Week 16:
5/20: Misinformation, disinformation and spotting ai
What we will do:
Questions from last week: Social networks
Presentation: Misinformation, Disinformation and Spotting AI
Homework:
Review lesson
Take the quizzes on the website
Study images
Watch videos
View resources at end
Use discussion board to share insights
Recording
Miss the class? Or would you like to hear it again? View the recording from Tuesday's class.
Quick links:
Zoom:
Join us on Monday or Tuesday in the Zoom classroom
Zoom link: https://sdccd-edu.zoom.us/j/9191959460?pwd=OXh0RE9ZTVZTWElTMUQ0ZzAxQzExdz09.
Passcode (if asked): emeritus
What is Misinformation? Disinformation?
Misinformation
Misinformation is the act of sharing information without recognizing it is wrong.
Disinformation
Disinformation is the deliberate creation and/or sharing of false information in order to mislead. The difference is Intent.
Why do people promote misinformation or disinformation?
Fulfill a social agenda
Earn advertising revenue
Misinfo_inBrief_NNLW.pdfLearn more
Video:
A primer to identify real vs fake news.
Video:
How an 18 year old disrupted the US election. Why advertising continued. Why it was allowed to go forward.
Video:
How does misinformation spread through social media?
Types of misinformation or disinformation
Propaganda: Stories that are created to deliberately mislead audiences, promote biased point of view or particular cause or agenda
Satire and Parody: Lots of websites and social media accounts publish fake news for entertainment and parody. (Examples, The Onion, Waterford Whispers, The Daily Mash)
Misleading headings or content: Sensational headings can result in stories that spread quickly on social media where only headlines and small snippets of the full article are displayed.
Biased/Slanted news: Stories that confirm your own beliefs and biases. Our news feeds tend to display news and articles that we might like, based on our personalized searches. May not be entirely true or entirely fake.
Imposter content: Some websites will try to confuse readers into thinking they are online outlets of traditional or mainstream media sources. They may have a similar name or logo, but are not the same. It is difficult to see who owns them.
Fabricated content: New content that is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm. Used during elections. Can involve payment for others to create fabricated content.
a. Clickbait: Stories deliberately fabricated to gain website visitors and increase advertising revenue for websites. Use sensationalist headlines and the words shocking, amazing, unbelievable or you won’t believe what happened next. Can involve celebrities or mysterious stories. May challenge your IQ or guess your personality type based on what you eat (drink, wear, your pets, etc.).
b. Fabricated content is more interesting. And deceiving. According to Pew, about 1 in 4 reported sharing fabricated news, whether aware at the time or not.
Where to find reputable news sites: An online tool
Best sites for news
The best news sites are those with high levels of truth and low levels of bias. Newspapers, magazines and news sites which are Pulitzer Prize publications include Associated Press, Center for Public Integrity, Chicago Tribune, Reuters, The New York times, The New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
News sites and online news magazines are less likely to have fake news, although they may be biased. If a source is reliable, they will let you know their point of view.
To clearn things up, you can check your sources for truth and bias on the Media Bias/Fact Check site. (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/) This site analyzes websites, using a rating system to determine media and truth.
Media Bias/Fact Check
View Interactive chart which outlines facts and bias on a number of publications. Note that results are found by taking one story and evaluating it. As a result, some ratings may change periodically. Click here for an interactive view of this chart.
After going to the site online, look at some of your trusted news sources. Are you surprised?
Tips to tell if information is correct:
• Check the source: Do you recognize the website, is the source reliable, can you find more about the author?
• Go beyond the headline: Read the entire story, as sometimes they use sensational headings to grab attention. Be wary of headlines in all caps and using exclamation points. Look at the quotes. Are they from professionals (academics, experts)? Double check their credentials using Google search
• Check other sources: Is anyone else reporting on this? Are there sources in the story? Are they reliable? Do they even exist?
• Check the facts: Check when article was published; is it current, or an old news story?
• Check your own biases: Are your own views and beliefs affecting your opinion of a news feature or report? The source mentioned above (Media Bias/Fact Check) can help guide your understanding.
• Check the website: Many people have trouble recognizing sites that are satire. Satire sites include The Onion and ClickHole. Check the About Us section, which should tell you about the company that runs it, the members and mission statement.
You can also use this tool to determine the validity of the information.
