Charts purporting to identify Fake News sites

Guest Speaker:

Eric Maas
http://www.ericmaas.com

Eric Maas is an entrepreneur and search engine optimization specialist. He has over 10 years of SEO experience and close to 20 years in web marketing. His consulting work has included political candidates, publications, and fortune 500 companies.

Guest Speaker: Dr. Hilary Goldstine, Ph.D. Psychologist and Expert on Brainwashing, Cults, and their effects on their members

Guest Speaker, Sean Vernon, Senior Editor, Berkeley Political Review

Fake News or Real News: What's the Difference and How to Know
OLLI Summer 2017

"Fake News" is not a fight over Truth but rather a fight over Power"

2016 was the "Year of the Hoax" disguised as truth. Fake news and the proliferation of opinion that passes for news is creating confusion, punching holes in what is true, and leading us to doubt everything branded as "news." A BuzzFeed analysis found that false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated more engagement than content from real news sites during the last three months of the election. In the aftermath of the election, Donald Trump weaponized the term "fake news" and used it to describe the traditional media. The United States has become polarized between Liberal and Conservative factions, each one claiming that the other produces false information to further its own political agenda.  In this course we will examine the difference between "fake news", satire, opinion, slanted journalism, propaganda and factual news reporting. We will look at the rise of the fake news phenomenon, how and why it has gone viral, who writes it, why people believe it, and its actual and potential consequences. We will debate the issue of fake news and free speech: Should the spread of false information be regulated and if so, who should regulate it?

Week 1   June 6, Introduction and Overview of the Course

• What is "Fake News?" What is Legitimate News?
• Why Fake News has emerged as an issue now: The emergence and evolution of "fake news"
• How can we tell Fake News when we see it? What does "real news" Look Like?
• Who writes Fake News and Why?
• Why people tend to believe fake News: The psychology behind its spread
• What are the actual and potential consequences of the spread of Fake News?
• Fake News and Free Speech
• What Can be done?
• https://www.facebook.com/vicenews/videos/vb.235852889908002/722496247910328/?type=2&theater
• http://americannews.com/lady-gaga-makes-disgusting-move-undermine-trumps-inauguration-will-pay-big/
• https://www.facebook.com/SourceFedNews/videos/1199514293432055/
• Problems of unreliability in traditional media: inaccurate/insufficient information such as errors and ommissions, biased information (often in favor of the status quo), government pressure to suppress reports, corporate public relations campaigns
• https://theintercept.com/2016/12/10/anonymous-leaks-to-the-washpost-about-the-cias-russia-beliefs-are-no-substitute-for-evidence/
• Vox Democrats are falling for fake news
• The public editor in the NYT: checking false information and editorial spin in news articles (Bernie Sanders article)
• What is Fake news?  Is objective News an illusion?
  

After reading the following article, think about how the "Iran Deal" was reported:

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/308940-wheres-the-outrage-over-obamas-fake-news-peddling

Also note how easy it is to create a realistic fake news story: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/fake-news-hillary-clinton-cameron-harris.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

• How does fake news differ from problems of unreliability noted above?  Hoaxes, Satire, opinion, and Comedy, “spin,” intentional disinformation mixing factual material with fraudulent information
• Jon Stewart on the thin line between traditional media and fake news  https://qz.com/850475/jon-stewart-the-american-media-has-become-an-information-laundering-scheme/
• one type of fake news — the version that mimics real news with the intent to deceive, which spreads rapidly online — is a new strain
  http://www.alternet.org/media/how -fake-news-exploded-and-how-tell-when-label-misused

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/12/stop_calling_everything_fake_news.htm

• How can we tell fake news when we see it?
• http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/evaluating-resources
• http://www.reuters.com/article/us-media-trump-commentary-idUSKBN14O17D
• http://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/how-to-spot-fake-news/
• And an argument about why fact checking won’t help  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fact-checking-wont-save-us-from-fake-news/
• Daily Cal Presentation: What Real News Looks Like!

