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Stopping misinformation means fixing the relationship between journalism and PR

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Public relations and journalism exist in an uneasy balancing act, a relationship where they both rely on each other as part of a communication ecosystem.

It used to be that journalism was the stronger player in the relationship, but now as a result of cuts to newsrooms, PR is becoming more dominant. And this relationship could undermine already limited trust in news.

Public relations and journalism

Public relations is defined as the practice of using communication strategies to build relationships between organizations (such as corporations, institutions and government) and the public.

Traditionally, one of the most important connections for PR practitioners has been those with journalism. PR professionals rely on their journalistic connections to help get their messages out, and journalists draw from PR to help find interesting stories, fill quotas and meet deadlines. In fact, according to the Canadian Public Relations Society, PR professionals tend to interact more with journalists than with any other professional group.

This relationship worked for many years because journalists had the upper hand. Journalists had a culture that made them wary of PR professionals, which helped to keep the PR industry in check. When interacting with PR practitioners, journalists would choose whether to pursue a story, and how much of the story suggested by the PR professional is actually worthy of column space or broadcast time. Journalists were likely to seek out different sides of an issue suggested by a PR professional, rather than just publishing a news release verbatim.

In return, the PR professionals could be reasonably confident the coverage would be trusted by the public. By choosing what to cover and how to cover it, journalism keeps PR accountable. If PR practitioners do anything to threaten their relationship with news outlets, they will not be able to work effectively.

However, in recent years, as a result of media consolidation and the rise of social media, the relationship between PR and journalism has shifted. While this shift seems to favour PR, in reality it has resulted in declining trust in news, and that’s bad for everyone. When the delicate balance between journalism and PR is upset, we end up with an information ecosystem that is less trustworthy because it is driven by organizational goals rather than the public interest.

A shifting balance

Now journalism is increasingly relying on PR to survive. As my previous work has shown, local news is facing unprecedented pressure from media consolidation and the social media business. As journalism jobs have dried up across North America, many talented and trained journalism graduates and successful journalists are accepting jobs in PR in order to make ends meet.

At the same time, many cash-strapped newsrooms are turning to advertorials or sponsored content to make up for shrinking revenues. As a result, more of the news media is implicated in spreading PR content that is often one-sided, incomplete information that favours corporate PR clients.

For example, when important information like COVID-19 vaccine efficacy is presented to the public directly from news releases, important scientific facts can be minimized or left out of the portrayal of the issue. That can contribute to eroding public trust in both the news story and the organization covered by it. While PR plays a role in ensuring the trust between organizations and the publics, some PR practices can lead to the decline in trust in news.

A group of journalists holding microphones during a media scrum.

Cash-strapped newsrooms are increasingly turning to PR to make up for falling revenues. (Shutterstock)

Other grey area PR tactics, like astroturfing, direct media attention to stories that journalists might not otherwise consider very newsworthy. Astroturfing entails using social media to create fake online grassroots support for an organization or issue. News outlets often cover a story that seems to be getting a lot of attention on social media. Unethical PR firms will often exploit this fact by buying likes, shares and engagements, creating fake hype for a specific product, person or organization that would otherwise not be covered at all.

Rethinking the relationship

Journalism isn’t perfect, but striking the balance between PR and journalism is beneficial for both parties. As this balance shifts in favour of public relations, it becomes harder for the public to trust news. That leads to more aggressive PR tactics, further eroding the public trust. Everyone loses.

Steps can be taken to rebalance the relationship between journalism and PR. Journalism must be strengthened, including local news, so that journalists have the resources to refuse sponsored content and push back against PR pitches. This means we all have a role to play in paying for the journalism we value, and new funding models should be developed to help provide resources to smaller and independent journalism in Canada and elsewhere.

To that end, entrepreneurship networks like indiegraf and other opportunities for independent journalism need to be supported by offering business training to journalism students, providing government resources to support journalism entrepreneurs and through our own habits.

Journalists who are brave enough to also become entrepreneurs by starting their own publications need us to pay for their content through Substack, Patreon or other subscription services. This will have a cascading impact as these journalist entrepreneurs create small businesses that can provide new job opportunities for other journalists and journalism students.

Finally, professional associations for PR practitioners like the Canadian Public Relations Society or the Public Relations Society of America need to do more to punish disreputable firms that use tactics like astroturfing to create fake influence. By strengthening journalism and putting limits on PR, we can reset the balance and create a healthier media ecosystem for everyone.

