Daily Archives: June 2, 2021

Will the Next Space-Weather Season Be Stormy or Fair? – The New York Times

Posted: June 2, 2021 at 5:42 am

The big news about the sun is that there is no big news. We are blessed, astronomers like to say, to be living next to a boring star.

But the inhabitants (if there are any) of the planets orbiting the neighboring star Proxima Centauri, only 4.2 light-years away, are less fortunate. In April astronomers announced that a massive flare had erupted from its surface in 2019. For seven seconds, as a battery of telescopes on Earth and in space watched, the little star had increased its output of ultraviolet radiation 14,000-fold, in one of the most violent such flares ever seen in our galaxy.

This was more than serious sunburn territory. A human being on this planet would have a bad time, said Meredith MacGregor, an astronomy professor at the University of Colorado who led the worldwide observing effort.

Space weather on this scale could sterilize potentially habitable planets, and could augur bad news for the search for life beyond this solar system. Even mild space weather can be disruptive to creatures already evolved and settled; sunspots and solar storms, which wax and wane in an 11-year cycle, spray energy that can endanger spacecraft, astronauts and communication systems.

A new cycle of storms will begin any day now, and astrophysicists are divided on how active or threatening it will be. The sun may be about to set records for sunspot numbers and violent storms, or it may be sliding into a decline like the Maunder Minimum, from 1645 to 1715, when hardly any sunspots appeared a period that became known in Europe as the Little Ice Age.

We live in the atmosphere of a star, as Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., often says. As a civilization we take our star for granted.

Here, 93 million miles from the nearest star the one we call our sun we exist and mostly thrive on the edge of almost incomprehensible violence and complexity.

The sun is a medium-size star, a ball of blazing-hot ionized gas one million miles in diameter. Its large inside rotates faster than its outside, and the outer layers rotate faster at the equator than at the poles. The result is a snarled nest of magnetic fields, which manifest as sunspots and worse when they break the surface.

Every second, thermonuclear reactions in the center of the sun burn 600 million tons of hydrogen into 596 million tons of helium. The missing four million tons, turned into pure energy, constitute the mortgage payment for all the life on Earth and perhaps elsewhere in the solar system. As the energy emerges from the sun, it rises through successively cooler and less dense layers of gas and finally, 100,000 years later, from the photosphere, or surface, where the temperature is a mere 5,700 kelvin, or 9,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

The sun is amazingly consistent in making these mortgage payments. A few years ago an experiment in Italy confirmed that our star does not seem to have changed its energy output in at least the last 100,000 years, the time it takes that energy to migrate from the suns core. The researchers were able to calculate how much energy the sun produces in real time, by measuring subatomic particles called neutrinos that are produced by nuclear reactions inside the sun, escape in seconds and reach Earth in just eight minutes. This energy, they found, matched the output that was generated 100,000 years ago and is only now detectable.

The action doesnt stop at the suns surface. That friendly yellow photosphere boils like oatmeal and is pocked with dark magnetic storms (the infamous sunspots) that crackle, whirl and lash space with showers of electrical particles and radiation. The corona, composed of thin, superhot streamers of electrified gas, and visible only during solar eclipses, extends millions of miles from the glowing surface.

Things sometimes go wrong, although so far on a scale far below the outbursts seen on Proxima Centauri. As the magnetic fields generated by all that swirling, electrified gas emerge on the suns surface, they become twisted and tangled. Eventually they snap and reconnect in loops, releasing enormous amounts of radiation and charged particles an explosive solar flare that can be more powerful than millions of hydrogen bombs.

Sometimes these flares blow whole chunks of the suns outer layers into space, in events called coronal mass ejections. The mother of all known solar storms thus far occurred on Sept. 1, 1859, when a blob of sun slammed into Earth. Sparks flew from telegraph systems in Europe and North America, causing fires. The auroras that night stretched as far south as Hawaii and Cuba and were so bright that people could read their newspapers by their light.

In 2012 another a coronal mass ejection barely missed Earth. An earlier study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that a direct hit by such a storm could cause some $2 trillion in damage, shutting down the power grid and rendering satellites at least temporarily blind. Forget about trying to use the internet or your local A.T.M.; many people wouldnt even be able to flush their toilets without the electricity to run water pumps, the report noted. I think as a civilization we become screwed, Dr. McIntosh said.

Cloudy with a chance of sunspots

Such storms are more likely to occur during the high points of the suns mysterious 11-year cycle of sunspot activity.

Lately, the sunspot cycles have been getting weaker. During the last cycle, 101 spots were observed on the sun in 2014, the year of peak activity; that was well below the historical average of 160 to 240.

Last year, a committee of scientists from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast that the coming cycle would be similarly anemic, with a peak in 2025 of about 115 sunspots.

But Dr. McIntosh and his colleagues have produced a radically different forecast, of more than 200 sunspots at its peak. The 11-year sunspot cycle, they say, based on an analysis of 140 years of solar measurements, belies a more fundamental 22-year Hale cycle, named after its discoverer, George Ellery Hale. During that period the suns magnetic field reverses its polarity, then switches back.

Each cycle ends or begins when two bands of magnetism, migrating from opposite, high latitudes of the sun, meet at the equator and annihilate each other. On average each phase of the cycle takes 11 years, but it can vary.

