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Professor Amanda Sturgill

@drsturg.bsky.social
51K followers 799 following 2.3K posts

Truthmonger. I write books, teach students and make podcasts about you being smarter about misinformation. #WeAreAltGov #DetectingDeception bit.ly/UnSpunPod

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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 14h
Legal: Allowable under the law Ethical: Conforming to standards of conduct They are not the same. Societies consider being illegal and being unethical to both be bad. Bad-faith arguers will sometimes say that because something was legal, you are unfair to bring up ethics. Weaksauce.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 21h
Did you know that Baptists have a news outlet? (I study media and religion, so I do). Anyway, it published a piece about Cornell, and it will probably surprise you. baptistnews.com/article/dear...
baptistnews.com
Dear men, it is time to wake the hell up
All this is horrible, but there’s one fact about this case that ought to keep you awake at night worried about the future of the world:
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Timely with the Cornell story. #GiftLink www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/u...
nytimes.com
Trump Officials Revise How Title IX Sex Discrimination Rules Are Enforced (Gift Article)
The change follows a court ruling barring Title IX from protecting L.G.B.T.Q. people and has angered advocates for sexual assault survivors.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Um... Theories: Social media editor is having some kind of issue It's time to dial back on the AI adding art and posting Or... Really puzzled here
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
What - you don't put paintings of food inside your refrigerator?
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I don't think @ddale8.bsky.social posts here anymore, but all the way back in his @thestar.com days, he was instrumental in developing the kind of live verification that is more effective in keeping lies from becoming deceptions. This is worth a read. www.cnn.com/2026/09/27/p...
cnn.com
I started fact-checking Trump 10 years ago. Here are 15 things I’ve learned | CNN Politics
Ten years ago this month, in my old job as Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, I started what I believed would be a quick little side project: fact-checking underdog presidential candidate ...
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
So the thing about religous folks deciding they should be all up in politics is... the theology is so bad. It's like they don't really understand the thing they say they believe in and fight for.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I'm a little confused by this. Why are media outlets accepting this ad? He's not a candidate, so the equal time threats don't seem like they would apply? www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-f...
cbsnews.com
New Trump-focused "Love Me" ad campaign paid for by taxpayers hits airwaves
Ads promoting President Trump and paid for by American taxpayers are now airing on network and national cable.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
🧵End-of-month reminder to use your gift links if you subscribe. Here are some from my subscriptions. YOU add to the magic when you reshare. #GiftLink www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...
theatlantic.com
What Israel Knew Before October 7
A conversation with Vivian Salama about her exclusive reporting that Egypt’s top spy warned of the coming attack.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Answers to question NYT headlines, without context. 1. Because people let him. 2. Use a time-limit app. 3. An episode of Saturday Night Live. 4. Probably, but it would be hard and costly. 5. Beats me. (I wish they didn't.) 6. The morality of some things makes them less controversial to tax.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Hi there. You've been managed by distraction for a while now. How it works: Scandal brewing? 😲 Do something even more scandalous over there. 🤫 Problem solved! The issue: eventually, upping the stakes will get to be too much. What was entertaining outrage becomes real threats.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
They essentially stopped teaching a lot of public school kids how to write legibly by hand about 12 years ago. As someone who teaches college, I can say it absolutely has mattered. Don't let your hubris block you from at least admitting that there might be unintended consequences.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We have news playing in my building, and I just saw a piece where a prediction market guy was trying to argue that those are better than polls. Poppycock. They are both bad. They manufacture news and don't tell you anything about what will happen. I wish media didn't commission and cover them.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It's difficult for university students to vote for several reasons. If you have a student or know people with a student, now is the time to ask them if they have a plan. For a lot of the largest graduating class in US history, this is their FIRST chance, so help them take it!
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
static.klipy.com
Well Well Well Brian Griffin
ALT: Well Well Well Brian Griffin
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Sigh. (And it's all political perspectives) www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/u...
nytimes.com
An Army of Paid Creators Is Carpeting the Web With Political Content (Gift Article)
Unlike celebrity influencers with large followings, these creators produce a blizzard of videos for a fraction of the cost of traditional online campaigns and, in the process, shift public conversatio...
