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A deadly novel coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 4,500 people and spread to 15 countries since emerging in China, has also spawned many false claims on social media.

Here's a selection of misinformation debunked by AFP's Fact Check service.

In Australia, multiple Facebook posts shared hundreds of times claimed to show a list of foods and locations in Sydney which have been contaminated by the new coronavirus strain first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December.

One post, published on January 27, identified different types of rice, cookies and onion rings that allegedly contain traces of the virus. It also claimed that a "bureau of diseasology" had run tests and discovered the strain in several Sydney suburbs.

But the local health authority told AFP the locations listed posed no risk to visitors, and the foods named did not appear in the New South Wales food authority's list of recalls and advisories.

A video viewed more than 88,000 times on Facebook purported to show the market in Wuhan where the virus strain materialised. In reality, it was filmed at an Indonesian market.

The misleading post was published on an account in the Philippines on January 26, 2020. The footage showed bats, rats, snakes and an assortment of other animal meat products being sold at a bustling market.

However, a reverse image search using key frames extracted from the video led to another identical YouTube clip uploaded on July 20, 2019.

AFP was able to confirm the video was in fact captured at the Langowan market in Indonesia's North Sulawesi province.

In Sri Lanka, a Facebook post shared thousands of times claimed doctors were projecting that the entire population of Wuhan - a city of 11 million people - would likely die of the novel coronavirus.

This is false; Chinese authorities have made no such projection.

There is currently no vaccine for the new strain of coronavirus. But the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention stated that most people will recover on their own.

The post also claimed the virus could be caught by eating the meat of the Chinese cobra but this has not yet been established.

Multiple posts on Weibo, Twitter and Facebook shared in January claimed top Chinese respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan had told people to rinse their mouths with salt water solution to prevent infection from a new virus outbreak.

But the claim is bogus; the expert's team said saline would not "kill" the new virus and urged people not to believe or share medically-inaccurate online rumours.

The World Health Organization also told AFP there was no evidence that saline solution would protect against infection from the new coronavirus.

Multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter alleged that the novel coronavirus was created on purpose - with theories including that it was manufactured by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The posts included patents to buffer their claim. But these were in fact patents registered in an effort to combat different strains of coronavirus, for example by developing vaccines.

In France, several social media posts have circulated with claims that people had been contaminated with the novel coronavirus in the departments of Val d'Oise, Savoie, Lot-et-Garonne and Pyrenees-Orientales.

These false reports were accompanied by images made to look like they were screenshots from several French news sources - including AFP.

However, these images were digitally manipulated. No cases have been confirmed in these departments.

Agence France-Presse

Excerpt from:
These Lies And Conspiracies About The Wuhan Coronavirus Are Totally False - ScienceAlert

Data-Driven Thinking is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Todays column is written by Rishad Tobaccowala, chief growth officer at Publicis Groupe and author of Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data (Harper Collins, publishing on Jan. 28, 2020).

All leaders, and particularly those in marketing and media, face many challenges today, including organizational designs built for the past vs. the present, hierarchical command-and-control management styles that do not resonate with a new generation and employees who question their intent.

One key change that companies are making to address these issues is to ensure that they have a more diverse work force that will resonate with the marketplace and with their talent.

Ensuring diversity is not just the right thing to do, but is proven to be good for the bottom line as a representative workforce is a competitive advantage when talent is key, change is widespread and new ways of looking at things become critical.

However, ensuring a diversity of faces is a necessary but insufficient step. Not only do companies need different faces around the table, but they also need diversity in thinking. We need to ensure that every person in a firm and around the table has a voice.

Most importantly, it is critical to have voices that can speak truth to power, question the status quo, call out potential issues and be heard without the risk of being punished.

Today in the field of marketing and technology, there are huge issues that need to be discussed including a) the control major platforms have over marketers, who find themselves with limited data and customer relationships; b) how advertising technology built for engagement has become a society operating system that has created polarization and a breakdown in trust; and c) the long-term secular decline of advertising, which will be accelerated by cheap, ad-free streaming services.

