<
https://theconversation.com/israel-gaza-conflict-when-social-media-fakes-are-rampant-news-verification-is-vital-215496>
"As news of Palestinian militant group Hamas launching a deadly attack on
Israel and Israel’s threat of retaliation began to filter across news networks
and social media platforms, a wave of misinformation and fake videos rose
alongside.
In a “tech-first” society, it is increasingly difficult to differentiate
between authentic information and false claims or deliberately misleading video
content. It is clear that numerous videos, social media posts and images
purportedly about the Israel–Hamas conflict are deliberately misleading.
This problem highlights why the verification efforts of journalists reporting
on conflicts are vital. And understanding how they work is important for
ensuring the public can have confidence in what they read and see from media
publishers.
The
Digital News Report 2023 from the University of Oxford’s Reuters
Institute, of which I am acting director, surveyed people from 46 countries
about their news consumption habits. It found 56% said they were worried about
identifying the difference between what is real and fake on the internet when
it comes to news – up from 54% in 2022.
There is heightened concern among audiences in areas close to violent conflict.
As our survey found, in Slovakia, one of the countries bordering Ukraine,
almost half the sample said they had seen misinformation about the Ukraine
conflict in the previous week. That’s double the proportion that said this in
the UK, United States or Japan.
Several media reports have pointed to a surge of fake posts around the
Israel-Hamas conflict on Twitter (now known as X), which has recently made
significant changes in how it operates. The
Guardian pointed to data from
Israeli monitoring firm Cyabra, which covers US election disinformation and
tracks bot accounts on Twitter, to demonstrate the levels of fake posts.
Cyabra claimed that many were coming from fake accounts – using automated bots
– which were very active on Twitter, TikTok and other platforms. Cyabra scanned
over two million pictures, posts and videos. Out of 162,000 profiles, 25% were
fake, it claimed."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