Week 2 June 13 Digital Media, Google Rankings, and the new incentives to Misinform: The new financial environment and more temptations facing "legitimate" media to distort and misinform

Guest Speaker Eric Maas

Fake News is Nothing New, But it has Evolved

Before fake news, what was “real” news? The crumbling infrastructure of traditional journalism and the emergence of digital media

Read:

Goodby to the Age of Newspapers, Hello to the Age of Corruption
Commentary: Fake News Isn’t a New Problem, and We’re Better Equipped to Fight It Now
The Corpse Factory and the Birth of Fake News
Lessons of the Fake News Pandemic of 1942

Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political­Media Machine (NYT August 2016)
How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study (NYT)
This is how hyperpartisan Political News Gets Made (Buzzfeed)

Vampire Web Sites Suck Content from Legitimate Progressive News Sites



Week 3: June 20 Who Writes Fake News, Why, Why do People believe it, and What are the Consequences?

Guest Speaker: Hilary Goldstine, Ph.D, Psychologist and expert on the effects of cults on their members

• Individuals write for profit and Fun (hoaxes as clickbait and trolls)
• "Fake News Writer Says He is Proud of his Work"
• Inside a Fake News Sausage factory
• Governments and corporations promote disinformation to manipulate the public

Craig Silverman, "A Hollywood Film Is Using Fake News To Get Publicity" Buzzfeed, Feb. 13, 2017

• Trolls and Ideological activists propagate false narratives to take down opponents and exercise power
• Know your meme: Birther Movement
• Amanda Hess "How the Trolls Stole Washington," NYT Magazine Feb. 28, 2017
• Andrew Marantz, "Trolls for Trump: Meet Mike Cernovich, the meme mastermind of the alt-right," The New Yorker, October 31, 2016

• "Despite their self-presentation as ciphers, trolls have always had a point of view, and #GamerGate offered a platform for a whole coalition to express its distrust of media, resentment toward women and anger at progressive critiques of racism and misogyny. They had demands, too: They worked to get journalists fired, to pressure advertisers, to silence feminist critics."

• Efforts to Kill Mainstream Media and replace it with new narratives“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”--Gary Kasparov
• Ten Times Trump Spread Fake News
• Charles J. Sykes, "When Nobody Cares the President is Lying" NYT Sunday Review February 4, 2017
• Carole Cadwalladr, "Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media: With links to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage, the rightwing US computer scientist is at the heart of a multimillion-dollar propaganda network" The Guardian, February 26, 2017
• Jane Mayer, THE RECLUSIVE HEDGE-FUND TYCOON BEHIND THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY: How Robert Mercer exploited America’s populist insurgency. The New Yorker, March 27, 2017

recommended: A long article on Russia https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0P

Why do people believe Fake news? "Fake News is not a fight over Truth but rather a fight over Power"

• People want to be entertained and politics is about perception: Bret Stephens, "Don't Dismiss President Trump's Attacks on the Media as Mere Stupidity" Time Feb. 26, 2017
• People are no longer interested in facts: Roger Cohen, "Am I Imagining This?," New York Times, Feb 10 2017 And an argument about why fact checking won’t help  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fact-checking-wont-save-us-from-fake-news/
• Conformation bias https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/opinion/campaign-stops/your-facts-or-mine.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-shar
• Desirability Biashttp://www.psypost.org/2017/06/study-trump-clinton-supporters-accept-new-information-conforms-desires-49118
• Demonstrating shared values with your community http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/20/opinions/fake-news-stories-thrive-donath/index.html
• victims of brainwashing: Guest Speaker Dr. Hilary Goldstine
• What are the Consequences?
• "The actual impact of fake news is dependent on who delivers it" Ben Thompson, "Fake News"
• No matter whether true or false, allegations can shape perceptions into the future  http://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-russia-commentary-idUSKBN14V2MQ
• False allegations can have dangerous consequences http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-comet-conspiracy-theory-20161205-story.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/world/asia/pakistan-israel-khawaja-asif-fake-news-nuclear.html
• Fake News and the 2016 Election  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/online-hoaxes-fake-news-played-role-election
• https://www.facebook.com/TomiLahren/videos/vb.868219436604578/1166533586773160/?type=2&theater (

 

Week 4 June 27

Fake News and Free Speech

 

What can be done?

Guest Speaker, Sean Vernon, Senior Editor, Berkeley Political Review

Further reading:
On the history and evolution of fake news
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535
On teaching about how to evaluate information
https://sheg.stanford.edu/upload/V3LessonPlans/Executive%20Summary%2011.21.16.pdf
Books
Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble
Shaheed Mohammed, The Disinformation Age
Howard Rheingold, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online
David Helfand, Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age
Eric Conway and Naomi Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt
Maria Konmikova, The Confidence Game