Month: December 2016

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05: Fake news, Google rankings and augmented intelligence

In episode 5 of the Small Data Forum podcast hosted by LexisNexis – our Christmas and year-end edition – Neville Hobson, Sam Knowles and I reflect on fake news and their distribution networks, the alleged gaming of Google search rankings, the promise of augmented intelligence and broad questions of how civil societies deal with the emerging and evolving challenges. Do we need more regulation? And who will regulate the regulators?


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04: Brexit, Trump and the challenge of better forecasting with better data

Our latest Small Data Forum podcast focuses on recent surprise political outcomes and the mechanisms at play: the psychology of predictions, the new phenomenon of fake news, echo chamber effects and the way data was analysed and interpreted.

Recent expressions of democratic political will – the UK referendum on EU membership, the US presidential election – have surprised most observers and commentators.

Both outcomes, ie Brexit and Trump, were not what most of the polling data indicated. This episode of the Small Data Forum is asking whether we should and could have seen this coming.


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