Online trust, fact-checking, disinformation

A report, a research project and a conference, around the theme of the credibility of online information:
(1) Full Fact. (2019). Report on the Facebook Third Party Fact Checking programme Jan-June 2019. Full Fact (the independent fact checking organisation) have been employed by Facebook to check up on the validity of items flagged as questionable on Facebook. They have also been developing a set of categories to tag those items once examined. The report explains what they have been doing, and reports on what they found. "We joined the programme in January in a bid to help tackle misinformation online. When we signed up to the project we committed to regular reporting to ensure our transparency, openness and impartiality was protected. This report is the first in a series of reports that will provide insight into the nature of misinformation on social media and to assess how effectively the project is tackling it." Go to https://fullfact.org/blog/2019/jul/full-fact-publishes-first-report-facebooks-third-party-fact-checking-programme/ (description) and https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/tpfc-q1q2-2019.pdf (report)


(2) The Conference on Truth and Trust Online (TTO) takes place October 4-5 2019 in London, UK. The aim is "to bring together all parties working on automated approaches to augment manual efforts on improving the truthfulness and trustworthiness of online communications. Truth and Trust Online is organised as a unique collaboration between practitioners, technologists, academics and platforms." https://truthandtrustonline.com/


(3) Social Media, Online Disinformation, and Elections: A Quantitative, “Big Data” Perspective is a research project where they "use large-scale text analysis with the GATE open-source platform (aka AI or more specifically, natural language processing) to gain valuable quantitative insights from large volumes of social media content, and thus, help answer important open questions". This is based at my own university, the University of Sheffield, UK, but in a different department. More info at https://gate-socmedia.group.shef.ac.uk/
Photo by Sheila Webber: e-scooter, Adelaide, July 2019