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2015•Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and TechnologyRequires access

News in an online world: The need for an “automatic crap detector”

Yimin Chen, Nadia Conroy, Victoria L. Rubin

Open publisher page 151 citations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Widespread adoption of internet technologies has changed the way that news is created and consumed. The current online news environment is one that incentivizes speed and spectacle in reporting, at the cost of fact‐checking and verification. The line between user generated content and traditional news has also become increasingly blurred. This poster reviews some of the professional and cultural issues surrounding online news and argues for a two‐pronged approach inspired by Hemingway's “automatic crap detector” (Manning, 1965) in order to address these problems: a) proactive public engagement by educators, librarians, and information specialists to promote digital literacy practices; b) the development of automated tools and technologies to assist journalists in vetting, verifying, and fact‐checking, and to assist news readers by filtering and flagging dubious information.

About this research paper

What this paper is about

ABSTRACT Widespread adoption of internet technologies has changed the way that news is created and consumed. The current online news environment is one that incentivizes speed and spectacle in reporting, at the cost of fact‐checking and verification. The line between user generated content and traditional news has also become increasingly blurred. This poster reviews some of the professional and cultural issues surrounding online news and argues for a two‐pronged approach inspired by Hemingway's “automatic crap detector” (Manning, 1965) in order to address these problems: a) proactive public engagement by educators, librarians, and information specialists to promote digital literacy practices; b) the development of automated tools and technologies to assist journalists in vetting, verifying, and fact‐checking, and to assist news readers by filtering and flagging dubious information.

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OpenAlex reports 151 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

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Available abstract

ABSTRACT Widespread adoption of internet technologies has changed the way that news is created and consumed. The current online news environment is one that incentivizes speed and spectacle in reporting, at the cost of fact‐checking and verification. The line between user generated content and traditional news has also become increasingly blurred. This poster reviews some of the professional and cultural issues surrounding online news and argues for a two‐pronged approach inspired by Hemingway's “automatic crap detector” (Manning, 1965) in order to address these problems: a) proactive public engagement by educators, librarians, and information specialists to promote digital literacy practices; b) the development of automated tools and technologies to assist journalists in vetting, verifying, and fact‐checking, and to assist news readers by filtering and flagging dubious information.

Key concepts: Vetting, Flagging, Computer science, Digital literacy, The Internet, Internet privacy, Spectacle, Order (exchange)

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