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Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Royal Roads University

Sourced from The Conversation

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COVID-19 misinformation: scientists create a ‘psychological vaccine’ to protect against fake news

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Anti-vaccination groups are projected to dominate social media in the next decade if left unchallenged. To counter their viral misinformation at a time when COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out, our research team has produced a “psychological vaccine” that helps people detect and resist the lies and hoaxes they encounter online.

The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed concern about a global misinformation “infodemic” in February 2020, recognising that the COVID-19 pandemic would be fought both on the ground and on social media. That’s because an effective vaccine roll out will rely on high vaccine confidence, and viral misinformation can adversely affect that confidence, leading to vaccine hesitancy.

We recently published a large study which found that higher belief in misinformation about the virus was consistently associated with a reduced willingness to get vaccinated. These findings were later reaffirmed in a subsequent study which found a significant relationship between disinformation campaigns and declining vaccination coverage.

The spread of false information about COVID-19 poses a serious risk to not only the success of vaccination campaigns but to public health in general. Our solution is to inoculate people against false information – and we’ve borrowed from the logic of real-life vaccines to inform our approach.

When looking for ways to mitigate misinformation, scientists are confronted with several challenges: first, rumours have been shown to spread faster, further and deeper in social networks than other news, making it difficult for corrections (such as fact-checks) to consistently reach the same number of people as the original misinformation.

Second, even when someone is exposed to a fact-check, research has shown that corrections are unlikely to entirely undo the damage done by misinformation – a phenomenon known as the “continued influence effect”. In other words, approaches to combating misinformation “post-exposure” are probably insufficient.

Our work in recent years has therefore focused on how to prevent people from falling for misinformation in the first place, building on a framework from social psychology known as inoculation theory.

Man in medical face mask holds head and looks at phone in confusion
COVID-19 misinformation is common across social media. TeodorLazarev/Shutterstock

Mental resistance

Psychological inoculations are similar to medical vaccines. Exposing someone to a severely weakened dose of the “virus” (in this case misinformation) triggers the production of mental “antibodies”, thus conferring psychological resistance against future unwanted persuasion attempts.

However, rather than only “vaccinating” people against individual examples of misinformation, we instead focus on the more general ways in which people are misled – manipulation techniques such as the use of excessively emotional language, the construction of conspiracy theories, and the false testimony of fake experts.

To do so, we developed a series of online games in which players learn how misinformation works from the inside by being encouraged to create their own fake news: Bad News (about misinformation in general), Harmony Square (about political misinformation) and Go Viral!, which is specifically about misinformation around COVID-19.

Research has shown that a powerful way to induce resistance to persuasion is to make people aware of their own vulnerabilities. In our games, players are forewarned about the dangers of fake news and encouraged to actively generate their own antibodies through gradual exposure to weakened examples of misinformation in a simulated social media environment.

When we assessed the success of these projects, we found that playing a misinformation game reduces the perceived reliability of misinformation (even if participants had never seen the misinformation before); increases people’s confidence in their ability to assess the reliability of misinformation on their feed; and reduces their self-reported willingness to share misinformation with other people in their network. We also found that similar inoculation effects are conferred across cultures and languages.

An image from an app showing how an app works

An image from the ‘psychological vaccine’ game GoViral! Sander van der Linden, Author provided (No reuse)

We then looked at how long the games’ inoculation effect lasted and found that people remained significantly better at spotting manipulation techniques in social media content for at least one week after playing our game Bad News. This “immunity” lasted up to three months when participants were assessed at regular intervals each week. We see these prompts as motivational “booster shots”, topping up people’s immunity to misinformation by staying engaged.

Herd Immunity

Of course, our work is not without its limitations. Although these games have been played over a million times around the world and have been shared by governments, the WHO, and the United Nations, not everyone is interested in playing an online game.

But the game itself functions as just one kind of “virtual needle”. A global “vaccination programme” against misinformation will require a suite of different interventions. For example, we’re working with Google’s technology incubator “Jigsaw”, and our colleague Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, to develop and test a series of short animated inoculation videos.

Like the game, these videos forewarn and administer a micro-dose of a manipulation technique, which primes the watcher to spot similar techniques in the information they subsequently consume online. We intend to publish our study on the efficacy of video vaccines later this year.

As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc worldwide, a successful vaccine rollout is of vital interest to the global community. Preventing the spread of misinformation about the virus and the vaccines that have been developed against it is a crucial component of this effort.

