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Digital Planet: Who is most susceptible to fake news?

Factual: Science & Nature

Who is most susceptible to fake news?

03/11/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, Who is most susceptible to fake news?

Study into fake Covid-19 news shows Twitter is a fertile platform for conspiracy believers

A study into fake Covid-19 news shows Twitter is a fertile platform for conspiracy believers.

A new study shows that twitter remains a platform with many conspiracy believers.  The work also reveals that compared to the Dutch public, the British are not as good at judging false coronavirus stories to be untrue.  The Covid-19 and the Rhetoric of Untruth project - an Anglo-Dutch research initiative – has focussed on the impact of fake news and conspiracy theories during the coronavirus pandemic. Professor Sebastian Groes from Wolverhampton University explains the findings so far.  

The Social Network of Game of Thrones
What are the secrets behind the hugely successful fantasy series?  New research into the George R.R. Martin book series “A Song of Fire and Ice” shows that very plausible and almost real life social network between characters is the key.  Professor Colm Connaughton of the University of Warwick explains how physics, mathematics, psychology and computing, were all used to build a network map linking the two thousand characters and their thousands of interactions.

AI that Can Identify Individual Birds
Could machines be better ornithologists than humans? Deep learning systems are now able to distinguish between species of birds, but also individual animals.  At the moment, the only way that conservationists can identify individual birds is by tagging them. That’s time consuming, costly and a bit of an inconvenience for the creatures themselves. Anthea Lacchia has been finding out more about how the algorithms are helping out. 
The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.

Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

(Image: Getty Images)

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