An EU-funded project to develop a tool to spot false information online has made “a lot of progress”, but the technology still has a way to go. swissinfo.ch is a partner in the project, which has just come to an end.
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I have a wealth of experience as a journalist working in Switzerland and enjoy producing videos, articles and podcasts on a range of subjects, recently focused mainly on politics and the environment.
Born in the UK, I studied law at Nottingham University, then went on to attend the first-ever post-graduate radio journalism college in London. After working as a radio journalist in the UK and then Switzerland from 1984 to 1995, I returned to the UK to complete a post-graduate diploma in film at Bournemouth Film School. I have been working as a video journalist ever since.
Many fake news stories that are compelling to click on and have a ring of truth about them soar on the social web, for instance on Twitter, where links are given the same weighting regardless of source.
The Pheme project brings together IT experts and universities to devise technologies that could help journalists find and verify online claims. Models are being programmed to spot the opinions of users about a claim, and based on that, pick out how likely something is to be true or false.
The project leader is Kalina Bontcheva, a professor at the University of Sheffield in the UK. “It’s hard for machines to detect satire and irony, half-truths and propaganda, but machine performance is improving continuously,” she told swissinfo.ch.
Fake news was one of the features of the 2016 American presidential election. Some of the made-up stories were not created for political gain, but simply to make money. (Julie Hunt, swissinfo.ch)
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Academics join in the fight against fake news
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A new partnership of academics involving swissinfo.ch, the international service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, will address “fake news”.
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How can journalists ensure that the information they are gathering from online sources can be trusted? An EU-funded project called Pheme is developing a tool to speed up verification and swissinfo.ch is involved in the project. (Michele Andina, swissinfo.ch)
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.