Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 163
Posts 41 - 50

As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 29.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, threat
Summary | Computer programming classes are increasingly in demand at universities across the country. Reports of students plagiarizing and copying code from each other are however also increasing. It is difficult to find out whether students have cheated but identical mistakes are a dead giveaway. One programming professor has also written a programm to compare codes and find how similar they are indicating the likelihood that the two codes were collaboratively written.
Image Description | Image of a lecture hall showing the lecturer's laptop and an image of a female student walking on campus.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s)

The limits of instant activism

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 28.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | politics, social media
Summary | A new book titled "Twitter and Tear Gas" by Zeynep Tufekci is coming out. It discusses the infuence of social media on protest culture. The author has been present in many recent protest movement: Occupy Wall Street, the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, the Tahrir Square protests, and many more. In her book, she concludes that social media help mobilize many people very quickly, as the anti-Trump marches have shown. However, this ease with which people are mobilized to attend a protest make the ties within the protest community looser making it difficult for the movements to overcome issues later on in the process.
Image Description | Image of the March on Washington in 1963.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), text

The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak, the Anonymous Messaging App

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | childhood, cyberbullying, law, privacy, social media, threat, youth
Summary | The anonymous messaging app Yik Yak became very popular in colleges and schools because it lets people broadcast anonymously to other users near them. The activity on the app has however started to become thretening with college students and children bullying each other and people making bomb threats that have led to multiple evacuations. A feminist group from University of Mary Washington have filed complaint to the University to block Yik Yak on campus because it has been used to harrass and threaten members.
Image Description | An illustration with a face and a smartphone and an image of the creators of Yik Yak.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Is China Outsmarting America in A.I.?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, computer programming, politics
Summary | China is surpassing the US in artificial intelligence research. They succeeded in getting to human-level language recognition a year before Microsoft did. China is also increasing funding for artificial intelligence research massively while President Trump is cutting research funding. The Chinese interent giant Baidu has succeeded in understanding very subtle differences between Chinese dialects.
Image Description | Images of a German AI researcher in China with his machines and students, a Tweet, and an auditorium watching a human playing a board game against Google AI.
Image Tags | female(s), Google, male(s), Twitter

Facebook takes a new crack at halting fake news and clickbait

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 17.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, fake news, threat
Summary | Facebook has announced that it will work on new strategies to flag fake news on their platform by labeling them "disputed". Facebook's activism will also target click bait stories which can be equally misleading. Click bait are headlines which leave out essential content or grossly exaggerate to lure people into clicking on the link.
Image Description | Getty image of a woman's hand holding a smartphone showing the Facebook logo in front of a screen showing the Facebook sign-in page.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, Facebook, female(s), hand(s), logo, smartphone

Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Dog Gone? Refresh Your Feeds

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 13.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, Instagram
Summary | Facebook, Instagram, and co. have revolutionized finding lost pets. Pet owner can be reunited with their dogs and cats minutes after they post on social media. The broad public is very eager to share images of lost pets on social media and this can help find lost pets much more frequently and quickly than ever before.
Image Description | Images of an Instagram-famous dog with another found dog and his owner.
Image Tags | Instagram, male(s)

UPDATE: Snaps won't disappear as quickly

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 10.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, Snapchat, translation
Summary | Snapchat will now allow users to broadcast their snaps for infinity instead of the previous 10 second maximum. This allows recipient to watch the snaps for as long as they like but once they close the message, it will disappear. Facebook is working on instantly translating all content (text and even video) on their platform so that users see everything in their preferred language.
Image Description | N/A

In Discover, Snap Sees a Bright Spot as It Tries to Fend Off Facebook

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 7.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, fake news, Snapchat, youth
Summary | Snapchat Discover is a realm in the messaging app that offers advertisers a platform to present their content (which also self-destructs in 24 hours). It is very expensive for advertisers to produce new content each day but some say that they have been able to recruit followers in the hard-to-reach demographic of youths. Snapchat has also made a move to curate the content on their Dsicover platform in order to censor nudity as well as unreliable news sources in order to combat fake news.
Image Description | An image of a video shoot for Snapchat and a Tweet of a Snapchat video.
Image Tags | female(s), Snapchat, Twitter

A hunt for militants at a key location: the Internet

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Newspaper | Los Angeles Times
Date | 6.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, law, texting, threat, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube
Summary | The EU's police organization as well as the US government are targeting IS material online in their battle against terrorism. Attempts to intercept communication via encrypted instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram have failed. The IS also uploads video and other content to YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. These social media platforms report to have deleted hundreds of thousands of entries linken to the IS.
Image Description | Portrait of a high profile IS member.
Image Tags | male(s)

In Europe’s Election Season, Tech Vies to Fight Fake News

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 1.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, Facebook, fake news, Google, law, politics
Summary | In light of recent elections, many people are eager to combat misinformation online. Major tech companies like Facebook and Google are being pressured to purdue solutions to stop the spread of fake news on their platforms. Germany even demands fines from Facebook for not complying with federal laws targeted at keeping hate speech and fake news controled. Competitions with rewards of several thousand dollars are asking for programmers to come up with fact-checking software which can weed out false news.
Image Description | Image of a computer programmer working on solutions to flag fake news and a Reuters image of election posters from France.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

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