A Field Guide to Fake News and Other Information Disorders: A Free Manual to Download, Share & Re-Use

“Recent scan­dals about the role of social media in key polit­i­cal events in the US, UK and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries over the past cou­ple of years have under­scored the need to under­stand the inter­ac­tions between dig­i­tal plat­forms, mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da, and their influ­ence on col­lec­tive life in democ­ra­cies,” writes First Draft, an online jour­nal pub­lished by Har­vard’s Shoren­stein Cen­ter on Media, Pol­i­tics and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy.

Hence comes A Field Guide to ‘Fake News’ and Oth­er Infor­ma­tion Dis­or­ders–a free man­u­al that helps “stu­dents, jour­nal­ists and researchers inves­ti­gate mis­lead­ing and viral con­tent, memes and trolling prac­tices online.” Packed with valu­able data visu­al­iza­tions, the man­u­al high­lights a “series of research pro­to­cols or ‘recipes’ that can be used to trace trolling prac­tices, the ways false viral news and memes cir­cu­late online, and the com­mer­cial under­pin­nings of prob­lem­at­ic con­tent.”

A Field Guide to ‘Fake News’ and Oth­er Infor­ma­tion Dis­or­ders was co-pro­duced by the Shoren­stein Cen­ter and the Pub­lic Data Lab. Because it’s pub­lished under a Cre­ative Com­mons License, you’re free to copy, redis­trib­ute and reuse the book. Beyond that, you can find all of the assets need­ed to trans­late and pub­lish the guide into oth­er lan­guages over on this GitHub page.

via First Draft

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

Down­load Theft! A His­to­ry of Music, a New Free Graph­ic Nov­el Explor­ing 2,000 Years of Musi­cal Bor­row­ing

When Sovi­et Artists Turned Tex­tiles (Scarves, Table­cloths & Cur­tains) into Beau­ti­ful Pro­pa­gan­da in the 1920s & 1930s

Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­umph of the Will Wasn’t a Cin­e­mat­ic Mas­ter­piece; It Was a Stag­ger­ing­ly Effec­tive Piece of Pro­pa­gan­da