Although it is not possible to inoculate everyone against misinformation on a permanent basis, if enough people have gained a sufficient level of psychological immunity to misinformation, fake news won’t have a chance to spread as far and as wide as it does currently. This will help arrest the alarming growth of anti-vaccination sentiment on the internet.

Feature Image Credit: Alexander Limbach/Shutterstock

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  • Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, University of Cambridge

  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Psychology, University of Cambridge

Sourced from The Conversation

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How a country, a major publisher and top global brands are upping the ante on fake news

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CNN recently reported that Finland is winning the war on fake news. It is doing so by training children in critical thinking skills that help them spot fake news. This is critical for democracy, and for news publishers, because these are the future voters and news consumers.

Some publishers are already working at building reading habits in students to ensure that they become future subscribers. It may be worthwhile to consider a strategy which includes equipping current and future readers with the ability to spot fake news.

“First line of defense is the kindergarten teacher”

The Finnish school program is a part of an anti-fake news initiative launched by Finland’s government in 2014. It seeks to teach residents, students, journalists and politicians how to identify and counter false information.

It’s not just a government problem, the whole society has been targeted. We are doing our part, but it’s everyone’s task to protect the Finnish democracy. The first line of defense is the kindergarten teacher.

Jussi Toivanen, Chief Communications Specialist, Prime Minister’s Office, Finland

The French-Finnish School of Helsinki, a bilingual state-run K-12 institution, recently partnered with Finnish fact-checking agency Faktabaari (FactBar) to develop a digital literacy “toolkit” for elementary to high school students learning about the EU elections.

It includes exercises which call for examining claims found in YouTube videos and social media posts, comparing media bias in an array of different “clickbait” articles, probing how misinformation preys on readers’ emotions, and even getting students to try their hand at writing fake news stories themselves, according to CNN.

What we want our students to do is…before they like or share in the social media they think twice – who has written this? Where has it been published? Can I find the same information from another source?

Kari Kivinen, Director of Helsinki French-Finnish School

Dismaying inability to reason about online information

Although they are “digital natives,” studies in the US and the UK have found that a lot of young people have no idea about the source of the online information, or even why they are reading it. A study by the Stanford History Education Group evaluated the online reasoning skills of 7,804 students across the US.

The researchers found a “dismaying inability by students to reason about information they see on the Internet.” They had a hard time distinguishing advertisements from news articles, or identifying where information came from.

Many people assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally perceptive about what they find there. Our work shows the opposite to be true.

Sam Wineburg, Lead Author of the report and founder of SHEG

The situation is no better in the UK. A report from the Commission on Fake News and the Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills in Schools, found that only 2% of children and young people in the UK have the critical literacy skills they need to tell if a news story is real or fake.

All of which makes the Finnish initiative a powerful strategy. “What we have been developing here—combining fact-checking with the critical thinking and voter literacy—is something we have seen that there is an interest in outside Finland,” says Kivinen.

Representatives from many EU states, as well as from Singapore, have come to learn from Finland’s approach to the problem. And that may be one of the biggest signs that Finland is winning the war on fake news.

Stanford also offers an online program for educators that offers free lessons and assessments to teach students how to evaluate online information.

“Better understand the tangled landscape of information online”

Further, the findings from two studies conducted across 3,446 participants, suggests that “susceptibility to fake news is driven more by lazy thinking than it is by partisan bias per se.”

And that’s something the NYT’s The News Provenance project looks set to address. The publisher has been experimenting with blockchain technology over the past year to make its data (beginning with images) tamper-proof. At the same time, it will be offering additional contextual information to readers, making it easy for them to distinguish fake from genuine.

Sasha Koren, Project Lead, The News Provenance Project, refers to how The Guardian changed the way the dates of its old articles are displayed. The publisher did so after it observed spikes in traffic on stories about years-old events, that had been shared as new, and with incorrect context, on Facebook. The News Provenance project seeks to go further in trying to make the origins of journalistic content clearer to audiences.

The publisher is using blockchain because the technology makes the records of each change traceable. Any updates to what is published are recorded in a sequential string (or “blocks” in a “chain”) with the string of those changes adding up to create a provenance.

It has begun with NYT’s photojournalism, because photos can be easily manipulated and circulated widely online via social platforms, messaging apps or search engines.

In altering how we produce and present what we publish, news outlets may be able to help readers better understand the tangled landscape of information online, especially on social platforms and messaging apps. What if we could provide them with a meaningful way to differentiate between misleading content and credible news?

