Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their “most important” source; (ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; (iii) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and (iv) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.

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Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa University of Chicago Press, 2011 This book has much to say that is perceptive about today's undergraduate higher education in the United States. It will be valuable to review the authors' insights. At the same time, it will be as instructive to note the book's weaknesses, and especially what is omitted from the discussion. It is a discussion that is truncated intellectually by the authors' close adherence to the selective awareness that so greatly typifies the mindscape of the contemporary American "establishment" in academia and throughout the commanding heights of American society. That mindscape allows a recognition of many things, but not of others. The authors are both faculty members at major American universities. Richard Arum is a sociology professor at New York University with a tie to the university's school of education. He is the author of several books on education and director of the Education Research Program sponsored by the Social Science Research Council. His co-author, Josipa Roksa, is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. That the book is published by the University of Chicago Press attests to its presumptive merit. Academically Adrift furnishes an example of something that has long been common in social science writing: a rather thin empirical study serving as the work's own contribution, combined with considerable additional material coming out of the literature on whatever subject is being explored. The function of the authors' own research is thus often to serve more or less as scientistic windowdressing. The reason we say the empiricism for this book is "thin" is that the "longitudinal data of 2,322 students," while seemingly ample, involves students spread over "a diverse range of campuses," including "liberal arts colleges and large research institutions, as well as a number of historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions," all "dispersed nationally across all four regions of the country." This must necessarily mean that the "sample" from any given institution or program was quite small. We are told that the authors didn't concern themselves with the appropriateness of each sample, but left the recruitment and retention of the sample's students to each of the respective institutions. The authors acknowledge that the study included fewer men than women, and more good students than those of "lower scholastic ability." So far as this book is concerned, however, the thinness doesn't particularly hurt the content, since so much of what is said doesn't especially depend upon anything unique found by the authors' own research. A brief summary is provided when the authors say that "we will highlight four core 'important lessons' from our research." These are that the institutions and students are "academically adrift" (which is the basis for the book's title), that students gain surprisingly little from their college experience, that there is "persistent and growing inequality" in the students' learning, and that "there is notable variation both within and across institutions" so far as "measurable differences in students' educational experiences" is concerned. Following the lead of former president Derek Bok of Harvard and of the Council for Aid to Education, the authors' ideal for higher education is that it will enhance students' "capacity for critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing." These are the three ingredients measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), which the authors value most among the various assessment tools. The CLA results, they say, show that "growing numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication are either exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent. …

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All- Administrative University and Why It MattersBenjamin Ginsberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 248 pp. $29.95This is a horrifying book: I cannot recall ever being so upset so quickly, even by overviews of or commentaries on the economic, political, or militaristic debacles that have haunted the world during the past century. Because I have dedicated my professional life to academia, before I began to read, I alerted myself to be vigilantly objective, but I was roiling with anger after a mere paragraph or two. Not that I was unaware of the situation. My mother, my father, and I have just under 200 years invested in formal education: learning, instructing, and even a bit of administering. From the time that I was old enough to understand matters, all I ever heard at the end of each day was a recitation of what had occurred in my parents' schools. The problems usually, though not always, stemmed from inept or demagogic administrators who caused a great deal of ongoing harm. I never met the early tyrants, but now 60 years later, I still recall their names. Eventually my father moved on to college teaching, but matters here were even worse. My own experiences as a professor at two major universities confirm much that Benjamin Ginsberg offers in this extremely important study, although I was lucky to work closely with three deans who were extremely efficacious and kind, at least to me. I never had any trouble or problems with administrators. I prospered. However, as the chair of the grievance committee at an institution with 750 full- time faculty members, I was aware that other bodies rolled- right offthe campus (although, ironically, this was not always an administrator's fault).Despite my knowledge, I was immediately enlightened: Ginsberg, a professor at Johns Hopkins, has brought together a panoply of miseries inflicted on the professoriate and by extension on students as well as on higher education generally. Though all academics are aware of most of the points he makes, it may never have occurred to them (or to me) that what is being done is based on a hidden agenda, one that is extremely detrimental to the faculty. In the recent past, professors had a great deal of power and used it to teach and make discoveries in their fields, thus forwarding the two primary goals of an academic institution: instruction and research. Slowly but inexorably, administration has increased its own size (adding deans, associate deans, assistant deans; provosts and their subordinates; and so on, interminably but superfluously) and its power, delimiting and deflecting faculty influence in the decision- making process; whereas in the past, it would have been difficult or impossible to build a new arena, pay a football coach five million dollars a year, or alter the curriculum without full faculty cooperation, today the faculty may be the last to learn that some major alteration has been instituted. Ginsberg calls this "rampant administrative blight." Throughout this study, he adduces frequent apposite examples, some in great detail, to prove his points. So, for example, the lack of faculty influence at Boston University is demonstrated by the fact that a high percentage of professors "loathed and feared the dictatorial President John Silber," but they were unable to divest themselves of their leader.One of the major negative alterations in higher education has been the substitution of adjuncts (part- timers) for tenured or tenure track faculty. In 1976, 31 percent were adjuncts; by 2005, this had increased to 48 percent; during the same period, however, part- time administrators had decreased from four to three percent. Ginsberg cites the egregious case of the University of Maryland's main campus where one will find 29 vice- presidents and assistants of various stripes and denominations. Many earn more than $200,000 a year. As this university retrenched (a contractual arrangement that generally allows for the dismissal of tenured professors), the administrators' salaries soared. …