Deep Fakes and the upcoming election
The landscape has changed in recent years, reflecting a combination of real and fake videos and images. While in the past, it may have been easier to spot fake media, this has become much more challenging with AI. And if you have difficulty spotting AI deep fakes, don't feel bad. Research has suggested that nearly 2/3 of people can't tell the difference between AI-generated images and voices. So what can you do? Here are some practical tools to help you decipher what is real and what is not:
Viral posts on social media: You would think that if a post is shared by millions of people, it must be true. Unfortunately, this is not the case. There are automated accounts which are creating and spreading misinformation to lead public opinion. It is virtually impossible to identify all of them. So, before sharing something on social media, look deeply into the source. If you can't verify it is authentic, do not repost.
Look for other coverage: Perhaps the scammer has put together a convincing image or video. But they cannot fake the context. So if you hear something which is outlandish or far fetched, look for other sources. If you are unsuccessful, then double check with resources such as Google Fact Check Explorer, Verify this or Snopes.
Reverse image search: If there is a picture on a potentially fake news site, do a reverse image search. Use Google image to help. To access Google Image search, go to www.google.com/images. Click on the little camera icon on the right of the search bar, next to the microphone. You will be prompted either to enter the URL of a photo you've found online or to upload a photo from your computer. Then your results will appear. Often you'll be able to get additional information about when and where the photo first appeared, along with the people who appear in the photo, if they're well-known. OR, try TinEye, which can be used as a browser attachment for a quick search.
Video
25 minute video which outlines the role of AI in creating fake video and voice. A little long, but this clip does a great job of explaining deep fake and the use this along with social networks in skewing public opinion.
Another excellent video outlines the effects of deep fake video and voice.
Spotting AI in video and images
AI has made it very difficult to spot deep fakes. However, if you pay attention to details, you may have some helpful ways to help you determine if what you are seeing is actually real.
Criteria for spotting deep fakes:
A research project at MIT came up with a list of criteria for spotting deep fakes. It includes:
Pay attention to the face. High-end DeepFake manipulations are almost always facial transformations.
Pay attention to the cheeks and forehead. Does the skin appear too smooth or too wrinkly? Is the agedness of the skin similar to the agedness of the hair and eyes? DeepFakes may be incongruent on some dimensions.
Pay attention to the eyes and eyebrows. Do shadows appear in places that you would expect? DeepFakes may fail to fully represent the natural physics of a scene.
Pay attention to the glasses. Is there any glare? Is there too much glare? Does the angle of the glare change when the person moves? Once again, DeepFakes may fail to fully represent the natural physics of lighting.
Pay attention to the facial hair or lack thereof. Does this facial hair look real? DeepFakes might add or remove a mustache, sideburns, or beard. But, DeepFakes may fail to make facial hair transformations fully natural.
Pay attention to facial moles. Does the mole look real?
Pay attention to blinking. Does the person blink enough or too much?
Pay attention to the lip movements. Some deepfakes are based on lip syncing. Do the lip movements look natural?
Practice spotting deep fakes:
Northwestern University has set up a site with over 600 images where you can indicate if an image is real or fake. They will use your results to determine how often people can figure out what is real. If you don't want to go through them all, go through several to see how you do.
Take the quiz: Learn more about deepfakes
Some videos highlighting the importance of understanding deepfake images and videos and why it is so important.
Why is this important?
Fact checking sites
There are a number of ways that you can check the accuracy on a site. Some options:
Snopes: Snopes’ fact-checking and original investigative reporting lights the way to evidence-based and contextualized analysis. (snopes.com)
PolitiFact: PolitiFact is a nonpartisan fact-checking website to sort out the truth in American politics. (politifact.com)
Fact Check: Reduce deception and confusion in politics (factcheck.org)
OpenSecrets: Tracking the money behind elections and the government (opensecrets.org)
That’s Fake: Latest on scams, texts and emails (thatsfake.com)
Testing yourself
Game: Cranky Uncle is a fun but challenging game that helps us to understand the techniques used to mislead. It is useful in helping us to point out the fallacies of what we learn.
Game: Bad News is a game where you are the one posting misinformation. You are led through techniques that are used to spread misinformation and the ways that they achieve this.
Game: Spot the troll is unlike the others in that it uses real social media accounts. A troll is Internet slang for a person who intentionally tries to instigate conflict, hostility, or arguments in an online social community. Platforms targeted by trolls can include the comment sections of YouTube, forums, or chat rooms. Trolls often use inflammatory messages to provoke emotional responses out of people, disrupting otherwise civil discussion. Trolling can occur anywhere that has an open area where people can freely post their thoughts and opinions. Unfortunately, some trolls are not who they seem to be. In this game, you identify which are real people and which are not.