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By Eli GottliebBig Ben was stolen from Palestine. So claimed an elderly woman, in Arabic, in a retweeted clip I received recently.

Yes, that Big Ben: the great bell in the iconic clock tower of Londons Palace of Westminster. The British took it, she said, from a tower they demolished at Hebron Gate in Jerusalem in 1922.

The claim pulled me up short. It seemed so outlandish. Who would invent something so easy to refute? And why? The woman spoke with great conviction, but could she really believe what she was saying? And if this was a hoax, then who was perpetrating it on whom?

These questions sent me down a Big Ben rabbit hole.

Before I share what I discovered, lets pause here for a moment, where many would have shrugged and moved on.Youd have to have some prior interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict or the history of British colonialism to give the claim even a moments thought. And even then, youd most likely judge it fact or fake, depending on your prior allegiances.

Palestinians and their allies would likely see it as further evidence of colonialist dispossession; their opponents would see a Palestinian lie to garner sympathy and incite resentment. In neither case would viewers have felt any need to investigate further. In this age of information overload, its a matter of seconds before the next incoming message pings for our attention.

From my perspective, as a cognitive psychologist who researches how people justify their beliefs and assess the credibility of sources, it seems that this is where misinformation causes most damage less by convincing people of specific untruths than by reducing the motivation to distinguish fact from fiction.

Relentless bombardment by incoming stories on social media makes our attention an increasingly scarce resource. And, as technologies of fabrication proliferate, the chance increases that any given story we encounter is fake. Worse still, research suggests that fake stories travel six times faster and farther on social media than do factual ones.

The net effect is general pollution of the information environment.Long before the invention of the smartphone and the rise of social media, trust was declining in institutions and those who lead them. New communication technologies are accelerating and intensifying these processes. People are becoming less trusting in general and more likely to place an exaggerated level of trust in sources whose views echo their own.

If these trends continue, reasoned debate with those whose views differ from our own will become rarer and more difficult. There will be a shrinking pool of facts on which those at the ideological extremes will be prepared to agree and a growing sense among the skeptical that debate is pointless because everything is ultimately a matter of opinion.So, when do facts matter? And how can we distinguish them from fabrications?In my case, the clip hit a nerve. I was born in London and emigrated to Israel 25 years ago. Im familiar enough with London, Jerusalem and Middle Eastern geopolitics to have smelled a rat. So, I had motive to investigate.But, were it not for recent research, I might not have had the means. In a recent series of pioneering studies, Stanford cognitive psychologist Sam Wineburg and his History Education Group have shown how bad people are at assessing the credibility of what they read online. With the notable exception of professional fact checkers, were all bad at it: professors no less than schoolkids; digital natives no less than digital immigrants.

Based on what fact checkers did differently, Wineburgs group developed online lessons to teach lateral reading which involves quick comparison across sites and sources rather than close reading of the target source. This enables readers to determine where information is coming from before they read it.

So, going lateral, I went straight to Wikipedia to look up Big Ben. Contrary to snobbish dismissals by some academics, Wikipedia is perhaps the most robust engine of peer review ever created. Although it can be edited by anyone, and entries on controversial topics are occasionally inaccurate, Wikipedias processes of editorial oversight and control, including insistence on accurate citations to substantiate claims, make it a useful first stop on any fact-checking journey.

I discovered (well, duh!) that the bell was cast at Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London and installed in the Palace of Westminster, with much pomp and circumstance, in 1858.

Next, I checked the Wikipedia entry on the clock tower at Hebron Gate in Jerusalem and discovered that it was not built until 1908 a full half-century after Big Bens installation in London.

Next, I tracked down the Twitter account from which the clip had been forwarded. It belonged to a pro-Israel satirical site, TheMossadIL, which masquerades as the official Twitter feed of Israels secret service.But the clip hadnt originated there it had been reposted by that account as an object of ridicule. I noticed that the clip had a TikTok watermark a stamp that appears automatically at the top and bottom of every downloaded TikTok video, comprising the TikTok logo and video creators username which identified the clips author as @aliarisheq. So, thats where I went next.

The feed, seemingly curated by a young Arabic-speaking woman, contained additional clips featuring the woman in the Big Ben clip and advertisements for jewelry.

Using the View Page Source (Ctrl + U) function in my Chrome browser, I learned that the clip in question was uploaded at 17:12 on Dec. 19, 2019. The woman claiming that Big Ben was stolen in 1922 looked like she was in her 70s. To have witnessed the alleged theft, she would have to be a centenarian. So she wasnt a witness: What we had here was an oral tradition, of which she was, at best, a second- or third-hand bearer.All of which means that unless the many corroborating sources cited in Wikipedias Big Ben entry are an elaborate hoax of QAnon proportions, her claim doesnt have a leg to stand on.

