Social media: How to fight fake news & misinformation

Leading news organizations join with social media giants Facebook, Twitter & YouTube to improve news quality on social networks & filter out online misinformation.

MEDIA & THE TRUTH

Social media: How to fight fake news & misinformation

14/09/2016
AFP News Agency

The age of the public recording newsworthy events with their mobile phones as "citizen journalists" and then sharing it has arrived.

Communities of friends and co-workers with similar interests and information needs share news every day via social media. 

However, fake news or advertisements pretending to be news has become more common.

News consumers have to be more careful.

Tools to verify news and catch fake news are becoming an essential part of news literacy and separating the truth from lies and half-truths. 

Enter First Draft News, a new organization devoted to helping people become news literate and to verify news and catch fake news.

FIRST DRAFT NEWS: TOOLS TO VERIFY NEWS  

Leading news organizations have joined with social media giants Facebook, Twitter & YouTube to form a coalition to filter out online misinformation and improve news quality on social networks.

First Draft News, backed by Google, announced Tuesday that some 20 news organisations will be part of its partner network to share information on best practices for journalism in the online age (see Facebook here & YouTube here).

SOCIAL MISINFORMATION & HOAXES

First Draft was formed last year with support from Google News Lab and has worked with YouTube on verifying user-generated videos, among other projects.

The news coalition comes amidst concerns over the growing role of social networks, especially Facebook, in delivering and filtering news.

Social media networks often allow hoaxes and misinformation to proliferate.

An example this week is the disinformation surrounding US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's mild brush with pneumonia, which was not severe (see BBC here).

Clinton's minor illness was the starting point for many absurd wild stories being spun about her health, such that she had Parkinson's disease (see CNN here) but a balanced analysis is possible as Associated Press (AP) news agency shows (see here).

More absurd examples include the appointment of Philiippine President Rodrigo Duterte, embroiled in a controversial country-wide extrajudicial killing spree, as Secretary General of the UN or the politician who opposes him (see here).

FILTERING OUT FALSE INFORMATION, FACT-CHECKING & STORY VERIFICATION

The news network will help advance the organisation's goal of improving news online and on social networks, according to Jenni Sargent, managing director of First Draft. 

"Filtering out false information can be hard."

"Even if news organisations only share fact - checked and verified stories, everyone is a publisher and a potential source," she said in a blog post.

"We are not going to solve these problems overnight, but we're certainly not going to solve them as individual organisations."

The network already has a collection of educational resources & YouTube videos for verifying news (see here).

There are also browser plugins for newsgathering and verification (see here).

Get the Verification Handbook for free here.

Take a fake news quiz to see if you can tell real from fake news (see here).

NEWS VERIFICATION PLATFORM & CODE OF PRACTICE FOR ONLINE NEWS 

Sargent said the coalition will develop training programmes and "a collaborative verification platform," as well as a voluntary code of practice for online news.

"We live in a time when trust and truth are issues that all newsrooms, and increasingly the social platforms themselves, are facing," she said.

"Each partner is committed to sharing knowledge, developing policies and devising training in how journalists use the social web to find and report news."

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS

The partner network includes prominent news organizations such as The New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, CNN, ABC News of Australia, ProPublica, AFP, The Telegraph, France Info, Breaking News, Le Monde's Les Decodeurs, International Business Times UK, Eurovision News Exchange and Al Jazeera Media Network.

Other organisations in the network include Amnesty International, European Journalism Centre, American Press Institute, International Fact Checking Network and Duke Reporters' Lab. 

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/1085216/facebook-twitter-coalition-vows-to-improve-online-news

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