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Proposal
Our project is to create a website that fosters and facilitates discussion towards finding truth in news stories. We want to do this with a focus on user moderation, easy access to aggregated information as well encourages and rewards behaviour that contributes to positive, open-minded and critical discussion.
The domain we are working in is Fake News while the problem space we’re choosing to explore in depth is Trusting Others. Information is the easiest to obtain than it has ever been before however the issue of discerning fact from fiction has been an issue that has been a growing concern especially to those who have grown up in the digital era. When exploring the topic initially, our team came to the dilemma in which we had to decide: “Are sources unreliable until proven reliable or reliable until proven unreliable?” We were ultimately split but agreed that the ideal situation would be that informative sources should be able to be considered reliable unless they have proven otherwise. In the case where information is hidden, obscured or otherwise unavailable to a community, the community might be able to come to common understandings that shed light on event that would be otherwise unknowable by an individual or other limited viewpoints. An example of this would be how scientific theories are built on the collective knowledge built by those who came before the latest idea and only the idea that is ‘most correct’ can maintain its status as a dominant theory in its domain.
Issues that would arise as part of out domain is that we rely for the most part on goodwill and well-natured participation in the community we are trying to create and support. Additionally, attempts at trolling and possible attempts at astroturfing can be countered with possible restrictions on accounts below a certain age or user moderation options with conditions taking into account experience, age and reliability to ensure proper moderation.
Furthermore, while exploring domain research in particular, we found statistics that effectively described the extent in which this a wide-affective issue. A stat reads, “86% of Americans who read news articles on social media admit they don’t always fact check the articles they read.” (Zignal Labs, 2017) This indicates that the majority people have the outlook that news that gets to their screens the fastest are usually the most right. This is problematic in instances where information might be mistakenly published such as the premature announcement of Nelson Mandela’s death in 2013 which sowed seeds of distrust when his legitimate death was announced six months later. This is further supported by studies that show that the bombardment of information, whether real or false, encourages the development of cynicism or apathy that affect a person’s ability to identify reliable information in the long-term. (Balmas, 2014)
With the explored situation and challenges in mind, the team desired to innovate a solution that would address the issue of individuals’ information ‘filter bubbles’ along with the problematic increasing prevalence of mainstream media produced ‘Fake News’ , and develop a social platform that promotes extensive consideration of different perspectives . At its core, the solution should encourage discussion and interaction between its users, and provide a place for users with the common goal of finding the facts and the truth, on current topics and stories. With this in mind, the proposed concept will be ‘The Truth Table’, an online news aggregator, and public discussion forum site, with source rating and user contribution features.
Current news topics of interest will be displayed as entries on the site, and within each new topic, The Truth Table will aggregate relevant sources of various perspectives and associations, and separate between the commonly repeated facts and the unique statements and arguments presented by each source. Users are encouraged to be redirected to read directly from those sources, but are especially encouraged to read from more than one source before forming an opinion and submitting or contributing their response to The Truth Table. Users will be able to ‘quote’ snippets of sources, particularly key statements and claims of importance, and submit them to the topic’s page for further specific discussion between users regarding it. A user rating system will be in place to rank the sources for each particular topic, denoting its trustworthiness on the matter. The system is hoped to result in a visible establishment of whether a particular source is discernibly accurate, and assist in data gathering for the performance of news organisations, with the possibility of identifying trends within their claims (e.g. a site which consistently produces pieces resulting in a negative rating).
Responding to the topic will be primarily done using user submitted comments, as various forum thread channels for open discussion will be available. The aforementioned inclusion of key snippets discussions will allow users to focus on the key claims at hand, and debate specific aspects of a topic. Additionally, users will be able to manually submit other sources they have found relating to the the topic into the list. An emphasis is placed on users providing evidence and the ability to illustrate the validity of any evidence they submit to back up their discussion perspectives. A moderation team will be required to handle the inevitable inappropriate or offensive behaviour of users which break the site’s rules for maintaining civil discussion, with the ability to tag and hide contributions under a disclaimer, and suspend or ban users.
