Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 28
Posts 11 - 20

Invasion of the troll armies: from Russian Trump supporters to Turkish state stooges

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 6.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | fake news, politics, threat
Summary | Thousands of trolls out there are pretending to be someone else. They spread fake news and write fake texts in exchange of some money. For instance, Russian people were paid by their government in order to pretend to be Trump's supporters. In China, the practice is common; the government pays people to manipulate social media. The article lists other examples such as Russia, Ukraine, Israel, the UK, North and South Korea, and Turkey.
Image Description | Image of military men (their faces has been replaced by thumbs up), image of someone using a laptop, two social media illustrations
Image Tags | computer/laptop, male(s), social media

How a Canadian app is helping refugees find food, clean water and medical care

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 16.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | smartphone, threat
Summary | A new app called Services Advisor was created by Canadian nonprofit PeaceGeeks. The goal of the app is to give refugees basic information about food, shelter, or medical care. The app is available in English and Arabic. A lot of refugees are tech-saavy people and already owned a smartphone before they had to leave their country.
Image Description | Photograph of a group of refugees, and screenshot of the app displaying different categories
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Tech may rule, but the human backlash is coming

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 24.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | smartphone, technology-free, threat
Summary | Movies have a special relationship with new media: they hate it. Romcoms prefer showing people who fall in love while meeting face-to-face rather than on dating apps, sci-fi movies show apocalyptic scenes representing the future, and movies such as "Her" or "Ex Machina" show how artificial intelligence can lead to downfall. Why is the movie industry tech-sceptic? Maybe because the internet is ruining the movie business.
Image Description | Screenshot of a movie scene with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Facebook will beam the web to Africa - a vital first step in helping people connect

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 24.2.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, smartphone, threat
Summary | Facebook, together with the French company Eutelsat, will put a satellite in orbit in order to give the internet to millions of sub-Saharan Africans. However, when you introduce social media into a poor country with low literacy, a country that does not know anything about free speech and freedom of expression, the consequences can be bad; it can lead to an explosion of hate speech (e.g. Myanmar, Lesbos). Therefore, connection alone is not the right solution.
Image Description | N/A

Apple removes New York Times app in China

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 5.1.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | censorship, social media, threat
Summary | Apple removed its New York Times app from its store in China. China's internet censorship is one of the toughest in the world; the government blocks all the websites seen as a threat. In China, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram are all banned. The New York Times app had been violating the country's regulations, that is why it had to be taken down.
Image Description | Photograph of a tablet screen displaying the New York Times
Image Tags | tablet

Taliban app removed from Google Play Store

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 4.4.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Google, social media, threat
Summary | Google Play store removed an app that was developed by the Taliban and that was created as part of a digital campaign by the Taliban to grow its audience. The app gave users access to the Taliban's Pashto website. The group is also trying to maintain constant presence on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
Image Description | Photograph of a group of Taliban fighters.
Image Tags | male(s)

Please, Facebook, don't make me speak to your awful chatbots

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 29.4.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, threat
Summary | Chatbots are the future! Soon, you'll be able to do everything thanks to chatbots (e.g. order a pizza, schedule a meeting). With Facebook, the idea is to introduce third-party bots into Messenger. Existing chatbots are not perfect yet; they are still slow and don't always understand everything. Facebook's goal is to create something flawless, a platform for your phone where you'll be able to book a table, pay a bill, order a cab, check the weather, and manage your relationships.
Image Description | Photograph of Mark Zuckerberg speaking in front of a giant screen displaying the Messenger platform, photograph of engineer Charles Lawson lighting a robot's cigarette, screenshot of a tweet, photograph of a smartphone screen displaying WeChat.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone, text, Twitter

Monitor monikers: why what we call our robots matters

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 7.2.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, marketing, threat
Summary | It is really odd how frequently artificial intelliigence assistants are anthropomorphized. They usually get a human-like name: Alexa, Cortana, Siri, or Amy and Andrew Ingram. This is in line with the larger project of chatbots, which is to make the internet more personalized. This trend to make everything technological more intuitive however suppresses critical thinking and is dangerous.
Image Description | Allstar image of the talking computer from the film 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Big data’s power is terrifying. That could be good news for democracy

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 6.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | fake news, politics, social media, threat
Summary | Big data makes big new innovations possible. It has already been assumed that recent elections were manipulated by fake news targeted to gullable individuals on social media. Other people are looking into options of how big data can be used to improve democracy, for instance the Pirate Party in Iceland.
Image Description | An illustration of hands 'cracking' a computer and an image of female Icelandic politicians from the Pirate Party.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), keyboard

Fighting fake news: societies using technology to search for truth

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 0.0.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | censorship, Facebook, fake news, politics, social media, threat
Summary | Many countries are trying to combat fake news and urging Facebook to find ways of combatting fake news. They influence elections by deceiving people and that is a great problem. It is nearly impossible to identify fake news with a program, it takes a human. Facebook is now allowing users to flag suspicious content, which is then reviewed and if deemed fake, labeled as such and displayed with a lower priority. Fake news are not taken off of Facebook because that would be censorship.
Image Description | Shutterstock images of protesters against fake news.
Image Tags | female(s), text

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