Earlier this month, the Omidyar Network and the Democracy Fund released a report examining six key issues presented by social media participation and manipulation, inspired, they say, because the current instability in democracies is causing potentially irrevocable harm to fundamental rights. Here is an excerpt.
The Oxford Dictionaries named “post-truth” as the Word of the Year 2016. It is an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” This attitude of readers choosing their own beliefs over facts has been a huge problem that beset journalism in the past year, with media outlets trying to regain readers’ trusts and debunking false news from dubious digital sites. Here is a list of initiatives to combat fake news that have popped up in response to this challenge.
