Tag Archives: fake news

U-M moves exclusively to slacks

By | April 1, 2022

The Michigan IT Steerage Committee is happy to announce that the university has signed an enterprise licensing agreement to use slacks. Effective April 1, 2023, only khaki slacks will be allowed for all faculty and staff on the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Flint, and Michigan Medicine campuses. Dresses, jeans, kilts, shorts, skirts, and swimsuits will no longer be considered… Read More »

U-M rolls out new eco-friendly workstations

By | April 1, 2021

The Michigan IT Steerage Committee is happy to announce a new, high-end desktop workstation for use in both the academic and medical center environments across the university.  Introducing the Future Object-Oriented Laptop, a brand-new technology designed to be more “green”—sustainable, biodegradable, and using fewer heavy metals and less electricity to create and to operate—than contemporary workstations. Included in… Read More »

Disinformation, misinformation, and fake news Teach-Out

By | September 11, 2020

In a new Center for Academic Innovation Teach-Out, Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, an online social media monitoring company, outlines tactics everyday people can use to anticipate, spot, and react to disinformation from potential “threat actors.” He calls it the “Four D’s” — Dismiss, Distract, Distort, and Dismay. The Disinformation, Misinformation, and Fake News Teach-Out helps people understand the… Read More »

Introducing Trio 3FA

By | April 1, 2020

We all know that two-factor authentication (2FA) adds an extra layer of security to computer systems, applications, networks, and servers. It combines something you know, like a password or PIN, and something you have, like your 2FA token (either a physical item or a smartphone app). Well, if two-factor is good, then three-factor must be better! U-M has… Read More »

Why fears of fake news are overhyped

By | February 13, 2019

A study conducted by U-M professor of public policy Brendan Nyhan suggests that the effect of fake news on the 2016 election has been overestimated. Using laptop/desktop web traffic data from a nationally representative online panel allowed Nyhan and his colleagues to measure who visited fake news sites before the 2016 election with unprecedented precision. “Relatively few people consumed this form… Read More »

U-M experts figure prominently in election coverage

In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, concerns about hacking, transparency, and the influence of “fake news” on election outcomes garnered unprecedented coverage by news organizations. Both national and local media often reached out to U-M experts in cybersecurity, social media, and data analysis to provide perspective, interpret research, and explain the challenges of our current electoral… Read More »

Dissonance Event Series: Catching Fake News, Nov. 27

Make plans to join us on Tuesday, November 27, at 6:15 p.m., in the Rackham Assembly Hall on the UM-Ann Arbor campus (915 E. Washington St.) for an exciting Dissonance event: Catching Fake News. There is no charge for this event and no need to register. A panel of experts will explore, two years after the 2016 election,… Read More »

Fake news detector developed at U-M works better than a human

By | August 22, 2018

An algorithm-based system that identifies telltale linguistic cues in fake news stories could provide news aggregator and social media sites like Google News with a new weapon in the fight against misinformation. Led by computer science and engineering professor Rada Mihalcea, the U-M researchers who developed the system have demonstrated that it’s comparable to and sometimes better than humans… Read More »

New center to promote social media responsibility, tackle fake news

By | March 7, 2018

School of Information experts are sounding the alarm on a potential information apocalypse, a state when fake news and altered videos on social media and elsewhere effectively end social reality as we know it. To address this growing concern and bring some of the brightest minds together to brainstorm creative solutions, U-M has formed the School of Information… Read More »

The coming death of facts?

By | February 16, 2018

Aviv Ovadya, chief technologist at the School of Information’s Center for Social Media Responsibility, cautions that technology and social media that can be used to enhance and distort what is real is evolving faster than our ability to understand and control or mitigate it. “I’m from the free and open source culture,” he says. “The goal isn’t to… Read More »

Michigan IT joins Myspace

By | April 1, 2017

Social media is an ever-changing landscape of exciting options. There’s Friendster, Orkut, Vine, and Yik-Yak just to name a few. But no social media platform is as leading edge, new, and cool as Myspace. That’s why the Michigan IT Steering Committee has created a Michigan IT Myspace account! Some of the standout features of Myspace include: Friends — Connect with… Read More »

MTS returns!

By | April 1, 2017

Some people have email requirements that don’t fit neatly into the university’s two solutions, Google Mail (for the academic side) and Microsoft Exchange (for Michigan Medicine). To address those needs ITS has brought up an instance of the long-retired Michigan Terminal System (MTS), and provided access to its email tool $MESSAGESYSTEM. MTS is one of the first time-sharing computer operating… Read More »

Saving the truth

By | March 4, 2017

Recently, BBC Future Now launched a series about the grand challenges we face in the 21st Century. Many on their panel of experts named the breakdown of trusted sources of information as one of the most pressing problems today. Among them was Paul Resnick, professor of information at U-M. Working out who to trust and what to believe has always been… Read More »