Sasha Koren, Project Lead, The News Provenance Project

The changes include “drawing more attention to details that could inform a person’s gut reaction, like age and caption of a photo, writes Emily Saltz, UX Research, Design, and Strategy at the NYT, on Medium. “We also incorporated prompts and resources to support more critical thinking, and to help people make sense of potential dissonance between a mis-captioned photo and its original context. Finally, we provided more photos and article links related to the event depicted in a photo to help people explore a story more on their own.”

Source: NYT Open/ Medium

Misinformation is an everyone problem

“The idea seems relatively straightforward. In an age when images are manipulated and deepfakes get more sophisticated each day, using blockchain technology to show readers and viewers where and how an image, static or moving, has been changed can be an important way for consumers to understand where the image actually came from—trusted source or not,” comments Josh Sternberg, Tech Editor at Adweek.

Marc Lavallee, Executive Director, R&D at The New York Times, told Adweek that the company is looking at how it can help build an ecosystem of solutions, not just conduct fact checks or have a reporter on the misinformation beat.

“It’s about finding multiple seeds and starting points of collaboration,” he said. “We’re trying to do two things: figure out from different angles what different parts of the solution look like, and two, the opportunity to use the name recognition of New York Times to get everyone to work together. It’s not just tech companies but other news organizations. Misinformation is an everyone problem.”

The uncommon collaboration needed to change the game

And that includes some of the world’s biggest brands like Unilever, P&G, Mars, Lego and Adidas. These companies have outlined a plan to curb harmful content online by ensuring that those spreading it don’t have access to advertising dollars.

“Along with Google, Facebook, several ad agency networks and trade bodies, around 40 household names have been involved in designing the blueprint,” reports Rebecca Stewart, Senior Reporter at The Drum.

It’s a three pronged strategy, that aims to “prevent advertisers’ media investments from fuelling the spread of content that promotes terrorism, violence, or other behaviours that inflict damage on society.”

The key tenets of the plan include:

  • Developing and adopting common definitions about harmful content.
  • Creating tools that let brands and media agencies take better control of where their media spend is going.
  • Establishing shared measurement standards so that marketers can assess their ability to block, demonetise, and remove harmful content.

This is the first big initiative from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a  cross-industry working group founded by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) in 2019. According to the association, a collaborative approach is needed to fight fake news.

Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer at P&G, said, “It’s time to create a responsible media supply chain that is built for the year 2030—one that operates in a way that is safe, efficient, transparent, accountable, and properly moderated for everyone involved, especially for the consumers we serve.”

Rob Rakowitz, Initiative Lead for GARM told The Drum, “Previous approaches to harmful content have been in part a reactive game of whack-a-mole. We are convinced this uncommon collaboration is what is needed to change the game.”

By Faisal Kalim

A longstanding business journalist, Faisal rose to become Editorial Manager of The CEO Magazine before turning his attention to developments in media and digital publishing. His specialised focus is on the latest revenue generation strategies available to publishers.

Sourced from WNIP What’s New in Publishing

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Stop Funding Fake News in talks with media agencies to demonetise misinformation sites

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By John McCarthy

Stop Funding Fake News, the social movement pressuring brands to boycott newsbrands that it believes routinely spread misinformation, is turning its attention to media agencies.

Anonymous officials from the activist group told The Drum that for it to achieve its goals of demonetising fake news sources, it has realised it must court the middlemen between brands and publishers.

Inspired by Sleeping Giants in the US and Stop Funding Hate in the UK, the group operates anonymously, claiming activists could be at risk if their identities were known.

Adobe, Chelsea FC, Harry’s, Experion, eBay, Moonpig and Manchester United are among the 40 brands and charities that the group has convinced to block out a number of sites off the back off a campaign it launched March 2019.

Now, it’s looking to advertising and media agencies to engage in a dialogue about the news industry. A spokesperson said agencies have approached the group, keen to grasp what sites should be considered for blacklist.

This is particularly beneficial for Stop Funding Fake News’ cause as agencies handling multiple clients ought to be able to widely blacklist offending sites – a step-up from the brand-by-brand approach the group previously took.

It said it is now expanding its network to help “persuade” ad agencies that it is “bad for their clients to be associated with the lies and racism found on these sites, so it’s in the interest of ad agencies to ensure they don’t put them there.”

It urges agency figures to get in touch at [email protected] for discussion.

