{"id":416,"date":"2019-03-28T15:47:53","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T15:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/digital-computational-studies\/?p=416"},"modified":"2023-06-21T12:19:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T16:19:34","slug":"students-bring-new-analytical-visual-skills-to-busting-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/digital-computational-studies\/2019\/03\/28\/students-bring-new-analytical-visual-skills-to-busting-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Students bring new analytical, visual skills to busting fake news"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Doug Hubley<\/a> \u2014 Published on March 28, 2019<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Did a certain well-known news organization \u201cgerrymander\u201d a map of the U.S. to bolster its claim of being the most-watched?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are online translation services gender-biased?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did a prominent Midwestern university make misleading claims about its status as a producer of Fortune 500 CEOs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are just a few of the topics awaiting answers from students taking \u201cCalling Bull in a Digital World,\u201d a new course offered by the Program in Digital and Computational Studies<\/a>. The intention of \u201cCalling Bull\u201d is simple: to make students savvier consumers of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In particular, the course explores motivations and techniques that drive the daily barrage \u2014 coming from both ends of the political spectrum \u2014 of BS in mass media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Associate
Associate Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Carrie Diaz Eaton teaches her course \u201cCalling Bull in a Digital World\u201d in Carnegie Science Hall.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Taught by Carrie Diaz Eaton<\/a>, associate professor of digital and computational studies, the course has equipped its 24 students with a variety of critical lenses for determining what\u2019s slanted, downright fake, or innocent but wrong. The course is helping students \u201cexamine assumptions, think about how information is being presented, who\u2019s presenting it, etc.,\u201d Diaz Eaton says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And along the way, \u201cCalling Bull\u201d has given students hands-on experience with the statistical programming language called R, which, among other purposes, is a powerful tool for analyzing data and rendering it visually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNobody\u2019s going to be a data scientist\u201d after completing the 100-level course, Diaz Eaton says, \u201cbut we can give them some tools to better interpret the things they\u2019re dealing with in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She adapted the Bates offering from \u201cCalling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data<\/a>,\u201d a course launched to considerable acclaim in 2017 at the University of Washington by biologist Carl T. Bergstrom and information scientist Jevin West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A stated goal of \u201cCalling Bull\u201d is to heighten students\u2019 fluency with different modes of information \u2014 verbal, mathematical, visual.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In a look at how programmers\u2019 blind spots can affect data quality, Diaz Eaton\u2019s students have heard about facial identification algorithms, designed for fighting crime, that can reliably determine the gender of pale faces \u2014 but not dark ones. They\u2019ve been introduced to Beall\u2019s List of Predatory Journals and Publishers<\/em>, an online effort, now discontinued, to call out scholarly journals whose failure to perform peer review can open the door to specious scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they\u2019ve confronted the discouraging reality of the so-called bullshit asymmetry principle, which holds that debunking fake news requires 10 times more effort than creating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A stated goal of \u201cCalling Bull\u201d is to heighten students\u2019 fluency with different modes of information \u2014 verbal, mathematical, visual. And the mechanics and messaging power of data visualization have figured prominently in the course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early on, the class developed what Diaz Eaton calls a data visualization rubric \u2014 a list of desirable characteristics in visualizations. \u201cBasically, the class created the thing by which they will be graded,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"While
While Diaz Eaton\u2019s 100-level course isn\u2019t geared toward creating new data scientists, it can equip students with \u201ctools to better interpret the things they\u2019re dealing with in the world.\u201d (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think that makes them pay more attention to what they\u2019re doing right. They know that they\u2019re going to be held to it. And by creating it, hopefully they remember what\u2019s in it a little bit better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the semester, for a fifth of their grade, students have practiced ways of rendering their own day-to-day circumstances as visualized data using the book Observe, Collect, Draw! A Visual Journal<\/em>. (In exercise No. 21, covering a surprising range of parameters, students expressed a week\u2019s worth of complaints as musical notation.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course has \u201cbeen great because we\u2019ve been able to focus on things that are applicable to what\u2019s happening in our everyday lives,\u201d says Carly Ransford \u201922 of Carbondale, Colo. (For Ransford, politics and \u201cproblematic statements\u201d were two high-pitched plaints in exercise No. 21.) \u201cI was attracted to it based on how it ties in humanities content with mathematical tools and skills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
In creating \u201cCalling Bull,\u201d Diaz Eaton included elements to help students gain confidence with the statistical programming language called R. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ransford is typical of students that Bates\u2019 new DCS program seeks to welcome, not frighten away. \u201cAs someone who\u2019s not typically super excited by math and statistics, I liked that this was kind of a new approach,\u201d she says. \u201cCoding is something I\u2019d never done before, but this class made me feel like I could have an interest in it, and actually gain some skills in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diaz Eaton explains that in her consultations with other faculty as she created the course, colleagues in other disciplines wished for a course that would deepen student thinking about graphs and ease them into using R. \u201cIf students haven\u2019t seen that in the past, it becomes a bit of a hurdle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

R is a command-line environment, common among programming languages, rather than a point-and-click interface. \u201cYou have to think about where your data is stored and how to store it,\u201d Diaz Eaton says. \u201cYou have to make a lot of choices along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat kind of computational thinking is often new to students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As important as it is to be able to spot BS, a good digital citizen should also be equipped to explain<\/em> why<\/em> it\u2019s BS \u2014 hence the \u201cCalling\u201d in the course title. So the students\u2019 final projects involve, in effect, busting the BS artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"While
While the course \u201cCalling Bull\u201d is fun and empowering, its fundamental mission, of course, is profoundly serious. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Having found three appropriately aromatic examples of fake or misleading info, each student needs to use R to analyze the data in one of those three cases. For example, Ransford is examining just how randomly Google Translate assigns gendered pronouns to neuter terms that it translates from other languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the second case, the task is to publicly refute an outstanding specimen of BS. And for the third, the assignment is to improve an existing public visualization of data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCalling Bull\u201d is fun and empowering, providing a frisson of the particular satisfaction that comes with revealing a lie. But its fundamental mission, of course, is profoundly serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent class session, says Diaz Eaton, \u201cwe talked about how having a successful democratic republic requires access to real and authentic information.\u201d Once you lose the access, you may lose the democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the real threat,\u201d she says. \u201cWe want people to be able to think that they have a role as a digital citizen to play in the world of fake news and not feel like, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s just this thing that happens elsewhere.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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