Maria Laura Garcia delivering a speech at the FIBEP World Media Intelligence Congress in Berlin, 4-6 October 2017
Maria Laura Garcia, President of GlobalNews Group shares in this interview the three variables they have chosen to suspect, if not detect directly, fake news. Laura also talks about the future media monitoring tools to counter information overload, while points out quality journalism as part of rising tech platforms. Finally, Laura outlines the new normal in media intelligence.
Q: What would you consider as best “weapons” against fake news?
Laura: We understand that fake news can be detected or, at least, that they can be easily suspected using three variables that we have chosen: the source (the degree of validity and its record), the degree of original work done to the text (hamming distance+Levenshtein distance) and the general universe correlation with concurrent news of the same subject. In order regions, fake news have become a whole phenomenon, they have helped increase the relevance of traditional news outlets in the past few months.
Q: What do you believe are the future media monitoring tools?
Laura: Information overload requires a great degree of intelligence applied to classification, clusterization and administration of information. The current state of generalized manipulation of information and the advent of fake news demands from Media Monitoring companies the creation of new tools that, with the help of AI, can help our clients establish a degree of trust on the contents they receive. At GlobalNews we have been investing heavily in AI in the past few years, especially in the field of NLP in order to cluster information and generate procedures to validate sources and provide a series of products for journalists to assess the veracity of a news piece and to use these products in order to assess and detect when content is being manipulated.
Q: Is there still room for quality journalism in the era of rising tech platforms?
Laura: Journalism is in a moment beset by disruption and we need to refocus and enhance it. For example, social media allow anyone who is where the “events are happening” to become a real time reporter, more up to date than any news agency, that’s why journalist’s job has to be to investigate, to uncover the true facts, dimension and validate news. News outlets have to enrich content with insights and analysis and become beacons of truth and credibility.
Q: What would you consider the new normal in media intelligence?
Laura: Content unlimited excess, the multiplicity of sources and formats and how easy it has become to manipulate information are taking our industry to a new place.
In this place, to organize contents, establish contexts, uncover timelines, prominence and tonality, discriminate authentic from fake or possible fake for validation, to me, have to become the new normal for media intelligence.
Artificial intelligence definitely is our new ally in this new era for our industry.
About Maria Laura Garcia
Laura is an entrepreneur committed to innovation, communication and the development of women. She works hard for the professionalization of the audit of the communication and the analysis of contents in Latin America. She incubates projects within its company linked to technology.
Prior to founding GlobalNews Group, Laura was an International Press Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, Press Coordinator of the International Negotiation and Integration processes such as Mercosur, FTTA and the WTO. She was media analyst and foreign press coordinator for private companies and international corporations; And Journalist on Radio El mundo, Diario La Nación, among others.
You can reach Laura by email, follow her on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.
About GlobalNews Group
As a leading media intelligence and evaluation business, GlobalNews Group meets the actual market demands for reliable and instant information from international media for multi market activity to provide services such as digital clipping, corporate intelligence and media evaluation of print media and radio and TV broadcasts.
Since 1998, GlobalNews Group has grown to become the premier source of media monitoring in Latin-America, covering 18 countries from its network of subsidiaries with local offices in: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, the United States of America, Uruguay and its representatives in Guatemala and Panama.
For more information visit the company website, follow on Twitter or LinkedIn or friend GlobalNews Group on Facebook.
