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by Michael Stuart

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Younger generations are actually better at telling news from opinion than those over age 50

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According to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center, Americans ages 18–49 were more likely to accurately categorize factual statements as facts and opinion statements as opinions.

 
Among the opinion statements, roughly three-quarters of 18- to 49-year-olds (77%) correctly identified the following opinion statement, one that appeals more to the ideological right – “Government is almost always wasteful and inefficient” – compared with about two-thirds of older Americans (65%). And younger Americans were slightly more likely than older adults (82% vs. 78%, respectively) to correctly categorize this opinion statement, one appealing more to the left: “Abortion should be legal in most cases.”
 
This stronger ability to classify statements regardless of their ideological appeal may well be tied to the fact that younger adults – especially Millennials – are less likely to strongly identify with either political party. Younger Americans also are more “digitally savvy” than their elders, a characteristic that is also tied to greater success at classifying news statements. But even when accounting for levels of digital savviness and party affiliation, the differences by age persist: Younger adults are still better than their elders at deciphering factual from opinion news statements. Beyond digital savoriness, the original study found that two other factors have a strong relationship with being able to correctly classify factual and opinion statements: having higher political awareness and more trust in the information from the national news media. Despite the fact that younger adults tend to be less politically aware and trusting of the news media than their elders, they still performed better at this task.
 
 
This corroborates the footnote of a recent American Press Institute study which found that only 43 percent of Americans thought it was easy to distinguish opinion from news on digital news sites and social media.
 
The API researchers found that 52 percent of adults under age 30 said it’s at least somewhat easy to tell them apart on social media, versus 34 percent of adults 60 and older: “The level of ease was about the same for younger adults across all media types.” The study also noted that the young folk were understandably less familiar with print jargon like “op-ed” than the older adults.
 
 
A different recent Pew study found that while 57 percent of American social media users expected the news they encountered there to be “largely inaccurate,” younger social media news consumers were — unsurprisingly — more likely to say social media has “impacted their learning for the better” (48 percent of those age 18 to 29, compared to 28 percent of those age 50 to 64).
Op-eds have been playing a much larger role in the news cycle these days, with Trump’s anonymous underling writing in The New York Times and the president’s error-ridden contribution to USA Today. Instead of fighting with terms that are quickly becoming arcane, there are a few options beyond cheering the fact that rising generations of news consumers understand the newspaper layout.
 
What is Fake News?
Fake news is in the News these days, so what is it? The term is most often used to describe completely fabricated stories, but can also be applied to a broader continuum of news. Many news outlets will exhibit some form of explicit or implicit bias while not falling into the fake news category. Assessing the quality of the content is crucial to understanding whether what you are viewing is true or not. It is up to you to do the legwork to make sure your information is good.
 
  • Fake News: Sources that intentionally fabricate information, disseminate deceptive content, or grossly distort actual news reports.
  • Satire: Sources that use humor, irony, exaggeration, ridicule, and false information to comment on current events.
  • Bias: Sources that come from a particular point of view and may rely on propaganda, decontextualized information, and opinions distorted as facts.
  • Rumor Mill: Sources that traffic in rumors, gossip, innuendo, and unverified claims.
  • State News: Sources in repressive states operating under government sanction.
  • Junk Science: Sources that promote pseudoscience, naturalistic fallacies, and other scientifically dubious claims.
  • Clickbait: A strategically placed hyperlink designed to drive traffic to sources that provide generally credible content, but use exaggerated, misleading, or questionable headlines, social media descriptions, and/or images.
 
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) published a summary in diagram form to assist people in recognizing fake news.
Its main points are:
 
  • Consider the source (to understand its mission and purpose)
  • Read beyond the headline (to understand the whole story)
  • Check the authors (to see if they are real and credible)
  • Assess the supporting sources (to ensure they support the claims)
  • Check the date of publication (to see if the story is relevant and up to date)
  • Ask if it is a joke (to determine if it is meant to be satire)
  • Review your own biases (to see if they are affecting your judgement)
  • Ask experts (to get confirmation from independent people with knowledge).
 
Read more at https://www.ifla.org/ifla-publications, including the latest IFLA journal, October 2018, is a special about Privacy, https://www.ifla.org/files/assets/hq/publications/ifla-journal/ifla-journal-44-3_2018.pdf
 

Fact-checking The sites below generally review specific news stories and claims.