Dr. McIntosh and his team found that the longer a cycle went on, the weaker the next cycle would be, and vice versa. The current cycle, the 24th since record-keeping started, shows every sign of ending after a little more than 10 years shorter than average, which means the next cycle should be strong.

Sunspot Cycle 25 could have a magnitude that rivals the top few since records began, Dr. McIntosh said in late April. On Thursday, he and his team were still waiting for ignition to begin. It is very, very close, he wrote in an email. We are watching very closely.

At stake, besides the health of our planetary infrastructure, is the pride that astronomers take in feeling that they understand the complicated and violent processes going on behind the suns relatively calm face.

I think the problem with the sun is that were too close to it, and so theres too much data about the sun, Dr. McIntosh said. He called it a breaker of models: Your models are going to fail eventually. Its part of the reason why its so hard to forecast the weather, right? Because our observations are so detailed, but you know its hard to get it absolutely right.

Tony Phillips, an astronomer who runs the website Spaceweather.com, agreed in an email. In my experience, when people really understand something, they can explain it simply, he said. It is striking to me that almost no one in the solar-cycle prediction business can explain their favorite dynamo model in a way that lay people can get it.

The situation reminded him of the proverbial blind men who try to produce a Theory of Elephants, with one of them focused solely on feeling the animals trunk.

Scott and Bob are standing off to the side shouting, Hey, you guys are ignoring most of the elephant, he said. In other words, theres more to the solar cycle than is commonly assumed by conventional models. And so, according to Scott, they are doomed to get the big picture wrong.

Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College who has spent his life observing the corona during solar eclipses, said he did not put much store in such forecasts. In an email, he recounted a meeting during the last cycle that had an amusing set of talks.

The conversation, as he recalled it, went: The next cycle will be stronger than average, the next cycle will be weaker than average, the next cycle will be either stronger than average or weaker than average, the next cycle will be neither stronger than average nor weaker than average.

He added, So my plan is to wait and see.

Potential hazards aside, understanding how the sunspot cycle actually works is crucial from a purely human standpoint, if you want to understand stars, Dr. McIntosh said. And if you think about it, Earths magnetic field is largely why we probably have life on Earth.

Mars, he pointed out, doesnt have much of an atmosphere or a magnetic field. If your planet doesnt have a magnetic field, you can have all the atmosphere you want, he said, but your local friendly neighborhood star could whisk it away in a heartbeat.

Indeed, astrophysicists suspect that such a fate befell Mars, which was once warmer and wetter than it is now.

Proxima Centauri, a small star known as an M dwarf, harbors at least two exoplanets, one of which is Earth-size and close enough to the star to be habitable if it werent bathed in radiation. Dr. MacGregor offered one glimmer of hope for life in such neighborhoods.

Recent work has shown that ultraviolet light might be very important for catalyzing life turning complex molecules into amino acids and ultimately into single-celled organisms, she said. Since M dwarfs are so small and cold, they dont actually produce that much UV radiation, except when they flare. Perhaps there is a sweet spot where a star flares enough to spark life but not so much that it immediately destroys it!

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International Astronomical Union OAO Announce Three Projects for Funding Scheme – Space in Africa

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The International Astronomical Union Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO) is pleased to announce the selection of three projects in the second year of the IAU National Outreach Coordinator (NOC) Funding Scheme. The selected projects involve National Outreach Coordinators from 17 countries. They will focus on key areas of astronomy outreach, from building a global platform to share astronomy outreach events to taking astronomy to refugee camps or using art as a tool for astronomy outreach.

The IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO) is a joint project of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The mission of the OAO is to engage the public in astronomy through access to astronomical information and communication of the science of astronomy. This is implemented through a network of IAU National Outreach Coordinators (NOCs) and the IAUs public engagement initiatives. The work of the OAO is about building bridges between the IAU and the global astronomy community of amateur astronomers, outreach professionals, educators, communicators, and the general public, and through international collaboration, to make the science of astronomy accessible to all.

In 2020, the IAU started to provide all IAU national outreach representatives with a dedicated funding system to support the network on their outreach initiatives. The funding scheme embodies the IAU mission of building international cooperation by encouraging the NOCs to form partnerships to present proposals addressing common challenges. This second year of the scheme brought together 45 country representatives and a total of 24 submitted proposals.

We are pleased to see the growing involvement of our NOC community in the OAO funding scheme and the spirit of collaboration and mutual support translated in the received proposals, says Jos Miguel Espinosa, IAU Assistant General Secretary.

The three projects selected are:

The Art of Astronomy: Recognising that art is greatly influenced by astronomy, this project, which involves Brazil, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Angola and Portugal, will create a virtual exhibition and an interactive virtual art gallery composed of astronomy-related artistic material produced by groups of young people (primary and high-school students) and engaging the public in astronomy.

Amanar: Under the same sky 2021 Summer Program:This programme, which involves Spain, Italy and Brazil, aims to expand the summer programmes of the Amanar project, a project to empower and inspire the Sahrawi community from the refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria, using astronomy. The project will also produce guidelines and lessons learnt about working with refugee communities in astronomy outreach projects to be applied to other refugee groups.

AstroGPS for the World:Increasing numbers of astronomical events are being organised all over the world. It is vital that target audiences can easily access information on these activities. This project, which involves NOCs from the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Mongolia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and is led by Poland, will build on a user-friendly and successful service and expand it for the benefit of the global community.

