Facebook Wants To Teach You How To Spot Fake News On Facebook

Posted on April 7, 2017, at 2:00 a.m.

Written by Craig Silverman  BuzzFeed News Media Editor

What the new educational tool will look like in News Feed.

In its latest move to help blunt the flow of misinformation on its platform, Facebook today rolled out a new initiative to educate users on how to spot "false news."

Starting [April 8th, 2017], people in 14 countries will begin seeing a link to a "Tips for spotting false news" guide at the top of their News Feed. Clicking it brings users to a section offering 10 tips as well access to related resources in the Facebook Help Center. Facebook is also collaborating with news and media literacy organisations in several countries to produce additional resources.

"Improving news literacy is a global priority, and we need to do our part to help people understand how to make decisions about which sources to trust," Adam Mosseri, Facebook's VP of News Feed, wrote in a blog post about the initiative. "False news runs counter to our mission to connect people with the stories they find meaningful. We will continue working on this, and we know we have more work to do."

Facebook's 10 tips for spotting false news.

Facebook has now announced several initiatives to try and stop the spread of misinformation and to support trustworthy information. It's working with third-party fact-checking organizations to flag false content in the News Feed; the company recently announced the Facebook Journalism Project to work with news organizations on products and business models; and it's one of the funders of the new News Integrity Initiative, a $14 million project "focused on helping people make informed judgments about the news they read and share online."

These moves come in response to the outcry about the platform's role in spreading fake news stories during the recent US election, and to public pressure it faced after CEO Mark Zuckerberg was initially dismissive of the issue. Now he, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and other top executives talk frequently about the responsibility Facebook has to help provide accurate information to its more than 1.8 billion users.

"We know that seeing accurate news on Facebook is really important to people on all sides," Sandberg recently said on PBS NewsHour. "No matter who you are, seeing the accurate story and seeing a diversity of opinions is really important. We know we have a responsibility, along with newsrooms and classrooms and academic and other companies, to make sure people see accurate news."

Harvard University's Digital Photography Course Online

Image: iStock

Harvard University just made its photography course free to access online. This is a great resource for improving your photography skills. Available on Alison, the course has 12 modules covering the fundamentals of photography – from exposure, optics, colour and histograms to artefacts and software tools. Complete the assessment at the end and receive a certificate. You will need to get a mark of 80 percent or higher to pass.

Course Information

Welcome to Digital Media E-10: Exposing Digital Photography, offered Fall 2015 at Harvard University's Extension School.

DGMD E-10: Exposing Digital Photography

Fall 2015

Instructor: Dan Armendariz
Teaching Fellows: Shelley Westover, Rob McCarthy, Jordan Hayashi, Henry Vega Ortiz
Producer: Jordan Hayashi
Harvard Extension School

Description

This course explores the artistic aspects, scientific foundations, and techniques of digital photography with the goals of enabling students to expand their knowledge of photography as an art form, to develop a deeper and broader understanding of the scientific basis of photography, to improve their photographic technique, and to effectively use photographic software tools. Although the primary focus is on digital photography, many concepts apply to other photographic disciplines including film and video. Topics include quality of light, exposure control, depth of field, aesthetics, composition and patterns, perspective, color science, the human visual system, spatial and color perception, exposure, metering, digital sensors, optics, analogies to biological systems, color filter arrays, file formats, sensor linearity, color spaces and profiles, optical and computational image artifacts, and software tools and techniques for modification and enhancement. Through lectures, hands-on assignments, and critiques, students expand their understanding of digital photography while exploring their creativity to broaden the possibilities and improve the quality of their photographs. Upon successful completion of the course, students can expect to take photographs with an intuition of the camera's behaviour, and its limitations, and an ability to think critically about light and the resulting appearance of a photograph.

Students should have access to a camera with a manual mode and an option for RAW for the duration of the course.

Take the course here

How To Create a Grungy Star Wars Propaganda Poster in Photoshop

Do you need you class to make a poster in Photoshop? Here's a step-by-step guide.
From the excellent blog Spoon Graphics, by Chris Spooner - visit it here.

