Prof. Thomas Malone writes for Salon about Elon Musk’s recent proposal to create a “media credibility rating site” where the public could rate journalists and media outlets. “Crowdsourcing can work—even when most people in the crowd can’t do the task well—if there is some independent way of recognizing and giving special weight to the crowd members who are good at the task.”
A new study co-authored by Prof. Ariel White finds that news outlets can impact the issues Americans talk about, reports Deborah Netburn of the Los Angeles Times. As the authors note in the study, “The decisions made in the nation’s editorial boardrooms have remarkably large effects on the character and composition of the national conversation.”
MIT PhD Student Tom O’Grady writes for The Washington Post about the upcoming vote on independence in Scotland. O’Grady argues Scotland’s case is unique in that nationalists and progressives are united in their support for leaving the UK.