In 2021, the OAO partnered with the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO). The SKAO offered additional funding to sponsor projects on radio astronomy outreach, bringing together NOCs and the SKAOs own Communications & Outreach Network to foster new international collaborations.

In April 2021, the OAO host institutions, the IAU and NAOJ, signed a new agreement that, amongst other measures, assures the continuity of this funding scheme. The 2021/2022 NOC Funding Scheme will open in August 2021.

More information:

The IAU is the international astronomical organisation that brings together more than 12,000 active professional astronomers from more than 100 countries worldwide. Its mission is to promote and safeguard astronomy in all its aspects, including research, communication, education and development, through international cooperation. The IAU also serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and the surface features. Founded in 1919, the IAU is the worlds largest professional body for astronomers.

Links

IAU Office for Astronomy OutreachNational Outreach Coordinators (NOCs) NOCs Funding Scheme

Contacts

Lina Canas,Director, IAU OAO Tel: +81-(0)422-34-3966. Email: lina.canas@nao.ac.jp

Lars Lindberg Christensen, IAU Press Officer. Cell: +49 173 38 72 621.Email: lars@eso.org

Republished from IACs website here.

Faleti Joshua is an avid lover of space in all its incomprehensible nature. He holds a LL.B degree, and is a pessimist in his free time.

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What is "Fake News"? – "Fake News," Lies and Propaganda …

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What is "Fake News"? - "Fake News," Lies and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact from Fiction - Research Guides at University of Michigan Library Skip to main content

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Fake news is a term that has come to mean different things to different people. At its core, we are defining fake news as those news stories that are false: the story itself is fabricated, with no verifiable facts, sources or quotes. Sometimes these stories may be propaganda that is intentionally designed to mislead the reader, or may be designed as clickbait written for economic incentives (the writer profits on the number of people who click on the story). In recent years, fake news stories have proliferated via social media, in part because they are so easily and quickly shared online.

The universe of fake news is much larger than simply false news stories. Some stories may have a nugget of truth, but lack any contextualizing details. They may not include any verifiable facts or sources. Some stories may include basic verifiable facts, but are written using language that is deliberately inflammatory, leaves out pertinent details or only presents one viewpoint. "Fake news" exists within a larger ecosystem of mis- and disinformation.

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is mistakenly or inadvertently created or spread; the intent is not to deceive. Disinformationis false information that is deliberately created and spread "in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disinformation).

Claire Wardle of FirstDraftNews.com has created thehelpful visual image below to help us think about the ecosystem of mis- and disinformation. And as she points out, "it's complicated."

How misinformation and disinformation is produced is directly related to who the author(s) is and the different reasons why it is created.

Who are the authors? They may be:

The technological ease of copying, pasting, clicking and sharing content online has helped these types of articles to proliferate. In some cases, the articles are designed to provoke an emotional response and placed on certain sites ("seeded") in order to entice readers into sharing them widely. In other cases, "fake news" articles may be generated and disseminated by "bots" - computer algorithms that are designed to actlike people sharing information, but can do so quickly and automatically.

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Astronomy: A beginner’s guide to stargazing wherever you live – Stylist Magazine

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Welcome to The Curiosity Academy, Stylists new learning hub where you can access workshops, how-to guides, new research and learn the most up-to-date skills from the UKs most in-the-know people.

The only thing more magical than gazing at a velvet-black sky spangled with stars is being able to understand exactly what those sparkly dots are. Stargazing is a time-old tradition and once played a huge part in our society and culture (before we all turned our eyes to the even brighter glow of our smartphones).

If we go back thousands of years, the stars and the night sky were a huge part of life for our ancestors, says Hannah Banyard, an astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich. Many ancient calendars were based on the moon and it was really important for people to look at the phase of the moon to decide when to plant and harvest food.

As the modern worlds progressed, weve lost touch with it, but theres something really inspiring about the night sky, says Hannah. Just looking at it gives you a sense of feeling insignificant and part of something larger all at the same time.

With more time to slow down and stare at the world around us during the pandemic, enthusiasm for stargazing rocketed. Weve definitely seen interest kick up, says Hannah. Lockdown was a good time for people to just stop for a moment and look up at the sky properly for the first time.

Looking at the stars was also a way for people to connect with each other during a time when weve never been so far apart. When you had family all over the country, or the world, that you couldnt see, you could still go outside and look at the same things in the sky. Its a lovely way to bring people together, says Hannah.

If youre baffled when it comes to understanding your asterism from your asteroid, heres Hannahs expert guide to getting into stargazing as a beginner wherever you live, from getting the right equipment to knowing where to point your telescope. Happy star spotting.

You can start stargazing in your garden, if youre lucky enough to have one. If not, head to a park or another place thats as dark as possible.

If you want to look at the stars, rather than the moon, pick a night when the moon isnt really out. Moonlight blocks out the fainter stars, says Hannah. So, youre better off going out when you dont have a bright moon. Its also best to avoid cloudy nights, because the cloud cover will obstruct your view of the stars. You can track the movements of the moon on the Royal Observatorys monthly blog.

When youre stargazing its important to head out at the right time. As we enter into summer the days are getting longer so were getting to a time when we wont get a proper astronomical night, says Hannah. She recommends going stargazing later in the summer months when the brighter stars begin to appear. It does get cold though, so wrap up if youre going to be out for a while.

