Tag Archives: Deception

06Jan/24

Four tips for a healthy news diet in 2024, from an expert in media psychology

Sharon Coen, University of Salford

The start of the new year brings inevitable pressure to start fresh, with new hobbies, exercise regimes and healthy diets. But there is one diet you may not have thought of improving this year: your media and news consumption.

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2024: The year of democratic elections

Jan. 2, 2024 /Politics/ — 2024 is shaping up to be a bumper year for elections! Here are some noteworthy examples beyond the UK and USA: Continue reading

26Sep/23

Donald Trump’s truth: why liars might sometimes be considered honest – new research

Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol and Jana Lasser, Graz University of Technology

According to fact checkers, Donald Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency. That’s around 20 a day. But, according to several opinion polls during his presidency, around 75% of Republican voters still considered Trump to be honest.

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27Jul/23

Introducing Norton Genie – Real-Time AI-powered Scam Detection at Your Fingertips


Scams are one of the most pervasive Cyber Safety threats of our time. The sheer volume is staggering – people are collectively wading through 3.4 billion phishing emails on a daily basis – and scams are becoming more sophisticated and harder to spot without help. Today, Norton, a leader in Cyber Safety and part of Gen™ (NASDAQ: GEN), is inviting people to join in the fight against scams by offering early access to Norton Genie, a real-time AI-powered scam detector, to provide an easy, fast and free way to check if texts, emails, websites and social media posts are a scam. Continue reading

22Jun/23

How scammers use psychology to create some of the most convincing internet cons – and what to watch out for

Stacey Wood, Scripps College and Yaniv Hanoch, University of Southampton

Online fraud is today’s most common crime. Victims are often told they are foolish for falling for it, but fraudsters use psychological mechanisms to infiltrate the defences of their targets, regardless of how intelligent they are.

So it’s important to keep up with the latest scams and understand how they work.

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02May/23

Buzzfeed News: sad demise of a clever, innovative site that led the way in digital journalism

Sean Dodson, Leeds Beckett University

Buzzfeed News, once a shining star of digital journalism, has announced it will shut its award-winning news division for good, laying off about 60 journalists in a move its founding editor, Ben Smith, described as “the end of the marriage between social media and news”.

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18Apr/23

The defamation lawsuit by Dominion against Fox and a timeline of key events leading up to the trial

April 18, 2023 /Business/ — Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation and its Fox News Channel on March 26, 2021, alleging that the network defamed the company by repeatedly making false and defamatory claims about its voting machines in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

The lawsuit alleged that Fox News hosts and guests, including former President Donald Trump, made false and defamatory claims about Dominion’s voting machines, including that they were “rigged” and “susceptible to hacking.” The lawsuit also alleged that Fox News’s coverage of Dominion’s voting machines was “reckless and false” and that it caused Dominion to suffer “severe and irreparable harm.”
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17Apr/23

The future of AI-powered disinformation

April 17, 2023 /MEDIA/ — The future of AI-powered disinformation is a concerning one. As AI technology continues to develop, it will become increasingly easy to create and spread false or misleading information. This could have a devastating impact on our society, as it could erode trust in institutions, undermine democracy, and lead to violence.

There are a number of ways in which AI could be used to spread disinformation. For example, AI could be used to create fake news articles, social media posts, and videos that are designed to look like they are from legitimate sources. AI could also be used to target people with personalized disinformation, based on their interests and beliefs.
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15Aug/22

OPINION: Besides AI, regulation key to fight mis/disinformation

By Anya Schiffrin, director of the Technology, Media and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

When worries about online mis/disinformation became widespread after the 2016 U.S. election, there was hope that the tech giants would use artificial intelligence (AI) to fix the mess they created. The hope was that platforms could use AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automatically block or downrank false. illegal or inflammatory content online without governments having to regulate.
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