Overview: Communications Tactics

"more than 200 studies that show the positive effect of writing on mental health... but researchers don’t completely agree on why or how".One idea: "safe, confidential way to disclose emotions that were previously bottled up". But "recent studies show an increase in self-awareness ... could be the key". Turn your attention inward towards the self…

A "perverse downstream consequence for debunking... being corrected by another user for posting false political news increases subsequent sharing of low quality, partisan, and toxic content".Looks like evidence for the backfire effect: "Direct correction ... backfires by making people feel defensive or focusing their attention on social factors (e…

Good history of the digital ad industry, from 3rd-party tracking cookies through to today's data-brokered behavioural advertising profiles:"Digital advertisers have steadily transformed the internet into a surveillance machine from which there is no escape... argue that ... universe of on demand digital content has created a crisis of attention sc…

"Almost unbelievably, scepticism is highest among healthcare workers."Examines both the specific mistakes and the general antivaxxer European setting undermining the vaccination campaign.Specific mistakes: "by publicly trashing [AstraZeneca], the commission undermined trust in the vaccines... compounded by confusion over the vaccine’s efficacy... …

early adopters are not innovators, but are "willing to experiment... [but] they're not guinea pigs" make them feel they're getting something special, earlythey "are willing to work with your minimum viable product if it solves their problem" Give them something to test. But their reputation is on the line, so prove you're cutting-edge, innovative …

"User friction ... prevents a user from accomplishing a goal in your product... three levels: interaction friction, cognitive friction, and emotional friction"Interaction friction: do usability testing."When cognitive load is high ... there is significant cognitive friction ... encompasses all aspects of the experience that result in mental effor…

One of a great series of Reimagining the Internet podcasts. Guest: the Planetary.Social founder, discussing:the early days of Twitter: "Twitter's innovation ... happened all at the edges... users created everything... inline images and short links and retweets and the app, actual at and hashtags... the company... cultivated this garden where innov…

Content moderation "will always end up frustrating very large segments of the population and will always fail to accurately represent the "proper" level of moderation of anyone".any moderation will upset the moderated no moderation will upset those who don't like spam, harassment, etcpushing moderation to the users puts the burden on them*moderati…

An innovative writing toolkit will further extend the productivity tools offered to MyHub editors.

a collection of our favorite visualizations, infographics, and other projects built on open data from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects

Approach to visualising Wikipedia category pages and their interconnections.

The fact that this is actually necessary is saddening: "practical, nonpartisan, evidence-based recommendations to journalists covering the 2020 U.S. presidential election", including how to cover an election amid attempts to undermine it; what to do in the case of a contested result or Trump doesn't concede; and "what to do if there is civil unres…

A history of the FLICC ( Fake experts, Logical fallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry picking, and Conspiracy theories) framework for characterising science denial.

A tour of the year from Zuckerberg's original position - that private companies should not be censoring politicians or the news in a democracy - to the most recent U-turn, after a year of exploring options: from continuing to do nothing through to Twitter's position - banning all political ads."field testing revealed that none of those options wou…

Facebook reacted quickly, but it was reaction, not proaction, and therein lies the problem.When I saw and Queued this article, they'd confirmed to FastCompany that "political campaigns would be able to place new ads on Facebook starting November 4" which meant Trump could advertise an election victory before it was confirmed. By the time I actuall…

Tours election technology from 2008 to 2018 "and beyond".2008: Obama integrated e-mail, cell phones and websites to both convey the candidate’s message and enable his supporters to connect and self-organize - supporting grassroots community. MyBarackObama allowed users to form groups, raise money, organise events, get info on local voters, and st…

Amazing animation setting out the 5 filters - ownership, advertising, the media elite, flak and the common enemy - used by media and power to Manufacture Consent, as set out in Chomsky's eponymous book on mainstream journalism and its role in the mechanics of power

Privacy Zuckering... when “you are tricked into publicly sharing more information about yourself than you really intended to... Facebook... paid a $5 billion fine for making “deceptive claims about consumers’ ability to control the privacy of their personal data.” ... “dark patterns,” ... particularly insidious “when you’re deciding what privac…

counties that had voted for Donald Trump in 2016 exhibited 14% less physical distancing... higher Covid-19 infection and fatality growth rates ...the hormone oxytocin... promotes bonding... plays a role in trust... When participants trusted and felt trusted, oxytocin levels ... jumped... Trust just feels good... But risky if we give it to the w…

As the internet lit up ... Accounts identified as belonging to Latino social media users voiced outrage about politically correct “mob” bullying ... activists immediately grew suspicious... thousands of posts were coming from ... bots... activists cooked up a counteroffensive... exposed “recipes” for disinformation and distorting facts... educatio…

arguing with them or debunking their theories is likely only to generate publicity or money for them... generate a fake air of controversy over climate action ... deniers ... four different categories: the shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool... the fourth type of climate denier... utterly blinded by ... free-market creed. Th…

marginalization of those with radical critiques... poisoning both the right and the left ...resentment and victimhood spread across the American right — an intellectual inferiority complex combined with a moral superiority complex ... Thinking was no longer for understanding. Thinking was for belonging ... Sarah Palin and Donald Trump reintroduc…

a new Al Jazeera investigation that identified 120 Facebook pages — with a total of over 800,000 likes ... Facebook frequently talks up its algorithm and moderators for catching a lot of hateful content — but ... some of these pages have been online for a decade.

8 in 10 Americans do not trust social media companies to make the right call on what content to leave up or take down. Yet a majority still favor letting companies make the call rather than letting government decide... Section 230 ... protects digital platforms from legal liability for third party content... [except] illegal content... child porno…

unique, visual tool to help researchers and applied scientists find and explore papers relevant to their ... work... analyze ... ~50,000 papers and select the few dozen with the strongest connections to the origin paper.... arranged according to their similarity... papers that do not directly cite each other can be strongly connected and very clo…

We are asking all businesses ... not advertise on Facebook's services in July.What would you do with $70 billion? We know what Facebook did. They  allowed  incitement  to  violence  against  protesters  fighting  for racial justice... named Breitbart News a “trusted news source” ... turned  a  blind  eye  to  blatant  voter  suppression ...99% o…

online “fake news” game, Bad News, can confer psychological resistance against common online misinformation strategies across different cultures... “prebunking,” ... can help cultivate “mental antibodies” against fake news... players “walk a mile” in the shoes of a fake news creator... significant and meaningful reductions in the perceived reliab…

data on the U.S. media ecosystem suggests that women journalists make up a disproportionately high number of the most credible journalists... about Covid-19... dominate ... top 100 most credible journalists ... 19 of the top 25 journalists and 58 of the top 100algorithm analyzes individual articles for credibility based on the author’s topical exp…

Raw data on confirmed cases and deaths for all countries is sourced from ... ECDC. Our complete COVID-19 dataset is ... maintained by Our World in Data... updated daily and includes data on confirmed cases, deaths, and testing... you can download all of our data.

active information avoidance... keeping our senses away from information that might be useful, that we know is out there, that would cost us nothing to obtain, but that we’d still rather not learn...