Its best to lie down when youre stargazing. This means you can see more of the night sky and helps to block out light pollution from things like street lamps or your neighbours windows.

To see stars properly, let your eyes adjust to the dark before you start stargazing. Around 20 minutes is enough to get your eyes used to the darkness.

Try not to look at your phone while youre stargazing because it will disrupt your night vision. Astronomers always use red lights, says Hannah, because it doesnt disrupt your night vision as much. You can switch your phone to red light mode.

Just because you live in a light-polluted city, doesnt mean you cant enjoy a spot of stargazing. Cities are filled with high buildings, which means people just dont look up, says Hannah. If they do, theyll notice lots of things in the night sky from the moon to some of our brighter constellations. The longer you keep looking up the more youll start to see.

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich is opposite Canary Wharf, which gives us so much light pollution, but we can still observe things in the night sky.

If you are stargazing in the city Hannah advises avoiding as many light sources as you possibly can. Turn your back and face away from any light, she says. Going up somewhere higher overlooking the city is also helpful. It means the city lights arent as bright and youre closer to the horizon so you can see more of the sky.

You dont actually need that much equipment at all to stargaze. You can observe the moon and lots of brighter constellations just with the naked eye or a pair of binoculars.

If you are more serious about getting into stargazing you might want to invest in a telescope. People can get quite intimidated when it comes to telescopes, but you dont really need to spend more than 100 on a telescope that will let you see things like the rings of Saturn, Hannah suggests buying a four-inch telescope if youre a beginner.

If you dont want to invest in equipment, try joining one of the many amateur astronomy groups around the country, like The Baker Street Irregular Astronomersin London. Youll find that one or two people in the group will have brought all the big equipment with them and theyre happy to share it and talk you through how to use it, says Hannah. These amateur groups are really, really passionate and more than happy to let other people come along.

The full moon is beautiful to look at just with your naked eye, says Hannah.

If you want to look at the moon in more detail its best to wait until its in a different phase. The full moon can look quite flat up close because theres so much light on it, says Hannah. But if you wait for a crescent moon or a quarter moon, you can look at the craters and the mountains on the moon with a pair of binoculars. Theyre quite easy to make out.

The North Star, or Polaris as its known in the astronomy world, is the easiest star to spot in the night sky. Its circumpolar, which means you can see it all year round in the Northern Hemisphere.

To spot it, Hannah suggests looking for The Plough, or The Saucepan as its sometimes called. The Plough is an asterism. This means its not an official constellation, but part of the constellation called Ursa Major or the Great Bear.

Its quite easy to spot because its in a saucepan shape, says Hannah. If you get to the end of the saucepan, the two stars that make up the pan end are Dubhe and Merak. If you draw a straight line between those with your eyes and continue in a straight line to the next star youll see Polaris. Its really, really easy to spot because its so bright.

Once you find Polaris that will face you North because its pretty much directly about the North Pole. This means that once youve found Polaris, youll be able to locate other things in the night sky. If theres something specific you want to look at and you know that North is in front of you, it means to your right will be East, South behind you and West to your left.

Polaris, the North Star, is in the tail of Ursa Minor, which is also known as the Little Bear.

You can see a couple of stars in this constellation with your naked eye, says Hannah. Look for Draco the Dragon, which runs between Ursa Major and around Ursa Minor.

The Summer Triangle is one of my favourite things to spot. You cant miss it, says Hannah. Its made up of three really bright stars. Theyre called Deneb, Vega and Altair.

Whats really beautiful about the Summer Triangle is that if youre somewhere dark enough you can see the stripe of the Milky Way running through it.

It also has a wonderful story behind it in Chinese folklore. The story is about two lovers - Vega and Altair - who are separated by a silver river running between them, which is the Milky Way. The story goes that once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, which is Chinas Valentines Day, the third star, Deneb, becomes a bridge of magpies so the two lovers can meet for one day.

It just shows that when we look up at the sky, its not just what you can see, its also about the culture around the stars and the stories they tell us.

If you decide to invest in a telescope you will be able to make out the constellation of Virgo, which is up in the South at the moment.

Virgo has a really bright star youll be able to spot called, Spica, says Hannah. In Virgo you can also see the Sombrero galaxy. Its a spiral galaxy that youll be able to see side on. It has a bulge in the middle, which is why it looks a bit like a sombrero.

A telescope will also allow you to see the stars different colours. When we look at the stars we just assume theyre all white, but this isnt the case at all.

If you look closer at the Summer Triangle with a telescope you can look for a star called Albireo. Its about halfway between Vega and Altair, says Hannah. If you look with your naked eyeAlbireo will just look like one star, but with a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope, you can make out two stars. One of them is blue and the other is orange. Its part of a double-star system.

A stars colour is due to its temperature. Its the opposite of your kitchen taps, says Hannah. So blue stars are hottest and red stars are the coldest. It goes red, orange, yellow, white, blue from hottest to coldest. For comparison, the Sun is a yellow-white star. Our Sun is actually not a very exciting star, its just the closest one to us.

Another colourful star Hannah suggests looking for is Arcturus. Above Virgo is a constellation called Botes or the herdsman, says Hannah. It really stands out because its got a really bright giant red star called Arcturus. You can see that easily with your naked eye.