There are voices that question and have suggestions on how to solve or mitigate these issues.

If such voices were listened to, many companies, such as Wells Fargo and possibly Boeing, would not have suffered their reputational and market valuation losses. There were people who knew there were issues, but they either kept quiet or were silenced or ignored.

For true diversity it is key that people can call out the turd on the table when everyone else is celebrating what looks like a delicious brownie.

This is very difficult since the issues being called out are challenging. Financial impropriety. Cutting corners to make deadlines, which hurts product or service quality. Loathsome behavior by management. Incompetence in adapting to change.

In addition to the difficulty of speaking out, there is the risk of job loss, increased workload to fix the problem, career blackballing and, of course, the possibility of being wrong.

But speaking ones mind is not just important in helping to avoid big problems or issues. It also creates an environment that helps day-to-day business.

Speaking up is difficult in all circumstances but particularly if management and the culture is not supportive.

Studying many companies and organizations, including firms as diverse as Pixar and the Navy Seals, has revealed some best practices that one can unleash to encourage diversity of voice.

Being sensitive to diversity of voices as much as to diversity of faces will ensure long-term success for companies.

Follow Rishad Tobaccowala (@rishad) and AdExchanger (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

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Diverse Faces Are Not The Same As Diverse Voices - AdExchanger

Jaclyn Hills future looked promising when she launched her own beauty brand, Jaclyn Cosmetics, back in mid-2019. Her So Rich Lipsticks (a collection of nude lip colors) were extremely successful at first launch, and Hill sold out of all the products in mere minutes. Unfortunately, the success of the original launch was short-lived. Reports of contaminants within the lipsticks came in by the droves. Customers reported finding everything from animal hair to shards of glass and plastic in their products, making the lipstick a safety and health hazard.

The situation wasnt helped by Hills response. First, she denied that there was anything wrong with her cosmetics. Then she elected not to comment further until she had all the necessary information. Following that, she issued an excuse that didnt add up. Finally, she stopped production and promised each and every customer a full refund for their products before taking a social media hiatus for nearly a month. All the while, she refused to recall the lipsticks, maintaining that they were safe to use. Despite all the controversy, Jaclyn Cosmetics has re-launched since this snafu, and many of Hills fans seem open to giving her a second chance.

Months later, Hill is reflecting on her 2019. On January 24, 2020, she penned a message to her fans sharing how difficult the past few months have been for her and her hopes for the future. 2019 was the hardest year of my life for many reasons. As you guys all witnessed last year, I launched my own cosmetic line, which has been a dream of mine for soooo long! And it was a total flop. Ive never felt that kind of humiliation, embarrassment & disappointment in myself before. I totally crumbled. I didnt know how to address it, I wanted to crawl into a hole & disappear. Im still ashamed of the way I handled it, but Im learning! I cant control the past, but I can be better in the future. Thank you to everyone who has stayed with me for the past year. You are incredible!!!! I cant wait for you to see whats in store for 2020! Hill shared to her Instagram page.

The video garnered over 200,000 likes and a whole host of comments. Many of the comments were positive and praised Hill for her continued persistence. You really are so strong. I have admired and looked up to you for so many years. We all love and believe in you no matter what. You never give up, you always keep fighting. I cant wait to watch you grow more and more you will always have my support. Much love, one fan wrote on Instagram.

However, not everyone was sympathetic to Hill. Some former fans and critics felt she was playing the victim once again. What the too little too late fresh hell is this? An ad? Exploiting your failure? Novel idea. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her? I get what shes trying to do, but its not working. nope-still dont feel bad. Still handled it POORLY, one user wrote on Twitter.