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Good morning! For UnSpun this week, I'm changing up the journal club a little bit to look at a book. It's a good framework for understanding why the US president thinks he can dismiss the press. You - smarter in about 20 minutes! Find it here or where you pod. bit.ly/UnSpunPod
bit.ly
Unspun
Listen to Unspun on RedCircle
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Great 🧵
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Fine. Since everyone is doing it, here's mine.
Ballot of top TV shows of the 21st century. Embedded text reads: Arrested Development, Derry Girls, Schitt$ Creek, The Diplomat, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Severance, The Great British Baking Show, The Crown, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The need relationship in politics works both ways. News orgs NEED politicians NEED news orgs. Particularly in election season. Will be interested to see if this works, or if presidential event coverage will devolve into influencers, Newsmax, and friends.
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Reposted by Professor Amanda Sturgill
Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 21/09/2026
Not for nothing, but there’s some pretty interesting research about this!
academic.oup.com
Learning to Like the Likes and the Hate: The Labor of Internet Fame in the New Attention Economy
ABSTRACT. How do people experience internet fame? Whereas public visibility and reputation were once tightly coupled, these can be decoupled in the new med
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Maybe someone should tell them that students making their own "content" from the material would be much more effective for learning... Even if you're not into learning theory, think about it. What's your own desire for AI content on things you don't care about? techcrunch.com/2026/09/20/s...
techcrunch.com
ScrollEd wants to turn textbooks into TikTok | TechCrunch
ScrollEd turns textbooks into a scrollable, Instagram-like feed with video, audio, and quizzes. The Palo Alto startup, founded by student co-founders (and spouses) Utsav Gupta and Rebecca Neff, pitche...
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Half-caff thought: We're not always great at counting the real cost. Examples: You want your news without a paywall AND no data collected. Cost: biased information. You want low taxes so YOU don't pay for others to have things. Cost: potholes; diseases, ignorant workforce.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
National security is a common trope for federal officials to get their way/avoid accountability. (David McCraw wrote about this in Truth in Our Times, talking about gov not answering journalists.) Now it's the ballroom/bunker and the like. What will the Kennedy Ctr. security piece be?
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I think they could tell, but don't think the audience will care. Which says a lot about what they think/assume about that audience.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I'm far from a military strategy expert, but don't you usually hide tempting targets, not put gold statues on them and place them in flight paths?
Screenshot from news story reading "proposed triumphal arch will double as military complex with snipers and drones.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
🤫This is especially hard when public opinion is crossing borders.
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Reposted by Professor Amanda Sturgill
Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 20/09/2026
Put another way, social media is good at showing what people are talking about (the direction of public attention or sentiment), but it doesn’t reliably convey how many people feel that way (intensity) or how strongly they feel it (speed/force of change).
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I so want to say something snarky about some of the student work I see. I must say that although I am thoroughly trained/experienced in critical thinking, I occasionally get very close to being fooled by bad takes. It's at the point where I'm starting to pretend the repost button doesn't exist.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
🧵I realized in writing #WeAreAltGov that the national parks have a unique ability to capture the American imagination. Information about what the 45th president was doing to protected lands and culture inspired community action like nothing else. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/19/c...
nytimes.com
How Trump Has Disrupted National Parks (Gift Article)
Maintenance projects have been put off around the country and resources diverted to the president’s favored projects in Washington.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
A worthy goal could be to live your life so well that it inspires an obituary like this: www.npr.org/2026/09/18/n... I've written quite a few in my time. You put in the extra work on people who mean a lot to you, and Rose Friedman obviously did.
npr.org
Editor Rose Friedman, who helped shape NPR's cultural coverage, dies at 38
Friedman was in her early 20s when she landed her first position as an editorial assistant at NPR. She became an editor and reporter, and a co-creator of the annual Books We Love reading guide.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
On the Internet, no one knows you're a bot... www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/t...
nytimes.com
Iran and China Create First-of-Their-Kind Autonomous A.I. Influence Campaigns (Gift Article)
The countries, along with Israeli firms, combined Chinese open-source A.I. models and A.I. agents for the campaigns, foreshadowing future online manipulation.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Todays adventure in thoughtfulness: Thinks - I would love to get an idea of interest in a topic Looks - To see if @bsky.app has an embedded polling tool Writes/deletes - Skeet to ask them to consider one Looks - To see for sure there is not Finds - 3rd party tool more...