If youre prepared to head out at 3am, you will be able to see Jupiter and Saturn in the southeast, says Hannah. They are quite low down on the horizon. You can see those just with your eyes. Theyll be pretty much the brightest things in the sky.

You can find out more about astronomy and stargazing on the Royal Observatory, Greenwich website, including monthly blogs about what you can see in the night sky. Find more e-learning guides on The Curiosity Academy.

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What is Fake News | Center for Information Technology and …

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Clickbait refers to a headline or the leading words of a social media post (the teaser message) written to attract attention and encourage visitors to click a target link to a longer story on a web page [4]. Clickbait offers odd, amazing, or suspenseful phrases that induce curiosity, and entice people to want to know more. Like this:

Source: Medium.com

They dont need pictures to be clickbait. For example,

Clickbait is a common way that fake news (and any kind of content) is spread. Clickbait depends on creating a curiosity gap, an online cliffhanger of sorts that poses headlines that pique your curiosity and lead you to click the link and read on. The gap between what we know and what we want to know compels us to click. To an extent, the more outrageous a teaser message is, the more successful clickbait may be.

Besides curiosity and outrage, clickbait often uses a number of language characteristics that draw people in. Many clickbait headlines offer a list of some kind these 10 things that will blow your mind about and the titles have a number in them (and usually start with it) [6]. According to a review by Martin Potthast and colleagues [4], clickbait teasers contain strong nouns and adjectives, but use simple, easily readable language. They use these and this a lot.

You see these attention-getting strategies in conventional tabloids, too, like the National Enquirer. Theyre the kind of goofy leads that The Onion likes to parody.

Clickbait motivates further reading, instantly, and further reading promotes advertising for website publishers, so its a widespread practice. Fake news headlines often look this way, just as they did in the fake news peddled by tabloids and the era of yellow journalism.

References

[1] H. Allcott and M. Gentzkow, Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election, Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 211236, May 2017.

[2] D. M. J. Lazer et al., The Science of Fake News, Science, vol. 359, no. 6380, pp. 10941096, Mar. 2018.

[3] E. C. Tandoc, Z. W. Lim, and R. Ling, Defining Fake News: A Typology of Scholarly Definitions, Digital Journalism, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 137153, Feb. 2018.

[4] M. Potthast, S. Kopsel, B. Stein, and M. Hagen, Clickbait Detection, in Advances in Information Retrieval: 38th European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2016, Switzerland: Springer, 2016, pp. 810817.

[5] Y. Chen, N. J. Conroy, and V. L. Rubin, Misleading Online Content: Recognizing Clickbait as False News, 2015. [Online]. Available: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2823465.2823467. [Accessed: 03-Aug-2018].

[6] B. Vijgen, The Listsicle: An Exploring Research on an Interesting Shareable New Media Phenomenon, Studia UBB Ephemerides, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 103122, Jun. 2014.

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Fake News Quotes (152 quotes) – Goodreads

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We know from subsequent leaks that the president was indeed presented with information about the seriousness of the virus and its pandemic potential beginning at least in early January 2020. And yet, as documented by the Washington Post, he repeatedly stated that it would go away. On February 10, when there were 12 known cases, he said that he thought the virus would go away by April, with the heat. On February 25, when there were 53 known cases, he said, I think thats a problem thats going to go away. On February 27, when there were 60 cases, he said, famously, We have done an incredible job. Were going to continue. Its going to disappear. One dayits like a miracleit will disappear. On March 6, when there were 278 cases and 14 deaths, again he said, Itll go away. On March 10, when there were 959 cases and 28 deaths, he said, Were prepared, and were doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away. On March 12, with 1,663 cases and 40 deaths recorded, he said, Its going to go away. On March 30, with 161,807 cases and 2,978 deaths, he was still saying, It will go away. You know ityou know it is going away, and it will go away. And were going to have a great victory. On April 3, with 275,586 cases and 7,087 deaths, he again said, It is going to go away. He continued, repeating himself: It is going away. I said its going away, and it is going away. In remarks on June 23, when the United States had 126,060 deaths and roughly 2.5 million cases, he said, We did so well before the plague, and were doing so well after the plague. Its going away. Such statements continued as both the cases and the deaths kept rising. Neither the virus nor Trumps statements went away. Nicholas A. Christakis, Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

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Fake News Quotes (152 quotes) - Goodreads

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The Five Types of Fake News | HuffPost

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Not all fake news is the same. To paraphrase George Orwell, some news is more fake than others.

So how do you tell the difference? Here's my quick guide to the five types of fake news you may see in your everyday life:1.100% False. Pope Francis is dead. So is Paul McCartney. At least they were -- if you believed what you saw on social media. The Pope and Sir Paul are just a few of the celebrities whose deaths have been falsely reported online. But even with "RIP Paul McCartney" trending on Twitter, anyone standing next to him would have been able to see that he was clearly still alive.

2.Slanted and Biased. The Washington Times recently published their list of fake news stories -- including the "fake" story that "Climate change will produce more storms like Hurricane Katrina." While it's (thankfully) true that no storm since has matched Katrina's devastation, the Times seems to use this fact as leverage to discount the reality of climate change. Just because A. climate change can lead to major hurricanes and B. there haven't been major hurricanes doesn't mean that C. climate change isn't real.

3.Pure Propaganda. The Washington Post recently reported on a "sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online" during the election campaign. While the accusations are still flying back and forth, it's fair to say that some fake news appears specifically designed to influence the reader's opinion in a certain direction.

4.Misusing the Data."Have a Beer, It's Good for Your Brain," reported Inc. But you should wait a minute before you grab a pint (or two). The study was done on mice -- not people. And the amount of beer was the equivalent of 28 kegs in humans. This is a great example of how the media often misinterprets research, offering up eye-catching findings that don't really apply to you, and often aren't supported by the science.

5.Imprecise and Sloppy. "1 in 5 CEOs are Psychopaths, Study Finds." This headline from The Guardian caught my eye, since I am a CEO (and I'm not a psychopath). But the headline is wrong. The research was based on a survey of professionals in the supply chain industry, not CEOs. A headline about supply chain professionals may not be as sexy, but talking about CEOs gives ppeople the wrong impression.

Unless you swear off social media and the Internet, you probably can't avoid fake news. No media organization is immune, although some are better than others. But it's a lot easier to spot it when you understand the different types of fake news you're likely to encounter.

This blog post is collaboration with my Everydata co-author Mike Gluck.

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Here Are The Real Fake News Sites – Forbes

Posted: at 5:42 am

The internet is teeming with fake news sites. That's not a political statement, but the conclusion of a new study by DomainTools, a security analysts company.

The new study analyzed some of the top media outlets in the U.S. to determine their susceptibility to domain-squatting and spoofed domains. The bogus URLs may spread disinformation or malicious code, according to DomainTools.

As distrust of traditional media continues to grow, protecting the public from disinformation campaigns has become pertinent to the democratic process, says Corin Imai, a senior security advisor of DomainTools.

So which news sites have the highest fake scores? And what does it mean for the average news consumer? You'll probably be surprised by the answers.

Why study fake news sites?

Authenticity and trust are the building blocks of a terrific customer service experience. So, as a consumer advocate, and as a heavy consumer of news, I followstudies like this closely.

DomainTools' research shows how malicious actors use tricks like typosquatting and spoofing on domains as tactics to carry out malicious campaigns.

Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, relies on mistakes made by Internet users when typing a website address into a web browser. Spoofing happens when a scammer pretends to be a premium publisher. These criminal activities can potentially extract personally identifiable information, download malware to a device, or spoof news sites to spread disinformation.

"Its no secret that disinformation campaigns have been on the rise," Imai told me. "With the uptick in fake news sites in recent years, we were curious about the possible connection between typosquatting campaigns and the dissemination of disinformation. What we found is that domain names of top news outlets have indeed been spoofed, and subject to typosquatting techniques."

These are the most fake news sites

Among the news site rankings, there are a few surprises. The top news site, for example, is not a national newspaper or a computer-security site but has still managed to draw a record 52 "high risk" domains, according to DomainTools. The "safest" of the sites also fits the same description.

Here's the list of publishers with the most high-risk domains:

1. Newsday (52 historical high-risk domains)

2. The New York Times (49 historical high-risk domains)

3. The Washington Post (20 historical high-risk domains)

4. The New York Post (16 historical high-risk domains)

5. Los Angeles Times (13 historical high-risk domains)

6. New York Daily News (10 historical high-risk domains)

7. USA Today (9 historical high-risk domains)

8. The Boston Globe (6 historical high-risk domains)

9. CSO (5 historical high-risk domains)

10. Chicago Tribune (5 historical high-risk domains)

DomainTools chose an initial list of media organizations based on traffic to the legitimate site.

"We had a hunch that the media organizations with the highest readerships were likely to be more lucrative for scammers seeking to spoof domain names," says Imai. "Our team compiled a list of the top media organizations based on audience size. This methodology gave us not only a set of online properties to investigate, but also a sense of the potential pool of the criminals targets."

(Oh, and in case you're wondering -- Forbes didn't make the list. It's squeaky clean.)

Why fake new sites matter

For news consumers, the biggest threat is what's referred to as "typosquatting," according to DomainTools (registering Forbs.it, for example, and posting bogus posts). It's particularly important, considering how frequently users misspell words, and how easy it is to fool even vigilant internet users.

Typosquatters can look legitimate, with legitimate SSL certificates and professional websites, used to trick Internet users into a false sense of security.

The bad guys also re-purpose once valid Internet real-estate, squatting on old, once-legitimate domains. That buys them time to iron out any inconsistencies with their attack infrastructure, allowing them to escape detection, according to DomainTools.

How to avoid fake news sites

Sites that spread disinformation often take advantage of the pace at which users skim the internet and their preferred news sources for breaking news. These campaigns could potentially steal and harvest personally identifiable information, download malware to a device or spoof news sites to spread disinformation to the public, according to DomainTools.

How do you avoid a fake news site?

Think before you click. Hover your mouse over any suspicious domain names or links to find out if theyre legit. "By hovering over a domain name, youll be able to get a glimpse to find out if they are who they say they are," says Imai.

Consider bookmarking your favorite news sources. That allows you to avoid misspelling the domain name when typing into the search bar.

Watch out for domains that have COM-[text] in them. "We're so accustomed to seeing .com that we can easily overlook the extra text appended to it with a dash," says Imai.

Go directly to the news source website. Don't follow a link through a newsletter or email.

Stay security savvy. "Remain educated and up-to-date on the latest scams that circulate through the web," says Imai. "Flagging suspicious emails and sending them straight to spam is also another great method to consider when steering clear from unusual activity."

Use a reliable search tool. Type in the name of the news site into Google search instead of into the address field. This will prevent any typos you may make from pulling up a fake site.

Will this change how people consume news?

As part of my research, I asked regular news consumers if the presence of fake news sites would affect their trust in the news media. Would it surprise you to hear that the answer was "no"?

Roughly one-third of my readers said they don't trust any mainstream media outlets, including all the ones for which I write. Ouch. Another third only trusts established mainstream media outlets like this one. And the balance reflected the sentiments of Patricia Seward, a retired health care executive from Kansas City.

"I dont trust any of the news outlets," she says.

In other words, the DomainTools research, while interesting, is unlikely to change the highly polarized view of the news media in the United States.

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From Facts to Fake News: How Information Gets Distorted – Knowledge@Wharton – Knowledge@Wharton

Posted: at 5:42 am

Remember the old childhood game of telephone? One kid whispers a phrase in another kids ear, and it gets passed along until the final child in the chain repeats it out loud. Inevitably, the words change along the way, subject to the cognitive interpretation of the listener.

Retelling stories may be harmless amusement on the playground, but new research from Wharton sounds the alarm on the grown-up version by revealing how news can become more biased as it is repeated from person to person. As information travels farther away from its original source, retellers tend to select facts, offer their own interpretations, and lean toward the negative, according to the study titled The Dynamics of Distortion: How Successive Summarization Alters the Retelling of News.

This paper started because I was interested initially in understanding how we end up with fake news. But quickly I realized that this project was going to be about something much broader, and I think more interesting, which is how do original news stories become distorted as theyre retold sequentially across people, Wharton marketing professor Shiri Melumad said in an interview with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)

Social Media Amplifies Distortion

Melumad co-authored the research along with Wharton marketing professor Robert Meyer and Wharton doctoral candidate Yoon Duk Kim. The scholars analyzed data from 11,000 participants across 10 experiments and concluded that news undergoes a stylistic transformation called disagreeable personalization as it is retold. Facts are replaced by opinions as the teller tries to convince the listener of a certain point of view, especially if the teller considers himself more knowledgeable on the topic than his audience.

The effect is amplified on social media. Followers dont always click on shared content to read the original work for themselves, yet they often accept the conclusion or opinion proffered by the person who posted it. Melumad said that finding is both consistent with previous research and pretty scary in its implications.

Whether we like it or not, social media has been a platform that allows for this type of retelling at a really broad scale and at a really fast pace, she noted.

The fragmentation of traditional news media into outlets that have outright bias (think Fox News to the right or The New Yorker to the left), along with the echo chamber effect, has worsened the distortion. Many people neither consume information from outside their small circle nor seek out alternative sources.

Unfortunately, what were seeing is this increased polarization whereby anyone whos existing outside of my echo chamber, Im probably not going to really trust [as a] source of information, Melumad said. Again, I think social media is worsening this matter because its so easy to just operate within our respective echo chambers.

Another disturbing result the researchers found was the trend toward negativity, even if the original story was positive, and stories tend to become more negative with each reiteration.

The further removed a retelling is from the original source again, think of the telephone game the more negative and more opinionated it becomes, Melumad said. Its really hard to turn this effect off, actually.

Whether we like it or not, social media has been a platform that allows for this type of retelling at a really broad scale and at a really fast pace. Shiri Melumad

Nothing but the Truth

Clearing the distortion is difficult. Melumad said the responsibility for the unvarnished truth falls on both the teller to convey accurate information and the recipient to be a critical listener and seek out original content. Of course, she added, it would help if content creators would be more mindful of what they produce.

If somehow you can incentivize writers or journalists to do their best to not sensationalize information as much, but rather relay facts in a more objective or dry manner, hopefully this would reduce this bias towards negativity, she said.

Melumad said the research left her reflecting on her own style of communication and making a few changes. Now, when she tells a friend about something she read in the news, for example, she encourages them to read the original article.

I try to qualify my retelling by saying, You know, this is just my opinion on this. You should read this for yourself, she said.

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We Cant Fight Fake News with More Fake News – OneZero – OneZero

Posted: at 5:42 am

Erik Von Weber via Getty Images

Every piece, no matter how short, offers the writer an opportunity to cross the line to exaggerate, fabricate, or cherry pick facts in a way that ever-so-slightly misrepresents reality for what feels like the greater good. Whether writing an extended essay about the conflict in the Middle East, or a single tweet about Covid policies, theres always a moment where we can choose to press on the truth just a little too hard. It scores an easy hit, generates more reaction, and maybe even gets us to the next rung of social media celebrity.

But at what cost?

Ive watched over the past few months as several of my colleagues have succumbed to the temptation to fight what they see as fake news with what could only be called more fake news. They are transforming from journalists into propagandists, and ultimately undermining not just their own reputations but the entire landscape of public discourse. I mean, if we so-called professionals cant do this with civility and integrity, then who can?

It tends to start on Twitter, where the absurdly low signal-to-noise ratio makes fidelity to truth seem less important than capacity for wit. For example, one respected public intellectual has gotten it into their head that the media is now surreptitiously editing its previously published stories about Covids origins. Now that theres renewed interest in the possibility of an accident at the Wuhan facility, they believe that certain periodicals are trying to make it look like they didnt ban and censor this information last year. So they posted side-by-side versions of the piece before and after editing, saying these are the differences between the piece in March 2020 and now. It turns out the changes were made between March and April, 2020. So while technically thats between then and now, its really between then and then.

