WeChat: How Chinese students consume (fake) news in Australia

The Fake News epidemic in Australia is not exclusive to western social media sites such as Facebook. WeChat, the Chinese social media behemoth, has a strong presence in Australia among international students from China of which there are almost 200,000 each year.

Chinese students who are unable to read local English language use WeChat as their primary source of news. The revenue model is similar to Facebook- the higher the views the higher the potential for advertising income. This results in the production of sensationalised fake news with themes of nationalism.

Australian Red Scarf is one of the most popular WeChat pages in Australia. The site claims to translate Australian news for a Chinese audience. However it is filled with exaggeration, opinion memes and attention grabbing headlines making it a source of Fake News.

Three top fake news stories are:

1. Not only have the nuclear test areas been polluted, but every city of the Australian east coast is facing a nuclear crisis

2. Breaking! ISIS officially announced their Australian attack! Many famous locations in Sydney and Melbourne targeted

3. White Australia Policy is Back

-Jake

How games can help us spot fake news

With tech companies like Facebook introducing new features, and governments around the world considering laws to disrupt the spread of fake news, games are also being made to help spot fake news.

The University of Cambridge developed Bad News as an educational tool, helping people understand how fake news spread. Players are encouraged to pick provocative and clickbait headlines to garner attention and grow their imaginary social media following.

The game teaches techniques used by fake news purveyors in an attempt to ‘demistify and illuminate’ fake news. By learning these techniques, players can learn to recognise signs such as fake profiles, and not be influenced by fake news.

As we’ve covered before, while laws and changes are great, helping people engage in critical thinking and fact checking to stay as informed citizens is still the most effective way to combat disinformation. Drawing from Inoculation theory, Bad News confers resistance against fake news by giving you insights into the various tactics fake news-mongers use. If you can recognise it, you can resist it.

You can play the game at Bad News, and for more information check out the developers page.

-Maria

Seeking the truth and NOT what’s comfortable

People Sometimes Seek The Truth, But Most Prefer Like-minded Views

It may be hard to believe everything that is said on a blog like this where you have no idea who the authors are. However, you can always trust an educated and respected expert journalist on disseminating wisdom on how to navigate the current mediasphere.

Let us introduce you to Christiane Amanpour, a world-respected (2.9million followers on Twitter!) journalist who has spoken to world leaders, reported on devastating wars and has earned the trust of her viewers and at a TedxGlobal event, she expressed her views on fake news

Watch her TedTalk Now: 

If you’re a bit time poor, here is a quick summary of some of her insights and tips on “How to seek truth in the era of fake news” (ROM) – research, objectivity, morality

Research

‘Research the facts’ may seem redundant and oversaid but nevertheless crucial. If you understand the research, and the facts behind the truth you will have a better context. “so if 99.9 percent of the science on climate is empirical, scientific evidence, but it’s competing almost equally with a handful of deniers, that is not the truth; that is the epitome of fake news.” People are entitled to their opinions, but if you have a massive group of professionals supporting their research, consider it to be truthful.

Objectivity

The battle between bias and objectively is clear in any news source. Being able to tell a story from every angle and not a personal perspective is without a doubt hard. However,  the issue is that objectivity is not the same as fair and balanced. This is where Amanpour brings in a personal story when she was accused of not being an objective reporter when presenting on the Balkan Wars as she reported more on the minority party of the incident. Here she realises that ‘objectivity means giving all sides an equal hearing and talking to all sides, but not treating all sides equally, not creating a forced moral equivalence or a factual equivalence.” Objectivity constantly hangs in the balance. This can be a challenging yet impactful way to seek truth.

Morality

We all have different morals and here Amanpour asks for developers and technology giants to build morality and quote “Filter out the Crap! You guys are good at technology, let’s figure out an algorithm that works. Can we not?” Despite having good intentions, I disagree with pushing all the responsibility to commercial giants to tackle the issue as I have repeatedly said that the answer relies on informed citizenship, being aware of what we read and what we share and contribute as digital citizens.

Not only Amanpour has shed light on the fake news epidemic, in fact many other experts have also spoken on the topic. Check it out here.

-Cecilia

Sport in Australia: The AFL’s fight against Fake News

The Australian Football League is urging playing to call out ‘fake news’ in AFL media.

As celebrities in Australia, players of the AFL are under constant media scrutiny for their behavior, attitudes and actions on and off the field. Fake News surrounding their professional careers and their personal lives can bear a heavy toll on a player’s mental health. In the 2017 season Travis Cloke, Tom Boyd and Alex Fasolo all took time out from the game because of mental health struggles, partially attributing the decision to what they had seen on social media.

