Research affiliate Tim Hwang speaks with Aaron Mak of Slate about whether Google is suppressing conservative media outlets in search results. “I don’t think the question is whether or not it’s biased. All these systems embed some kind of bias,” explains Hwang. “The question is: Do we have transparency to how some of these decisions are being made?”
In an article for the Pacific Standard about dispelling rumors and conspiracy theories, Nathan Collins highlights research by Prof. Adam Berinsky examining how information sources impact voters. “People speaking against their interests [are] more credible,” Berinsky explains. “What’s more credible: the surgeon general or McDonald’s saying you shouldn’t eat French fries?”
Prof. Simon Johnson speaks with Ailsa Chang of NPR’s All Things Considered about the Trump administration’s plan to remove tariffs and trade barriers with the European Union. Johnson says a zero-tariff agreement would allow the U.S. to become more integrated with Europe.
TechCrunch reporter Sarah Perez spotlights Outfit, a startup co-founded by MIT alumnus Nadeem Mazen that is aimed at making grassroots-style political campaigning easier. Perez explains that Outfit “helps individual voters reach out to their own personal acquaintances, family and friends.”
In an article for The Boston Globe, Amy Carleton, a lecturer in the comparative media studies/writing program, writes about the jacket First Lady Melanie Trump wore to visit a shelter for migrant children. Carleton posits that the First Lady, “has demonstrated that she is well-versed in the rhetorical power that fashion possesses.”
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau stressed the importance of investing in artificial intelligence at the MIT Solve conference, reports the Associated Press. Trudeau noted that “leaders also have a responsibility to shape the rules and principles to guide the development of artificial intelligence.”
Researchers from the Media Lab and Sloan found that humans are more likely than bots to be “responsible for the spread of fake news,” writes Paul Chadwick for The Guardian. “More openness by the social media giants and greater collaboration by them with suitably qualified partners in tackling the problem of fake news is essential.”
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Megan McArdle shares her thoughts on research from the Media Lab and Sloan that identifies “fake news” as traveling six times faster than factual news. “The difference between social media and ‘the media’ is that the gatekeeper model…does care more about the truth than ‘the narrative,’” McArdle writes.
Jordan Webber of The Guardian addresses the rise of “fake news”, citing research from the Media Lab and Sloan. “I believe that social media is a turning point in human communication,” said Sloan Prof. Sinan Aral. “I believe it is having dramatic effect on our democracies, our politics, even our health.”
Larry Greenemeier of Scientific American writes about a study from researchers at Sloan and the Media Lab that finds “false news” is “70% more likely to be retweeted than information that faithfully reports actual events.” “Although it is tempting to blame automated “bot” programs for this,” says Greenemeier, “human users are more at fault.”
Robin Young and Femi Oke of WBUR’s Here and Now highlight research from Sloan and the Media Lab that shows how quickly false news travels the internet. “We [also] found that false political news traveled farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than any other type of false news,” says Prof. Sinan Aral.
Researchers from Sloan and the Media Lab examined why false news spreads on Twitter more quickly than factual information. “Twitter bots amplified true stories as much as they amplified false ones,” writes Robinson Meyer for The Atlantic. “Fake news prospers, the authors write, ‘because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.’”
Prof. Sinan Aral writes for The New York Times about research he co-authored with Postdoc Soroush Vousaghi and Associate Prof. Deb Roy, which found that false news spreads “disturbingly” faster than factual news. “It could be, for example, that labeling news stories, in much the same way we label food, could change the way people consume and share it,” writes Aral.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has selected Associate Prof. J. Phillip Thompson to serve as his deputy mayor, writes Mara Gay for The Wall Street Journal. De Blasio praised Thompson as “one of the foremost experts on how to better serve and lift up low-income neighborhoods.”
Political science graduate student, Michael Freedman writes in The Washington Post about the increased influence of Israel’s religious political parties. Freedman argues that this change is due to the death of powerful moderate political leaders, and warns that it will become “difficult to build a stable coalition that relies on cooperation between secular and religious parties.”