Absent definitive answers from the government about mysterious drone sightings in New Jersey and elsewhere in the Northeast, many social media users really want to believe aliens are to blame.
PolitiFact
As soon as President-elect Donald J. Trump won the presidential race, influencers on Rumble, the right-wing alternative to YouTube, flooded the platform with a simple catchphrase: ‘We are the media now.’
The New York Times
For 12 years Sophie had been experiencing painful periods, weight gain, depression and fatigue. She had been diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal condition that affects about one in 10 women, but she struggled to get medical help.
BBC
Diary of a CEO host Steven Bartlett is amplifying harmful health misinformation on his number-one ranked podcast, a recent BBC investigation has found.
BBC
The world is ending. The No. 7 does not exist. Rain is a myth. If I gave dates and images and “sources” that support these statements, would they be believable? If I gave these statements with full confidence, would you change your thinking, change what you have always known, seen, and felt, based on a published article?
People Newspapers
The United States launched a broad effort, including sanctions and indictments, to fight Russian influence and disinformation campaigns related to the 2024 election.
The New York Times
Vikram Bhaskaran was leading creator partnerships at Pinterest when his father started showing early symptoms of ALS, a rare, terminal neurodegenerative disease.
TechCrunch
Europe’s efforts to contain a resurgence of nationalism and Russian interference entered dangerous new territory on Friday when Romania canceled a high-stakes presidential election, just two days before a runoff vote that an ultranationalist candidate had been well positioned to win.
The New York Times
In an era when artificial intelligence floods our social media feeds with content that makes the fake seem real, how are people supposed to discern what is true? Creative advertising student Brooke Hirsch ’24 came up with a solution to this problem.
Syracuse University News
Within hours of the deadly shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York this week, the surveillance video that captured the brazen crime spread across social media. On X, Reddit and Facebook, the short video was likely analyzed as closely as the footage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy over 61 years ago.
Forbes
Talk of election falsehoods died down after President-elect Donald Trump won, thanks in part to Vice President Kamala Harris’s relatively prompt concession. It was Trump’s side that had been prepared to mount claims of fraud if he had lost, and that proved unnecessary.
The Washington Post
It’s been the biggest year for elections in human history: 2024 is a “super-cycle” year in which 3.7 billion eligible voters in 72 countries had the chance to go the polls. These are also the first AI elections.
The Conversation
Stanford Communication professor Jeff Hancock, an expert on technology and misinformation, has been accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) to craft a court statement.
The Stanford Daily
Spanish-speaking communities in the United States are uniquely vulnerable to the unmitigated spread of election misinformation. These communities face risks other communities do not: misinformation often exploits their unique socio-political experiences.
Brennan Center for Justice
As digital information grows more pervasive, business leaders and educators face a critical challenge: How can they help individuals discern fact from fiction in a world awash with falsehoods?.
Forbes
Local journalism is a dying profession. Since the start of the 2000s over one-third of the country’s newspapers and two-thirds of its journalists have been lost according to a study from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
West Potomac Wire
Nadya Bliss, the executive director of Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative, helps us understand disinformation from the ground up.
American Diplomat
Violent confrontations between Chinese and Philippine vessels in the South China Sea are being manipulated online by disinformation networks for profit, posing risks to regional security, an AFP investigation has found.
Agence France-Presse
At the start of the year, there were widespread concerns about how generative AI could be used to interfere in global elections to spread propaganda and disinformation. Fast-forward to the end of the year, Meta claims those fears did not play out, at least on its platforms.
TechCrunch
Australian lawmakers on Thursday approved a landmark ban on social media for children under 16, in some of the world’s toughest such controls. The ban aims to address the impact of social media use on children’s physical and mental health.
NBC News