Shel Holtz is globe-trotting this week, so Paul Gillin and I take the reins of his FIR podcast. Our guests are Todd Van Hoosear, a well-known social media figure in Boston and elsewhere, and Barbara Selvin, associate professor at the Stony Brook University School of Journalism, where she created and teaches a course on the changing busness models of the news industry. We cover a wide range of topics in the more than an hour discussion, including:
- Nick Bolton writes in Vanity Fair that fake news is about to get even scarier than you ever dreamed. “Advancements in audio and video technology are becoming so sophisticated that they will be able to replicate real news—real TV broadcasts, for instance, or radio interviews—in unprecedented, and truly indecipherable, ways.” This is a chilling piece. Maybe blockchain will help?
How do American decide what to trust on social media? I turns out that who shared it is more important than where it came from. Not good news for those who disseminate real news.- On a related note, James Somers makes a compelling case for why the ‘Like’ button ruined the internet by making engagement a bigger deal than the importance of the subject.
You can listen to our podcast here.