Nearly nine in 10 Canadians fooled by fake news: survey

 

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press
Published Tuesday, June 11, 2019 12:20AM EDT 
Last Updated Tuesday, June 11, 2019 3:13PM EDT

OTTAWA -- A new global survey suggests distrust of the internet is being fuelled by growing skepticism of social-media services like Facebook and Twitter.

One in four people who took part in the survey said they didn't trust the internet, a view increasingly being driven by lack of confidence in social media, governments and search engines.

The opinion research involved more than 25,000 internet users in 25 countries in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region.

The survey report says growing distrust in the internet prompted people to disclose less information in cyberspace, use the internet more selectively and buy fewer things online.It was conducted by pollster Ipsos on behalf of the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ont., in partnership with the Internet Society and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

The results come amid widespread concern about fake news online and the duplicitous use of social media to influence democratic processes, including elections.

Three in four respondents were at least somewhat concerned about their online privacy. Overall, more than half of those surveyed were more concerned about their privacy compared to a year ago.

"They still trust the internet, in the majority, but I think there's some storm clouds on the horizon," said Eric Jardine, an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Tech and a fellow at CIGI.

The survey was conducted between Dec. 21, 2018, and Feb. 10 of this year. The margin of error ranges from plus or minus 3.1 to 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20, depending on whether the survey was done online or in person.

Among those who distrust the internet, 81 per cent cited cybercriminals as a reason. Seventy-five per cent pointed to social-media platforms, 66 per cent mentioned foreign governments, 66 per cent cited government generally and 65 per cent blamed search engines such as Google for the erosion of trust.

In Canada, social media was the leading source of internet distrust, cited by 89 per cent of people.

Almost nine in 10 surveyed said they had been fooled by fake news at least once. Facebook was the most commonly noted source of phoney news, followed by Twitter.

Ten per cent of Twitter users and nine per cent of Facebook users told the researchers they had closed their accounts in the last year as a direct result of fake news.

A majority of internet users expressed support for actions that governments and companies could take to fight fake news, from social media and video-sharing platforms taking down bogus posts, videos and accounts to adoption of automated content removal and even government censorship of content, the researchers say.

The federal government has repeatedly voiced concerns about the behaviour of social-media services, particularly their role in hosting dangerous content related to violent extremism and child exploitation.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale discussed the problem Monday in Washington with U.S. acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan.

"Both we and the Americans fully agree we need to develop the technologies to take down the offensive material and, as much as possible, prevent it from going up in the first place," Goodale said in an interview after the meeting.

Social-media companies use sophisticated algorithms to manipulate and use the personal information of people on their platforms, he noted.

"Those algorithms need to be more transparent than they are today," Goodale said. "These are the business models by which the companies make their profits, but they're also the tools by which they entice people down some very dark and dangerous pathways."

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Near-record 'dead zone' predicted in Gulf of Mexico

Rich Banks stands along a jetty in Galveston, Texas, photgraphing waves in the Gulf of Mexico, on June 15, 2015. (Cody Duty / Houston Chronicle)

The Associated Press
Published Monday, June 10, 2019 6:38PM EDT 

NEW ORLEANS -- Scientists are predicting a near-record Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" where the water holds too little oxygen to sustain marine life.

"A major factor contributing to the large dead zone this year is the abnormally high amount of spring rainfall in many parts of the Mississippi River watershed," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a news release Monday. That led to record amounts of water carrying large amounts of fertilizer and other nutrients downriver, it said.

The nutrients feed algae, which die and then decompose on the sea floor, using up oxygen from the bottom up in an area along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas.

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The low-oxygen, or hypoxic, area is likely to cover about 7,800 square miles (20,200 square kilometres) -- roughly the size of Slovenia and all the land in Massachusetts, NOAA said. A Louisiana-based team has estimated the dead zone will be 8,700 square miles (22,560 square kilometres).

It will be measured during an annual July cruise by Nancy Rabalais of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

The record set in 2017 is 8,776 square miles (22,700 square kilometres).

Scientists had said earlier that widespread flooding made a large dead zone likely this year.