The Truth Table will need to rely on a growing user base in order to gain traction, as the whole premise depends upon users sharing the site’s generated topic pages, and seek to filter through and find the truth within the wide variety of presented sources. It aims to become a central news hub for as many users as possible, such that users would consider The Truth Table to be their first visiting point when faced with seeking the facts on a story. Users will arrive under all sorts of situations – individuals looking to form an opinion from scratch, others may be there to further contribute to a story they’re already very passionate and knowledgeable about, others visit to see whether the opposing perspective(s) hold any weight, and many might have been referred via a topic being shared on social media from their friends. Regardless of whichever user situation, The Truth Table will spread knowledge, break down ‘echo chamber’ barriers, filter out falsehoods, promote discussion among both peers and strangers, and hopefully, eventually establish for itself a community of intellectual users, debunking and shedding light to all future stories of the modern day society.
The target audience for this project was chosen to be people looking for reliable news source on Social Media, in particular younger people who prefer to use electrical devices for adapting new information compared to the physical resources including newspapers and magazines. With increased access to social media, teens and younger generations are increasingly exposed to an avalanche of fabricated content. People aged between 18 to 34, who are mostly exposed to social media will be the main target group, especially those who are aware of social trends and incidents. Social Media Users tend to follow/agree on other people’s reactions and thoughts through sharing and retweeting, rather than having their own opinions about social issues. Fake news is not limited to socio-political issues. From communal clashes to strikes in the public transport system to GPS chips in currency notes, everything “forwarded as received” can go viral. Young generations fall for these rumors mainly because these often look authentic with supporting tweets or news links. Fake news is forcing those innocent users to form biased opinions and have over-the-top reactions to many issues, a matter of great concern for society today. Automated algorithms, known as bots, help spread false reports, doctored videos, morphed pictures and hoaxes. These go viral much faster than politicians, authorities or fact-checkers can debunk them. Thus the project aims to help those who find it difficult to distinguish whether the information on internet is genuine or not especially for younger generation whose subjectivity towards social/political issue is not formed enough.
Similar existing solutions could be categorised into two main categories from which the proposed concept takes inspiration from. The first of these are traditional fact checking sites such as Snopes and FactCheck. These sites first selection topics based on their observed importance and frequency of claims relating to politics and other social and topical issues. Snopes themselves does not pick which items to cover, electing to gather items based on reader interest, determined through user submissions and social media including Google, Twitter and Facebook’s respective trending topics. FactCheck.org primarily focuses on political statements identified through their primary media sources including the major TV networks, Ads, Presidential remarks, Campaign websites, and C-SPAN. It also contains SciCheck, a segment dedicated to science-related topics, and both SciCheck and FactCheck allow for reader submitted questions through their ‘Ask a Question’ feature. These fact checking sites hire and rely on unbiased and qualified journalists to conduct research via contacting the original source, primary sources, experts, and non-partisan agencies and data sources.
The other category of existing fake news solutions is news aggregators such as All Sides and PurpleNewsFeed. While these sites also focus on U.S. politics, the noteworthy aspect is the structure of news delivery, in that no direct ‘answer’ is provided by the site, as to whether the claims are decidedly true or false. Rather, these sites aim to eliminate bias and the issue of filter bubbles by providing all perspectives on stories, and in the case of these sites and U.S. politics, a mix of conservative, liberal, and moderate views. PurpleNewsFeed promotes their main feed in particular, designed to challenge echo chambers. Both AllSides and PurpleNewsFeed share a common mission with our proposed concept – promoting understanding between those with different perspectives to better understand each other, as well as providing an inherently unbiased collection sources.