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Half-caff thought: Content creation is spending a lot work making things you then have to exhort people to take, even though those things are free to them. And for the great majority, the payoff is $0. What a hobby.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New UnSpun Episode on how Christian nationalists use, create and are affected by media was inspired by this video resurfacing. bit.ly/UnSpunPod (I'm not linking to the video - you can find it by searching "God made Trump." You might note who has shared it, if you do)
Screen shot from video. An American Flag on the left is in front of the name Trump, seen as if the flag is translucent. A partial silhouette of, I guess, Trump, is on the right. The caption reads "a country to be the Envy of the world again so God made Trump."
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The visual style suggests this is NotebookLM. People have this weird, and not correct, belief that it's the "safe" AI because you upload content yourself to get things like graphics and slides. If you believe this, I'd urge you to try it with stuff you wrote and see how accurate it is.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I know the profs moving to Canada made a splash, but did you know there are quite a few countries courting top US academics? Just saw a new one today. #BrainDrain
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Things I learned recently: Want to remake something the way you want it, but you don't have the power/people fight back? Easy. Just use the power you DO have to sabotage it. Then, claim it was always bad. Finally make a new thing the way you want and put your name on it.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
(Sipping slowly this morning) One more half-caff thought: Wondering why journalism and academia aren't doing their jobs and assessing and making you aware of issues? You might want to check out the pressures on those sectors over the last few years. There's just less watchdog to go around.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Half-caff thought: The Radio Act of 1927 was an example of industry needing the government to regulate because signal interference is bad and without an arbiter, stations were trying to use the same parts of the spectrum. They could not manage themselves. AI.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Half-caff thought: Opioids. Folks took something with helpful properties in some contexts and tried to get it everywhere and got people addicted, causing dreadful harm to people, communities, and societies so they could make obscene amounts of money. AI.
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Reposted by Professor Amanda Sturgill
Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
I use this one with students: www.ibm.com/think/videos...
ibm.com
Generative Models Explained | Technology Explained | IBM
IBM expert Kate Soule explains how a popular form of generative AI, large language models, works and what it can do for enterprise.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Whether you think the ends justify the means depends a lot on where you are in the pipeline.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I play games on NYT and on LinkedIn. I take the hints on the LinkedIn ones and don't feel guilty, since using resources is how to get ahead in business. I feel like there's some bigger lesson there, but I have not yet had enough coffee. What's your favorite free little online game?
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
It looks like they are going for a "go away green" effect...
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
There are days where for a journalism professor class pales in comparison to world events, so you drag everyone to a TV to watch what is going on (you can always discuss the coverage later). Sept. 11, 2001 was one of those days, made complicated by having a family member working in the Pentagon.
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Thought for the day: Which is worse...having people with ill intent use AI to create and post misinformation at scale or having the AI tools do it autonomously?
static.klipy.com
Pudgy Penguin Pondering
ALT: Pudgy Penguin Pondering
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Reposted by Professor Amanda Sturgill
Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
In this week's UnSpun journal club, a paper that looks at how people from different education and income levels get value from news. There are some important things publishers are missing. Here, or where you pod. bit.ly/UnSpunPod
Woman's hands hold iPhone
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Heard on this morning's @nytimes.com The Daily podcast ..."turning the US Postal Service into an arbiter of which states can have mail voting"
static.klipy.com
April Fools Joke: 'It's Fine' Meme
ALT: April Fools Joke: 'It's Fine' Meme
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Professor Amanda Sturgill @drsturg.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
In this week's UnSpun journal club, a paper that looks at how people from different education and income levels get value from news. There are some important things publishers are missing. Here, or where you pod. bit.ly/UnSpunPod
Woman's hands hold iPhone
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