Misinformation has been linked with deaths around the world, not to mention that fact that generating clickbait lies can be a lucrative trade. Earlier this year, The Drum explored the harms fake news causes globally, talking to misinformation experts, Wikimedia, and BBC News about how to curtail the issue.

As a largely ad-funded media, greater scrutiny is being placed upon the brands that are enabling these stories.

By John McCarthy

Sourced from The Drum

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K-12 Media Literacy No Panacea for Fake News, Report Argues

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By Benjamin Herold

From state lawmakers to Facebook advertising executives, everyone seems to think that digital-media literacy is an antidote to a fragmenting media landscape and its attendant explosion of fake news and disinformation.

But a new report from New York think tank Data & Society offers a more cautious take.

Evidence on the effectiveness of media-literacy interventions is still limited, according to the report, titled “The Promises, Challenges, and Futures of Media Literacy.”

And there’s lots of reason to believe we’re facing a far bigger problem than students alone can address, no matter how well-educated they are.

“Media literacy has long focused on personal responsibility, which can not only imbue individuals with a false sense of confidence in their skills, but also put the onus of monitoring media effects on the audience, rather than media creators, social media platforms, or regulators,” the report reads.

Written by researchers Monica Bulger and Patrick Davison, the document aims to provide a framework for better understanding current media-literacy efforts, and offers the field recommendations for moving forward.

Among the issues raised: the need to better understand the modern media environment, which is heavily driven by algorithm-based personalization on social-media platforms, and the need to be more systematic about evaluating the impact of various media-literacy strategies and interventions.

What is ‘Media Literacy?’

The term “media literacy” generally refers to the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create information using multiple forms of communication, with the larger goal of creating informed and responsible citizens.

This Education Week video for the PBS News Hour covers the issue nicely.

Forms of media literacy date back to Plato and the ancient Greeks, the Data & Society report notes.

Modern notions of the concept started to emerge in the late 1970’s.

Over the past decade or so, researchers who have been documenting students’ (and adults’) inability to gauge the accuracy and reliability of online information began to sound alarm bells.

And then during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, the idea really took off, thanks to a flood of baseless conspiracy theories, made-up news, and inflammatory social-media content intended to exploit cultural and partisan divides.

In response, bills to promote media literacy in schools have been introduced or passed in more than a dozen states. A range of nonprofit, corporate, and media organizations have stepped up efforts to promote related curricula and programs.

Such efforts should be applauded—but not viewed as a “panacea,” the Data & Society researchers argue.

Many existing efforts “focus on the interpretive responsibilities of the individual,” they write.

But, they ask, is it really a media literacy when public officials deny the existence of climate change, or tech companies proliferate “intentionally opaque systems of serving news on social media platforms?”

And, the researchers wonder, “if bad actors intentionally dump disinformation online with an aim to distract and overwhelm, is it possible to safeguard against media manipulation?”

Such concerns are not hypothetical.

Just this month, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election indicted 13 foreign individuals and organizations for an alleged scheme to use social media to exploit divisions in American society, encourage the election of Donald Trump, and conduct “information warfare against the United States of America.”

And in a recent interview with Bloomberg View, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, had this to say.

“The real opposition is the media,” Bannon told writer Michael Lewis. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Research and Recommendations

Current media literacy efforts have shown some positive effects, according to the Data & Society report.

A 2012 meta-analysis by academic researchers found that media literacy efforts could help boost students’ critical awareness of messaging, bias, and representation in the media they consumed.

There have been small studies suggesting that media-literacy efforts can change students’ behaviors—for example, by making them less likely to seek out violent media for their own consumption.

And more recently, a pair of researchers found that media-literacy training was more important than prior political knowledge when it comes to adopting a critical stance to partisan media content.

But such research needs to become more robust, the Data & Society report argues.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration is also critical, to generate new insights from fields such as social psychology and political science, where researchers are studying the role of “gut feeling” and political affiliation in the ways people analyze and interpret online information.

And those interested in media literacy need to develop a “coherent understanding of the media environment,” the report argues, focusing not just on the ways individuals consume information, but the roles of institutions, technology companies, and governments in developing new ways to create and distribute content.

“It is necessary to rethink media literacy in the age of platforms,” the report reads.

“From an evidence perspective, there remains uncertainty around whether media literacy can be successful in preparing citizens to resist ‘fake news’ and disinformation.”

Photo: “Fake news” sites, such as the three shown above, are becoming increasingly prevalent, fueling concerns that schools need to make the teaching of media literacy a top priority.–Education Week

By Benjamin Herold

Sourced from Education Week

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Facebook’s Trust Crisis: What Now?

