Pine wrote:
I'm finding it encouraging to see that a number of researchers and journalists are taking these problems seriously, trying to understand them, and trying to improve the situation. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/misinformation-on-social-media-could-...
I'm encouraged by the studies, but confused about why the fake news phenomenon is considered novel, rather than continuations of age-old disinformation, yellow journalism, aggressive public relations, manufactured consent, astroturfing, propaganda, and deceptive marketing. There's nothing new about it other than the term.
Agreed that what we're seeing are Internet-enabled implementations of old practices. I think that there has been a recent renewal of awareness of how effective these dark arts can be at generating revenue and perhaps affecting political systems.
Over the years, a number of people and organizations have tried to manipulate the neutrality of Wikipedia content for political, financial, or PR advantage. I have the impression that the community's human resources capacity and technical tools are currently insufficient in comparison to the scale of the problems. I'm hoping that some of the tools that are being developed as a part of the anti-harassment initiative will help a little. I'm also thinking that a good exercise for students in Wikipedia in Education classes would be to identify content that is noncompliant with neutrality and verifiability standards, and either change that content themselves or flag it for review by more experienced editors.
Pine
On Sat, May 13, 2017 at 5:53 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Pine wrote:
I'm finding it encouraging to see that a number of researchers and journalists are taking these problems seriously, trying to understand
them,
and trying to improve the situation. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/misinformation-on-
social-media-could-outfox-technical-solutions-for-now
I'm encouraged by the studies, but confused about why the fake news phenomenon is considered novel, rather than continuations of age-old disinformation, yellow journalism, aggressive public relations, manufactured consent, astroturfing, propaganda, and deceptive marketing. There's nothing new about it other than the term.
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
I've studied this question using the same framework I use to track the WP:SPVA changes. I'm convinced that the English Wikipedia can, given enough time, handle every kind of controversy except:
(1) religious disputes (e.g., "Historicity of Jesus... Not to be confused with Historical Jesus."
(2) international political disputes (any number of disputed borders and islands, Israel/Palestine etc.),
(3) economic disputes pertaining to http://talknicer.com/ehip.pdf and http://talknicer/egma.pdf
The issues regarding (1) don't have a material (world) impact; (2) are intractable outside of Wikipedia, so why even bother; but (3) has profound real-world political and economic impacts which affect the Foundation's Mission by altering the extent to which free educational content can be created and effectively disseminated. However, if assertions that the issues pertaining to (3) are a result of systemic bias are met with ridicule.
So what we have is Wikipedia perpetuating the "fake news" promoted by trickle down economics that tax cuts for the rich are good. How might that affect electoral outcomes, for example?
The best example at present is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Economics#Tax_cut_claim_in_Fiscal_policy_... which has stood for months with no interest expressed by any Wikipedians in addressing the problem.
On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Agreed that what we're seeing are Internet-enabled implementations of old practices. I think that there has been a recent renewal of awareness of how effective these dark arts can be at generating revenue and perhaps affecting political systems.
Over the years, a number of people and organizations have tried to manipulate the neutrality of Wikipedia content for political, financial, or PR advantage. I have the impression that the community's human resources capacity and technical tools are currently insufficient in comparison to the scale of the problems. I'm hoping that some of the tools that are being developed as a part of the anti-harassment initiative will help a little. I'm also thinking that a good exercise for students in Wikipedia in Education classes would be to identify content that is noncompliant with neutrality and verifiability standards, and either change that content themselves or flag it for review by more experienced editors.
Pine
On Sat, May 13, 2017 at 5:53 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Pine wrote:
I'm finding it encouraging to see that a number of researchers and journalists are taking these problems seriously, trying to understand
them,
and trying to improve the situation. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/misinformation-on-
social-media-could-outfox-technical-solutions-for-now
I'm encouraged by the studies, but confused about why the fake news phenomenon is considered novel, rather than continuations of age-old disinformation, yellow journalism, aggressive public relations, manufactured consent, astroturfing, propaganda, and deceptive marketing. There's nothing new about it other than the term.
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org