Understanding Media. Recourses

• The Social Dilemma (2020). Business models and effects of online companies, critical, Netflix documentary to watch.

• Gianfranco Polizzi, PhD tips on how to evaluate information online. Advice is based on semi-structured interviews with digital experts in the UK. Useful because of mentioned tips and easy-to-read explanation about the problem of misinformation online.

• The News Manual. A Professional Resource for Journalists and the Media. Despite being a professional recourse, very useful tool for beginners or people interested in media and journalism.

• Disinformation Primer from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Up to date, basic reliable resource. Chapters explaining hate speech, dangerous speech and other aspects of information disorder; Glossary of Terms, Manipulation Technique Key Terms.

• Infodemic concept explained.

Some reliable[1] news sources:

In Lithuanian

• https://www.lrt.lt/ (Lithuanian national broadcaster’s news website ).

In Russian

• https://www.svoboda.org/ (Radio Free Europe, news and high-quality analysis).

In English

• https://www.bbc.com/news . “Golden standard” of neutral journalism. Useful, reliable, short, simply written online news.
• https://www.theguardian.com/international  Checked and reliable news and its analysis, political left positioning.
• https://www.understandingwar.org/ Institute for the study of war. Highly professional and specialized information on Russia – Ukraine war.
• https://www.bloomberg.com/europe High quality news and deep analysis of economy and political matters. One can read free of charge three articles per month.

Further readings:

• Law on the Provision of Information to the Public: https://e-seimas.lrs.lt/portal/legalAct/lt/TAD/TAIS.29884/asr

• the Code of Ethics in Providing Information to the Public of Lithuania: https://www.etikoskomisija.lt/teisine-informacija/etikos-kodeksai/item/215-visuomenes-informavimo-etikos-kodeksas

• Yang, S., Shu, K., Wang, S., Gu, R., Wu, F., & Liu, H. (2019). Unsupervised Fake News Detection on Social Media: A Generative Approach. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 33, 5644–5651. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1609%2Faaai.v33i01.33015644

• UN tackles ‘infodemic’ of misinformation and cybercrime in COVID-19 crisis. Retrieved from: https://www.un.org/en/un-coronavirus-communications-team/un-tackling-%E2%80%98infodemic%E2%80%99-misinformation-and-cybercrime-covid-19

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[1] Mentioned news media organizations use standards and principles of quality journalism (like objectivity, neutrality, impartiality) to a different extent. They provide us with much, much more reliable, better quality information compare to other non-journalistic sources. But even this information often is not, and in many cases can’t be absolutely, undoubtedly, 100 percent precise and impartial.  On rare occasions media content charged with misinformation or disinformation is published. Journalists are people, so mistakes or even lies are unavoidable like in any other profession, but quality news media organizations use mechanisms and procedures which minimalize probability of misleading information. Once detected, mistakes are publicly corrected – it‘s normal and very important practice.