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Less than 1 in 3 people call Facebook a responsible company, according to a new survey.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Barraged by accusations of spreading divisive fake news and amid new allegations that it handed over personal information on up to 50 million users without their consent, Facebook is losing the faith of the people, according to a new survey.

Almost 4 out of 10 people surveyed said: “Facebook is not a responsible company because it puts making profits most of the time ahead of trying to do the right thing.” Less than 1 in 3 said that Facebook is a “responsible company because it tries to do the right thing most of the time even if that gets in the way of it making profits.” The rest were unsure.

By a 7-1 ratio people surveyed said that Facebook has had a negative influence on political discourse. Sixty-one percent said that “Facebook has damaged American politics and made it more negative by enabling manipulation and falsehoods that polarize people.”

The survey was conducted as new revelations surfaced that the company connected to the 2016 Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, inappropriately harvested personal information on millions of Facebook users.

The sharp rise in negative feelings is a significant departure from Facebook’s standing prior to the 2016 election, when the rise of so-called Fake News and polarizing content led to calls for the company to take greater responsibility for the content on the popular social media site – or face government regulation.

By a 2-1 margin, people surveyed said it’s Facebook’s responsibility to remove or warn about posts that contain false or misleading information. And 59 percent reported that the company is not doing enough to address the issues of false and inflammatory information that appear on its site.

“Facebook is at a crossroads because of its inability – nearly a year-and-a-half after the election – to get a handle on its divisive effects on society,” said Tom Galvin, Executive Director of Digital Citizens, who commissioned the survey. “From spreading fake and manipulative information to becoming a ‘Dark Web-like’ place for illicit commerce, Facebook seems to losing the trust of the American public. Regulation will not be far behind for social media companies if things don’t change.”

This declining trust reflects a growing concern about the impact Facebook and other social media sites have on young teens.  In the survey, more than two in five people surveyed said that the minimum age to have a Facebook account should be at least 18 years old.

“Digital platforms have to rise to the occasion and assure internet users that their personal information will be safe, that the content will be legal, safe and not contrived to manipulate. In short, they have to demonstrate they will be the positive influence on our society that they espouse to be,” said Galvin.

 

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“Scientists” Release Documentary “Proving” That the Earth is not Round

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Well, this is MediaStreet and we bring you all the media stories!

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Okay so here’s a change from our usual stories about modern-day media and how it works. A new documentary has been made about the actual shape of our earth.

The question will be answered, apparently, in a feature-length movie called Convex Earth: The Documentary.

The film will be released on March 29 at convexearth.org, in Portuguese, English and Spanish.

Here’s what the filmmakers say:

Inquiries concerning the shape of the Earth have been a recurring theme in human history. Based on a series of natural phenomena that contradict accepted academic teaching on the matter, Brazilian scientists at Dakila Pesquisas decided to investigate these inconsistencies.

Founded in 1997, Dakila Pesquisas is comprised of researchers and scientists from diverse fields of knowledge, mainly the natural sciences.

In seven years of studies, scientific experiments were conducted at different points in the world, with the involvement of government institutions and professional researchers from a variety of fields.

According to Urandir Fernandes de Oliveira, founder of Dakila Pesquisas, the thesis that the Earth is round has been refuted by seven experiments: a geodesic experiment, which consists of measuring two buildings at a considerable distance; using sea level as a reference; a laser experiment to ascertain the flatness of water surfaces; levelling of water surfaces; optical distortions relating to processes of reflection; an experiment with boats on the horizon line; and experiments involving gravity and heavenly bodies.

In order to carry out the geodesic experiment, the base and the top of two buildings were measured, one in Torres, Rio Grande do Sul, and the other in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte. Engineers at the National Institute of Land Settlement and Agrarian Reform (INCRA – Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária) took part in these activities. A long-range laser was used to measure the flatness of the waters at the Três Marias Dam in Minas Gerais; at the Lagoa dos Patos, in Rio Grande do Sul; at Lake Titicaca in Peru; and on the seas around the island of Ilhabela in the state of São Paulo, and at the Straits of Gibraltar the sea passage separating Europe from Africa. In this way, the theory of gravity has been challenged by two essential natural measures: the plumb line and the level.

All the experiments had the participation of astronomers, cartographers, geologists, topographers and civil engineers, among other professional researchers. Cutting edge equipment was used. After the release of the documentary, Dakila Pesquisas will make available all of the methodology and technology used so that those interested can verify the results.