The AFL Players Association has encouraged players to respectfully combat inaccurate stories by calling out factual errors or what they considered to be unfair reporting. While players were discouraged to contact journalists directly, avenues were given to them to voice their side of the story to internal media outlet.

CEO Gillon McLachlan believes players would be better off staying away from social media all together. Is this a realistic request in the modern digital age?

This is just one of the many examples of real-life consequences that fake news can bring.

-Jake

Fake News and Safety Warnings: Why You Should Be Alarmed

There is an infinite amount of blogs issuing warnings, advice and tips on health and safety. With so much of this information being unsubstantiated viewers face the Fake News Dilemma: I Don’t Know What To Believe.

 

 

For the most part, this dilemma is encountered with celebrity gossip or sensationalized politics. However, the case study of the Hawaii Missile Alert can be seen as an example whereby the Fake News Dilemma resulted in total inaction by the public to a potentially real threat.

In 2018, the state department of Hawaii issued a warning:

 

The alert was a mistake by someone pressing the wrong button. More interesting is the public reaction. Some Hawaiians went into panic mode while others waited for further confirmation. The fact that many people did not believe the alert was real can be attributed to the rise of Fake News. They didn’t know if it was a joke, a stunt or in fact a real missile threat.Thus the Fake News phenomena impacts the ability of governments to communicate to their citizens in times of crisis. With so much misinformation circulating people become skeptical of everything including what is real; as seen in the case study of Hawaii.

-Jake

Fake News: From Democracy to Dictatorship

What do Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and U.S. President Donald Trump all have in common?

They label unfavourable press “Fake News”

The term Fake News was popularized by U.S. President Donald Trump as a way to attack and dismiss unfavourable press coverage. Both the term and the associated tactic of its implementation have since been adopted by authoritarian leaders the world over.

Attacking the press is not new to dictatorships. In fact, control of national media is a pillar authoritarian control exercised by infamous governments including the NAZI party in Germany.

Freedom of expression is a principle of democracy, which stipulates the importance of a free press. The use of a dictatorial technique by a democratic nation raises questions over the integrity of its office.

See below 5 examples of world leaders who now use Fake News to discredit the press:

1) Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

Quote: “You can forge anything these days. We are living in a fake-news era.”

2) Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

Quote: The media “spread lots of false versions, lots of lies. This is what we call ‘fake news’ today, isn’t it? The era of post-truth.”

3) U Kyaw San Hla, Burma State Officer

Quote: “There is no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news.”

4) Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis

Quote: “I am not saying that all are fake pictures, but some of them are and there have been a lot of alternative facts and fake news.”

5) U.S. President Donald Trump

Quote: “You areFake News”

-Jake

 

Trumpaganda

What’s a blog on fake news without addressing Trump?

Trump did not invent Fake news nor was he the first administration to have a contentious relationship with the press yet it is no secret that Trump’s use of propaganda has significantly popularised the term, evident during his 2016 presidential election and to some extent, it helped him win.

Fast forward 2 years and fake news have flooded the internet and social media has become weaponised to an extent that it is more effective than airstrikes in destroying the target, in this case legitimate news. Therefore, it comes to no surprise that aside from shaping Trump’s fortunes, fake news has since been used by activists, propagandists and thought police to curate a tide of opinion. By the time the truth is dug up, who knows what damage has already been done.

Of course, Trump has continuously spoken out against ‘fake news’ and journalism, calling it the ‘enemy of the American people‘. You see, Trump likes to tell us what he thinks about Fake News.

Exhibit A: 

Exhibit B,C,D,E…..

Yes, he has a lot to say.  However, what’s ironic is that for all the president’s complaints, he also craves validation from the media. In fact, Trump has given exclusive interviews to The New York Times and, in addition to loving Fox News, reportedly watches CNN and MSNBC every morning.

He is also often the center of fake news posts.

You may have come across this edited photo that appears to show Donald Trump floating in a raft, extending a red Make America Great Again hat to a flood victim. It went viral last year but has resurfaced online as a result of Hurricane Florence

As New York Times reporter Kevin Roose pointed out on Twitter, the pic is a fake ― it was taken in Central Texas in 2015, long before Trump was elected president, and he definitely wasn’t in that raft.

Take a look at the real photo 

It has been shared 275,000 times on Facebook.

Trumps direct and indirect involvement with fake news will continue to exist.

According to a 2018 survey done by ABC, about 7 in 10 Australians are now worried about the spread of false information and of ‘fake news’ being used as a weapon to mislead and influence public opinion. Political engagement is also on the decline.