The issues shared by both of these types of solutions are numerous. In the first place, fact checkers are not actually widespread – while the existences of these sites are known, they are not actually widely used in the first place. A survey conducted nu Zignal Labs regarding the circulation of news on social media reveals that only 14% of Americans always fact-check the information they read, and 27% of the Americans who do not always fact-check articles they read admit to actually sharing articles which are not fact checked (Brown, 2017). While factcheck.org itself has a share feature, its network effect and popularity among social media users is irrelevant in comparison to mainstream media outlets, or even user created content. Additionally, none of the existing solutions provide a platform to facilitate discussion, feedback, approval or challenge. There are no comments sections or ways for users to interact (e.g. rate or ‘like’) these stories, and actually start discussion. AllSides and Snopes meanwhile don’t even provide ways to share and promote their findings. News aggregators also tend to allow for selective reading due to their clear separation of source types (PurpleNewsFeed separately has a ‘BlueFeed’ and ‘RedFeed’, seemingly defeating the purple for their MainFeed in the first place.), and failure to promote interaction between those with opposing perspectives, leading inevitably to readers defaulting to biased sources.
The proposed concept will differentiate itself by incorporating the social element that is sorely missing in these existing solutions. A focus will be placed on user participation and virtual interactivity, by aggregating news from sources of all viewpoints on a particular topic or story, and allowing users to leave behind their more knowledgeable viewpoints after considering these numerous perspectives. It is hoped that users will find incentive to promote and share their findings and journeys towards seeking the facts on issues, as the social interaction element facilitates enhanced engagement when users involve their friends and invite further discussion on social media. As the users are the ones who find the facts and leave lasting contributions to the archived stories, they too will be the ones who inherently generate the application’s activity, decreasing the possibility for discovered truths to be unheard and unshared.
- Initial Requirements & Design (Week 7 - 8)
- Gathering initial user requirements (Week 7)
- Initial product and feature design (Week 8)
- Prototype & Evaluation (Week 9 - 10)
- Building Low-Fidelity prototype for conducting user testing (Week 9)
- Running user testing sessions for initial prototype and collecting feedback (Week 10)
- Improving product design based on the previous user testing responses (Week 10)
- Iteration & Evaluation (Week 11 - 12)
- Building High-Fidelity digital mock-ups (Week 11)
- Running user testing sessions for digital prototype and collecting feedback (Week 11)
- Evaluating user feedback and building final prototype (Week 12)
- Final Prototype (Week 13)
- Final prototype showcase (Week 13)
Second year student majoring in Bachelor of Multimedia Design. He is from different cultural background and can speak both English and Korean; hence, is able to collect data from non-English speaking Koreans. Has Design & Prototyping skills and confident of using design softwares including Adobe Illustrator and InDesign to create visual elements required for informing users. Weakness is that he does not speak perfect English as natives so there can be some communication issues between team. However he is able to cope this weakness by using resources such as dictionaries and the team will ensure that he knows what he should be doing. He is looking forward to use the knowledge and design skills learnt from past courses in this project and wish to design something that can practically help the society today.
Third Year student studying a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Computer Science. He has participated and led multiple projects in the context of both UI/UX focus and programming focus and has a technical background in both. James has a particular focus in directing and managing groups and project towards an effective final product. His strengths are particularly in his ability to create and facilitate an effective group environment as well contribute thoughtfully from a wide background of knowledge. A weakness exists in his relative lack of experience in workplace environments that will be eventually worked through in the future though professional development. James’s learning goal would be the extension of his project management skills as well profession development of his programming and UX experience with the collaboration of his team members and peers. James has extensive experience in the chosen domain as an active member of multiple online communities that include various scenarios in which incomplete or sometimes incorrect fragments of information may have to infer from or elaborated on to perceive possible solution to problems or the alleged happening of events either online or in real life.
