Journalism agenda: Fake News drama continues.. Google’s financial initiative on Digital News…

Digital News Initiative: second funding brings €24M to 124 projects across Europe

 

We are thrilled to announce the second round of funding of the Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund, Google’s €150m commitment to spark new thinking and give European news organisations of all sizes the space to try some new things, experiment and innovate in the digital space. Today, project leaders are being notified of funding offers that total €24 million to 124 projects originating from 25 European countries.

Google continues to make nice with European publishers, part two: The search giant announced Thursday it is supporting 124 new media projects across 25 European countries with €24 million as part of its Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund. Google intends to dole out €150 million over three years, and has already spread €27 million across 128 projects back in February (wewrote abouta numberof them).

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has outlined their plan to tackle fake news on the site.
Fake news is like the living dead of new media. It is unkillable.

The problem of fake news on social media platforms like Facebook misinforming Americans was seriously addressed by none other than President Barack Obama Thursday.


Facebook’s fake news problem is all the rage these days. After raising hell about Facebook’s role in the recent election — and a misleading response from CEO Mark Zuckerberg — we’re really back at square one. It’s a problem, we all know it’s a problem (save Zuckerberg), and at this point we’re still struggling for a solution — although we do have some suggestions. According to The Washington Post, four students — Anant Goel, Nabinta De, Qinglin Chen, and Mark Craft — may have solved the problem. At a hackathon at Princeton University this week, students were given the challenge of solving…

For all its talk of a more connected world, Facebook has a tendency to silo us—its users—into feedback loops, those spheres of information where we’re rarely subjected to views that differ from our own.

Ever since the end of the presidential election, the spread of rumors, misinformation and outright fake news on social media has been in the spotlight. With even President Obama speaking out about social media’s role in pushing propaganda, and some
Algorithmic systems have a way of making mistakes or leading to undesired consequences. Here are five principles to help technologists deal with that.
There’s no doubt Facebook had some influence in the Presidential Election result – but what that influence was, and how we fix it, is a more challenging concern.

Zuckerberg’s problem: he makes money from fake news

This morning’s Observer column:

Zuckerberg says that he doesn’t want fake news on Facebook, but it turns out that getting rid of it is very difficult because “identifying the ‘truth’ is complicated”. Philosophers worldwide will agree with that proposition. But you don’t need to have a Nobel prize to check whether the pope did indeed endorse Trump or whether Clinton conducted the supposed purchases of arms or a Maldives house.


As the election season came to an end the fake news sources were just getting started. During the final three months of the US Presidential campaign, viral fake news sites crushed the real thing in terms of Facebook engagement. According to reporting from BuzzFeed News, the 20 top-performing fake election stories — those coming from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs — generated more than 8.7-million engagements.

As Facebook continues to roil over the idea that fake news on the social network could have had any effect on the U.S. presidential election, one Chrome extension is stepping in.

After serious anxieties that fake news proliferated on social media unchecked during the election cycle, internet titans have stepped up, with Google and Facebook both blocking ad money from going to hoax story sites. But to protect the people,

A week after the presidential election, the fight against fake news is finally ramping up.

The Real Problem Behind the Fake News

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president, Facebook has taken justifiable heat for its role in spreading misinformation and propaganda about the candidates. In particular, its news feed algorithm fueled a cottage industry of fake and intentionally misleading “news” that skewed heavily anti–Hillary Clinton and pro-Trump, according to a BuzzFeed analysis. These falsehoods attracted far more user engagement, on average, than true stories from the same outlets and drowned out earnest attempts by dedicated fact-checking sites such as Snopes to debunk them

Days after Mark Zuckerberg called the idea that Facebook — and specifically, the fake news circulated on Facebook

Also in the running was “coulrophobia,” the fear of clowns, and “hygge,” a Danish concept meaning “a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.” From The Guardian:

Google funds more than 100 European projects in second round of Digital News Initiative

The second round of funding focused on collaborative projects, alongside the programme’s other criteria of impact and innovation

Facebook Alone Didn’t Create Trump—The Click Economy Did

We may not know exactly how rich our soon-to-be president actually is. But in an economy where clicks are currency, Trump is King Midas.

With live VR, the news organisation aims to give audiences the chance to interact with its anchors in a more intimate way

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