I’ve been wanting to have some fun with the low-fi poster style that’s usually associated with punk rock gigs and revolution propaganda, but I couldn’t decide what to base my fictional design on. Then I saw the trailer for the new Rogue One movie and I knew I had to produce a Star Wars themed design for this tutorial! Follow along to see how to create a grungy propaganda poster for the Rebel Alliance in Adobe Photoshop with dirty textures, spray paint effects and a low-cost, hand made feel.

The design we’ll be creating in this tutorial is the ultimate anti-establishment message from the Rebel Alliance. It’s made in the style of the cheap flyers and posters made by underground movements, that rely on low-cost production methods like cutting and pasting photographs, hand-painted typography and low-quality photocopy prints. We’ll be creating this artwork 100% digitally, but with the assistance of handmade resources that will help to achieve the collage aesthetic.



Begin by downloading a paper texture and opening it up in Adobe Photoshop. Press CMD+A to Select All, followed by a right mouse click and choose Transform Selection. Hold the ALT key and scale the selection down to leave a border. Fill this selection with #dcbd88 and change the blending mode to Multiply.



Steal an image of Darth Vader from Google Images and paste it into the working document. We’ll have to rebel against copyright in this tutorial and hope the Disney empire doesn’t strike back! Desaturate the image, then go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Enter 5% with the Gaussian and Monochromatic options checked.



To give the image a photocopied appearance, go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. Adjust the settings to 400%, 15px radius and 0% noise reduction.



Use the Polygonal Lasso tool to roughly trace around the outline of Darth Vader, then go to Select > Inverse and hit the Backspace key to remove the background.



Download my old Rough and Grungy Photoshop Brushes (or my more recent Dry Brush Strokes) and adjust the size and angle from within the Brushes panel to deface the image of Darth Vader.



Use a display font to add some hand-drawn typography to the artwork. I’m using the lovely font Againts, which has a messy hand painted brush style.



To produce realistic hand-drawn typography, it used to be necessary to physical draw and scan the text yourself, but many premium display fonts now have alternate characters so any duplicate letters can be given a different appearance.



Paste in an image of some Stormtroopers underneath the Darth Vader layer and scale them to size so they’re visible at either side of Darth Vader’s head Since we’re going for the low-quality look, it doesn’t really matter if the image has a low resolution. Desaturate the picture and add 5% of grain, just like the previous steps.



Continue to add a Smart Sharpen filter to produce the photocopied look, but adjust the Amount value to 250% to avoid blowing out the whites too much.



Use the Polygonal Lasso tool to trace around the outline of the Stormtroopers to represent a rough cut out done with scissors, then Inverse the selection and delete the background.



Select one of my Photoshop Brushes and reduce the size to fit over the Stormtrooper’s head. Change the angle so the brush flows diagonally, then place two separate brush impressions to form a cross. Mix up the brush selection each time to avoid repetition.



Open up the original paper texture in a new Photoshop document and draw a rough rectangular selection using the Polygonal Lasso tool. Copy and paste this clipping into the working document.



Use the Type tool to add some more text to the artwork. Posters of this style would often use ransom style letter cuttings from a newspaper, but the Blackout Noon font used here provides a distressed low-quality print effect.



Press CMT+T and scale the background strip to roughly fit around the text. Angle both the text and the paper strip slightly to enhance the unrefined look.



Double click the paper strip layer and set up a Drop Shadow using the settings black, Linear Burn, 35% opacity, 2px Distance, 1px Spread and 3px Size to give the impression that the text has been cut and pasted onto the page like a collage.



Continue typing out the wording ‘Destroy the Empire’, using separate text elements for each word so they can be individually angled and offset. Add a paper strip background for each one and copy the layer style between them.



The same text effect can be applied elsewhere on the poster design, but with the background strips inverted (CMD+I) and the text set in white.



Download a copy of the Rebel Alliance logo and position it on the poster design. CMD+Click the layer thumbnail to load its selection, then go to Select > Modify > Feather. Add a 10px radius, then turn off the visibility of this layer.



