First Draft News

Last updated
First Draft
FormationJune 2015;9 years ago (2015-06)
DissolvedJune 2022;2 years ago (2022-06)
Legal statusFoundation
Headquarters London
Website firstdraftnews.org

First Draft News was a project "to fight mis- and disinformation online" founded in 2015 by nine organizations brought together by the Google News Lab. It included Facebook, Twitter, the Open Society Foundations and several philanthropic organizations. [a] [1] [2] In June 2022, First Draft announced it would be shutting down, with its mission continuing at the Information Futures Lab. [3]

Contents

Project description

The project drew on experts and organisations working in the field, including reported.ly, Eyewitness Media Hub, Storyful and Meedan. [4] Google News Lab developed and maintained firstdraftnews.org and supported the creation of new content. [1]

In September 2016, First Draft began coordinating "efforts between newsrooms, fact-checking organizations, and academic institutions to combat mis- and disinformation". [2] Coalition members published how-to guides addressing topics such as ethics surrounding "use of eyewitness media" and how to "spot fake footage and hoaxes". [4]

Newsrooms participating in the First Draft's CrossCheck project "cross-checked" each other, debunked stories, and developed methods to hinder "the spread of misleading and fabricated content" for the 2017 French, UK, and German elections. Claire Wardle, First Draft’s executive director, has stated: “With elections being a prime target for agents who create and spread disinformation, partnering with a research center that focuses on the intersection of media, politics and technology is a natural fit”. [2]

In October 2017, First Draft moved to the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. [1]

In February 2019, it was reported that First Draft has left Harvard, due to a "series of miscommunications". [5] In June 2019, First Draft participated in a Trusted News Conference convened by the BBC in response to alleged systemic disinformation during the 2019 Indian general election. [6] First Draft was a founding member of the Trusted News Initiative, which subsequently launched in September 2019. [7]

In June 2022, the First Draft mission moved to the Information Futures Lab from the Brown University School of Public Health. [8] The First Draft website was archived and "hosted in perpetuity" by the Internet Archive, [3] that it already had a partnership with since 2017. [9]

Notes

See also

Related Research Articles

Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic deceptions and media manipulation tactics to advance political, military, or commercial goals. Disinformation is implemented through attacks that "weaponize multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value judgements—to exploit and amplify culture wars and other identity-driven controversies."

Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such checking done in-house by the publisher to prevent inaccurate content from being published; when the text is analyzed by a third party, the process is called external fact-checking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craig Newmark</span> American entrepreneur, Craigslist founder

Craig Alexander Newmark is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist best known as the founder of the classifieds website Craigslist. Before founding Craigslist, he worked as a computer programmer for IBM, Bank of America, and Charles Schwab. Newmark served as chief executive officer of Craigslist from its founding until 2000. He founded Craig Newmark Philanthropies in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Misinformation</span> Incorrect or misleading information

Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Misinformation and disinformation are not interchangeable terms: Misinformation can exist with or without specific malicious intent whereas disinformation is distinct in that the information is deliberately deceptive and propagated. Misinformation can include inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or false information as well as selective or half-truths. In January 2024, the World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation, propagated by both internal and external interests, to "widen societal and political divides" as the most severe global risks within the next two years.

The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is a Harvard Kennedy School research center that explores the intersection and impact of media, politics and public policy in theory and practice.

Fake news websites are websites on the Internet that deliberately publish fake news—hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation purporting to be real news—often using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect. Unlike news satire, these websites deliberately seek to be perceived as legitimate and taken at face value, often for financial or political gain. Fake news websites monetize their content by exploiting the vulnerabilities of programmatic ad trading, which is a type of online advertising in which ads are traded through machine-to-machine auction in a real-time bidding system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fake news</span> False or misleading information presented as real

Fake news or information disorder is false or misleading information claiming the aesthetics and legitimacy of news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. Although false news has always been spread throughout history, the term fake news was first used in the 1890s when sensational reports in newspapers were common. Nevertheless, the term does not have a fixed definition and has been applied broadly to any type of false information presented as news. It has also been used by high-profile people to apply to any news unfavorable to them. Further, disinformation involves spreading false information with harmful intent and is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections. In some definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text. Because of this diversity of types of false news, researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Full Fact</span> British fact-checking organisation

Full Fact is a British charity, based in London, which checks and corrects facts reported in the news as well as claims which circulate on social media.

