That someone is me by the way. Introducing yourself is always a bit awkward. Remember that time when you had to introduce yourself on the first day of school? This feels like a bit like that. Well let's start this introduction off by telling something about me.
I am a 26 year old student that specializes in information and data technology in the Netherland. My focus is misinformation in society. Especially misinformation during critical situations. I've worked as a journalist back in 2011. The lack of innovation in journalism and their use of social media bothered me a lot. I used social media as a source for so many stories and there was hardly any way to verify the information. When I fell for story that was fake news, I decided to go back to school and learn everything about misinformation. In my third year I founded a start-up. It's called TrusttheSource and we develop algorithms that can verify social media data. I saw the problem of misinformation on social media, but I didn't expect that it would gain this much attention worldwide.
The analytics tools that most journalists use are outdated and suitable for marketing or customer relationship management. Our platform helps journalists fact check claims on social media. Our platform for Twitter is done and we will start with the testing this January with a group of journalists. Next year we will be launching the functions that can verify Facebook data en large amounts of texts. I was in the finale of a couple of pitching competitions and met a lot of great people who support us. This is by far the most interesting thing I've ever done in my life. !
I now want to share some of my knowledge about misinformation. Because that is in my opinion the most amazing use of social media. It's not about monetizing or making yourself look better in your social circle. It's about sharing knowledge.
Last year I submitted a workshop and a paper to a library and science conference in Finland. One of the circumstances that explain misinformation and researched is called an echo chamber.
An echo chamber is a metaphorical situation in which idea’s, views, standpoints or believes are amplified or reinforced by communication. People in those chambers hardly receive information that is in contradiction with their own. If they do receive new contradictory information, those competing views are often censored, disallowed of underrepresented.
The model in figure 1 explains how echo chambers work.
Mary is (A) and sends some false information to Michael (B) about the refugee crisis. For example. Refugees only come here to force the Sharia Law on us. Mary and Michael both agree on the matter. Mary’s information echo’s Michael’s understanding. Mary sends the information not only to Michael but also to Peter. (C) Michael also sends the information about the refugees also to Peter. This is called in social networking theory, a transitive triad. Georg Simmel a German sociologist argued that the triad is the basis for how social institutions work. (Dyad and Triad, 2016) A transitive triad is where each of the actors, so in this case Mary, Michael and Peter agree with each other and are not convinced by other actors.
Sociologists discussed neo tribalism and echo chambers long before social media became popular. But this theory does not only to apply to social interactions, but also how social interaction work online. Kartrik Hosangagar is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and focused on the impact of the algorithms of Facebook and Google on human behavior. Hosangagar argues that the internet was supposed to stop the polarization of the society by creating an environment where people could share knowledge and idea’s with other people and gain understanding of other notions than the ones they were interested in. Unfortunately the exact opposite happened.
The social newsfeeds on Facebook and Twitter and Google perform now the tasks of news organizations and their algorithms decide what you should be reading online. They make sure that if you believe something and everybody you know believes the same thing. All the news sources you come across, say the same. Your reality becomes what you believe. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it's the truth. It’s a version of the truth. If someone believes something different, that doesn’t make it false. This does create a reality where you might think that someone who thinks something different is wrong, misinformed or very stupid.
Well, within this platform I find it interesting to observe and test how echo chambers and confirmation bias occur without the algorithms that decide what people should look at. My other blogs will be telling more about misinformation, cognitive dissonance, virality, photography (I love tulips) and if I find the time, fact checking certain stories. I would love to get requests from you on stories that you want to have fact checked. It will be a great learning experience.
Thank you for reading. I can imagine that it is a lot to take in for an introduction but I hope you enjoyed it and I would love to hear from you!