Author: mariellew14

Stay Critical, Stay Safe: The urge to be critical before disseminating tweets

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Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the flow of related news items is inescapable. Whether you watch the news, read the paper or open Social Media, there will always be some new information about the global pandemic we are in. The stage of social media becomes more prominent for both reader and writer. In times of a highly uncertain global pandemic, accompanied with the fact that everybody has the agency to spread information, fact-checking has never been more important. It can diminish the fear around our day-to-day lives and the distrust in governmental institutions. With this article, we take the first step and look at whether we can find a possible solution for this issue.

The focus of our investigation is on visual content because we know humans process visual information faster, and most people remember 80% of what they see against 20% of what they read. Also, visual content is more likely to be shared, as it is eye-catching and has a direct effect on human emotions (Manic, 2015). These properties made it urgent to focus on tweets containing a visual element. By manually fact-checking a sample of tweets from a large database, we tried to formulate an answer on the following research question: “How reliable are the most retweeted COVID-19-related tweets containing a visual element?”

To answer this research question, 59 tweets were checked for their truthfulness. These tweets were selected from a database with most retweeted tweets containing a visual element by Pointer. Initially, this database consisted of more than five thousand tweets. To draw fair conclusions about the reliability of the whole database, a random sample was taken from it. The truthfulness of this selection was checked using different tools and sources to investigate the reliability of accounts, media and statements (see report for exact method). Eventually, results showed that 68% of these fact-checked tweets were considered as (mostly) true.

The truthfulness of prestigious sources
While interpreting the results, the majority of the tweets came from prestigious sources, of which some accounts had the verification mark. Examples of these are politicians, scientists, and the National Institute for Public Health and Environment. Comfortingly, almost all of these sources’ tweets were found to be factually correct. Often, media, such as a picture, is used to lend force to the statement in the text. However, the source of the picture is, in most cases, not clearly stated. This makes it difficult for Twitter users to decide if what they see is true. For example, Fleur Agema, member of the Dutch political party PVV, states in the tweet below that 11% of the institutes for disabled have been dealing with corona and finds this worrisome. To lend force to her statement, she shared a picture of highlighted sentences from a governmental document, stating these numbers as well. After digging into political reports, we can confirm that this picture is indeed a paragraph from a governmental document. However, the readers of her tweet could have thought that she made up these numbers herself. Therefore, we could stress that adding a source will reduce some suspicion or distrust.

@FleurAgemaPVV (2020, April 16) Retrieved from Twitter.

Furthermore, we found that non-verified accounts spread most false information. We, therefore, investigated whether the account below has a humanlike activity pattern or rather shows some suspicious activities. This analysis showed that this account could be a so-called ‘Astroturf’ bot (see report for detailed explanation). However, we can reject this concern since the activity patterns are humanlike. This means that we expect the account not to be a bot, but an account created to provoke discussion and fear of political matters. The latter becomes more obvious when looking at some of the last tweets and most used hashtags. Furthermore, we did not find any evidence of this tweet’s statement that citizens have to pay for the damage COVID-19 costs to our society. Posted by this account, it seems just another fear-provoking tweet.

  • @grard05542415. (2020, May 16) Retrieved from Twitter.
  • Pattern showing normal humanlike sleep period. Retrieved from foller.me.
  • [Translation] “Picture of Hugo de Jonge after injection with Corona Vaccine” Retrieved from foller.me
  • [Translation] “So that in a few years you are a patented bio droid of Bill Gates..” Retrieved from foller.me

Provoking fear
Provoking fear was seen as a thread throughout the tweets we found to be (to some degree) false. This picture of Bill Gates and Prime minister Rutte was posted, by an account stating that 5G causes COVID-19 symptoms. Moreover, it claimed Bill Gates to be the ‘inventor of crime against humanity’, of which no evidence was found, and even counter-evidence can be found. This insinuates that Mark Rutte and Bill Gates have been meeting on this topic and are together in this ‘crime’. A Google reverse image search shows us the truth: this photo was taken on January 26, 2016. On this day, Rutte and Gates talked about the importance of sustainable development goals and not about the subject shown in the tweet (Volkskrant, 2016). Together with other provoking statements, this tweet can be seen as an incitement to fear.

