Weather and politics heated up for August, as a result there was no shortage of news items to validate for trustworthiness and credibility. Upcoming midterm elections and ongoing investigations are again putting the focus on issues the current administration and general public continue to have regarding mainstream media bias. Aside from the political arena where credibility and trust remain hot topics, social media companies are now also facing increasing scrutiny. ‘Fake News’ remained a buzzword and if anything expanded in scope for the month.
August 2018, Trust-Scoretm results for popular articles and tweets as measured/validated by FactPipe:
Highest T-Scoretm (Category): U.S. News
Highest Score (Article): “Witnesses Watched Woman Being Attacked by Alligator, 911 Call Reveals”
Highest Score (Tweet): “2007-2015, Percentage of students on track to graduate Chicago High Schools rose from 61% to 85%”
Lowest T-Scoretm (Category): Politics
Lowest Score (Article): “Asia Argento Denies Sexual Assault Allegation”
Lowest Score: (Tweet): “Report Just Out, China hacked Hillary Clinton’s private Email Server.”
“A few surprises for the month on our side. What were recently the highest and lowest scoring categories, Sports and Politics respectively, become intertwined once again as the NFL is set to kick-off its regular season. This in large part helps us explain why the credibility of sports related articles fell for the month. Finance, another category which generally scores high, included Tesla/Elon Musk related items which tend to be quite divisive, thus driving down the category score. Overall, this resulted in the 'U.S News' category leading the way.
“The tragic alligator attack news item was interesting since it discussed specific emotions felt by witnesses which were supported by a 911 recording and police report, thus earning high marks for credibility by our voters. Conversely, the Asia Argento article was presented as a blanket denial by her with little supporting information, which our end-users found suspicious. Subsequent evidence appeared to support such suspicions.” said Darius Hatami, CIO of FactPipe.
He continued, stating, “Keep in mind however that the data we use to derive scores is fluid and the results can change in the future for any given time period.”
Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, Factpipe, www.FactPipe.com utilizes weighted collective intelligence and crowd-voting driven data to measure the trustworthiness and credibility of news articles, sites, persons and tweets. FactPipe is a leading independent source of reliability and credibility measurement of internet content. Its sister site, WealthPipe, launching Q4 2018, is financial news specific.
