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Month: May 2018

News: Journalists fall for false meme: why?

News: Journalists fall for false meme: why?

The long-time thesis of this blog is that social media is a frictionless platform for the spread of propaganda. In the “good old days”, propaganda required owning a printing press or broadcast license. Today, anyone can become a propagandist by posting an appropriate meme on social media and watch it shared thousands or millions of times. Journalists frequently use their personal accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (but especially Twitter) to share items of interest to themselves. Due to the…

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Journalists fall for false meme, because they want it to be true?

Journalists fall for false meme, because they want it to be true?

The long time thesis of this blog is that social media is a frictionless platform for the spread of propaganda. In the “good old days”, propaganda required owning a printing press or broadcast license. Today, anyone can become a propagandist by posting an appropriate meme on social media and watch it shared thousands or millions of times. Journalists frequently use their personal accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (but especially Twitter) to share items of interest to themselves. Due to…

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What Fiction News Looks Like: “Volcanic eruptions like the one in Hawaii, are not natural disasters — without them the Earth would explode”

What Fiction News Looks Like: “Volcanic eruptions like the one in Hawaii, are not natural disasters — without them the Earth would explode”

Fox News runs a column about Kilauea in which it gets almost everything wrong starting with the headline. Source: Volcanic eruptions like the one in Hawaii, are not natural disasters — without them the Earth would explode | Fox News What an actual volcanologist has to say about this: I also checked with my personal consulting geologist who agrees with Dr. Pitcher. In case Fox fixes their stupidity on this, here’s a screen capture of the headline: