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…

Shadow Bans, Dopamine Hits, and Viral Videos, All in the Life of TikTok Creators

Cameron Hickey, project director for algorithmic transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship, studies the spread of disinformation on TikTok and other social media platforms and believes all of these sites do some sort of algorithmic downgrading. Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have also been accused of shadow bans. “Are they shadow-banning? I’m sure of it,” Hickey said. “How…

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

Fake News, Aziz Ansari & The Vote

Speakers at an October 16 Ethnic Media Services briefing shared their perspectives on the intent behind messaging that’s being fabricated to confuse and disenfranchise voters. “It doesn’t have to be false to be a problem,’ said Cameron Hickey, Program Director of Algorithmic Transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship (NCOC). In fact, fear mongering in conspiracy theories is designed…

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…