  • Displays news coverage from “left”, “right”, and “center” sources. Use with caution as the categories are generated by users and reflect public perceptions of each news source rather than any actual bias in the individual articles displayed.
  • A product of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, this site is terrific for checking up on political claims.
  • Fake news database, tasked with “tracking fabricated news created to mislead”
  • The Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact researches the claims of politicians and checks their accuracy.
  • One of the oldest debunking sites on the Internet, Snopes.com focuses on widely circulating urban legends, news stories and memes.
  • Hoax-Slayer specifically focuses on email hoaxes, identity theft scams and spam.
  • Focused primarily on political stories.
 
Watch this video tutorial about how to choose your news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Y-z6HmRgI
With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed at an incredible rate by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. How do we choose which news to consume? Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them apart
 
 
Illustration by Sabrena Khadija used under a Creative Commons license.
 
Curated by Mike Stuart, 1stonline.us
 

Younger generations are actually better at telling news from opinion than those over age 50

Curated by

According to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center, Americans ages 18–49 were more likely to accurately categorize factual statements as facts and opinion statements as opinions.

 
Among the opinion statements, roughly three-quarters of 18- to 49-year-olds (77%) correctly identified the following opinion statement, one that appeals more to the ideological right – “Government is almost always wasteful and inefficient” – compared with about two-thirds of older Americans (65%). And younger Americans were slightly more likely than older adults (82% vs. 78%, respectively) to correctly categorize this opinion statement, one appealing more to the left: “Abortion should be legal in most cases.”
 
This stronger ability to classify statements regardless of their ideological appeal may well be tied to the fact that younger adults – especially Millennials – are less likely to strongly identify with either political party. Younger Americans also are more “digitally savvy” than their elders, a characteristic that is also tied to greater success at classifying news statements. But even when accounting for levels of digital savviness and party affiliation, the differences by age persist: Younger adults are still better than their elders at deciphering factual from opinion news statements. Beyond digital savoriness, the original study found that two other factors have a strong relationship with being able to correctly classify factual and opinion statements: having higher political awareness and more trust in the information from the national news media. Despite the fact that younger adults tend to be less politically aware and trusting of the news media than their elders, they still performed better at this task.
 
 
This corroborates the footnote of a recent American Press Institute study which found that only 43 percent of Americans thought it was easy to distinguish opinion from news on digital news sites and social media.
 
The API researchers found that 52 percent of adults under age 30 said it’s at least somewhat easy to tell them apart on social media, versus 34 percent of adults 60 and older: “The level of ease was about the same for younger adults across all media types.” The study also noted that the young folk were understandably less familiar with print jargon like “op-ed” than the older adults.
 
 
A different recent Pew study found that while 57 percent of American social media users expected the news they encountered there to be “largely inaccurate,” younger social media news consumers were — unsurprisingly — more likely to say social media has “impacted their learning for the better” (48 percent of those age 18 to 29, compared to 28 percent of those age 50 to 64).
Op-eds have been playing a much larger role in the news cycle these days, with Trump’s anonymous underling writing in The New York Times and the president’s error-ridden contribution to USA Today. Instead of fighting with terms that are quickly becoming arcane, there are a few options beyond cheering the fact that rising generations of news consumers understand the newspaper layout.
 
What is Fake News?
Fake news is in the News these days, so what is it? The term is most often used to describe completely fabricated stories, but can also be applied to a broader continuum of news. Many news outlets will exhibit some form of explicit or implicit bias while not falling into the fake news category. Assessing the quality of the content is crucial to understanding whether what you are viewing is true or not. It is up to you to do the legwork to make sure your information is good.
 
  • Fake News: Sources that intentionally fabricate information, disseminate deceptive content, or grossly distort actual news reports.
  • Satire: Sources that use humor, irony, exaggeration, ridicule, and false information to comment on current events.
  • Bias: Sources that come from a particular point of view and may rely on propaganda, decontextualized information, and opinions distorted as facts.
  • Rumor Mill: Sources that traffic in rumors, gossip, innuendo, and unverified claims.
  • State News: Sources in repressive states operating under government sanction.
  • Junk Science: Sources that promote pseudoscience, naturalistic fallacies, and other scientifically dubious claims.
  • Clickbait: A strategically placed hyperlink designed to drive traffic to sources that provide generally credible content, but use exaggerated, misleading, or questionable headlines, social media descriptions, and/or images.
 

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) published a summary in diagram form to assist people in recognizing fake news.
Its main points are:
 
  • Consider the source (to understand its mission and purpose)
  • Read beyond the headline (to understand the whole story)
  • Check the authors (to see if they are real and credible)
  • Assess the supporting sources (to ensure they support the claims)
  • Check the date of publication (to see if the story is relevant and up to date)
  • Ask if it is a joke (to determine if it is meant to be satire)
  • Review your own biases (to see if they are affecting your judgement)
  • Ask experts (to get confirmation from independent people with knowledge).
 