Create a new layer, then use my free Spray Paint Photoshop Brushes to fill the selection with red (#cc0705). Use the fine edge of the spray brush so the selection isn’t filled with a solid colour.



Change the brush to a different spray paint splatter and reduce the size to fit within the logo, then add some oversprays around the edges.



Load the selection of the original logo layer, then use a spray paint brush to softly fill in portions of the selection with a crisper edge.



Reduce the fill amount of the layer to 96% to allow the underlying elements to show through slightly, which finishes off a realistic spray painted stencil effect.



Paste in a copy of the Imperial logo, then draw a circle with the Ellipse tool. Set up a large red stroke to form the foundation of a ‘No’ symbol.



Draw a diagonal line to finish the symbol by matching the size to the weight of the circle’s stroke, then select both shape layers and Rasterize them, followed by the shortcut CMD+E to merge them into one layer.



Load the selection of the symbol layer, feather the selection and follow the previous steps to create a spray-painted stencil effect for this element.



Repeat the process with the Imperial logo, except this time use black to contrast against the red symbol. Due to the smaller scale and higher detail of this logo, only feather this selection by 5px.



To finish off the artwork with more grungy textures, make a duplicate of the paper background and drag it to the top of the layer stack. Add 5% of Noise from the filter menu.



Change the blending mode to Multiply, then add a Smart Sharpen filter to bring out the details and boost the contrast. Keep an eye on the preview and balance the Amount to provide the desired result. 100% gave a nice mix of grainy tones while not being too overpowering.



The final design captures the style of those grungy gig flyers and revolution posters by mimicking the low-cost production methods in digital format with a variety of resources and filters. The limited colour palette, photocopy print effects and collage style all enhance this visual aesthetic, which makes the Rebel Alliance seem like the anarchists of the galaxy!

Cool animated overview of how media manufactures consent

Manufacturing Consent feels like a must-read all over again lately, and this excellent primer by animator Pierangelo Pirak lays out the five filters of the mass media machine.

Per Manufacturing Consent, this sounds as if it could have been written about those covering a certain sitting President:

A propaganda model has a certain initial plausibility on guided free-market assumptions that are not particularly controversial. In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal “profile” for advertising purposes, and, on the other, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres. The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience’s needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. But their “societal purpose” also requires that the media’s interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups.

• NOAM CHOMSKY - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine (YouTube / Al Jazeera English)

via Boing Boing

Kansas principal resigns after school reporters raise questions about her credentials

Photo: The student reporters discovered Amy Robertson's credentials were questionable. (Supplied: Emily Smith/Pittsburg High School)

An incoming high school principal has resigned after the school's student reporters investigated and raised questions about her credentials. The Booster Redux, the student-run newspaper at Pittsburg High School in Kansas in the United States, started researching Amy Robertson after she was hired. Their research uncovered revelations about Corllins University, the institution Ms Robertson said she received her master's and doctoral degrees from. When the students tried to look up the university, the website did not work and they were not able to find evidence Corllins was an accredited institution."There were some things that just didn't add up," student Connor Balthazor told the Washington Post.

Ms Robertson, who currently works with an education consulting firm in Dubai, told the Kansas City Star she received her degrees in 1994 and 2010 with "no issue" before the university lost accreditation. She said all three of her degrees were "authenticated by the US Government". She declined to comment on questions posed by the students about her credentials because "their concerns are not based on facts". The Pittsburg School Board accepted Ms Robertson's resignation, saying she felt the decision was "in the best interest of the district ... in light of the issues that arose".

'They weren't out to get anyone to resign'

Superintendent Destry Brown praised the student reporters' work.

"I appreciate that our kids ask questions and don't just accept something because somebody told them," he said.

Mr Brown said questions were also being asked internally within his office, but that the students' public reporting "probably speeded that process". He said the district, which does not typically ask for official transcripts until after a hiring decision has been made, will likely change its vetting process. The school's journalism adviser, Emily Smith, said she was "very proud" of her students. "They were not out to get anyone to resign or to get anyone fired," she said. "They worked very hard to uncover the truth."

ABC/AP