Reimagining media literacy
On Tuesday, Francesca Tripodi joined a conversation on misinformation, disinformation, and media literacy in a less-centralized media universe at the Reimagine the Internet conference.
Describing her work on scriptural interference and the search practices of conservative communities, Dr. Tripodi highlighted how search engines’ design optimizes them to answer exactly the questions we ask, using the terms we put in, rather than provide results that may answer our questions from different perspectives or include information that may challenge our preconceptions.
Understanding public opinion
This week, Ozan Kuru presented on his work with Shannon McGregor on how people perceive different types of public opinion data in news stories at the American Association for Public Opinion Research. They asked how people judge various types of public opinion data, including traditional ones (like polls and interviews) and emergent one (tweets and metrics), and if these various types of data differentially impact people's perceptions of public opinion.
Across multiple issues, they randomly exposed ~1100 people to news stories that contained either: polling data, interview quotes, polls & quotes, Twitter metrics, individual tweets, or metrics & tweets. Astoundingly, people who saw a news story with tweets (from random, non-elite accounts) rated them as significantly more credible than did the people who saw a story with nationally representative survey results. Also, despite the wide range of evidence types in the stories, they did not find differences in how people perceive public opinion. That is, no matter whether they saw a story with a representative poll or tweets, people did not vary much in how strong they believed others felt about the topic.
Other publications and appearances
“When I got pregnant, I wanted the very best for my baby. That’s why I chose the hospital uptown where the white women went to have their babies, with white doctors...thinking I would get better care—and I got anything but.” Tressie McMillan Cottom appeared on a new episode of Red Table Talk to discuss the concept of being an “invisible black woman.” The episode is available on Facebook Watch.
"They tap into this 'very human impulse to play with identity and pretend to be someone you’re not.'“ Alice Marwick spoke with the Washington Post about FaceApp, deepfakes, and catfishing.
“Righting this ship cannot be a quiet process — updating a web page here, saying the right thing there. The proclamations that we now know are wrong were so persistent and so loud for so long.” Zeynep Tufekci discusses missteps and course correction in the CDC and WHO’s pandemic messaging.
“…giving Covid-19 deniers, insurrectionists, and inciters of violence the right to disseminate disinformation on social media unless the platforms hosting them can show their speech has caused an identifiable and immediate harm to another person can come at the expense of the truth.” CITAP affiliate Enrique Armijo discussed the precedent set by the Facebook Oversight Board in Bloomberg Law.
“What I’ve noticed is the shrinking back from public life.” Deen Freelon appeared on WCHL to talk about the FOB decision.
“As parties have become more sorted and distant from one another, political parties may become a market segment in their own right.” CITAP affiliates Bridget Barrett and Lee McGuigan talked with The Markup about how Exxon, Comcast, and other companies target advertising based on viewers’ political leanings.
Rest of Web
We’re excited about the Ida B Wells Society Data Institute, the Microsoft Research Race & Tech lecture series, Sarah Brayne’s Predict and Surveil, Audrey Watters’ Teaching Machines, Dan Greene’s The Promise of Access, and Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression, convincing people to swap out “The Social Dilemma” for “Coded Bias” in their Netflix queue, and watching Sandra Oh play an academic department chair. Full endorsements below: