(h/t Raining Sky) A recent effort by the University of Michigan aims to prevent the spread of what the institution has deemed “fake news” about climate change. Researchers there hope to stop the spread of “myths” that cause people to doubt the severity of the phenomenon.
One study, conducted by UMich researchers, was meant to “address the myths surrounding climate change,” said study author and UMich doctoral student Lauren Lutzke, who added that “Facebook is where a lot of these myths are perpetuating.”
According to the university, it is important to identify “fake news about climate change — especially on Facebook — [because it] can embolden those who remain unconvinced that it’s a threat.”
All of this comes as UMich is offering a fall 2019 course focused on “fake news”coverage of President Donald Trump, as Campus Reform reported.
Lutzke and her colleagues found that prompting users to ask themselves certain guideline questions before exposing them to a Facebook post made users less likely to trust, “like,” or share certain posts.
Participants were told to ask themselves questions like: “Do I recognize the news organization that posted the story?”, “Does the information in the post seem believable?”, “Is the post written in a style that I expect from a professional news organization?” and “Is the post politically motivated?”.
The study found that users who were exposed to these questions before viewing “fake news” climate change posts were less likely to believe those posts.
Lutzke says that this finding is promising in influencing the behavior of “individuals who are ‘on the fence’” about climate change, adding that “the guidelines are quick and simple, and they seem to help [individuals] be more critical consumers of news.”
“This research definitely opens the door to preventing other areas of fake news, but fake news about climate change is especially problematic because climate change itself is such a widespread, global problem,” Lutzke said.
Lutzke hopes that “small, simple interventions” like this one can eventually help “limit the influence of fake news online” and believes that “anything that can be done” to do so “should be pursued.”
“Our findings suggest that being exposed to guidelines for evaluating news quality can lead individuals to be less likely to trust, ‘like,’ and share fake news about climate change,” her study co-author and UMich postdoctoral research fellow Caitlin Drummond told Campus Reform.
Drummond suggested that social media platforms “could seek to slow the spread of fake news by more actively sharing guidelines with their users,” as well as by “encouraging their users to engage in critical thinking when encountering news online.”
Campus Reform reached out for UMich for comment; the school pointed to the news release referenced in this article.
The UMich study is just the latest example of universities inserting themselves into the “fake news” debate. As Campus Reform has reported, UC-Berkeley and Cornell University have partnered with Facebook to identify “fake news.” One Boston University professor even suggested taxing “fake news.”
But universities are not just coming up with ways to find “fake news” online. For example, the University of Washington-Tacoma is working on a tool that can be used to scan for “hate speech,” which 41 percent of college students say is not free speech and should not be protected by the First Amendment, according to a survey.
Read more at Campus Reform
When I read the headline I was hoping that they would actually try to combat the fake information that is coming from celebrities, politicians, commentators and reporters. The examples are constant and abundant:
1) The Amazon, lungs of the world, is on fire
2) More frequent and severe heat wave, hurricanes, flooding, forest fires, …
3) Coral reefs are dying at unprecedented numbers
4) July was the hottest July ever
5) Polar bears are dying out
6) Walruses are jumping to their deaths
7) “Climate Scientists” change temperature charts to erase Medieval Warming, Little Ice Age, and the high temperatures of the ’30s/’40s followed by cold in the ’60’s/’70’s (Headlines reading that we are about to enter an ice age) being erased
8) And many more…
All of these are being told to us by breathless reporters are being caused by our use of carbon-based fuels that brought us to where we can live in cold and heat without worrying about dying.
Don’t you just love those words … fight climate change . What exactly does that mean other than nothing . Plug a few volcanos , increase the number of sun spots , how about we put in some turbines the size of California and change those nasty ocean currents .
Another one I love is ” tackle climate change ” . Are these people F!@#$g nuts .
If an ice age decides to reform do these jack asses actually think blowing some extra CO2 around is going to stop it ? Maybe wars served a purpose
as apparently the gene pool takes about 2 generations before it reverts back to
full on ass hats .
Lets see the IPCC (International Panel of Climate Criminals ) send out a scientific paper showing how a trace gas would have stopped the last ice age .
Did a lack of CO2 cause the last of several ice ages ?
Tackle climate change is code for you are a F!@#4g moron if you believe this .
This article is written in vague terms to let readers agree with the idea that fake news about global warming should be harshly judged, if not actually ignored, but the doctoral student doing the research is not clearly identified about her position on the topic, until she is quited (“fake news about climate change is especially problematic because climate change itself is such a widespread, global problem”). Given that, this study is a good one so that people can rely on its finding to realize that global warming is completely the product of fake news. It’s fake science-like propaganda, nothing more. Is this a situation that mimics Murphy’s Law in which sometimes it works even against itself?
We have to learn to interpret what liberals say. For instance, freedom of speech doesn’t meaning politely saying what you think, but rather speaking in favor of liberal agendas. As the call for prosecuting “climate change deniers” shows, freedom of speech for a liberal definitely does not include speaking against one of their agendas.
The same is true of “fake news.” This does not mean news that is factually incorrect such as Steve’s list. For the environmental activists, fake news is anything that undermines supports for their agenda.