“In addition to addressing the shape of the Earth, the documentary will reveal the discovery of a new continent sealed off by a great wall of ice. New knowledge will also be demonstrated concerning the sun, the moon and the constellations,” Urandir Fernandes de Oliveira disclosed.

Well there you have it. That’s their case for a convex earth.

Following the documentary, the book Convex Earth will be released, including all the scientific findings and a new map of the world.

 

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The Media is Now the Least-Trusted Institution Globally

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So, which citizens trust their media the most? And the least?

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Let’s start with the USA. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that trust in the U.S. has suffered the largest-ever-recorded drop in the survey’s history among the general population. Trust among the general population fell nine points to 43, placing it in the lower quarter of the 28-country Trust Index. It is now the lowest of the 28 countries surveyed, below Russia and South Africa.

The collapse of trust in the U.S. is driven by a staggering lack of faith in government, which fell 14 points to 33 percent among the general population, and 30 points to 33 percent among the informed public. The remaining institutions of business, media and NGOs also experienced declines of 10 to 20 points. These decreases have all but eliminated last year’s 21-point trust gap between the general population and informed public in the U.S.

“The United States is enduring an unprecedented crisis of trust,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman. “This is the first time that a massive drop in trust has not been linked to a pressing economic issue or catastrophe like the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In fact, it’s the ultimate irony that it’s happening at a time of prosperity, with the stock market and employment rates in the U.S. at record highs. The root cause of this fall is the lack of objective facts and rational discourse.”

Conversely, China finds itself atop the Trust Index for both the general population (74) and the informed public (83). Institutions within China saw significant increases in trust led by government, which jumped eight points to 84 percent among the general population, and three points to 89 percent within the informed public. Joining China at the top of the Trust Index are India, Indonesia, UAE and Singapore.

For the first time media is the least trusted institution globally. In 22 of the 28 countries surveyed it is now distrusted. The demise of confidence in the Fourth Estate is driven primarily by a significant drop in trust in platforms, notably search engines and social media. Sixty-three percent of respondents say they do not know how to tell good journalism from rumour or falsehoods or if a piece of news was produced by a respected media organisation. The lack of faith in media has also led to an inability to identify the truth (59 percent), trust government leaders (56 percent) and trust business (42 percent).

This year saw a revival of faith in experts and decline in peers. Technical (63 percent) and academic (61 percent) experts distanced themselves as the most credible spokesperson from “a person like yourself,” which dropped six points to an all-time low of 54 percent.

“In a world where facts are under siege, credentialed sources are proving more important than ever,” said Stephen Kehoe, Global chair, Reputation. “There are credibility problems for both platforms and sources. People’s trust in them is collapsing, leaving a vacuum and an opportunity for bona fide experts to fill.”

Business is now expected to be an agent of change. The employer is the new safe house in global governance, with 72 percent of respondents saying that they trust their own company. And 64 percent believe a company can take actions that both increase profits and improve economic and social conditions in the community where it operates.

This past year saw CEO credibility rise sharply by seven points to 44 percent after a number of high-profile business leaders voiced their positions on the issues of the day. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they want CEOs to take the lead on policy change instead of waiting for government, which now ranks significantly below business in trust in 20 markets. This show of faith comes with new expectations; building trust (69 percent) is now the No. 1 job for CEOs, surpassing producing high-quality products and services (68 percent).

“Silence is a tax on the truth,” said Edelman. “Trust is only going to be regained when the truth moves back to centre stage. Institutions must answer the public’s call for providing factually accurate, timely information and joining the public debate. Media cannot do it alone because of political and financial constraints. Every institution must contribute to the education of the populace.”

Other key findings from the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer include:

  • Technology (75 percent) remains the most trusted industry sector followed by Education (70 percent), professional services (68 percent) and transportation (67 percent). Financial services (54 percent) was once again the least trusted sector along with consumer packaged goods (60 percent) and automotive (62 percent).
  • Companies headquartered in Canada (68 percent), Switzerland (66 percent), Sweden (65 percent) and Australia (63 percent) are most trusted. The least trusted country brands are Mexico (32 percent), India (32 percent), Brazil (34 percent) and China (36 percent). Trust in brand U.S. (50 percent) dropped five points, the biggest decline of the countries surveyed.
  • Nearly seven in 10 respondents worry about fake news and false information being used as a weapon.
  • Exactly half of those surveyed indicate that they interact with mainstream media less than once a week, while 25 percent said they read no media at all because it is too upsetting. And the majority of respondents believe that news organizations are overly focused on attracting large audiences (66 percent), breaking news (65 percent) and politics (59 percent).