Big Ben was not stolen from Palestine and has no place on lists of controversial cultural artifacts like the Parthenon Marbles that former colonial powers are being asked to return to their countries of origin.

I emerged from this rabbit hole reassured about my ability to ferret out fakery when it matters. But it had taken hours. And I could think of few people to whom the outcome of my investigation would matter.For me, the moral of the tale is threefold.

First, the idea that a person can, on any given day, sift through every incoming story, sorting fact from fiction, is increasingly implausible. Theres just too much of both.

Second, this doesnt mean that the fact-versus-opinion distinction should be retired as a quaint idea from a bygone era. When it matters, theres little we cant eventually figure out.

Third, the greatest challenge fake news poses may be an ecological one: namely, how to protect precious natural resources our time and attention from its pollution.

Disproving fake news is time-consuming. But ignoring it corrodes trust.

Eli Gottlieb is a Senior Visiting Scholar at George Washington University.

(Reuters)

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Down the 'rabbit hole' to debunk misinformation - Gibraltar Chronicle

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

(THE CONVERSATION) Big Ben was stolen from Palestine. So claimed an elderly woman, in Arabic, in a retweeted clip I received recently.

Yes, that Big Ben: the great bell in the iconic clock tower of Londons Palace of Westminster. The British took it, she said, from a tower they demolished at Hebron Gate in Jerusalem in 1922.

The claim pulled me up short. It seemed so outlandish. Who would invent something so easy to refute? And why? The woman spoke with great conviction, but could she really believe what she was saying? And if this was a hoax, then who was perpetrating it on whom?

These questions sent me down a Big Ben rabbit hole.

A matter of seconds

Before I share what I discovered, lets pause here for a moment, where many would have shrugged and moved on.

Youd have to have some prior interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict or the history of British colonialism to give the claim even a moments thought. And even then, youd most likely judge it fact or fake, depending on your prior allegiances.

Palestinians and their allies would likely see it as further evidence of colonialist dispossession; their opponents would see a Palestinian lie to garner sympathy and incite resentment. In neither case would viewers have felt any need to investigate further. In this age of information overload, its a matter of seconds before the next incoming message pings for our attention.

From my perspective, as a cognitive psychologist who researches how people justify their beliefs and assess the credibility of sources, it seems that this is where misinformation causes most damage less by convincing people of specific untruths than by reducing the motivation to distinguish fact from fiction.

Relentless bombardment by incoming stories on social media makes our attention an increasingly scarce resource. And, as technologies of fabrication proliferate, the chance increases that any given story we encounter is fake. Worse still, research suggests that fake stories travel six times faster and farther on social media than do factual ones.

The net effect is general pollution of the information environment.

Long before the invention of the smartphone and the rise of social media, trust was declining in institutions and those who lead them. New communication technologies are accelerating and intensifying these processes. People are becoming less trusting in general and more likely to place an exaggerated level of trust in sources whose views echo their own.

If these trends continue, reasoned debate with those whose views differ from our own will become rarer and more difficult. There will be a shrinking pool of facts on which those at the ideological extremes will be prepared to agree and a growing sense among the skeptical that debate is pointless because everything is ultimately a matter of opinion.

So, when do facts matter? And how can we distinguish them from fabrications?

Down the Big Ben rabbit hole

In my case, the clip hit a nerve. I was born in London and emigrated to Israel 25 years ago. Im familiar enough with London, Jerusalem and Middle Eastern geopolitics to have smelled a rat. So, I had motive to investigate.

But, were it not for recent research, I might not have had the means. In a recent series of pioneering studies, Stanford cognitive psychologist Sam Wineburg and his History Education Group have shown how bad people are at assessing the credibility of what they read online. With the notable exception of professional fact checkers, were all bad at it: professors no less than schoolkids; digital natives no less than digital immigrants.

Based on what fact checkers did differently, Wineburgs group developed online lessons to teach lateral reading which involves quick comparison across sites and sources rather than close reading of the target source. This enables readers to determine where information is coming from before they read it.

So, going lateral, I went straight to Wikipedia to look up Big Ben. Contrary to snobbish dismissals by some academics, Wikipedia is perhaps the most robust engine of peer review ever created. Although it can be edited by anyone, and entries on controversial topics are occasionally inaccurate, Wikipedias processes of editorial oversight and control, including insistence on accurate citations to substantiate claims, make it a useful first stop on any fact-checking journey.

