This paper examines the 2016 US presidential election campaign to identify problems with, causes of and solutions to the contemporary fake news phenomenon. To achieve this, we employ textual analys...

/pdf/fake-news-and-the-economy-of-emotions-problems-causes-4wu4kmkmr8.pdf

Fake News and The Economy of Emotions: Problems, causes, solutions

Objective To identify the source (press releases or news) of distortions, exaggerations, or changes to the main conclusions drawn from research that could potentially influence a reader’s health related behaviour.

Design Retrospective quantitative content analysis.

Setting Journal articles, press releases, and related news, with accompanying simulations.

Sample Press releases (n=462) on biomedical and health related science issued by 20 leading UK universities in 2011, alongside their associated peer reviewed research papers and news stories (n=668).

Main outcome measures Advice to readers to change behaviour, causal statements drawn from correlational research, and inference to humans from animal research that went beyond those in the associated peer reviewed papers.

Results 40% (95% confidence interval 33% to 46%) of the press releases contained exaggerated advice, 33% (26% to 40%) contained exaggerated causal claims, and 36% (28% to 46%) contained exaggerated inference to humans from animal research. When press releases contained such exaggeration, 58% (95% confidence interval 48% to 68%), 81% (70% to 93%), and 86% (77% to 95%) of news stories, respectively, contained similar exaggeration, compared with exaggeration rates of 17% (10% to 24%), 18% (9% to 27%), and 10% (0% to 19%) in news when the press releases were not exaggerated. Odds ratios for each category of analysis were 6.5 (95% confidence interval 3.5 to 12), 20 (7.6 to 51), and 56 (15 to 211). At the same time, there was little evidence that exaggeration in press releases increased the uptake of news.

Conclusions Exaggeration in news is strongly associated with exaggeration in press releases. Improving the accuracy of academic press releases could represent a key opportunity for reducing misleading health related news.

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/349/bmj.g7015.full.pdf

The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: retrospective observational study.

Background
Exaggerated or simplistic news is often blamed for adversely influencing public health. However, recent findings suggested many exaggerations were already present in university press releases, which scientists approve. Surprisingly, these exaggerations were not associated with more news coverage. Here we test whether these two controversial results also arise in press releases from prominent science and medical journals. We then investigate the influence of mitigating caveats in press releases, to test assumptions that caveats harm news interest or are ignored.

Methods and Findings
Using quantitative content analysis, we analyzed press releases (N = 534) on biomedical and health-related science issued by leading peer-reviewed journals. We similarly analysed the associated peer-reviewed papers (N = 534) and news stories (N = 582). Main outcome measures were advice to readers and causal statements drawn from correlational research. Exaggerations in press releases predicted exaggerations in news (odds ratios 2.4 and 10.9, 95% CIs 1.3 to 4.5 and 3.9 to 30.1) but were not associated with increased news coverage, consistent with previous findings. Combining datasets from universities and journals (996 press releases, 1250 news), we found that when caveats appeared in press releases there was no reduction in journalistic uptake, but there was a clear increase in caveats in news (odds ratios 9.6 and 9.5 for caveats for advice and causal claims, CIs 4.1 to 24.3 and 6.0 to 15.2). The main study limitation is its retrospective correlational nature.

Conclusions
For health and science news directly inspired by press releases, the main source of both exaggerations and caveats appears to be the press release itself. However we find no evidence that exaggerations increase, or caveats decrease, the likelihood of news coverage. These findings should be encouraging for press officers and scientists who wish to minimise exaggeration and include caveats in their press releases.

/pdf/exaggerations-and-caveats-in-press-releases-and-health-pyorwn8umt.pdf

Exaggerations and Caveats in Press Releases and Health-Related Science News.

BACKGROUND: There has been insufficient research attention to alcohol industry methods of influencing public policies. With the exception of the tobacco industry, there have been few studies of the impact of corporate lobbying on public health policymaking more broadly. METHODS: We summarize here findings from documentary analyses and interview studies in an integrative review of corporate efforts to influence UK policy on minimum unit pricing (MUP) of alcohol 2007-10. RESULTS: Alcohol producers and retailers adopted a long-term, relationship-building approach to policy influence, in which personal contacts with key policymakers were established and nurtured, including when they were not in government. The alcohol industry was successful in achieving access to UK policymakers at the highest levels of government and at all stages of the policy process. Within the United Kingdom, political devolution and the formation for the first time of a Scottish National Party (SNP) government disrupted the existing long-term strategy of alcohol industry actors and created the conditions for evidence-based policy innovations such as MUP. CONCLUSIONS: Comparisons between policy communities within the United Kingdom and elsewhere are useful to the understanding of how different policy environments are amenable to influence through lobbying. Greater transparency in how policy is made is likely to lead to more effective alcohol and other public policies globally by constraining the influence of vested interests.

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/add.12380

Vested interests in addiction research and policy. The challenge corporate lobbying poses to reducing society's alcohol problems: insights from UK evidence on minimum unit pricing.

This paper examines the problems for police reputation, operational effectiveness and integrity of the criminal justice system that can arise from off-duty use of social media (SM) by police officers. It locates recent trends in SM use against the background of changes in information and communication practices in policing and the wider community. The concept of police indiscretion is used to explore those features of SM that facilitate and encourage disclosures as well as to, using a series of case studies, identify the harms that can arise. It is suggested that there is currently insufficient appreciation of how SM is impacting upon policing and that, in contrast to the impacts of previous new technologies, SM has the potential to transform many policing practices more quickly and in a more wholesale fashion. Some suggestions for responding to this scenario are offered.

Brian Leveson

Papers

An inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press