Bolaji,Thanks thanks thanks. The presidency needs to improve on its communication with the public. Your explanation below should have come from the presidency to the public. The presidency should shut down the wailers' story every time the wailers come up with a story before the story gains mileage in this age of social media.Ayo Ojutalayo
http://assets.bwbx.io/images/ie7T27q0b44w/v1/640x-1.jpg
How Facebook Makes Us Dumber
149 JAN 8, 2016 9:51 AM ESTWhy does misinformation spread so quickly on the social media? Why doesn't it get corrected? When the truth is so easy to find, why do people accept falsehoods?
A new study focusing on Facebook users provides strong evidence that the explanation is confirmation bias: people's tendency to seek out information that confirms their beliefs, and to ignore contrary information.
Confirmation bias turns out to play a pivotal role in the creation of online echo chambers. This finding bears on a wide range of issues, including the current presidential campaign, the acceptance of conspiracy theories and competing positions in international disputes.
The new study, led by Michela Del Vicario of Italy's Laboratory of Computational Social Science, explores the behavior of Facebook users from 2010 to 2014. One of the study's goals was to test a question that continues to be sharply disputed: When people are online, do they encounter opposing views, or do they create the virtual equivalent of gated communities?
Del Vicario and her coauthors explored how Facebook users spread conspiracy theories (using 32 public web pages); science news (using 35 such pages); and "trolls," which intentionally spread false information (using two web pages). Their data set is massive: It covers all Facebook posts during the five-year period. They explored which Facebook users linked to one or more of the 69 web pages, and whether they learned about those links from their Facebook friends.
In sum, the researchers find a lot of communities of like-minded people. Even if they are baseless, conspiracy theories spread rapidly within such communities.
More generally, Facebook users tended to choose and share stories containing messages they accept, and to neglect those they reject. If a story fits with what people already believe, they are far more likely to be interested in it and thus to spread it.
As Del Vicario and her coauthors put it, "users mostly tend to select and share content according to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest." On Facebook, the result is the formation of a lot of "homogeneous, polarized clusters." Within those clusters, new information moves quickly among friends (often in just a few hours).
The consequence is the "proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia." And while the study focuses on Facebook users, there is little doubt that something similar happens on other social media, such as Twitter -- and in the real world as well.
Striking though their findings are, Del Vicario and her coauthors do not mention the important phenomenon of "group polarization," which means that when like-minded people speak with one another, they tend to end up thinking a more extreme version of what they originally believed. Whenever people spread misinformation within homogenous clusters, they also intensify one another's commitment to that misinformation.
Of the various explanations for group polarization, the most relevant involves a potentially insidious effect of confirmation itself. Once people discover that others agree with them, they become more confident -- and then more extreme.
In that sense, confirmation bias is self-reinforcing, producing a vicious spiral. If people begin with a certain belief, and find information that confirms it, they will intensify their commitment to that very belief, thus strengthening their bias.
Suppose, for example, that you think an increase in the minimum wage is a sensational idea, that the nuclear deal with Iran is a mistake, that Obamacare is working well, that Donald Trump would be a fine president, or that the problem of climate change is greatly overstated. Arriving at these judgments on your own, you might well hold them tentatively and with a fair degree of humility. But after you learn that a lot of people agree with you, you are likely to end up with much greater certainty -- and perhaps real disdain for people who do not see things as you do.
On the basis of all the clustering, that almost certainly happened on Facebook. Strong support for this conclusion comes from researchfrom the same academic team, which finds that on Facebook, efforts to debunk false beliefs are typically ignored -- and when people pay attention to them, they often strengthen their commitment to the debunked beliefs.
Can anything be done? The best solution is to promote a culture of humility and openness. Some people, and some communities, hold their own views tentatively; they are interested in refutation, not just confirmation. Moroever, those who manage social media (such as Google) can take steps to allow people to assess the trustworthiness of what they are seeing, though these efforts might be controversial and remain in a preliminary state.
In the midst of World War II, a great federal judge, Learned Hand, said that the spirit of liberty is "that spirit which is not too sure that it is right." Users of the social media are certainly exercising their liberty. But there is a real risk that when they fall prey to confirmation bias, they end up compromising liberty's spirit -- and dead wrong to boot.
