雅思听力提分训练素材：假消息是如何传播开的?

本期雅思听力提分训练素材来自NPR，话题为：Can You Believe It? On Twitter, False Stories Are Shared More Widely Than True Ones.NPR新闻是美国的国家公共广播，纯公益，所以内容更加去纯粹，直击心灵。可作为雅思听力泛听训练的日常素材，坚持长期听，除了锻炼英语听力，还能积累雅思听力词汇。

雅思听力MP3下载：http://m.newstudy.cn/listinfo-156-0.html?/thread-430186-1-1.html

Can You Believe It? On Twitter, False Stories Are Shared More Widely Than True Ones

SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:

Now it's time for All Tech Considered.

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MCCAMMON: This week's report reminds us of this famous line, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, sometimes Winston Churchill, sometimes another person altogether. Regardless of who said it, a new study of how news travels on Twitter confirms the basic truth of that quote. Here's NPR's Laura Sydell.

本周的报告让我们想起了这条著名的路线，一个谎言可以走遍世界的一半，而真理正在穿鞋，有时归因于Mark Twain，有时是温斯顿邱吉尔，有时是另一个人。不管是谁说的，一项关于新闻如何在Twitter上传播的新研究证实了该报价的基本真实性。这里是NPR的Laura Sydell。

LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: It may not be news that lies spread faster than the truth.

But on Twitter, it's a lot faster.

SINAN ARAL: The sheer vastness of the difference in the speed, breadth, depth that false news spread compared to the truth was surprising.

SYDELL: This is Sinan Aral, one of the authors of a study on the spread of false news on Twitter. He's professor of management at MIT. He says false stories on Twitter are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the true ones. And the study found it's not bots that are doing the retweeting.

这就是Sinan Aral，一个对假新闻的传播推特研究作者。他是麻省理工学院的管理学教授。他说，推特虚假故事70%更可能比真实的转发。而研究发现，这不是机器人做转发。

ARAL: And the bot results points to human judgment and human decision-making as being a potentially more important factor than we might have thought.

SYDELL: The study tracked 126,000 news stories that spread on Twitter between 2006 and 2017. Though the study did not ask people why they retweeted certain stories, it did find that false stories often triggered strong feelings of disgust and surprise. Leanne Baker is one of those people who unwittingly retweeted a false story.

这项研究追踪了2006至2017年间在Twitter上传播的126000个新闻故事。虽然这项研究并没有问为什么人们被某些故事，却发现虚假的故事常常引发厌恶和惊讶的强烈的感情。Leanne Baker是那些人在不知不觉中被一个虚假的故事。

It was a post that said the alleged Parkland shooter had trained with a right-wing militia group. He did not.

LEANNE BAKER: Twitter just takes off when events like this happen, and the news and posts are coming in so fast.

SYDELL: The story went viral. Baker says ultimately, she realized it was not true because she follows people who are experts in their field.

BAKER: Another lady I follow that specializes in extremist groups and studies them, she started saying, you know, hold on a second, this isn't adding up (laughter).

SYDELL: The problem with Twitter and social media is that it amplifies the way gossip spreads in the real world. Deb Roy is co-author of the study and a professor at MIT.

DEB ROY: How do you get a few billion people to stop for a moment and reflect before they hit the retweet or the share button, especially when they have an emotional response to what they've just seen?

SYDELL: Roy served as Twitter's chief media scientist between 2013 and 2017. He says the false news problem is hard to solve. Fact-checking organizations can be slow.

Machines are faster, but a study showed they were only right 75 percent of the time.

ROY: You will often flag stories that turn out to be perfectly fine, right? And what's the cost-benefit tradeoff of doing that?

SYDELL: Twitter helped fund the study. Its response to it was help. The company is asking for proposals on how to deal with the problem. One proposal it's evaluating is finding a better way to authenticate and verify users. But Twitter's faced criticism, especially from right-wing groups, that it's taken down accounts simply because it doesn't like the ideology of the user. In a stream conversation with users, CEO Jack Dorsey said they're going to work hard on the problem.

Twitter资助了这项研究。它对它的反应是有帮助的。公司正在就如何处理这个问题提出建议。其评估的一个建议是寻找一种更好的方法来验证和验证用户。但Twitter面临的批评，尤其是右翼集团的批评，是因为它不喜欢用户的意识形态，而拒绝了账号。在与用户的谈话中，首席执行官杰克·多西说他们将努力解决这个问题。

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JACK DORSEY: We want to be very open and very vulnerable with you all about what we're facing and what our challenges are and the way we would like to move everything forward.

SYDELL: Dorsey said changes weren't going to happen overnight. Unfortunately, that's a lot slower than the speed at which false news spreads. Laura Sydell, NPR News.

雅思听力高频词汇

vulnerable 脆弱的

ultimately 最终

tradeoff 权衡

proposal 建议

gossip 流言蜚语

extremist 极端主义

decision-making 决策

authenticate 进行身份验证

a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes 谎言可以环游世界，而真理却在穿鞋。

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