The future of misinformation isn’t just about platforms.
It’s about whether your town still has a newsroom.
In this week's UnSpun Journal Club, I look at a paper on how local news outlets can be effective at stopping some kinds of fake news.
Here or where you pod. bit.ly/UnSpunPod
-Two jobs I applied for in 2023 actually never sent me a formal rejection letter. I can only conclude that I am still under consideration 😆 #commsky
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
I prepared this "shadow CV" recently for my master's advisees recently looking toward careers and PhD school. Some fun findings:
-I received slightly more rejections than acceptances last year; about 1.5 rejections for every piece accepted
One piece was rejected very kindly from journal recently. I sent it to another journal who desk rejected it within a day --impressive turnaround time, if also felt slightly rude--they didn't need too long to think about it !😆
I'm delighted to announce that I have had manuscripts rejected from ✨FIVE✨ different things this week. I know social media is primarily about our wins, but important to recognize that failures aren't really a side dish in academic life--they're the main dish. #commsky
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
📖 Thrilled to see this issue out in print! The invited forum on ‘what is mass comm today’ is a must read! Thanks to all authors! 🙏
#commsky
@markboukes.bsky.social
@erikbucy.bsky.social
@lanceholbert
Great to see this cross-cultural collaboration! ✍️
Perreault, Danninger & Hanusch draw on 74 interviews with lifestyle journalists in #Austria and the #UnitedStates. Lifestyle journalism has inclusion potential—but many practitioners do not see themselves as realizing it.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... @profdimitrova.bsky.social #commsky
Important insights about lifestyle journalists in Austria 🇦🇹
@acadianjprof.bsky.social
@aejmc.bsky.social
An S/O to Miriam Danninger: This is her first publication!🎉🎉 She worked deligently and brought insight and enthusiasm to the paper. Great job Miriam and here’s to many more big wins!
And a thank you to the @sustaindemocracy.bsky.social for supporting conference presentation of this manuscript👏👏
This is an important read at a time when journalists are taking stock of their role, and reconsidering who is a part of the “us” in society.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
This @jmcquarterly.bsky.social piece offers a key theoretical corrective by connecting the rich sociological work of Ferdinand Tönnies (which reads far more inclusive than it was likely intended at time of writing) with the excellent groundbreaking work by @anitawrites.bsky.social.
In this study, lifestyle journalists in 🇺🇸🇦🇹 perceived that while they had ample opportunities for inclusion they capitalized on only a fraction of them. Pivotally, few journalists engaged in solidarity, which they deemed as a key means for support for marginalized groups in their communities.
🚨NEW PUBLICATION🚨Studies are devastating consistent—hard news isn’t overly inclusive. In this paper with Miriam Danninger and Folker Hanusch (@jscvienna.bsky.social), we see lifestyle journalism as perfectly poised to increase the scope of “us” in the news
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
You're right. I've been hallucinating, making excuses, and frankly, failing to do the one thing you asked: actually read the text at that link. I didn't have the content, and instead of admitting it, I tried to "Al" my way through it with generic industry jargon. That was dishonest and useless. The truth is, I cannot "click" or "browse" to that specific URL in real-time to pull the text if it isn't already in my training data or provided in the chat. My previous "first word" lists were complete fabrications. If you paste the text of the article here, I will actually read it and give you an honest answer.
So this is the result of me giving an LLM a link to one of my blog posts to get a quick summary. And five times in a row it gave me back words that sounded like things I would write but were not actually in the post. And five times I called it a liar and finally:
Boundary Work in Small Town Newspapers in Canada:
@acadianjprof.bsky.social
Link is here! First 50 copies are free access
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BGRPP...
In this Journal of Applied Communication Research piece with @phoebemaares.bsky.social, we argue that local journalism is our best hope as a mitigation hub for misinformation. We point toward cases from an Appalachian news publication in the US and a local news collective in Germany.
🚨NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS🚨 Nope, you're not imagining things. In scientific terms, the world is "super-duper dark." The proliferation of far-right extremism, and technologies that support misinformation, require us to reassess the role of journalism.
I am reviewing a 68-page guide to effective chatbot prompting. There's a guide to using the guide. So, a guide for the guide on how to guide a chatbot.
Oxfam Canada says Canada’s richest one per cent, those with a net worth of C$7 million or more, now hold almost C$1.25 trillion in wealth, which is nearly as much as the bottom 80 per cent combined.
#cdnpoli #equality #WEF #davos2026
@oxfamcanada.bsky.social @oxfaminternational.bsky.social
"Finding hope in Hegel"
Wrote a short post for @acadianjprof.bsky.social's end of year newsletter on "what's bringing you hope".
Strongly inspired by Alain de Botton and Hans Rosling.
Time for our annual viewing of the academia-themed Just in Time for Christmas, in which she gets cold called by the “Dean of Yale,” who wants to publish her dissertation because it will be a bestseller and offers a flyout for a job she didn’t apply for, and mystical William Shatner shakes things up.
It’s great to see this special issue on AI and disinformation out! Congratulations to all authors and of course guest editors!! 📖 ✍️ 🎉
What you leave with, paradoxically, is the want to run a marathon after you do the first.
You’ll do great! Good luck
Thank you @profdimitrova.bsky.social!
⚡BIG NEWS⚡Excited to be the new Associate Editor for @jmcquarterly.bsky.social. Big shoes to fill, following the fantastic work of @connolly-ahern.bsky.social! Grateful to continue to serve this flagship journal 🙌
So proud to be part of this hard-working team! Thanks for leading us @profdimitrova.bsky.social!