  • @Aspirides78. (2020, April 12). Retrieved from Twitter.
  • @MinPres. (2016, January 26). Retrieved from Twitter.

Another example of a fear-provoking tweet is the one below, containing a video in which a claim is made about the COVID-19 software. The person in the video claims that, COVID-19 software has been installed automatically in our phones, and that from now on, it will be easy for the government to install the tracking app on our phones. A lot of panicking comments of people concerned about their privacy were elicited. The official website of Apple explains that the software is only activated when you manually install an official COVID-19 app. Also, the user decides for himself whether to turn tracking on. It is clear that the goal of this video is to elicit fear and collective distrust in the government by creating false panic about COVID-19 software.

@rallyjef (2020, May 23). Retrieved from Twitter.

The importance of data visualisation
The tweet below shows us that we need to stay critical because even (verified) accounts that are expected to be reliable can spread fake news. A Twitter account managed by the Dutch national broadcaster “NPO 1” posted a video of mathematician Bert Slagter. In this video, he explained that the data visualisation of deaths caused by COVID-19 in several countries is misleading. The tweet stated that The Netherlands, in comparison to other countries, are doing ‘not too badly’ and is confirmed by virologist Jaap van Dissel. This statement was a motivation for Slagter to express his criticism on how the numbers of Corona cases are distributed in the media. However, the explanation of Bert Slagter was not following reality. First of all, we found that Bert Slagter is not a mathematician. A search on his LinkedIn profile told us that he started a study in computer science at Utrecht University, but never completed this, or any related study. Furthermore, Slagter states that the x- and y-axes are not important in the graph, which is not true, because axes allow readers to interpret a graph objectively (Yang et al., 2020). Therefore, his statement that The Netherlands is one of the countries with the highest death rates’ is a wrong interpretation, as the axes showed that rate was per capita. In short, this example visualises that even prestigious sources can be part of spreading fake news.

@op1npo (2020, May 2) Retrieved from Twitter.

The urge to be critical before disseminating tweets
Finally, after analysing 59 tweets, we can conclude that visual tweets related to COVID-19 show some division to reliability. These tweets give us insight into which sources disseminate either fake or genuine news. We found that regular accounts spread fake news, while the institutions and journalists usually shared messages based on the truth. This trend can be traced back to where we started. As we explained, people gain less confidence in institutions such as the government and science (Lewandowsky, Ecker & Cook, 2017). As a result, people express their fear in tweets, creating a vicious circle in which these tweets, in turn, contribute to increased distrust in intuitive parties.

This effect, defined as Elite Discourse, explains how communication shared by the elite about fake news affects people’s ability to accurately assess whether the news is true or fake (Van Duyn & Collier, 2019). This means that even when news institutions and journalists disseminate real news, many people will distrust this information. The lack of good judgment is alarming because more people are spreading misinformation on Twitter (see report for the statistics).

A possible solution to this problem is to give people tools with which they can control information. As our research has shown, institutions are not transparent in their resources on Twitter. It is necessary to list resources systematically, even on a transient platform such as Twitter. Hopefully, this will result in a more critical view of the institutions themselves, which may lead to a more in-depth fact check before distributing news and thus, reduce the unintentional dissemination of fake news from their side. With this article, we show the urge to take steps from the transmitter’s side to regain confidence in the news and the institutions of a fundamental part of the population.

References

  • Van Duyn, E., & Collier, J. (2019). Priming and fake news: The effects of elite discourse on evaluations of news media. Mass Communication and Society, 22(1), 29-48.
  • Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond misinformation: Understanding and coping with the “post-truth” era. Journal of applied research in memory and cognition, 6(4), 353-369.
  • Manic, M. (2015). Marketing engagement through visual content. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Economic Sciences. Series V, 8(2), 89.
  • Yang, B., Vargas-Restrepo, C., Stanley, M., & Marsh, E. (2020). Truncating bar graphs persistently misleads viewers. Journal of Applied Memory and Cognition, in press.

Misleading visualizations go way back!

