Fake News, Echo Chambers & Polarization: How Bad Is Social Media?

Sabrine Hossenfelder does a good job in covering a number of research papers on this important topic, and analyzes them.    A fairly balanced look as I see it.   Including references to a number of studies that have been made in the US and elsewhere.   Link to her YouTube is right below.   I am reading her new book: 'Existential Physics', available most anywhere and in libraries.

Link to the Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDqESkPiV4E

Does fake news spread better than true news? Do bots spread fake news? What can we do against fake news? Does social media increase political polarization? Is it true that we all live in political echo chambers? In this video, we look at what scientific studies have found and what we can learn from that.

👉 Transcript and References on Patreon ➜ https://www.patreon.com/Sabine

💌 Sign up for my weekly science newsletter. It's free!  ➜ https://sabinehossenfelder.com/newsle...

📖 Check out my new book "Existential Physics" ➜ http://existentialphysics.com/

🔗 Join this channel to get access to perks ➜ 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1yN...

The two browser games I mentioned are "Go Viral" https://www.goviralgame.com

And "Get Bad News" https://www.getbadnews.com/

00:00 Intro

01:30 Fake News 

09:38 Information Literature

10:16 Echo Chambers

13:15 Polarization

16:38 Summary

17:19 MEL Science: Experiments By Subscription

#science

Fake News Detection with AI?

We connected with Enterra a few years ago about supply chain AI. Saw their ideas presented by Stephen DeAngelis , which were impressive for the application .  See my tags on Enterra.   Now some of their work on 'Fake News' detection in Forbes:   Potential for misuse is potentially high, but worth the examination.  Also, consider how these same methods might be used to automatically detect the validity of advertising claims.  Would that radically change marketing and advertising?   Lead to an arms war between claims and detection?  No technical detail in the article.  Looking deeper.

Can Enterra's Advanced AI Systems Stop The Fake News Epidemic?
By Alan Wolk , Contributor Forbes  .... " 

And further:

 " ... For DeAngelis, the benefit to Hollywood will be the ability to apply sophisticated data-driven insights to augment the creative process. Enterra’s Enterprise Cognitive System could take a vast number of variable inputs—production schedules, star power, budgets, cultural trends, media consumption rates, and box office grosses, as well as advertising campaigns, audience targeting, and political climate—and interpret them in a way that allows for more informed executive decision making and investment.  “The ability of an AI system to think and to reason while ingesting and analyzing data from all these sources—that’s going to prove to be very powerful for media companies,” he notes.  ... " 

(Update) More on this on Enterra site.