A task force of federal, tribal and state agencies from 12 of the 31 states that make up the Mississippi River watershed set a goal nearly two decades ago of reducing the dead zone from an average of about 5,800 square miles (15,000 square kilometres) to an average of 1,900 (4,900).

"While this year's zone will be larger than usual because of the flooding, the long-term trend is still not changing," University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Don Scavia, professor emeritus at the School for Environment and Sustainability, said in a news release. "The bottom line is that we will never reach the dead zone reduction target of 1,900 square miles until more serious actions are taken to reduce the loss of Midwest fertilizers into the Mississippi River system."

Rabalais has been measuring the hypoxic zone since 1985.

Storms before last year's mapping cruise reduced that hypoxic zone to about 2,720 square miles (7,040 square kilometres), about 40% the average size that had been predicted, and among the smallest recorded.

Researchers find Canadian Arctic island coast collapsing up to a metre a day

Researchers found the permafrost coastline of a Canadian Arctic island was collapsing at a rate of up to a metre a day. (Photo: Jeffrey Kerby)

Meredith MacLeod, CTVNews.ca Writer

Published Tuesday, June 11, 2019  

The frozen coastline of a Canadian Arctic island is eroding at up to a metre a day as a warming climate leads to longer summers, new research has found.

Researchers say the rate of collapse they found is six times faster than the average for the previous 65 years.

“Big chunks of land were breaking away and waves were eating them away,” said the study’s co-author Isla Myers-Smith, a geoscientist at the University of Edinburgh. “They were often gone by the next day.”

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A researcher inspects the coastline of Herschel Island-Qikiqtaruk in the Yukon. (Photo: Gergana Daskalova)

Myers-Smith was part of an international team that flew drone-mounted cameras to survey the tundra coast of Herschel Island, also known as Qikiqtaruk, off the Yukon coast in the Canadian Arctic. It is an unoccupied but historically significant island of about 116 square kilometres.

The researchers determined that summer storms are sweeping away coastal permafrost at a higher rate because it is being exposed for longer periods. Sea ice melts earlier and re-forms around the island later than it used to due to climate change, the researchers explain in their article published in the journal The Cryosphere.

Researchers mapped the area seven times over 40 days in the summer of 2017 and built computer models based on drone photos. They showed that the coast had retreated by an astounding 14.5 metres during the period, sometimes as much as a metre a day.

Researchers also compared the results with surveys taken between 1952 and 2011 that showed the 2017 rate of erosion was more than six times the historical average for the area.

The research team included university researchers, government scientists, and local park rangers from England, Germany, Netherlands, the United States and Canada, along with community members who live and work in the Arctic.

A Vancouver native, Myers-Smith has been travelling to Herschel Island-Qikiqtaruk to study plants since 2008 and has spent every summer there since 2013. She leaves again for the island in a few weeks.

The research team - dubbed Team Shrub - was studying changes in vegetation in 2017 when it witnessed big shifts in the coastline that it hadn’t seen in previous years, she told CTVNews.ca.

While coastal erosion is natural and inevitable, it’s important to document the rate, she says. Similar acceleration has been found along the Alaska coast.

“As the Arctic continues to warm faster than the rest of our planet, we need to learn more about how these landscapes are changing,” said study lead Andrew Cunliffe, a geography professor at the University of Exeter.

“Using drones could help researchers and local communities improve monitoring and prediction of future changes in the region.”

Herschel Island-Qikiqtaruk is uniquely suited to study because there has been a history of ecological documentation and it is located above the treeline but south of the extreme Arctic.

“Scientists expect to see lots of ecological change there,” said Myers-Smith.

The island’s Pauline Cove was at one time a significant settlement for Indigenous people and later served as a community for European and American whalers starting in the late 1800s. It was also an outpost for the Hudson’s Bay Company between 1915 and 1937. The island continues to be used by the Inuvialuit for hunting and fishing but the last permanent, year-round residents left in 1987.

A dozen structures survive on the island, including Indigenous sod homes and whaling buildings, which continue to be threatened by coastal erosion. It’s also home to a territorial park.

In 2008, the World Monuments Fund placed Herschel Island on its 100 Most Endangered Sites watch list, citing rising sea levels, eroding coastline and melting permafrost as imminent threats.

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