Every week, we provide interesting links from around the web that discuss issues regarding the verification processes of content from social media. Here is our list for this week.

 

 

The new anti-journalism
MH370 story is the new anti-journalism – all data, no real facts, endless theories.
A demonstration of the weakness of data. How does modern journalism handle the lack of factual information?
Source: The Guardian

 

How technology is changing the news business
To find out, have a look at this must-see 25 minute video magazine by Aljazeera’s Listening Post. Topics: the technology and ethics of drone journalism, the way in which media organisations are adapting to the exponential rise in the quantity and quality of user-generated content (this part starts at 09:35 min.) and controversy of digitally enhanced photo journalism & image verification (starts at 16:40 min.).
Source: Aljazeera Listening Post

 

Fact-checking initiative in Africa
The nonprofit Africa Check wants to build more fact-checking into the continent’s journalism. “Africa Check is a nonpartisan outfit with the dual goals of checking the veracity of public statements and educating journalists across Africa on how to approach fact checking,” we learn from an article published by the Nieman Journalism Lab.  According to Peter Cunliffe-Jones, deputy director of the AFP Foundation and founder of Africa Check, its aim is “to provide an example that can be seen and that can then serve as a spark, as a catalyst, to both promote the idea of fact checking and to help support and enable others in the media and in civil society to do it for themselves.”
Source: Nieman Journalism Lab