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Month: February 2017

Creating artificial social media pundits to manipulate public opinion

Creating artificial social media pundits to manipulate public opinion

Everyone is working to manipulate you on social media: “It’s recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be didn’t like. It could then potentially have their “fake” people run smear campaigns against those “real” people. As…

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Social media amplifies the power of propaganda messaging

Social media amplifies the power of propaganda messaging

There’s another type of “fake news” that surfaces during virtually every political campaign: propaganda. Propaganda is weaponized speech that mixes truthful, deceptive and false speech, and is designed explicitly to strengthen one side and weaken the other. Propaganda has been around for a long time, preceding the era of mass media. …. tools such as Twitter and Facebook may make propaganda harder to detect and debunk. Many citizens are skeptical of claims made by politicians and parties, but are less…

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Is there any difference between professional and fake news?

Is there any difference between professional and fake news?

USA Today goes full social media fake news stupid Based on an unverified report citing unnamed sources, USA Today publishes a story based on tweets that was already largely debunked by Snopes.com (FACT CHECK: Does President Trump’s White House Dress Code Mandate Dresses for Female Staffers?) In other words USA Today took poorly sourced, probably wrong material, based on unvetted Tweets and turned it in to a “news story” to sell eyeballs to advertisers. At the time I checked, the…

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Advocacy of boycotts on social media causing harm, often based on misinformation

Advocacy of boycotts on social media causing harm, often based on misinformation

Retailers once again find themselves in the middle of a political and cultural fight, and many have simply stopped making sense. Real companies and real jobs are at risk based on knee-jerk responses to misinformation. Consumer boycotts based on cultural or religious beliefs are nothing new, Target and Barilla pasta are just two of the many covered here at length. But recently social media is helping to fuel many knee jerk reactions that are turning concerned citizens and advocates into…

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Unusual use of data in a propaganda poster

Unusual use of data in a propaganda poster

TL;DR Summary Propaganda poster distributed on social media notes that the number of Americans killed annually by “Islamic jihadist immigrants” is very small. The numbers in the chart appear to be approximately correct (depends on year and who is counting). The poster uses data, which may invoke System 2 rational thinking, yet the numbers and layout are simple enough that many people may process this with their quick, intuitive and emotional-based System 1 thinking style. In that regard, this is…

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