Social Media

In the aftermath of the November 8 US presidential election, sections of the Democratic Party, the intelligence services and the media have intensified unsubstantiated pre-election claims that the Russian government hacked into Democratic Party email servers to undermine the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

If somebody asked me, in 2016, why I still consider myself to be on the Left, then I would undoubtedly start from my thoughts about the historical shift that occurred with the atomic bombings of two Japanese cities on 6th and 9th August 1945. Yet I would be the first to admit that the question of these weapons of mass destruction (and other such weapons) transcends the traditional spectrum of political ideologies, including those of the Left and of the Right.

PropOrNot managed to connect with the Washington Post on its own. Last week, the Post published a story based in part on PropOrNot’s research. Headlined “Russian Propaganda Effort Helped Spread ‘Fake News’ During Election, Experts Say,” the report claimed that a number of researchers had uncovered a “sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign” that spread fake-news articles across the Internet with the aim of hurting Hillary Clinton and helping Donald Trump. It prominently cited the PropOrNot research. The story topped the Post’s most-read list, and was shared widely by prominent journalists and politicians on Twitter. The former White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted, “Why isn’t this the biggest story in the world right now?”

The push to delegitimize the election results continued after a trio of top Senate Democrats called for a nonpartisan commission to investigate allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Sens. Ben Cardin (Md.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.), the top Democrats on the Foreign Relations, Intelligence and Judiciary committees, back the creation an independent commission with 18 months to report its findings The Hill reports.

In a special UpFront interview, renowned US academic and public intellectual Noam Chomsky sits down with Mehdi Hasan to discuss the implications of a Donald Trump presidency, on both domestic and global issues.

Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, has made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years. He has twice convinced the Internet that he’s British graffiti artist Banksy; he also published the very viral, very fake news of a Yelp vs. “South Park” lawsuit last year.

Account suspensions come on heels of agreement between social media giant and Israel to team up against "incitement". By Sophia Hyatt Editors from two Palestinian news publications based in...

If you were to pick a handful of images that changed how people think about war, Nick Ut’s most famous photograph would surely be among them. The image of 9-year-old Kim Phuc running from napalm — her skin burning, her clothes burned away — defined the horrors of the Vietnam War.