I discovered (well, duh!) that the bell was cast at Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London and installed in the Palace of Westminster, with much pomp and circumstance, in 1858.

Next, I checked the Wikipedia entry on the clock tower at Hebron Gate in Jerusalem and discovered that it was not built until 1908 a full half-century after Big Bens installation in London.

Next, I tracked down the Twitter account from which the clip had been forwarded. It belonged to a pro-Israel satirical site, TheMossadIL, which masquerades as the official Twitter feed of Israels secret service.

But the clip hadnt originated there it had been reposted by that account as an object of ridicule. I noticed that the clip had a TikTok watermark a stamp that appears automatically at the top and bottom of every downloaded TikTok video, comprising the TikTok logo and video creators username which identified the clips author as @aliarisheq. So, thats where I went next.

The feed, seemingly curated by a young Arabic-speaking woman, contained additional clips featuring the woman in the Big Ben clip and advertisements for jewelry.

Using the View Page Source (Ctrl + U) function in my Chrome browser, I learned that the clip in question was uploaded at 17:12 on Dec. 19, 2019. The woman claiming that Big Ben was stolen in 1922 looked like she was in her 70s. To have witnessed the alleged theft, she would have to be a centenarian. So she wasnt a witness: What we had here was an oral tradition, of which she was, at best, a second- or third-hand bearer.

Protecting from pollution

All of which means that unless the many corroborating sources cited in Wikipedias Big Ben entry are an elaborate hoax of QAnon proportions, her claim doesnt have a leg to stand on.

Big Ben was not stolen from Palestine and has no place on lists of controversial cultural artifacts like the Parthenon Marbles that former colonial powers are being asked to return to their countries of origin.

I emerged from this rabbit hole reassured about my ability to ferret out fakery when it matters. But it had taken hours. And I could think of few people to whom the outcome of my investigation would matter.

For me, the moral of the tale is threefold.

First, the idea that a person can, on any given day, sift through every incoming story, sorting fact from fiction, is increasingly implausible. Theres just too much of both.

[Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversations newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

Second, this doesnt mean that the fact-versus-opinion distinction should be retired as a quaint idea from a bygone era. When it matters, theres little we cant eventually figure out.

Third, the greatest challenge fake news poses may be an ecological one: namely, how to protect precious natural resources our time and attention from its pollution.

Disproving fake news is time-consuming. But ignoring it corrodes trust.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/i-went-down-the-rabbit-hole-to-debunk-misinformation-heres-what-i-learned-about-big-ben-and-online-information-overload-154923.

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I went down the 'rabbit hole' to debunk misinformation here's what I learned about Big Ben and online information overload - Trumbull Times

Grammatical article in English

The () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers or speakers. It is the definite article in English. The is the most commonly used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words.[1] It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of either gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers.

In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as // (with the voiced dental fricative // followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as /i/ (homophone of pronoun thee) when followed by a vowel sound or used as an emphatic form.[2]

Modern American and New Zealand English have an increasing tendency to limit usage of /i/ pronunciation and use //, even before a vowel.[3][4]

Definite article principles in English are described under "Use of articles". The, as in phrases like "the more the better", has a distinct origin and etymology and by chance has evolved to be identical to the definite article.[5]

The and that are common developments from the same Old English system. Old English had a definite article se (in the masculine gender), so (feminine), and t (neuter). In Middle English, these had all merged into e, the ancestor of the Modern English word the.[6]

An area in which the use or non-use of the is sometimes problematic is with geographic names:

Countries and territorial regions are notably mixed, most exclude "the" but there are some that adhere to secondary rules:

Since "the" is one of the most frequently used words in English, at various times short abbreviations for it have been found:

Occasional proposals have been made by individuals for an abbreviation. In 1916, Legros & Grant included in their classic printers' handbook Typographical Printing-Surfaces, a proposal for a letter similar to to represent "Th", thus abbreviating "the" to e.[12]

In Middle English, the (e) was frequently abbreviated as a with a small e above it, similar to the abbreviation for that, which was a with a small t above it. During the latter Middle English and Early Modern English periods, the letter thorn () in its common script, or cursive form, came to resemble a y shape. As a result, the use of a y with an e above it () as an abbreviation became common. This can still be seen in reprints of the 1611 edition of the King James Version of the Bible in places such as Romans 15:29, or in the Mayflower Compact. Historically, the article was never pronounced with a y sound, even when so written.

