Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy? WORKS REFERENCED • Emma Grey Ellis, Fake Think Tanks Fuel Fake News—And the President’s Tweets, Wired, Published January 24, 2017, https://www.wired.com/2017/01/fake-think-tanks-fuelfake-news-presidents-tweets/ • UN • Nick • David • Amar Toor, • Seth Bilton, Fake news is about to get even scarier than you ever dreamed, Vanity Fair, Published January 26, 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/fake-newstechnology Germany passes controversial law to fine Facebook over hate speech., The Verge, Published June 30, 2017, https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/30/15898386/ germany-facebook-hate-speech-law-passed • Elizabeth Kolbert, Why facts don’t change our minds, The New Yorker, Published February 27, 2017, http://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dontchange-our-minds • Craig Silverman, The Backfire Effect, Columbia Journalism Review, Published June 17, 2011, http://archives.cjr.org/ behind_the_news/the_backfire_effect.php • Sam Levin, Facebook promised to tackle fake news. But the evidence shows it’s not working, The Guardian, Original Publication May 16, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2017/may/16/facebook-fake-news-tools-notworking • Brendan Nyhan, Why More Democrats Are Now Embracing Conspiracy Theories, The New York Times, Published February 15, 2017, https://www.nytimes. com/2017/02/15/upshot/why-more-democrats-are-nowembracing-conspiracy-theories.html •  American Press Institute, Fact checking research, https:// www.americanpressinstitute.org/fact-checking-researchstudies/ Issue Three: Editorial conflation of popularity, legitimacy and user intentionality • Edelman Trust Barometer 2017, http://www.edelman. com/global-results/ • Tom Nichols, How America Lost Faith in Expertise, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2017 issue, https://www. foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-02-13/ how-america-lost-faith-expertise • Claire Cain Miller, When Algorithms Discriminate, The New York Times, Published July 9, 2015, https://www. nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithmsdiscriminate.html © Copyright The Omidyar Group 2017. All rights reserved. Women (website), UN Women ad series reveals widespread sexism, October 21, 2013, http://www. unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2013/10/women-shouldads Auerbach, Filling the Void, Slate, Published November 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/ technology/bitwise/2013/11/google_autocomplete_the_ results_aren_t_always_what_you_think_they_are.html Stephens-Davidowitz, Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets, The Guardian, Published July 9, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2017/jul/09/everybody-lies-how-googlereveals-darkest-secrets-seth-stephens-davidowitz • Nikki Williams, Bot Journalism: Who’s Writing That Piece You’re Reading? Center for Digital Ethics and Policy, http://digitalethics.org/essays/bot-journalism-whoswriting-that-piece-youre-reading/ Issue Four: Political capture • Samantha Bradshaw & Philip N. Howard, Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation. Samuel Woolley and Philip N. Howard, Eds. Working Paper 2017.12. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. http://comprop.oii.ox.ac. uk/ • Leo Benedictus, Invasion of the troll armies: from Russian Trump supporters to Turkish state stooges, The Guardian, Published November 6, 2016, https://www.theguardian. com/media/2016/nov/06/troll-armies-social-mediatrump-russian • Henry Farrell, Chinese government fakes nearly 450 million social media comments a year. This is why, The Washington Post, Published May 19, 2016, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/ wp/2016/05/19/the-chinese-government-fakes-nearly450-million-social-media-comments-a-year-this-iswhy/? • Megha Rajagopalan, Internet Trolls Are Using Facebook To Target Myanmar’s Muslims, BuzzFeed, Published March 18, 2017, https://www.buzzfeed.com/meghara/howfake-news-and-online-hate-are-making-life-hell-for? • Matthias Lüfkens, How world leaders build their massive Twitter followings, Quartz, Published May 7, 2015, https:// qz.com/399530/how-world-leaders-build-their-massivetwitter-followings/ PAGE 18