Read more at https://www.ifla.org/ifla-publications, including the latest IFLA journal, October 2018, is a special about Privacy, https://www.ifla.org/files/assets/hq/publications/ifla-journal/ifla-journal-44-3_2018.pdf
 

Fact-checking The sites below generally review specific news stories and claims.

  • Displays news coverage from “left”, “right”, and “center” sources. Use with caution as the categories are generated by users and reflect public perceptions of each news source rather than any actual bias in the individual articles displayed.
  • A product of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, this site is terrific for checking up on political claims.
  • Fake news database, tasked with “tracking fabricated news created to mislead”
  • The Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact researches the claims of politicians and checks their accuracy.
  • One of the oldest debunking sites on the Internet, Snopes.com focuses on widely circulating urban legends, news stories and memes.
  • Hoax-Slayer specifically focuses on email hoaxes, identity theft scams and spam.
  • Focused primarily on political stories.
 
Watch this video tutorial about how to choose your news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Y-z6HmRgI
With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed at an incredible rate by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. How do we choose which news to consume? Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them apart
 
Illustration by Sabrena Khadija used under a Creative Commons license.
 
Curated by Mike Stuart, 1stonline.us
 

The Death of Microsoft’s LinkedIn’s SlideShare

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In 2016, SlideShare had over 70 million unique visitors per day, and it was listed by Alexa as one of the top 100 most visited websites in the world. At its peak, it was such a powerhouse that Obama used the network to post his birth certificate. It also stood for years as a premier B2B social channel: In 2015, author and marketing expert Jay Baer referred to it as “content marketing’s secret weapon.”

 
 
Power users have been dropping the SlideShare channel.
 
  • Top content creator and SlideShare investor Dave McLure hasn’t posted to the channel in over 11 months.
  • HubSpot, the content marketing powerhouse that posted over 60 presentations in 2017 and reached over 500,000 users, has posted only once in 2018, reaching a total of just over 1,000 users.
  • So what has caused this exodus of power users and decline in social-media prominence? A perfect storm of shifting parent-company priorities, insufficient revenues, and a user base largely outside of the US.
 
Despite SlideShare’s massive fan base, loyal users, and billions of impressions, a once-powerful channel is all but dead, and here’s why.
 
The Loss of Human Touch
The rapid growth of SlideShare from a small startup to a top website began in 2009, in a tiny room in India, when Amit Rajan, Rashmi Sinha, and Jonathan Boutelle saw the need for a “YouTube for presentations.” Within a few years, they had built a network of 38 million registered users by providing a desperately needed tool—and a new social channel for presentations.  But the key to their success wasn’t the tool, it was the human touch it added to the presentations.
 
SlideShare didn’t have a marketing team fueling its rapid growth. It relied on loyal fans. Its fans were the content creators, and to ensure the best content was featured, the team at SlideShare would manually curate the site each day, ensuring that the best presentations were prominently featured.
  • Kit Seeborg, author of Present Yourself: Using SlideShare to Grow Your Business, was responsible for most of the content curation the users loved, she stressed how important human curation was to SlideShare.
  • The curated content was a huge hit. It was also one of the drivers of SlideShare’s email list, which, at the time of LinkedIn’s acquisition of SlideShare in 2012, was growing by 250,000 new subscribers each week. After the sale to LinkedIn, the curation process remained a critical part of community-building, until 2016, when the program was ended. Since then, the homepage has changed very little, which was a major clue to marketing insiders that LinkedIn was giving up on SlideShare.
  • During 2016, the team of editors who had been curators for SlideShare were moved off the product to support other LinkedIn projects, such as Pulse. The SlideShare company page on LinkedIn is now blank, with only a few remaining engineers listed as employees.
 
Some alternatives to SlideShare:
  1. Host your own content. There are new plugins for websites which allow you to host your slides on your own website and allow easy sharing and embedding. 
  2. Microsoft may create a social PowerPoint for 365. That is speculation, but now that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, and with the recent move to put Office in the Cloud, we could potentially see a new social aspect of PowerPoint in the future. 
  3. Use Prezi. It’s an alternative to SlideShare, but it does require you create content in Prezi’s own software rather than in PowerPoint; that requirement can be a pain for some.
  4. Use Google or Dropbox or ISSUU document sharing with their built-in presentation handling.
As we are continually bombarded with new marketing channels, tactics, and tools, one thing is clear: Slides are not going away. Events seem to give brands the personal touch the digital world just can’t, and slides are usually the No.1 content type at events.
 
The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.
 
The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today
 
  1. First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure not all of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks that are found on Slideshare. 
  2. Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media” sections.
  3. Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation.
 