What can be done? 

Fact-checking. Of course, by fact-checking,  I don’t mean researching every single thing you read on the internet. It can simply mean being mindful of the mediasphere and the key catalysts of fake news (Trump being one of them). It means encouraging public figures to think more carefully about the quality of information they are disseminating.

Look out for more tweets from Trump I’m sure there will be plenty.

P.S Trumpaganda (the title of this blogpost) is actually the name of a university course offered at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign examining President Donald Trump’s impact on democracy and the free press.

-Cecilia

Facebook’s Fight against Fake News

Facebook recently announced that it would trial a ‘context’ button that would help its users identify fake news.

Source: Truly Deeply

Following Mark Zuckerberg’s questioning by the US Congress, Facebook launched a campaign to address concerns against data misuse and the spread of misinformation. The new ‘context’ button is their latest move in the fight against fake news.

The feature, which rolled out in the US and UK, will make its way to Australian users. The button will appear on posts, and will give details about the publisher (such as their Wikipedia page), what posts the publisher has previously shared, and which friends have shared the article. In cases where there is no Wikipedia entry, it will indicate that information is unavailable, which will also be helpful context.

So how helpful is this?

Giving people quick and easy access to contextual information that can help them evaluate articles is definitely a step in the right direction. However, Facebook’s personalised newsfeed acts as a filter bubble, or echo chamber. For example, if I believed in aliens, and Facebook knows this because I’ve like a bunch of pages and posts about aliens. My entire newsfeed will reflect what I like, and that context button won’t matter because I’ve already decided on what I believe in before I’ve even clicked on that information.

*X-Files theme intensifies*

Whatever we already see on our newsfeed is information that is already tailored for us, and a context button might not be all that helpful if we live in an echo chamber.

 

 

-Maria

 

Fake News Laws: The Big Test for Social Media

The war on fake news online and the slow progress of Facebook and Google have led some countries to turn to the legal system for a solution.

Notably, various groups in Singapore are awaiting government report on potential Fake News Laws. The recommended new legislation would provide the government with “powers to swiftly disrupt the spread and influence of online falsehoods” and to prevent people from gaining monetary value for misleading clickbait articles.  It calls for criminal penalties for those who meet a threshold of “serious harm such as election interference, public disorder, and the erosion of trust in public institutions.”

But fighting misinformation with the law is tricky as concerns have been raised over free speech and censorship if these laws were to take place. However, the counter-argument is that these measures will be to ensure freedom of speech can be meaningfully exercised that is not drowned out by fake content.

In fact, not only have discussions emerged in Singapore but earlier this year Malaysia successfully passed fake news laws. This encompassed penalizing not only those behind fake news but also anyone who maliciously spreads this material. This faced huge international criticism due to the controversial debate of freedom of speech and those guilty faced up to six years in prison and fines of up to $130,000. Currently, the new Government is working to repeal the law.

Nevertheless, if fake news legislation becomes a universal reality, it should still be accompanied with increased fact-checking and investigative journalism and building the digital literacy and critical thinking skills of the population.

How do you rate Fake News Laws as a solution? Do you think having legislation on fake news is an effective solution? Or do you think the sacrifice of freedom of speech is too great of a consequence?

Head to our Facebook poll on our FlakeOnFake page to vote!

Cecilia

 

 

Art of Conning: Actual Fake News

As the last part of the series, this one will focus on actual fake news.

Source: Swadeology

Unlike satire, actual fake news deliberately aim to mislead and misinform whether for revenue or political purposes.

Alex Jones & Infowars

Managed by far-right conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, Infowars has published harmful stories such as the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and Boston Marathon bombing being hoaxes that involved ‘crisis actors’.

So, what are the tech companies doing?

After the Senate hearing about the alleged anti-conservative bias on major tech platforms where Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, and Twitter CEO ,Jack Dorsey, testified, Twitter and Periscope permanently banned Alex Jones and Infowars from their platforms.

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1037804427992686593&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2018%2F9%2F6%2F17829264%2Falex-jones-info-wars-banned-twitter

Twitter follows Google parent, Alphabet, Inc, along with Apple, Facebook and Spotify in banning Jones and Infowars from posting content on their platforms. Since then, Paypal has also banned Jones and Infowars from using their service and platform.

Can of Worms?

While many has welcomed the ban, conservatives have criticised it as an infringement of free speech. To what extent does our opinions count as truths? How do we draw the line between an objective truth and an individual perspective?

-Maria