Bolaji,Thanks thanks thanks. The presidency needs to improve on its communication with the public. Your explanation below should have come from the presidency to the public. The presidency should shut down the wailers' story every time the wailers come up with a story before the story gains mileage in this age of social media.Ayo Ojutalayo--
On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 8:30 AM, Mobolaji Aluko alukome@gmail.com [NaijaPolitics]<NaijaPolitics@yahoogroups.com> wrote:Ayo:It is all a storm in a tea-cup, mainly by corruption using all means necessary - ridicule, hyperbole, bombast, exxageration, mischief, subterfuge etcheram, ad nauseum - to fight back. Chief Akande got it absolutely right: some people in the Senate are trying to embarass the Presidency - or PMB himself - to get their pound of flesh, and like the Tea Partiers of the USA against Obama, they will use EVERY opportunity, serious or jejune, to do so.Moving on.....There was first the correct reportage - "recall" or "withdrawal" of the budget - but lacking juice, it was followed by the more mischievous - and ridiculous - "missing budget" mantra.How can a whole budget presented to the world be "missing?"Without anybody telling me, even I know that when you submit a document - maybe to satisfy a particular date that you had already set - there is always room to AMEND sections of it BEFORE it starts being officially discussed. Once it starts being discussed officially is another matter entirely.If you read the account below, you will see that Senator Ita Enang was doing absolutely the correct thing, but some people were running rings around him until the issue got into the media. That is why he reserved comments, with clearly some head-shaking by him.Look, as head of a University, I have a similar experience: the NUC asked us to submit our budget, in preparation for collation and presentation on behalf of ALL Nigerian federal universities to the National Assembly. There has been at least once when we sent in our FUO budget to fulfil the date, but sent in another a few days after with some corrections with the hope that the collated budget had not ACTUALLY been submitted to the National Assembly. Just last year, there was a bad mix-up of FUO budget that was presented before the Senate, and having found the error, it was corrected and re-submitted - without any hassle. [It led to FUO's overhead budget being cut (relative to other new universities) because of earlier "intransigence" on my part, but that is the topic of another symposium.]So na "bad belle" all dis be....but it will boomerang.And there you have it.Bolaji AlukoOn Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 10:32 AM, 'Ayo Ojutalayo' via AfricanWorldForum <africanworldforum@googlegroups.com> wrote:Joe,Nobody is reading you. Your opinion just happened to be the appropriate one in the circumstance. Some low level officers must have tried unsuccessfully to cut corners.Ayo Ojutalayo
On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 3:44 AM, 'Joe Attueyi' via AfricanWorldForum<africanworldforum@googlegroups.com> wrote:Someone must be reading me.! If there are errors in the budget simply FORMALLY withdraw the budget, make corrections and return same.Mr President is being served very poorly by his aides. Very poorly. There are very competent Nigerians all over the world who can stop all these own goals.President Muhammadu Buhari has written to the Nationally Assembly to formally request the withdrawal of the 2016 Appropriation Bill he had presented to a joint session of the federal legislature on December 22 for adjustment, THISDAY has learnt. The president's leader was addressed to Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara.
The formal request followed controversy over the alleged secret extraction and doctoring of the original budget document. The controversy over the budget had raged all through last week, as the National Assembly resumed after a recess and the legislators prepared to begin deliberation on the budget.It emerged that the budget saga, which became the source of an ever-growing confusion, arose from Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters, Senator Ita Enang's alleged adoption of a sneaky approach in the pursuit of an otherwise legitimate objective.It was gathered that Buhari had discovered after presenting the 2016 budget to the National Assembly that some of the figures proposed for operations in the Presidency and the State House were being publicly criticised as outrageous and higher than those of his predecessor, former President Goodluck Jonathan. Given Buhari's austere nature and the change agenda of his party, the figures for the subheads in the budget for the office of the president, vice president, and a few ministries, which went viral on the social media and had become a major topic of discussion on both the print and broadcast media, were a huge embarrassment.To reflect the public mood, the president was said to have directed the recall of the 2016 budget from the National Assembly for review. Ordinarily, the review process should have entailed a written request from the president to the National Assembly calling for the withdrawal of the budget. But Enang, allegedly, embarked on a surreptitious process of changing the budget figures, which went awry.The senate had at its plenary on Thursday accused Enang of doctoring the contents of the 2016 Appropriation Bill presented to the National Assembly by Buhari. "What he distributed is different from what was presented by Mr. President and we have resolved not to address any version until we receive the version presented by Mr. President," Saraki announced to the senators after an executive session that dwelled on a strange confusion about the substitution of the budget, which had raged since Monday. Enang's indictment followed an investigation by the ethics and privileges committee of the senate.THISDAY checks revealed that when Enang wanted to swap the original document, he attempted to reach the Clerk of the Appropriation Committee by telephone but could not get through. He then decided to call the Acting Clerk of the National Assembly, Mr. Nelson Ayewoh, and told him how he had attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to reach the appropriation clerk to collect a document from him.Ayewoh, it was learnt, accepted to call the appropriation committee clerk and ask him to call Enang, but without knowing that the communication was in connection with the budget document.
