Content creators mean business
Social media influencers are flipping the rules by first getting followers and then launching products and ...
Social media influencers are flipping the rules by first getting followers and then launching products and ...
Paneer, once alien to the South, has found a lucrative market in Chennai
WPP agency Wunderman Thompson has launched its annual Future 100 report, lifting the lid on trends shaping the ...
Carriers claim that all measures — including pre-flight tests, cabin sanitisation and fresh air inflow — have ...
What filters should you apply when mining for under-the-radar small-cap stocks? Read on to find more
High valuation, intensely competitive landscape and small cap nature of the stock are key risks.
Amid choppiness, the benchmark indices slipped marginally; approach the week with caution
SBI Cards (₹1,032.7): Witnesses fresh breakoutBetween September and December last year, the stock of SBI Cards ...
A virus swept aside 2020 plans to mark the 250th year of the birth of Beethoven. We need the German composer’s ...
Former MLA and farmer leader VM Singh on the violence that followed the January 26 tractor rally, the impasse ...
A mysterious new exhibit has been the centre of attraction at the gallery of Modern Art. This art work has ...
Tara was a curious little girl who loved to ask questions.She lived with her parents and her grandmother — ...
Social media influencers are flipping the rules by first getting followers and then launching products and ...
WPP agency Wunderman Thompson has launched its annual Future 100 report, lifting the lid on trends shaping the ...
Paneer, once alien to the South, has found a lucrative market in Chennai
The Flipkart kids playing adults are back — this time to push the home grown e-commerce marketplace’s grocery ...
Three years after its inception, compliance with GST procedures remains a headache for exporters, job workers ...
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of companies are altering the prospects for wooden toys of ...
Aequs Aerospace to create space for large-scale manufacture of toys at Koppal
And it has every reason to smile. Covid-19 has triggered a consumer shift towards branded products as ...
Covid-19 ‘Infodemic’ | WhatsApp groups more dangerous than public platforms: Study
New research, published on the official website of the Tallinn University, was conducted to explore the spread of disinformation relating to the Covid-19 pandemic on the internet, dubbed by some as the pandemic’s accompanying “infodemic,” and the societal reactions to this development across different countries and platforms.
The research was carried out to evaluate how national governments have responded to the task of providing a regulatory framework for online companies. It also sheds light on how these companies have transposed the obligation to protect human rights and combat hate speech online into their community standards.
Big-Tech
The research revealed that in almost all the surveyed responses, Facebook and YouTube belong to the top five media, accompanied mostly by Instagram and Twitter and sometimes by Pinterest and LinkedIn.
The search engine Google and the messaging service WhatsApp are mentioned less often, but if so, they rank first or second on the list of platforms.
While in some countries popular national and regional news sites were as popular as social media websites.
Said differentiation between (social media) platforms and messaging services appears to play an even more important role with regard to the spread of Corona-related (dis)information, the study added.
The study further said: “Facebook and, to a slightly lesser extent, Twitter, Instagram and other popular platforms are nearly always mentioned as a spreading medium, some replies explicitly point towards increasing importance of messaging apps in circulating Covid-related disinformation. One report explicitly mentions the increasing practice of “chain-messaging via Viber and WhatsApp platforms, with disinformation about various aspects of the pandemic.”
Other findings
The study took reference of Israel and Germany based studies and noted that “WhatsApp's groups are more dangerous in this time than public platforms such as Twitter as the spreader identity provides credibility to the message delivered.
The study also mentioned the reported counter-measures against such disinformation. This includes labeling potentially harmful, misleading information on Twitter; Covid-19-related content moderation rules on YouTube; a WHO chatbot on WhatsApp; and increased content moderation in cooperation with third-party fact-checkers on Facebook.
Those measures, however, are not country-specific and (apparently step-by-step20) applied without significant national differences, the thesis added.
The researchers revealed that only South Africa appears to be an exception here, as “misinformation is removed in response to public outrage or the possibility of criminal prosecution rather than any measures imposed by the social media platforms themselves.”
Follow us on Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Linkedin. You can also download our Android App or IOS App.
SHARE