Another writer, who has been otherwise rigorous in their reporting on the ways America has mishandled the Covid crisis, nonetheless felt compelled to cross the line. They posted pictures of Americans being subjected to the most severe mask and shield standards, and people from another country enjoying total social freedom. The headline suggested these photos were representative of our nations contrasting approaches to life under Covid. Dozens of people retweeted the photo, enraged at Americas draconian measures. In reality, the other countrys restrictions were more severe than our own, and the photo was cherry picked from one district there with different standards. Photos from a state like Florida could just as easily made the opposite point. Our policies may suck, but this was a reach.

Yet another journalist posted on their blog about how a hospital had started letting whites die in its exercise of an overly woke anti-racist agenda. In reality, the hospital had issued guidance to its doctors to pay extra attention to symptom complaints from Black patients. Studies had shown that Black peoples symptoms were being ignored or perceived as less severe, leading to fewer necessary procedures and poorer outcomes. So it wasnt about denying necessary treatment to white people, but learning to hear better. There may be a debate to be had about whether paying special attention to people of color could lead to unintended consequences, but this post was about stoking rage, and beneath the journalists otherwise high standards.

Factually true but intentionally misleading posts from people who should know better. I get it.

The list goes on. Factually true but intentionally misleading posts from people who should know better, but nonetheless got caught up in the issues theyre championing. Ive been there. I get it. All three of these writers and thinkers have been correct about so much, for so long, yet garnered mostly criticism for their efforts. New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and other mainstream coverage of these writers beats has been worse than tilted, and in some cases suspiciously resistant to viewpoints that either challenge the interests of their owners and advertisers or could be construed to offer legitimacy to anything that may have been uttered by Donald Trump. I understand how these beleaguered writers might occasionally think up clever, potentially viral comparisons and feel compelled to post them in the heat of the momentlike irresistibly good jokes.

So I did not call them out. (Ive even attempted to shroud the details here.) Instead, I wrote or called them, in private, asking them to consider the inaccurate impressions they were creating. They agreed with my assessments of their truthiness, but instead of removing or adjusting the tweets or blog posts, they all doubled down on them.

One of them explained to me that its just Twitter, not the New York Times, so it doesnt have to rise to the same standards of accuracy. Another said their posts werent intended to inform so much as to inflame to get people activated and angry. Liked Larry Kramers ActUp, these provocations would stoke some necessary rage. But is that really the problem? Theres not enough rage on Twitter, already? (Besides, Larry Kramer used facts and performance art not fake news.)

I admit I may have grown too intolerant. These are just tweets, after all, and I should know as well as anybody that the Twitterverse is not the place to conduct legitimate debate. And all of this fake-ish news is particularly triggering for me because of the friends Ive lost over the past couple of years to Qanon and worse. They start with a few over-the-top tweets like these, and then get into a positive feedback loop of likes and follows from people just as angry as they are, while also receiving pushback from magazines and editors who dont want to publish their vitriol. Then they cry censorship and end up retreating to self-publishing platforms under the premise that their ideas are just too dangerous for the mainstream media. Once siloed, these writers become practically unreachable trapped in filter bubbles of their own making. Their output becomes more strident and less useful.

It ultimately undermines not only their own arguments, but the whole social fabric and our collective quest as human beings to figure out what the heck is really going on here.

Yet we, the egregiously uninformed public, are still depending on people who have chosen to proffer not-quite-factual, ends-justifies-the-means arguments that express whatever axe they have to grind. They draw us into the yes/no, all-or-nothing, by-any-means-necessary culture to which they have succumbed, and distance us even further from any hope of rapprochement or even just honest debate. It ultimately undermines not only their own arguments, but the whole social fabric and our collective quest as human beings to figure out what the heck is really going on here.

The lesson for me and part of why Im here on Medium is to learn to be more careful about this, myself, and maybe help engender a more productive form of engagement in the process. Ill be writing weekly pieces through the summer, and more after that (when Im done with my next book). But Ill be doing so as part of cohort of writers and community of readers who I really hope will have each others backs. I dont mean that were here to defend each others contentions, but to challenge one another to improve the rigor and honesty with which we make them.

Having each others backs means being attentive to one anothers well being, and checking each other when one of us goes off the rails. Not with angry insults, but under the assumption of good faith. We dont usually err because were being intentionally false; its because weve been overwhelmed by our own passion, disgust, or righteous indignation. Thats getting increasingly difficult to avoid as our society itself appears to be disengaging from both reason and understanding. (People cant even agree on who is President.) We need each others help.

Most of all, my work here is going to be about developing better comportment: the bearing with which we engage one another and the world. For its this moment-to-moment approach to people and their ideas that may end up more important to our collective welfare than any of the particular ideas we mean to share.

Douglas Rushkoff writes a weekly column for Medium. You can follow him here. Hes the author of twenty books on media, technology, and society, including Media Virus, Present Shock, and Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. His latest book, Team Human, is being serialized on Medium in weekly installments. Rushkoff is host of the Team Human podcast, a professor of Media Studies at CUNY/Queens, and a graphic novelist.

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We Cant Fight Fake News with More Fake News - OneZero - OneZero

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