The following is a provocation for #EngageMOOC. Thanks to Bonnie Stewart and the rest of the #EngageMOOC crew for inviting me to contribute. Whooping Cough When I was in my twenties I went to the doctor with a cough I believed was whooping cough due to the tell-tale “whoop” intake of breath that occurred after… Continue reading

A summary of some reading from an old Wikity page. One way of thinking about current political trends is to see them as continuations of of trends brought about by other channels and uses of data dating back to the 1960s. In this telling, data and direct access to voters first erodes the precinct level… Continue reading

I wrote a Twitter thread today this is probably worth keeping. I reproduce it here with minor edits for clarity.  (And yes, I delete tweets eventually) ================= What McKew describes here is what researchers have been seeing in the data for ages now. Trolls, bots, and borgs aren’t just putting out fake news — they… Continue reading

  I talk about 90-second fact-checks and I think people think I’m a bit unhinged sometimes. What can students possibly do in that short amount of time that would be meaningful? A lot, actually. For example, this press release on some recent research was shared with me today: Now I want to re-share this with… Continue reading

A message I sent to a newsgroup on Facebook’s recent proposal that users could rate sites as a solution. To my surprise, I find myself suggesting they should follow Google’s model, which, while often faulty, is infinitely better than what they are proposing. ============== (Regarding the announcement), I think there’s a better, time-tested way of… Continue reading

I have a new and complete three-part activity sequence up on the Four Moves blog. It asks students to delve into whether a story about birds intentionally setting fires is an accurate summary of research cited. It goes through three steps: Evaluating the reporting source. Evaluating the research source. Checking for distortion of the source material. I… Continue reading

The way that machine learning works is basically this: you input some models, let’s say of what tables look like, and then the code generates some things it thinks are tables. You click yes on the things that look like tables and the code reinforces the processes that made those and makes some more attempts.… Continue reading

I wrote a prediction a couple weeks ago for Nieman Lab, and it was general and media literacy focused. But here’s some more mundane, somewhat U.S.-centric predictions: Social media overrun by AI. AI’s main influence in the coming year will not be in driving cars but in driving state-sponsored social bots and corporate astroturfing. The ability of AI… Continue reading

When you’re confronted with a news claim you want to verify, you have a lot of options. Generally, the first move of our four move method is to look for previous work. Find a fact-check or a reliable article from a local or well-resourced publication that’s already done the verification for you. The easiest way… Continue reading

New Video. Using Wikipedia to investigate sources is a core technique. In this one we show what verifying a traditional news source in Wikipedia looks like. Continue reading