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The - Wikipedia

A search engine is a website that allows users to look up information on the World Wide Web (www). The search engine will achieve this by looking at many web pages to find matches to the user's search inputs. It will return results ranked by relevancy and popularity by the search engine. Some popular search-engines are Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, Forestle and Bing. Older services include Webcrawler, Lycos, and Alta Vista.

To use a search engine you must enter at least one keyword in to the search box. Usually an on-screen button must be clicked on to submit the search. The search engine looks for matches between the keyword(s) entered and its database of websites and words.

After the user inputs their search or query into the search bar, a list of results will appear on the screen known as search engine results page (SERP). This list of webpages contains matches related to the user's query in a particular order determined by a ranking system. Most search engine will remove "spam" pages from the list of results to provide a better list of results. The user can then click on any of the links to go to that webpage.

Search engines are some of the most advanced websites on the web. They use special computer code to sort the web pages on SERPs. The most popular or highest quality web pages will be near the top of the list.

When a user types words into the search engine, it looks for web pages with those words. There could be thousands, or even millions, of web pages with those words. So, the search engine helps users by putting the web pages it thinks the user wants first.

Search engines are very useful to find information about anything quickly and easily. Using more keywords or different keywords improves the results of searches.

A search service may also include a portal with news, games, and more information besides a search engine. Yahoo! has a popular portal, and MSN Search is part of the MSN portal, while Google has a simple design on its front page. Search services usually work without charging money for finding sites, and are often supported with text or banner advertisements.

Originally posted here:
Search engine - Simple English Wikipedia, the free ...

WVU Libraries is hosting Amplifying Appalachia, a virtual Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon from March 1-5. The event is open to anyone who would like to participate.

Assistant English professor and co-organizer of the event Erin Brock Carlson said Edit-a-Thon is a community-organized event that aims to teach attendees how to edit, update and add articles on Wikipedia, with the hope that this would create like regular contributors and regular editors.

At the events kickoff Zoom meeting on March 1, Carlson and her co-organizer, Humanities Librarian Lynne Stahl, spoke about the astounding lack of diversity among current Wikipedia contributors.

Carlson cited a 2011 study conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation that found that less than 10% of Wikipedia contributors identify as (cisgender or transgender) women, and only about 17% of Wikipedias biographical articles are about women.

There's one really wonderful organization called Art + Feminism... founded in 2014, Carlson said during the Zoom meeting. It's this ongoing effort to really improve gender equity in Wikipedia's art-related content, because that's a space in which there is definitely a lack of representation.

WVUs Amplifying Appalachia Edit-a-Thon is supported by Art + Feminism, which has already contributed to improving more than 80,000 Wikipedia articles at the time of writing.

Previously, WVU has only held in-person Edit-a-Thons, but the Amplifying Appalachia'' planning committee was determined to overcome the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic in organizing this entirely virtual event.

The Edit-a-Thon will be continuing through the week until Friday, March 5, following an asynchronous format. According to Carlson, an asynchronous format might allow for more people to edit on their own time and at their own pace.

Participation is expected to exceed the planning committees goals, with 81 participants currently enrolled.

Weve [also] been working with 15 or so instructors who are incorporating the Edit-a-Thon into their courses this semester, which is exciting, Stahl added.

Carlson and Stahl also emphasized during the events kickoff Zoom meeting that although editing Wikipedia pages may seem like a daunting task, its actually quite simple once you get started.

Familiarizing yourself with [Wikipedias] major guidelines and policies is a good idea, Stahl said, and once youve done that, I think the best way [to get started] is just to jump in and make some edits. You can start smalladding links, sources and categories, for example, which helped me get over the intimidation factor.

The events organizers have put together a collection of resources that can be easily accessed through the event dashboard to help answer any questions new editors may have.

According to Carlson, the planning committee hopes that the Amplifying Appalachia Edit-a-Thon will help increase familiarity with Wikipedia across campus and encourage the amplification of stories, people and accomplishments of Appalachia, especially for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ community members and others who are often overlooked.

In addition, drop-in hours will be open to all from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. March 4-5 via Zoom, and a post-participation survey will be available for anyone who has participated in the event.

Since Wikipedia is a community-driven, crowd-sourced space for information, its up to us to make sure that it reflects the stories that ought to be told, Carlson said.

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Virtual Edit-a-Thon hosted by WVU libraries to improve Wikipedia articles - The Daily Athenaeum - thedaonline