Engaged Reading Digest: Viruses, Lies and Spammers

Hello, folks. It's been a while since I did one of these. Like everyone else, I've been knocked for a loop by the rapid progress of Covid-19. Luckily, so far my family remains untouched by the novel coronavirus — but two local people I know are in hospital, and another is recovering.

The last three weeks have been frantic. I've been trying to reconfigure my face-to-face training courses to online format - which seems (so far) to be working - while seeking alternative revenue streams. And I'm doing that while home schooling my daughters for half a day every weekday.

It's exhausting.

But this is our new normal, for now at least, so on we go. Here's some things I think you should be taking note of right now.

Tracking the coronavirus through social media data

I always emphasise to the Interhacktives that one way you can view social media is as a vast data set they can interrogate through their data journalism skills. This takes that idea about 15 steps further:

Social Media Posts and Online Searches Hold Vital Clues about Pandemic Spread

Such data offer valuable information and could help track the novel coronavirus—but they risk errors and raise privacy concerns

Scientific AmericanKatherine Ellison,Knowable Magazine

Exciting stuff.

The platforms tentatively step up

While my own financial situation is much more perilous than it was only a few weeks ago, many have it much worse. Facebook is doing something to support local media survive what could be an ad-collapse apocalypse.

However, as I've been helping local voluntary organisations with their web and social media presence, I can't help wondering if they could have more impact by finding ways of getting decent reach on locally-important posts without charging people for them right now.

Facebook Aims $100 Million at Media Hit by the Coronavirus

With grants and marketing spending, the social media giant hopes to support outlets doing essential local reporting but struggling with a drop in advertising.

NYTimesMarc Tracy

Meanwhile, Twitter is finally starting to delete Tweets from major political figures that contain gross untruths:

Twitter Deleted Two Tweets From Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro For Spreading Coronavirus Misinformation

“What I have been hearing from people is that they want to work,” Bolsonaro said in one of the deleted videos.

BuzzFeed NewsRyan Broderick

Inevitably, that's going to put "if you can do it for Covid-19, why can't you do it for other issues?" back on the agenda.

Lying liars and the lies they lie

The polarisation of attitudes to science and expertise is having a disastrous effect on political discourse, at the one time when lives depend on swift, effective action guided by genuine experts. The US is proving to be patient zero for this problem:

Conservative Voices Are Pumping Out Coronavirus Misinformation on Twitter

Twitter has cracked down on world leaders and media figures—though, notably, not Trump—for promoting untested cures, but other, more nuanced conspiracy theories are still spreading.

Vanity FairCaleb Ecarma

And fact-checkers are fighting their own battle against viral spread:

Facebook’s Fact Checkers Fight Surge in Fake Coronavirus Claims

Contractors battle bogus assertions about canine vaccines and free baby formula; ‘We’ve maxxed out’

The Wall Street JournalJeff Horwitz

Liar-in-Chief

The US President's complete disregard for the truth has moved from a political horror show, to an existential threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. And the press is not rising to the challenge, argues James Fallows.

Repeating the Mistakes of 2016

Cable and broadcast outlets are covering Trump’s daily briefings as they did the rallies of days gone by.

The AtlanticJames Fallows

The New York Times was taken to task last night over its "horse race" journalism where there is no race:

The whole thread is just brutal, especially when an NYT reporter tries to shut him up:

Thread by @gregggonsalves: @jmartNYT @maggieNYT Sorry Jonathan, I don’t care how important you think you are, how important you think the @NYTimes is as a newspaper, b…

Thread by @gregggonsalves: @jmartNYT @maggieNYT Sorry Jonathan, I don’t care how important you think you are, how important you think the @NY newspaper, but the political desk has been abysmal on this. I say this as someone who has worked on infectious d…

Thread Reader

And finally

It's nice to see that the SEO link spammers are still hard at work…

Unsolicited Link Requests

I get very stupid link requests.

Not even a pandemic stops the SEO graft.