<i>Palmer Report</i> American liberal fake news website

The Palmer Report is an American liberal fake news website, founded in 2016 by Bill Palmer. It is known for making unsubstantiated or false claims, producing hyperpartisan content, and publishing conspiracy theories, especially on matters relating to Donald Trump and Russia. Fact-checkers have debunked numerous Palmer Report stories, and organizations including the Columbia Journalism Review and the German Marshall Fund have listed the site among false content producers or biased websites.

The Google News Lab is a global team at Google whose mission is to “collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs to help build the future of media”. Launched in 2015, the team works with news organizations to help address industry challenges by providing training and access to emerging technologies for reporting and storytelling.

Fake news and similar false information is fostered and spread across India through word of mouth, traditional media and more recently through digital forms of communication such as edited videos, websites, blogs, memes, unverified advertisements and social media propagated rumours. Fake news spread through social media in the country has become a serious problem, with the potential of it resulting in mob violence, as was the case where at least 20 people were killed in 2018 as a result of misinformation circulated on social media.

The StopFake website is a project of Ukrainian media NGO Media Reforms Center. It was founded in March 2014 by Ukrainian professors and students with the stated purpose of refuting Russian propaganda and fake news. It began as a Russian- and English-language fact-checking organization, and has grown to include a TV show broadcast on 30 local channels, a weekly radio show, and a strong social media following.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Donovan</span> American social scientist and academic

Joan Donovan is an American social science researcher, sociologist, and academic noted for her research on disinformation. She is the founder of the nonprofit, The Critical Internet Studies Institute (CISI). Since 2023, she is an assistant professor at the College of Communication at Boston University.

Disinformation attacks are strategic deception campaigns involving media manipulation and internet manipulation, to disseminate misleading information, aiming to confuse, paralyze, and polarize an audience. Disinformation can be considered an attack when it occurs as an adversarial narrative campaign that weaponizes multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value-laden judgements—to exploit and amplify identity-driven controversies. Disinformation attacks use media manipulation to target broadcast media like state-sponsored TV channels and radios. Due to the increasing use of internet manipulation on social media, they can be considered a cyber threat. Digital tools such as bots, algorithms, and AI technology, along with human agents including influencers, spread and amplify disinformation to micro-target populations on online platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Google, Facebook, and YouTube.

The News Literacy Project (NLP) is an American nonpartisan national education nonprofit, based in Washington, D.C., that provides resources for educators, students, and the general public to help them learn to identify credible information, recognize misinformation and disinformation, and determine what they can trust, share, and act on. It was founded in 2008 by Alan C. Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Disinformation Project</span> Misinformation research group in New Zealand

The Disinformation Project was a research group studying the effects of disinformation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand. The research group was established in 2020 to combat disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic but subsequently expanded its scope to cover other "conspiracy theory beliefs" including anti-vaccine, climate change denial, anti-immigration, the anti-gender movement, anti-Māori racism and hatred towards the LGBTQ+ community. The Disinformation Project also took an interest in monitoring neo-Nazism, far right activism, antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is an international alliance of news media, social media and technology corporations which claim to be working to identify and combat purported disinformation about national elections, the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 vaccines. TNI was founded by Jessica Cecil, a leadership figure at the BBC who also serves as the initiative's director.

Verificado 2018 was a three-month collaborative journalism initiative to detect and counter false claims and disinformation related to Mexico's 2018 federal election. It involved over 90 partner organizations from across Mexico including local and national media outlets, universities, and civil society and advocacy groups. For much of the time, work was coordinated through a digital newsroom by a core group of about 30 people. Larger groups fact-checked presidential debates. On the weekend of the election, which was held July 1, 2018, members worked in person in a physical newsroom.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "First Draft News: About". First Draft News. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 "First Draft Joins the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School". Shorenstein Center. October 3, 2017. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  3. 1 2 "About". First Draft News. Retrieved 2023-03-30.
  4. 1 2 Ciobanu, Mădălina (November 15, 2015). "First Draft Coalition launches website to help journalists work with eyewitness media". Journalism.co.uk. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  5. "First Draft has left Harvard, citing problems with brand control". Poynter. 2019-02-19. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
  6. "New collaboration steps up fight against disinformation". BBC . 2019-09-07. Archived from the original on 2023-10-15. Retrieved 2023-10-15.
  7. "Trusted News Initiative". BBC . Archived from the original on 2023-09-23. Retrieved 2023-10-16.
  8. "Brown School of Public Health launches new Lab to combat misinformation, data deficits, outdated communication practices — and to catalyze innovation". Brown School of Public Health. 2022-06-14. Retrieved 2023-03-30.
  9. Watzman, Nancy (2017-04-06). "Internet Archive to help First Draft News debunk fake news". Internet Archive Blogs. Retrieved 2023-03-30.