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TECHNOLOGY Wednesday 8 February

Fighting fake news isn’t just up to Facebook and Google

BARBARA ORTUTAY
AP Technology Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The fight
against fake news is not just
being waged by Google,
Facebook and big media
companies.
They are joined in the
battle by academics and
data scientists who started
work on the subject years
before bogus news stories
were suspected of help-
ing sway the 2016 presi-
dential election. Their work
has yielded tools that help
track how “alternative
facts” spread, and others
that let you identify fake
stories or block them alto-
gether. Some of these are
still baby steps, but they’re
a key, if largely unsung,
part of the effort to tamp
down the spread of fake
stories.
And the researchers were
there first. For Giovanni
Luca Ciampaglia, a re-
search scientist at Indiana
University, the phenome-
non first caught his eye dur-
ing the Ebola crisis in 2014. In this Monday, June 4, 2012, file photo, a girl looks at Facebook on her computer in Palo Alto, Calif. Associated Press
“We started seeing a lot of
content that was spread-
ing, completely fabricated Twitter were not paying ibility. Looking at tweets Indiana University have cre- ple shared, so it misses any-
claims about importations much attention.” surrounding news events in ated an online tool called thing that’s paraphrased or
of Ebola, (such as) entire What attracted her to the 2014 and 2015 — including Hoaxy that seeks to visual- posted without a link.
towns in Texas being un- project was the prevalence the Ebola crisis, the Charlie ize “the spread of claims A data visualization tool
der quarantine,” he says. of fake news that spread Hebdo attack in Paris and and related fact checking shows the intertwined web
“What caught our atten- online following natural di- the death of Eric Garner in online.” Although it’s still of Twitter users who spread
tion was that these claims sasters such as Superstorm a confrontation of police a work in progress, Hoaxy both the claims and the
were created using names Sandy in 2012. When she officers in New York City — can trace the origin of, for fact checks, and how they
of publications that sound- saw that people were shar- they asked people to judge instance, the false claim are connected to one an-
ed like newspapers. And ing a lot of incorrect or mis- tweets based on how cred- that millions of votes in other. The researchers fo-
they were getting a lot of leading information about ible they thought the posts the 2016 presidential elec- cused on Twitter because
traction on social media.” the events, Mitra decided were. Words such as “ea- tion were cast by “illegal the service makes more
So he helped create a tool to track both big stories ger,” ‘’terrific” and “unde- aliens.” Type in your search data available to the pub-
tracking how unsubstanti- and smaller rumors with the niable” were linked to more terms and Hoaxy will re- lic, which makes it easier to
ated claims spread online. goal of creating an app credible posts, while words port back with stories that use in data-tracking tools
DECIPHERING TWITTER RU- that could help ordinary such as “ha,” ‘’grins” and spread the claims, as well than Facebook.
MORS people sort fact from fic- “suspects” were the oppo- as fact-checking articles LEAD A HORSE TO WATER
Tanushree Mitra, a doc- tion so they can make de- site. A computer matched that debunked it. Tools like Hoaxy or rumor-
toral student at the Geor- cisions that could be cru- the humans’ opinions 68 In this instance, the claim identification apps are
gia Institute of Technology, cial to their wellbeing. Mitra percent of the time. The goes back to a November only helpful if people use
began a project three and her fellow researchers next step, an app, could article from Infowars.com them. The same goes for
years ago to see how mis- scanned 66 million tweets help people rate the cred- that was shared 17,961 another approach — using
information and fake news linked to nearly 1,400 real- ibility of tweets and other times on Twitter and 52,200 a web browser plug-in to
spread through Twitter. At world events to identify social media posts. times on Facebook, ac- identify or block fake-news
the time, she says, “com- words and phrases linked TRACKING HOAXES cording to Hoaxy. The site stories.q
panies like Facebook and to perceived levels of cred- A group of researchers at only tracks actual links peo-