Others took offense to the way she handled the Jaclyn Cosmetics lipstick controversy. 1 main reason I cant with #jaclynhill is the ghosting during lipstickgate. When theres a crisis w a product, you dont shut down social media & take a 30-day breather. Wanna be a CEO? Deal with the issue like a grown woman. Your supporters deserve more than your victim role, a critic tweeted out. Even though Hill has plenty of critics, she seems to have enough fans who are willing to support her and are excited to see what Jaclyn Cosmetics comes out within the coming months.

More:
Jaclyn Hill Reflects on Launching Jaclyn Cosmetics; 'It Was a Total Flop' - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

One morning in her freshman year, Jasmine Sun got a text from her mom: Dont you have class right now? Why are you in your dorm?

Her mom, Joan Chen, lives in the Seattle area and had noticed that Jasmines location cursor on Life360, the location-sharing service where family members can keep tabs on each other, was still in her dorm room at Stanford. Like many college students, Jasmine had overslept and had skipped lecture that daysomething she didn't necessarily want her mom to know.

My mom liked Life360. Jasmine groans at the memory from her current dorm room at Oxford University, where shes spending the semester. But I didnt have options about what I wanted to share.

Now her family has a way of sharing what they want to when they want to. In November, ahead of her winter quarter at Oxford, Jasmine gently suggested that her mom and teen sister, who still lives at home, both download an app that had just announced its launch on Twitter: Cocoon, founded by two former Facebook employees, Alex Cornell and Sachin Monga.

On paper, Cocoon sounds a lot like Facebook: it wants to connect people in virtual space. The difference is that it only wants to connect family members in small, distinct groups. Imagine a feed of updates from family membersyour brother announcing that hed landed on his work trip, a video of your niece learning to walk, a location cursor on a cousin backpacking through Europeall attached to a messaging capability that threads conversations, and all restricted to the members of your group (12 is the current maximum).

Its not necessarily about broadcasting highlights or crafting my identity or gaining status, Monga says. You occupy this space with just these people. Theres no network.

Cocoon is one of a new wave of apps aiming to change the way we interact on social media. These new platforms dont encourage you to accumulate likes or followers, or require that you diligently craft an online persona. Instead they want you to connect with a small, curated group of people, and thats it.

Apps like Dex, founded by Kevin Sun, often make use of an old business standby, customer relationship management (CRM) software. CRMs are reliable and bland, akin to an Excel spreadsheet: theyre used to log the name of a contact alongside other relevant information, like birthdays, quirks, or passions.

I was one of those people that had a spreadsheet for my friends and personal relationships, says Sun, the founder of Dex, a personal CRM that its website claims gives you relationship superpowers.

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Theres also Monaru, founded by three Irish students who felt unmoored when they left college and came to the US. It employs a virtual concierge to help members remember birthdays, sending reminders to buy gifts or call a relative. Patrick Finlay, a cofounder, tinkered with Excel and set up reminders to call his loved ones but found that intertwining his personal and professional lives was weird. Instead, for a fee, Monaru pings you every so often if the app notices you havent called a close friend or loved one.

But if Dex and Monaru are trying to redefine the CRM, Cocoon wants to redefine social networksand thats a much bigger task.

Unwanted overlapping

The current social-media model isnt quite right for family sharing. Different generations tend to congregate in different places: Facebook is Boomer paradise, Instagram appeals to Millennials, TikTok is GenZ central. (WhatsApp has helped bridge the generational divide, but its focus on messaging is limiting.)

Updating family about a vacation across platformsvia Instagram stories or on Facebook, for examplemight not always be appropriate. Do you really want your cubicle pal, your acquaintance from book club, and your high school frenemy to be looped in as well?

Social media treats everyonea friend, a family member, an acquaintancethe same, says Courtney Walsh, a lecturer in human development and family sciences at the University of Texas who consulted for Cocoon. I would argue that what we are doing is impersonal on social media.

Cocoon aims to change the way we share. It launched on Thanksgiving, with more than 10,000 users signing up from 163 countries that week, according to Monga. Everything you post stays within the group. The app is its own small world: a feed is the home screen, greeting users with updates since they last signed on; messaging capabilities include threads to help corral conversations. Photos, videos, and links are shared in a vault that all members can access.

