The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web is a fruitful environment for the massive diffusion of unverified rumors. In this work, using a massive quantitative analysis of Facebook, we show that information related to distinct narratives––conspiracy theories and scientific news––generates homogeneous and polarized communities (i.e., echo chambers) having similar information consumption patterns.
Basically, Facebook becomes an echo chamber for like minded individuals, limiting access to information that is contrary to the beliefs of the echo chamber.
So many people, especially young people and teenagers, spend a significant period of time each day staring at a screen of some kind, whether that be a computer, smartphone, tablet, or the regular old TV. Now, a new study is warning parents that all that screen time may be behind a stunning rise in children…
The mainstreaming of the popular roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons has significantly changed how people address and understand the game. It’s become a spectator sport and a way for some gamers to earn their living. D&D gameplay and its symbolism have become a significant plot point in geek-oriented TV shows like Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory. It’s the subject of copious scientific…
10 Google Apps Tricks to learn for 2017. Increase your digital literacy with these Google Apps tricks: Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive Source: 10 Google Apps Tricks to Learn for 2017 – Teacher Tech One skill I’d add to this list is to learn how to bookmark individual files and folders in your browser toolbar for…
A corporate laptop being used in a coffee shop at a weekend was enough to allow a sophisticated cybercrime group to compromise an organisation’s entire infrastructure. The incident was detailed by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike as part of its Cyber Intrusion Services Casebook 2018 report and serves as a reminder that laptops and other devices that are secure while…
Quill is a is a free, web-based tool that provides personalized, interactive writing and grammar activities. ‘Students using Quill learn writing and grammar skills by writing sentences and proofreading passages. Source: Two New Tools to Enhance Students Writing ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning I had never heard of Quill before, but it looks like…
A professor of surgery says students have spent so much time in front of screens and so little time using their hands that they have lost the dexterity for stitching or sewing up patients. Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College, London, says young people have so little experience of craft skills that…