~ mariellew14 ~ 9 Comments

The ones who like to visit a museum and study paintings may already know that misleading visualizations go a long way back. A few years ago, I was that person, walking through a museum, wondering about all cues in paintings. In this blog, I want to show you what I learned from it. Therefore, I would like to take you to Paris in the 17th century. At that moment, Louis XIV was the king of France. Most people know him as the Sun King. For now, let’s say he got that nickname because he claimed that Versailles (his palace) and himself were the bright and shining center of the world (Koops, 2019). His point of view led to some exciting stories, but above all, some visualizations which had a huge impact on the centuries that followed.

The center of the world
Portraits and paintings, at that time, were the way to show others your wealth and status. Besides that, a painting is a product that should last forever, and therefore it was also the way to be immortalized (NPO, n.d.). Louis XIV (of course given his reputation) made use of this manner of communication, and so there are many portraits and paintings of him. I understand, you now may wonder what this has to do with misleading visualizations. Well, be patient I’ll come to that in a bit. First, I want to show you one example of such a painting of Louis XIV. Which figure do you think he is in the painting ‘Louis XIV’s Dutch War’?

It shouldn’t be a surprise that he is the man on the white horse, more or less in the center, but definitely painted brighter than the other figures. That brings me to some literature about visualizations. The salience principle, described in an article by Hegarty (2011), can be applied to this painting perfectly. The appearance of Louis XIV in this scene is made more salient than that of the bystanders. Besides that, I want to add that the position Louis XIV takes in this painting is in line with what Tversky (2011) calls central-peripheral organization. This basically means that important figures are more likely to put in the center and less important figures on the side. Interesting isn’t it that the external display was already manipulated in the 17th century! However, with this, the story of Louis XIV has not come to an end yet. We still have to discuss what this has to do with misleading the audience.

Image-building
Even though I think Louis XIV is an interesting person to talk about, this is not the main reason I wanted to mention him. Throughout his reign, Louis XIV was very focused on image-building. Let’s take his nickname, the Sun King, as an example here. Louis XIV and his ministers came up with a well-tried strategy for building-up his image as the Sun King, namely propaganda (Ziegler, 2015). Propaganda is a deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve the desired response (Historiek, 2019). Before I go on, I must say that propaganda includes visualizations, but can be found in all kinds of communication. Nevertheless, this kind of communication has a biased or misleading nature. For the sake of this blog’s topic, I’ll stick to discussing propaganda in the form of a visualization. In the case of Louis’ propaganda, an example can be found in the image in which the king is identified with the sun. By using such visualizations, he manipulates people’s cognitions and let them believe that he was the most powerful person.

Sounds like a good plan for building-up your imago, right? However, propaganda also has its downside, which is that it is hard to use it unobtrusively. Louis XIV experienced this too in the late 1660s. Back then, resistance against the methods of Louis’ policy arose (Ziegler, 2015).  However, this hasn’t stopped people from using propaganda, because centuries later, it is still here. Hitler used it often in World War II, and also Donald Trump is familiar with it.

Sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately
That said, let’s get back to misleading visualizations. Cairo (2015) argues that misleading visualization can be created on purpose, but also by accident. They call this the difference between a lie and a mistake. They define that a person who makes a misleading visualization on purpose is a liar. On the other side, someone who intends to communicate a message but doesn’t have the skills to represent it correctly can make an honest mistake (Cairo, 2015). For example, I can imagine that truncating an axis in a graphic, as described in a study by Yang et al. (2020) can be a mistake. Especially because, when creating a graph, sometimes the default option of a computer program is already misleading. No one will notice that this is the case until you are made aware of it, right? However, in the case of visualized propaganda, which is meant to manipulate, can this also happen by mistake? Or is the distinction Cairo makes not applicable to this form of a misleading visual, and is it always on purpose?

References

Framing is everywhere!

~ mariellew14 ~ 15 Comments

During my previous education, I worked as a communication specialist at an airport. Several times I had to guide journalists because for them it is not possible to film behind the customs without guidance. Once, two journalists were clearly looking for a different story than I could give. The moment they came to film, there was no colossal passenger aircraft. Only the small ones were ready for take-off. They had in mind that their story had to be about noise disturbance, and these little plains did not fit into this story. They clearly wanted to frame their message!

