, Derek Willis, Isaac Arnsdorf, Maryam Jameel, Jessica Huseman and Ryan McCarthy
Latinos de extrema derecha difunden desinformación electoral
Expertos comparan la desinformación con un virus real por ser contagiosa y peligrosa y tener una velocidad de propagación cuando se comparte que “pone en riesgo nuestra salud y bienestar, así como el futuro de nuestra democracia”. Así lo expresó Cameron Hickey, director del programa “transparencia algorítmica” en la Conferencia Nacional sobre Ciudadanía (NCoC en…
Inside the campaign to ‘pizzagate’ Hunter Biden
The claims have also spread far and wide on Facebook, especially on public pages and groups dedicated to the QAnon-linked SaveTheChildren conspiracy theory movement, according to posts viewed by NBC News, using a list maintained by Junkipedia, an organization that monitors misinformation. NBC News | October 2020, Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny
Disinformation and Voter Manipulation during the 2020 Election
“Viral misinformation is contagious, and it is dangerous just like an actual virus. This content spreads because people are sharing it with each other,” said Cameron Hickey, Program Director of Algorithmic Transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC). “And it creates significant problems that put our health and well-being at risk as well as…
Media analysts expose ‘problematic’ election-related posts
“As journalists we’ve all dealt with misinformation and disinformation — that’s part of our job,” moderator Pilar Marrero prefaced her opening to discuss what she describes as proliferation “never like we’re seeing today.” Marrero is among National Conference on Citizenship fellows she said are “knee-deep” in a program exploring the very subject. In collaboration with…