It’s a brave new world, and we as marketers must realise that placing any marketing cash with distrusted media outlets could mean a very big waste of our advertising spending power.

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Advertising Influences Millennials to Buy More Often Than Baby Boomers

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Millennials are more likely than older generations to try a new brand or product after seeing or hearing an advertisement. And who says advertising doesn’t work! It totally, totally does.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Millennials are more likely to make purchases after seeing or hearing advertisements compared to Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, and other older generations, according to a new survey from Clutch, a B2B ratings and reviews firm.

About 81% of millennials surveyed – those ages 18 to 34 – made a purchase after seeing or hearing an advertisement in the last 30 days. Baby Boomers and other generations over age 55, however, were not quite as influenced by advertising: Among those consumers, 57% made a purchase as a result of an advertisement.

These findings illustrate millennials’ higher tendency for “impulse buying” when it comes to new products and brands.

“Baby Boomers have already gotten set in their ways in regards to the brands they prefer, so an ad might not convince them to buy something,” said Rob Albertson, managing director of Bandwidth Marketing. “There’s an aspect of spontaneity in millennials that would cause them to try something.”

Millennials also trust advertising mediums more than older generations; 64% trust TV and print advertising, and 51% trust online and social media advertising. About 54% of Baby Boomers trust TV and print advertising, and just 27% trust online and social media advertising.

Millennials trust advertising more because they have more resources available to help them discover if a brand’s message is misleading.

“Baby Boomers come from a time when there were a lot fewer regulatory bodies in advertising,” said Julie Wierzbicki, account director at advertising agency Giants & Gentlemen. “For example, cigarettes used to be advertised as good for you, and we found out that these brands we thought were great were lying to us. Millennials feel like brands have to be honest because there’s so much more information out there, and if you’re doing things in a fraudulent or misleading way, it’s going to eventually come out.”

Consumer income is also a factor in advertising influence. The study found that 83% of consumers with a household income over $100,000 were more likely to make a purchase as a result of an advertisement, compared to 68% of consumers with household incomes of less than $49,999. This is due to a higher disposable income and more spending power.

Overall, advertisements influence 90% of consumers in their purchasing decisions, and consumers—regardless of generation—are most likely to make a purchase after seeing or hearing an advertisement on TV and in print.

Consumers view traditional advertising mediums – TV, print, and radio – as the most trustworthy, while they view online and social media advertising more skeptically.

The survey shows that advertising continues to influence consumers in their purchasing decisions, and businesses should advertise in order to reach consumers.

 

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Don’t Use Cute Kids While Advertising Your Charity – Your Campaign Will Backfire

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If you are selling clothes, use all the cute kids you want. But if you are advertising a charity, you need a different kind of kid.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

When it comes to asking a stranger for help, being young, pretty, and the opposite sex greatly improve your odds. But when it comes to children suffering from the likes of natural disaster, poverty, or homelessness, a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research reveals that less attractive children receive more help than their cuter counterparts.

“Many charitable organisations use children in advertising and promotional materials. Our research examines how the facial attractiveness of the children in these campaigns affects the empathy and help received from adults,” write authors Robert J. Fisher and Yu Ma (both University of Alberta).

Too cute. Next!

In a series of four experiments, participants were asked to visit fictional websites where they were asked to consider sponsoring a child from a developing country. The authors then systematically varied the levels of attractiveness of the children featured on the websites as well as their levels of need.

Results showed that when the children were portrayed as having a severe need (for example, orphaned as a result of a natural disaster), their facial attractiveness had no affect on helping responses. In contrast, when their need was not severe, participants felt less compassion and sympathy for an attractive child compared to an unattractive child in an identical circumstance.

Also too cute. Go home!

The authors explain that this negative effect of attractiveness occurred because participants inferred that the attractive children were more popular, intelligent, and helpful than their less attractive peers. They also observed this negative effect despite the fact that the children in the studies were obviously too young to care for themselves.

These results offer practical implications for how children are portrayed by disaster relief agencies, children’s hospitals, and other charities. “We believe our research offers a positive and hopeful perspective on human behaviour because it suggests that when a child is in obvious need, even strangers can feel compassion and offer aid irrespective of the child’s physical appearance,” the authors conclude.

Fundraisers and marketers for charities, take note!

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