What is framing?
This is just one of many examples of framing. Framing happens every day and is an often-chosen strategy by journalists. But what is framing precisely? Therefore, I have to dive a little deeper into the literature. Entman (1993) defines framing as “selecting some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation”. However, if you google framing you will read more often about the result of framing. This so-called framing effect is described by Scheufele and Iyengar (2014) as “behavioral or attitudinal outcomes that are not due to differences in what is being communicated, but rather to variations in how a given piece of information is being presented (or framed) in public discourse.”

Altogether, framing is the way how information is presented and has an impact on people’s behavior and attitudes. However, this is just half the story. To complete the description of framing, a distinction must be made between equivalence framing and emphasis framing. A simple example of equivalence framing then is asking someone if the glass is half full or half empty. It is the same information but presented differently. Entman’s definition is broader and focuses on making some information more prominent than others (selection and salience). This phenomenon is called emphasis framing (Scheufele & Iyengar, 2014).

Reflecting this on what the journalists at the airport did is a perfect example of emphasis framing. They wanted to make some information (the giant aircraft) more salient than other information (there are also small planes).

Journalists’ secret weapon
So, journalists like to frame their reports because this creates a more compelling message. However, to be complete about how framing in the media works, I have to add two more concepts that are closely related to framing. These concepts are called agenda setting and priming.

  • McCombs and Shaw (1972) define agenda setting as “the idea that there is a strong correlation between the emphasis that mass media place on certain issues and the importance attributed to these issues by mass audiences”.
  • Priming refers to “changes in the standards that people use to make political evaluations” (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987).

When making these definitions more workable, agenda-setting is that the media does not tell us what to think, but rather what to think about. On the other hand, priming can be seen as an extension of agenda-setting and is about how we perceive the message based on mental models we already have.

An example of an event that was broadcasted in many countries, was the speech about climate change of Greta Thunberg. She chose her words so well that she became world-famous. Her quote “How dare you!” was everywhere on the news. As a result, Greta was even named “person of the year 2019” by Times magazine (Tasoff, 2019). This speech and this girl would have never become world-famous if the media gave no attention to it

It’s even in your backyard!
Nevertheless, not only the media makes use of framing. Where there is language, there is framing, and therefore, you don’t have to be a journalist, marketer, or politician. Everyone uses framing in their everyday language. Duursma (2017) gave a simple example of this. His story is about pet owners. For pet owners, it is an impotent decision if you want to neuter your pet. In the Netherlands, this is also called “helping your pet”. But why is it called helping? Does surgery become more beneficial if you just use a more positive word for it?

To continue with pets. Let’s go to the backyard. What do you think about this ‘beware of the dog’ sign? Is this not just framing?

The good, the bad, and the ugly
I know, the story so far may give you the feeling that you are manipulated by these framed messages. But as with all those framed messages, also framing itself can be seen differently (more brightly). Every frame has a distinct emotion: fear, amusement, respect, disgust, etcetera (Fledge, 2017). Dependent on the feeling you want to evoke, framing can lead to positive and negative reactions. For example, in these corona-times, it can be used to evoke the emotion to care more for each other. This can be noticed in many ‘corona-ads’, like the one below. Isn’t that a beautiful cause of framing?

Another health-care-related example relates to this news article. This article will probably lead to a negative reaction or even more specifically, aversion against health care. If you can get ill from a vaccine, no one wants this medicine anymore, right?

Everywhere you look, everywhere you see! But how about you?
That framing is everywhere, may be clear now. It is a powerful tool to convince your audience. But as a communication specialist, would you choose to use it yourself? Or is this one step too far? I’ll leave that up to you. Independently of what your answer is here, the main message of this story is; be aware of your actions and be very critical towards everything you hear or see because no one is immune for framed messages.

References

Welcome

~ mariellew14 ~ Leave a comment

This blog is created for the course “Data and (mis)information”, which I will follow from 26th October 2020 until the middle of December 2020. For this course, I have to write 2 blog posts. One post will be about “Framing” and the other about “Misleading visualizations”.

The blog posts will be published on the following dates:

  • Framing: Week 45, 2020
  • Misleading visualizations: Week 47, 2020
  • Fact-checking: Week 50, 2020