Apr 25 What is the NewsTracker? By Cameron Hickey As the country was reacting to the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, concerns soared about the problems of misinformation or so-called “Fake News” spreading across social media. To understand the scale and shape of a problem that was incredibly… Continue reading
Apr 24 Watch 5:54 Schools wrestle with protecting student privacy on Facebook Facebook remains the center of attention over concerns about data privacy and sharing. How are schools reckoning with how they use the social media platform and what data is shared? John Yang talks with Benjamin Herold of Education Week on… Continue watching
Mar 24 Doctors and drugmakers may be looking at your social media By Menaka Wilhelm, Future of You Doctors and drugmakers are looking at patients' experiences on social media for clues on problems. Continue reading
Mar 20 Watch 4:27 Facebook faces scrutiny for how user data was used to influence elections By PBS News Hour British-based research firm Cambridge Analytica has been accused of harvesting data from more than 50 million Facebook users, and misleading the tech giant about it. New undercover video captured the CEO talking about their work for the Trump campaign. Meanwhile,… Continue watching
Mar 20 Watch 5:31 Investor says he tried to warn Facebook about ‘bad actors’ harming innocent people By PBS News Hour Roger McNamee, one of Facebook’s original investors and a mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, says he was concerned about the way “bad actors were taking the tools created for advertisers and using them to harm innocent people,” and alerted Zuckerberg and… Continue watching
Mar 20 WATCH: First lady vows to fight cyberbullying, despite skeptics By Darlene Superville, Associated Press Harassment is widespread and extends beyond teenagers. A Pew Research Center poll last year found 41 percent of U.S. adults believed they had been harassed online. Continue reading
Mar 19 Watch 5:20 Amid Cambridge Analytica revelations, Facebook needs ‘rules of the road,’ says Sen. Klobuchar By PBS News Hour Facebook is at the center of a new firestorm, sparked by media reports that political data firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign, harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook profiles -- and Facebook never told… Continue watching
Mar 13 5 important stories that have nothing to do with Trump or Tillerson By Harry Zahn, Erica R. Hendry, Joshua Barajas These days, it’s hard to stop news from Washington, D.C., from flooding your news feed. We take a moment every week to bring you important stories beyond the White House and the Capitol. Here’s what we’re reading now. Continue reading
Feb 28 Inside the study showing conservatives retweeted Russian trolls 30 times more often than liberals By Rashmi Shivni Computational social scientists found that 40,000 American Twitter users retweeted Russian trolls more than 80,000 times in a single month before the 2016 election. Continue reading
Feb 20 Watch 6:57 Russia’s ‘troll factory’ impersonates Americans to sow political chaos. How can the U.S. fight it? By PBS News Hour Russia's attempts to interfere in American elections and political discourse did not end with the 2016 race. What do we know about Moscow’s meddling and what can we expect in the near future? Judy Woodruff learns more from Nina Jankowicz,… Continue watching