Ayewoh was said to have told the investigating committee that he did not know what Enang wanted to discuss with the appropriation clerk but only showed him respect by drawing the clerk's attention to Enang's call.However, THISDAY was reliably informed that when Enang appeared before the committee, he denied communicating with both Ayewoh and the appropriation clerk over the budget. He also allegedly said he never had their numbers.Efforts to reach Enang for his reaction to the budget controversy did not succeed. He appears to have decided to reserve his comment on the matter. In the heat of the controversy last week, Enang was quoted as saying, "I do not want to comment on the matter at the moment. It is a very sensitive matter involving two of my bosses – the National Assembly and Presidency. I don't want to talk about them."Also yesterday, the Senate and former Interim National Chairman of APC, Chief Bisi Akande, exchanged diatribes over controversy surrounding the 2016 budget.Apparently unaware that the President had written the National Assembly on the budget controversy, Akande, in a chat with newsmen in his Ila country home as part of activities marking his 77th birthday, said the claim of missing 2016 budget from the upper legislative chamber was the furtherance of the indiscipline that produced its leadership.The former interim national chairman of APC also said that the APC still did not believe in the composition of the upper legislative body.He said: "When I first read in the newspapers that budget was missing in Abuja, you know I live in Ila and I don't have all the details of what goes on in Abuja. I called the lawmaker representing my constituency and he told me that the budget presented to the House of Representatives was not missing. That showed some complications."The whole thing is borne out of indiscipline. You know when foundation of an assembly is indiscipline, the whole thing is bad. That assembly was not constituted the way my party wanted it. The process was hijacked and the leadership was constituted the way it is."So from such an assembly, you should expect all kinds of stories. The development regarding the missing budget may be caused by mishandling by people, who are not supposed to be in position. Mr. President should not be blamed for what is happening"Come to think of it, how can a document as voluminous as the budget of a whole nation go missing? With my experience in government, just a ministry may have up to 10 pages or up to 100 pages. Imagine you have 30 ministries, that means you will have a documents of 30,000. How on earth will such a large document get missing?"The Senate however deplored the comment by Akande, describing his reaction as another expression of the frustration which accompanied his inability "to impose his lackeys on the Senate as leaders."In a statement last night, the Senate said it was regrettable that a man of Akande's status could respond to speculations without cross-checking his facts, alleging that the former governor was always eager to exploit any available opportunity to bring into disrepute the leadership of the Senate because his candidates lost out in the power game.According to the statement signed by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Media, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the parliament said if only Akande had chosen to check his record properly, he would see that "at no time did the Senate say the 2016 budget was missing."He said the Senate had insisted through several official statements and press interviews by its principal officers that the budget was not missing but two different versions of the budget were seen by senators."We have said it several times that the budget was not missing; that two versions of the details of the budget exist and this is no longer in doubt as the Presidency has equally admitted this. We expect a man of Akande's calibre to cross-check his facts and take us up on our words. That he decided to ignore the facts and make comments on speculations is regrettable. He is a man who had served in government. He is a leader of the party with the majority in the Senate and he has several channels of cross-checking facts as against speculations," the statement stated.The Senate further said contrary to the description of what happened as indiscipline on the part of the leadership, the position of Senate leadership is a demonstration of the regime of openness, transparency and accountability which he said had become the hallmark of the current upper legislative chamber.It added: "Chief Akande is still sulking after his group's failed attempt to impose certain individuals as the leaders of the Senate last year. So, he was in a hurry to condemn the leadership. We want him to know that the leadership of the Senate can only emerge through the provisions of the constitution and the standing rules of the institution. As a democrat, Akande should know that once the majority has elected the leadership, all parties to the contest ought to accept the decision."To continue belly-aching and working to undermine the institution because of the failure to get one's choice candidates elected casts doubts on his democratic credentials. It appears he is only a democrat when he has his way. We advise him to move on and let us help the legislative institution to focus on its agenda to serve the people in line with the much needed change that President Muhammadu Buhari promised the nation."
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