Weekly News 18



Russian "troll army" tweets cited more than 80 times in the UK media

 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/20/russian-troll-army-tweets-cited-more-than-80-times-in-uk-media
Twitter logo

Key Data/ Statistical Info
  • Members of a Russian “troll army” were quoted more than 80 times across British-read media outlets before Twitter revealed their identity and banned them, a Guardian investigation has shown.
  • Some posts from the accounts were embedded in articles to provide apparently local reportage and pictures from the sites of disasters and crime scenes around the world. In fact, Twitter claims, all the accounts were run from the offices of the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, alleged to be the headquarters of Russia’s troll army.
  • The investigation will raise concerns about the extent of Russian penetration of the British media, which would have disseminated their messages to a much wider audience than they might get on Twitter alone.
  • To gauge the effectiveness of the accounts, the Guardian searched the archives of 14 British news organisations, including the Telegraph, Daily Mail and the BBC, for every usage on their websites of any name from the list of 2,752 Twitter profiles believed by the social network to have been run by the Internet Research Agency.
The article talks about the impact of Russian "troll armies" on social media sites such as Twitter. It is said that they were "cited more than 80 times across British media outlets", before their identity was revealed by Twitter, who banned them from the site. This issue highlights one of the main disadvantages of the new and digital media, as it shows us that unmediated content from fake/"troll"organisations can make their way into major news institutions and sources. 












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NDM News: The future of journalism: John Oliver and Clay Shirky

1) Go to the  Nieman Lab webpage (part of Harvard university) and watch the video of Clay Shirky presenting to Harvard students . ' 2) Play the clip AND read along with the transcript below to ensure you are following the argument. You need to watch from the beginning to 29.35 (the end of Shirky's presentation). 3) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this? Shirky quotes "Losing the News" and says that accountability journalism " the  iron core  of journalism and in particular the investigative journalism category, where three reporters are dispatched for a long period on a story that may or may not pan out." 4) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)? Advertisers were forced to overpay for the services they receiv
Read more

NDM News: Citizen journalism and hyper-reality

Citizen journalism and UGC (user-generated content) 1) Read the article from Media Magazine:  The Rise and Rise of UGC  (Dec 2009). Use our  Media Magazine archive , click on MM30 and go to page 55. 2)  Create a blogpost  where you make notes from the article under the following headings:  Examples 1991- An African American man named Rodney King was tasered and beaten by four LA police officers, after a high speed chase. The event was filmed by someone in the nearby apartments and soon made it to prime-time news where it became an "international media sensation". Dec 26th 2004- Asian Tsunami- people witnessed the natural disaster as it unfolded. 5th July 2005- London bombings  January 15th 2009- Hudson River plane crash photo posted on Twitpic.  Theory (audience reception etc.)  Audience reception theory (Dominant or preferred reading) - Videos from citizen journalists can be interpreted in many ways, depending on the audience's view. Most audience members wo
Read more

Weekly News 5

Image
Social media companies must respond to the sinister reality behind fake news  https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/sep/30/social-media-companies-fake-news-us-election Key Data/ Statistical Info Social media  companies such as Facebook and Twitter have begun to share evidence of how their platforms are used and abused during elections. Computational propaganda flourished during the 2016 US presidential election.  US voters shared large volumes of polarising political news and information in the form of links to content from Russian, WikiLeaks and junk news sources.  First, we found that nationally,  Twitter  users got more misinformation, polarising and conspiratorial content than professionally produced news. The article talks about the way in which some users shared political news and information in the form of ''junk news sources'', most of which contained extremist/ sensationalist ideologies.  The article also mentins that due to this &
Read more