Slideshare’s coming passing comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and Scribd, among others.
 
 
 

During the 2016 US election you might have followed Russian Hacker Fake News

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Facebook has a new tool that will inform if you followed Russian Hacker propaganda or as Trump puts it, Fake News.
In a stark admission that Russia probably did influence the 2016 US election, amongst other events (hello Brexit), the tech giant will now tell you if you like or follow a page from a fake Russian account.
  • “It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election,” Facebook said in a statement.
  • “That’s why as we have discovered information, we have continually come forward to share it publicly and have provided it to congressional investigators. And it’s also why we’re building the tool we are announcing today.”
  • This move mostly stems around a company called the Internet Research Agency. This troll farm, based out of Russia, has created numerous fake accounts and pages to dupe people into believing farcical stories. No, I’m not typing “fake news”. Wait, crap.
First Facebook said it didn’t happen. Then they said it might have done. Now they’re releasing an actual tool to tell you if you fell for Russian propaganda.
  • The tool will be available in the Facebook Help Center, with the title: “How can I see if I’ve liked or followed a Facebook Page or Instagram account created by the Internet Research Agency?”
  • Examples of such pages given by Facebook include “Being Patriotic”, “Heart of Texas”, and “Stop All Invaders”.
If you follow any of these pages non-ironically, please delete your account. Facebook
  • The tool will highlight pages or accounts people followed between January 2015 and August 2017.
  • This also includes the friendly-sounding page “Secured Borders”.
  • You’ll only have access to the tool if you actually follow or like a Russian propaganda page.
Hopefully this doesn’t apply to you.

Best Social Media Automation Tools to Boost Traffic

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What are the Best Social Media Automation Tools to Better Reach My Audience?

The internet is chalk full of tools that are useful in this arena. Many sites exist to make your life easier by taking some of the burdensome work off of your shoulders. We’ve compiled a list of the nine best social media automation tools (in no particular order) to help you make a decision as to which tool is ideal for your needs. We asked the following two questions:
  • What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
  • What should I be concerned about?
Here are the nine best social media automation tools:
1 – dlvr.it
dlvr.it offers many options to automate posting to social media. From automating your blog within minutes of publishing – to scheduling posting – to repeating posts automatically, dlvr.it has a full arsenal of tools to make your life easier.
dlvr.it blog screenshot 2What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
dlvr.it offers the ability to post multiple posts per day from an RSS Feed to Socials. On the basic plan, users have the option to post to three different socials from different platforms. Free users can also use content filters to exclude any posts that do not meet criteria automatically. dlvr.it also offers Instagram integration as an input, as well as Twitter and Pinterest. This platform integrates into many different social media platforms. dlvr.it also offers the ability to either schedule posts, or post automatically.
The Pro plan is reasonably priced for most users. At $9.99 per month, users can expect to be able to use up to 10 social media accounts and up to 50 sources of input. The price tag of the Pro plan also provides access to the Echo feature. This power packed feature allows automated reposting of content from your input source up to two additional times without you having to do any further scheduling. dlvr.it also offers a free trial, which does not require additional credit card information.
What should I be concerned about?
Analytics for dlvr.it offer just click stats and follower stats. However, you can add Google analytics tags with additional parameters attached to your social media accounts. dlvr.it also does not provide in-depth demographics of followers.
2 – Hootsuite
Hootsuite has built a platform that is attractive to marketers because of its built-in analytics.
best social media automation tools hootsuite
What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
Hootsuite’s software packs a punch using Analytics. Hootsuite provides in-depth, detailed analytics that can help you to determine your audience engagement, metric performance, and real-time feedback. Hootsuite offers basic analytics for their free users, as well as enhanced analytics for its Pro users. For its free users, RSS integrations are free and unlimited. Upgrade to their Pro plan, and you can schedule bulk messages. Hootsuite also offers its users support through free social media classes.
What should I be concerned about?
Hootsuite does offer all of these features but prevents its free users from using more than three profiles. Hootsuite also does not allow image posting for its free users. Their analytics provide a lot of power, but for the novice user, this can be very confusing and difficult to understand. The front dashboard can be a bit confusing if you are not used to looking at so much information.
3 – Buffer
Buffer is a tool that works with input sources and social media accounts to publish your content quickly and easily.