Final year student studying the Bachelors of Commerce/Information Technology Dual Program. Having partaken in numerous UX design, prototyping, and group build project courses, Ivan has previous experience participating in similar team project environments. His strengths include active and regular participation, ideas contribution, providing feedback and critiques, and reliability. A potential weakness is his lack of experience in programming, relative to the more specialised, working and active programmers, and that is something he would like to devote some time to tackling throughout this course. Another goal of his would be learning to face the challenges involved in designing an application focused on facilitating social interaction and sharing. Ivan is thoroughly intrigued by the various political debates and conspiracy theories that have gained traction within recent years, and looks forward to researching into that domain space, and hopes to find some personal takeaways for approaching fact seeking and opinion forming in the future.
Third year student studying Bachelor of Information Technology, majoring both Software Design and Software Information System. Qishi has completed various programming and design courses, he has rich experience of working within both large and small teams. His strengths include technical support, software requirement analysis and structure design, implementing software and database, and hardworking to meet deadlines. One of his potential weakness is UI design and front-end development. Through working on this project, he is expecting learning how technology can be used for solving social issues, especially the wide spread of fake news over internet and social media platforms.
As a strong and productive team consists of four professional members, the team Drop Table* is confident to have this project succeed by the end of this semester.
The team consists of four team members who are from different cultural and academic backgrounds, which helps team to generate different points of views for designing and developing of this project. Half of the team members is good at design and the other half has professional programming skills. All team members have previous experience of working within a team and are able to cooperate with others. We are all passionate about developing such project since the team was formed around our interests of the domain space.
For the project concept, we have various advantages. Firstly, we are able to communicate with and to get user testing responses from user groups outside of Australia because of two of our team members are international students, which helps the project to gain more diverse feedbacks. Secondly, since Google Chrome has the biggest market share of web browsers at the moment, we will be mainly focusing on Chrome extensions. As a result of that, we are able to access the documentation about developing Chrome browser extensions easily as Google provides detailed tutorial about it. At the last, there are already some products in the market that attempt to solve the problem space, which provide some insights for us.
The team also has several challenges to confront. One of the challenges is the availability of team members. Since all team members are enrolled into four courses in this semester and have different timetable, this would result us having not much meeting time for the project every week.
The project has to face some challenges too. Firstly, it is extremely difficult to determine whether the news source is fake sometimes since there is not widely agreed standard for it. Secondly, the extension totally relies on web browsers, which heavily limits the usage of this application because the user still might be able to read fake news without any notification or warning in some mobile phone applications such as Facebook and Twitter. Thirdly, the user-based rating of website reliability might still show incorrect information since public opinions are not always correct and can be easily manipulated by misleading information.
Due to the lack of effective and user-friendly solutions for spotting fake news, it would be a good opportunity for Team Drop Table* to design and develop a such application to help user recognising fake news. However, risks also arise from these opportunities. One of them would be how to detect fake news effectively and accurately. The proposed option for this risk is a system that combines both professionals’ judgements and public user-based rating.
Team Drop Table* expects the application we are building for this project will be used by people who reads news regularly and wish to spot fake news. It has also been expected the user will have the extension turned on when they are browsing news or just randomly browsing using their web browsers.
Zignal Labs. (2017). A REPORT ON THE SPREAD OF FAKE NEWS, 18.
Nelson Mandela victim of death hoax on Twitter. (2013, June 10). Retrieved 6 September 2018, from https://www.smh.com.au/world/nelson-mandela-victim-of-death-hoax-on-twitter-20130610-2nz1k.html
Balmas, M. (2014). When Fake News Becomes Real: Combined Exposure to Multiple News Sources and Political Attitudes of Inefficacy, Alienation, and Cynicism. Communication Research, 41(3), 430–454. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650212453600
Brown, E. (2017). 9 out of 10 Americans don't fact-check information they read on social media | ZDNet. [online] ZDNet. Available at: https://www.zdnet.com/article/nine-out-of-ten-americans-dont-fact-check-information-they-read-on-social-media/ [Accessed 3 Sep. 2018].