Google is funding a project involving 75 news organisations around the world to devise indicators that will help people distinguish the difference between quality journalism and promotional content or misinformation.
The company said that approximately 50,000 web pages filled with information come online each day. It relies on algorithms to sort and rank them them, according to their credibility. But the constantly changing nature of the Web means that the system is not perfect.
It has been investing in helping people understand what they are reading by providing visual signposts and labels. It has added clear labelling to stories in Google News, and last year it launched the Fact Check tag globally in Google News and Search. Recently it added information to its ‘knowledge panels‘ to help people get a quick insight into publishers.
Today, it announced a move toward a similar labeling effort by the Trust Project, which is hosted at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. The project, which is funded by Google among others, has been working with more than 75 news organizations from around the world to come up with indicators to help people distinguish the difference between quality journalism and promotional content or misinformation.
The publishers involved include the BBC, dpa, The Economist, The Globe and Mail, Hearst Television, Mic, La Repubblica, La Stampa, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
In a first step, the Project has released eight trust indicators that newsrooms can add to their content. “This information will help readers understand more about what type of story they’re reading, who wrote it, and how the article was put together,” said Jeff Chang, group product manager of search at Google.
The eight indicators are:
Best Practices: Who funds the news outlet and their mission, plus an outlet’s commitments to ethics,
- Best Practices: Who funds the news outlet and their mission, plus an outlet’s commitments to ethics, diverse voices, accuracy, making corrections, and other standards.
- Author Expertise: Details about the journalist, including their expertise and other stories they have worked on.
- Type of Work: Labels to distinguish opinion, analysis, and advertiser (or sponsored) content from news reports.
- Citations and References: For investigative or in-depth stories, access to the sources behind the facts and assertions in a news story.
- Methods: For in-depth stories, information about why reporters chose to pursue a story and how they went about the process.
- Locally Sourced: Lets people know that the story has local roots, origin, or expertise.
- Diverse Voices:A newsroom’s efforts to bring in diverse perspectives.
- Actionable Feedback:A newsroom’s efforts to engage the public in setting coverage priorities, contributing to the reporting process, and ensuring accuracy.
News organisations embed markup from schema.org into the HTML code of their articles and on their website. When platforms like Google crawl the content, they can easily parse out the information.
“This works like the ClaimReview schema tag we use for fact-checking articles,” said Chang. “Once we’ve done that, we can analyse the information and present it directly to the user in our various products.”
“Our next step is to figure out how to display these trust indicators next to articles that may appear on Google News, Google Search, and other Google products where news can be found.
“Some possible treatments could include using the ‘Type of Work’ indicator to improve the accuracy of article labels in Google News, and indicators such as ‘Best Practices’ and ‘Author Info’ in our knowledge panels.
“We believe this is a great first step for the Trust Project and look forward to future efforts as well.”
Related posts
Interviews
Comment
Please mind the gap… or healthcare may fall
Imagine sharing a lengthy train journey with others. From beginning to end, imagine how often you might hear ‘mind the gap’ messages about embarking and disembarking safely. Picture how navigating…
Women Lead: My journey from Dragons’ Den to Silicon Valley
Following her appearance on Dragons’ Den, Sheila Hogan, serial entrepreneur, founder and chief executive of digital legacy vault, Biscuit Tin, shares her experience of her time in the Den and…
Look anywhere – the future is ‘aged tech’. But Scotland needs to be more adventurous
Scottish Care, as the representative body of independent social care providers of care home, care at home and housing support services, has been working over several years with colleagues in…
Women Lead: Engineer turned entrepreneur
We are always fascinated by other people’s stories. It’s how we connect, grow and learn from each other. Until very recently I always felt like I didn’t have a story to tell. Who…
‘Women – together we will change the dynamic in tech’
I was inspired to start a career in technology when personal computers were in their infancy and the internet decades away. My childhood dream of becoming a scientist was shaped by…
It’s time to change the future of tech apprenticeships – and we need your help
In his latest exclusive column for Futurescot, Ross Tuffee, chair of the Skills Development Scotland (SDS) Digital Economy Skills Group, calls on tech employers to get involved in shaping the…
What AI difference a year makes
Amazingly, it’s been one year since the publication of Scotland’s AI Strategy. And what a year it has been. Demanding but rewarding, with good progress made and great foundations laid…
International Women’s Day: It’s time to harness power of women in technology
As we celebrate International Women’s Day, I hope to be part of a future where barriers that prevent women from competing on a level playing field in the work environment…