Hot topics click link for more
The election was held, votes tabulated and winner announced. Now, three weeks after Brazil’s voters chose, election monitors have shown that nearly 100% of the voters received fake news via social media during the campaign. Much of it was salacious. It probably worked.
Nearly all Brazilians voting for far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro (98.21%) were exposed to fake news at least once during the campaign, according to research conducted for Avaaz by market researcher IDEA Big Data and released on the Avaaz website (October 31). And, worse, nearly all of them (89.77%) believed it. Fake news was rife across social media in Brazil, particularly on Whatsapp, the most popular social media platform in Brazil. The Bolsonaro campaign produced and paid for posted material calling into question the sexual orientation of another candidate, which was patently false. Mr. Bolsonaro was elected October 28th. (See more about elections and media here)
Avaaz is public interest advocacy network based in the United States and active in 30 countries, according to its website. Its chief activity is facilitating online petitions and voter registration. It is primarily funded through individual donations.
“Brazilian democracy is drowning in fake news,” said Avaaz chief executive and founder Ricken Patel. “These stories were toxic weapons carefully fabricated to destroy the eligibility of a candidate. And with the help of Facebook and WhatsApp, they spread quickly and some were taken as true. We urgently need the world to open our eyes to the greatest threat that democracies face today: an extreme right-wing misinformation operation on social networks.”
As president-elect Mr Bolsonaro has repeated the refrain common among authoritarians, critical media is fake news. And, taken from the far-right populist playbook, he is threatening to cut government media advertising for those daring to criticize, including major television network TV Globo and daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo.
That might be backfiring, said Folha de Sao Paulo executive editor Sérgio Dávila, quoted by Reuters (November 4). The newspaper has seen a spike in subscriptions. “They basically said: ‘Folha does critical journalism. Bolsonaro is attacking Folha. I’m going to subscribe to Folha out of solidarity.’”
It is a first. China’s state news agency Xinhua in partnership with search engine provider Sogou, displayed this past week a fully-automated virtual news anchor. It - they haven’t given it a name yet - reads the scripts very well in Mandarin or English and looks straight into the camera. They could call it HAL, for HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic 2001 A Space Odyssey, or Max, for Max Headroom of the 1985 TV movie.
Through the miracle of artificial intelligence (AI), the robot mimics speech characteristics and facial expressions of real Xinhua news anchor Zhang Zhao. AI image processing is widely used by the film and video gaming people as well as more dodgy enterprises. It was introduced at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China where high-tech developers gathered to show off their hot new stuff.
“‘He’ has become a member of (the) reporting team and can work 24 hours a day on (the) official website and various social media platforms, reducing news production costs and improving efficiency,” said Xinhua (November 8). Accountants at news broadcasters around the world are certainly giddy with joy, known in their circles as cost savings, and placing orders now.
“Hello everyone,” said the robot in its 30 second introduction. "I will work tirelessly to keep you informed as texts are typed into my system uninterrupted. I look forward to bringing you the brand-new news experience.”
Needless to say, the news world reacted; describing it variously as an avatar, digital doppelganger, clone, deep fake. Most media watchers also reflected on China’s ranking near the bottom of press freedom indexes as state control over media is pervasive. (See more about media in China here)
The Xinhua news robot was introduced the same week CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta got into another briefing room tussle with US president Donald Trump. Mr. Acosta is known as a demanding reporter, which is good. President Trump hates that.
A press room aide appeared and approached Mr. Acosta to retrieve the microphone, which he momentarily resisted. The episode appears staged, at the very least, to embarrass Mr. Acosta. The White House press office released a video of the incident provided by a notorious right-wing source depicting Mr. Acosta as aggressive. (See more about fake news here)
Several news organizations, on the scene, captured very different video of the incident and took pains to make a second-by-second comparisons. The video released by the White House press office was quite clearly altered, also known as fake news. Mr. Acosta, obviously a real person irritated at President Trump for dismissing a question in the usual demeaning fashion, had his press credentials lifted.
Fake news wins when viewers accept deep fakes, including news people.
Actor Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL 9000, passed away this week at 90 years.
|