What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
Buffer has a wealth of tools that help their users stay connected to social media wherever they are. They employ the use of a mobile app to make it quick and easy to schedule a post from anywhere. Buffer has also created a system that will work to find the best times to post your content. Possibly the most attractive feature that Buffer offers is the option to create infographics inside the tool. Buffer offers a tool called “Pablo” that allows you to create graphics within the app and will allow scheduling of this post also within the app. With access to the Pro plan, you will gain access to use RSS feeds as inputs as well as the Calendar feature.
What should I be concerned about?
Buffer offers some Instagram integration, but this integration is a tad misleading. Buffer reminds users to log into Instagram to post content. Essentially, the only automated function of these reminders is the reminder itself. Also, if you are a basic plan user, Buffer significantly limits the functionality of their app. For their basic users, they will only allow one social media account per platform, and will only allow you to schedule ten posts at a time. There is also a significant limit for their next step plan. This plan allows you to schedule 100 posts for ten profiles.
Social Oomph offers management of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
best social media automation tools social oomph
What makes this one of the best social media automation tools?
Social Oomph integrates with a few different platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. The most powerful feature that Social Oomph provides is to track Twitter followers and keywords. These platform analytics provide quite a bit of information about your audience so that you can tailor your content to your audience. Social Oomph also allows your employees to submit content via email, which will allow you to avoid needing to add team members to your account. You will instead be able to review and approve content from your own login information.
What should I be concerned about?
Social Oomph severely limits its free users, only allowing connection with Twitter at the basic level. Complete automation only occurs at the professional plan level, which is a higher price point than many on this list. The professional plan runs $17.97 every two weeks.
5 – IFTTT
IFTTT is a platform that allows you to set up a number of triggers. The acronym stands for If This Then That. This means if a certain condition is met, then an action is performed.
best social media automation tools ifttt
Why is it one of the best social media automation tools?
IFTTT works on the formula of recipes. You set a trigger, whether it be a YouTube video published, a Tweet sent, or a new blog post on WordPress, and then set a result. The result indicates where this content moves. IFTTT has a huge variety of triggers and resulting actions. Recipes on IFTTT are extremely varied, and possibilities are endless with the trigger options.
What should I be concerned about?
Costs can start to get steep with this platform. There are only two levels of the plan, which start at about $1,200/year and do include unlimited triggers and actions. The only other option is to pay around $6,000 per year to customize your plan.
Sprout Social helps business users manage and analyze social media impacts across platforms.
best social media automation tools sprout social
Why is this one of the best social media automation tools?
Sprout Social follows the analytics protocol, providing its users with many different types of analytics and interactions. Google Analytics are an essential feature of what Sprout provides. They integrate this into their dashboard so that you don’t have to run to Google to find out why your traffic may have dropped. Team members may also be added to all plan levels. They also have options to automate your social media content via a Social Content Calendar. Sprout also can decide the optimal times to deliver your content if you have trouble deciding when to publish.
What should I be concerned about?
Sprout is one of those platforms that is on the more expensive side. While they do offer a 30-day free trial, they also start their pricing at $99 per user per month for their most basic plan without adding additional users. Sprout also lacks Pinterest, Instagram, and multiple Google+ page interfaces. These features may be available on one of the other tools mentioned previously.
CoSchedule is a more robust platform that allows for posting and scheduling in a drag and drop calendar format.
best social media marketing tools coschedule
Why is this one of the best tools for social media automation?
CoSchedule offers a drag and drop format calendar that allows you to categorize your posting. This tool also allows you to select evergreen content, which can be posted indefinitely. The tool will also select the most popular posts in your history and repost them for you. CoSchedule also has integration options with Buffer.
Why should I be concerned?
CoSchedule is similar to Sprout Social in that there is no option for a Free plan. The lowest cost plan offered by CoSchedule is $30 per month for 10 Social Profiles and one user account. In our experience, CoSchedule does require a lot of initial setup. There is a significant time investment up front in setting up the account and calendar. However, once set up, only minor alterations are required.


Should I be using Third Party content?
  • First, third party content is not content that you have to write yourself. You may be pressed for time in coming up with original content, but want to make sure that you are maintaining a consistent social media presence. That’s where third- party content comes in. Well curated third party content can reinforce your messages in your original content. B2B Marketing Solutions suggests that you make this a part of your marketing strategy because you want to be a trusted source of valuable information. Not all of this information has to come from content that you generate.
  • Second, third party content can add valuable information to your social media walls without you needing to write it. Social-tribe suggests that third party content can add value as long as it holds relevance to your target audience. Sharing someone else’s article can help you publish this valuable information for your readers, increase your credibility and also increase your followers.
  • Third, this falls into the category of making sure that your content isn’t just bombarding your followers with sales pitches. Neil Patel recommends that when sharing content to your social media accounts, 80% should be social, rather than sales.
  • The social content draws in your audience and makes sure that they’re not exhausted by a constant sales pitch, leading you to see more audience attrition.

Source: blog.dlvrit.com