The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All- Administrative University and Why It Matters

Are you looking to uncover the slow professor challenging the culture of speed in the academy Digitalbook. Correct here it is possible to locate as well as download the slow professor challenging the culture of speed in the academy Book. We've got ebooks for every single topic the slow professor challenging the culture of speed in the academy accessible for download cost-free. Search the site also as find Jean Campbell eBook in layout. We also have a fantastic collection of information connected to this Digitalbook for you. As well because the best part is you could assessment as well as download for the slow professor challenging the culture of speed in the academy eBook

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The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy

The potential for big data to contribute to the US intelligence mission goes beyond bulk collection, social media and counterterrorism. Applications will speak to a range of issues of major concern to intelligence agencies, from military operations to climate change to cyber security. There are challenges too: procurement lags, data stovepiping, separating signal from noise, sources and methods, a range of normative issues, and central to managing these challenges, human capital. These potential applications and challenges are discussed and a closer look at what data scientists do in the Intelligence Community (IC) is offered. Effectively filling the ranks of the IC’s data science workforce will depend on the provision of well-trained data scientists from the higher education system. Program offerings at America’s top fifty universities will thus be surveyed (just a few years ago there were reportedly no degrees in data science). One Master’s program that has melded data science with intelligence is examined as well as a university big data research center focused on security and intelligence. This discussion goes a long way to clarify the prospective uses of data science in intelligence while probing perhaps the key challenge to optimal application of big data in the IC. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Stephen Coulthart for his generous input while developing this project. I'm also deeply appreciative of the feedback from the two anonymous reviewers. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol9/iss2/ 6

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Big Data and Intelligence: Applications, Human Capital, and Education

Misinformation and disinformation, often in the form of fake news disseminated on social media, are proliferating in the “post-truth” era, with profound implications for public and policy discourse...

Disinformation in Contemporary U.S. Foreign Policy: Impacts and Ethics in an Era of Fake News, Social Media, and Artificial Intelligence

Social media use has become ubiquitous not just among individuals, groups, and businesses, but also government institutions. In turn, the adoption of services like Facebook and Twitter in the public sector has increasingly become the focus of academic study. U.S. intelligence agencies, however, have been excluded from examination. The potential benefits—engagement, education, and transparency, among others—are significant, and studying how U.S. intelligence uses social media will help us realize those benefits. In the arcane, complex and potentially intrusive world of intelligence, new opportunities to bolster public knowledge and accountability must be utilized. Today, understanding government requires studying egovernment, and in intelligence, social media likely represents the most direction connection between citizens and the public agencies that serve them. To take a first step, this study maps how U.S. intelligence agencies are using Facebook and Twitter, examines other social media practices, and presents findings from correspondence with four intelligence and security journalists. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol8/iss5/7

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Social Media and U.S. Intelligence Agencies: Just Trending or a Real Tool to Engage and Educate?

This article makes the case for better connecting the study of organizations and the practice of intelligence in the United States. The need for such efforts is outlined and a series of recommendat...

Building Research Partnerships to Bridge Gaps between the Study of Organizations and the Practice of Intelligence

Propaganda, spin, and untruths are nothing new in politics and public affairs. But, the scope and pervasive character of misinformation and fake news in what has been labeled the “post-truth” era is a uniquely alarming development, one with critical implications for democracy and public policy. Colleges and universities in the United States are working to adapt to this issue and it could be argued that media literacy education—with a focus on news media—has never been more important. This article considers the gravity and contours of post-truth dynamics and argues that U.S. intelligence studies programs and faculty have a natural and needed role to play in preparing students—and not just their students—to be adept in navigating the contemporary (fake) news and (mis) information environment. In addition to options for instruction, the article presents ideas on how faculty can engage community members and the broader public on these issues.

Michael Landon-Murray

Papers

Big Data and Intelligence: Applications, Human Capital, and Education

Disinformation in Contemporary U.S. Foreign Policy: Impacts and Ethics in an Era of Fake News, Social Media, and Artificial Intelligence

Social Media and U.S. Intelligence Agencies: Just Trending or a Real Tool to Engage and Educate?

Building Research Partnerships to Bridge Gaps between the Study of Organizations and the Practice of Intelligence

U.S. Intelligence Studies Programs and Educators in the “Post-Truth” Era