We dont track time spent, which is a pretty common goal to optimize for, Cornell said. We dont care about that. The whole point is that you should be able to check in and want to connect with it. I want them [users] to have the warm fuzzy feeling, versus the crippling anxiety of logging on to Twitter.

Conor Muirhead, a software developer based in Washington state, first heard about Cocoon through a group chat at his workplace, and it piqued his interest. He is morally opposed to using Facebook products because of its data practices (although he begrudgingly uses WhatsApp as a way to keep in touch with his family, which includes his dad Jim, who lives in Canada). He and his wife also recently took in a foster daughter and wanted a safe place to share pictures with the wider family. We wouldnt share photos and videos [otherwise], he says. We totally want our family to see the cute things shes doing.

He was hesitant to download yet another app but was intrigued by Cocoons promise that it wouldnt sell his private information to a third party. While it is free for now, Monga and Cornell say they eventually intend to monetize the app by selling subscriptions, not ads.

They seemed to be making the pitch that they wanted this to be a private, protected, secure place, says Muirhead.

That privacy is what Jasmine and Joan were able to negotiate when she was at Stanford and now at Oxford. With the app, Jasmine is able to share her location by city instead of GPS coordinates.

I think it brings us closer together [to not share exact location], Jasmine says. It feels more equal.

Kate Eichhorn, an associate professor of culture and media at the New School and author of The End of Forgetting: Growing Up With Social Media, has a name for this second wave of post-Facebook social media: micro-networks.

To Eichhorn, its only natural that the past decades data missteps have created a desire for smaller, better-defined networks. In fact, young people already create their own version of this using current social-media apps.

Tweens and teens are very aware of reputation management, she says. They already are creating micro-communities on Facebook and Instagram. Theyre looking for other places to do that.

How the subscription-supported business structure is received could be key to the success of apps like Cocoon. Eichhorn said shed be interested to see how that plays out after almost two decades of free social media accessible to anyone willing to hand over personal data. People arent used to paying.

Are people concerned enough about privacy to actually let go of the idea that these platforms should be free? she says. Will they subscribe to gain their privacy back?

The other big question is: Does it work? Does using an app actually make you feel closer to your family?

Anecdotally, both families I spoke to have noticed that the type of content posted on the app is more open and honest than the stuff posted to Instagram or Facebook.

Jasmine, for example, noted that she could post a hasty, even not-so-clear shot and feel fine about uploading it in a way she wouldnt with Instagram. There are norms [on Instagram], she tells me, saying she uses a finsta (a fake Instagram account) sometimes for closer friends.

Trust breeds authenticity, says Miriam Kirmayer, a clinical psychologist and friendship expert. Its much easier to share the less curated parts of our lives when we feel accepted for who we really are and are less fearful of perceived judgment or rejection.

Cocoon is a new app with a fairly small set of users, and that means bugs. The messaging isnt always smooth, either: chat defaults to photos over text, which made it annoying to use for the Muirhead family during dad Jims recent medical emergency. The family got so frustrated and annoyed by the double-tapping that they just switched over to WhatsApp.

Still, such micro-networks and the control they offer might redefine how we think about and use social media in the next decade, whether it is Cocoon or another app that follows in its wake.

In the tech world, people crash and burn quickly, but the idea of these controlled micro-communities is something that will persist, Eichhorn says.

Excerpt from:
Why private micro-networks could be the future of how we connect - MIT Technology Review

Prince Charles and Prince William are reportedly growing even more worried about Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex hoped to live a quieter life in Canada after stepping down as senior members of the royal family, but the media has proven just as invasive across the pond. Things have gotten arguably worse without the royal familys protection, which has prompted Prince Charles and Prince William to reach out with love and support.

Harry and Meghan have allegedly found it more difficultdealing with the media in Canada without the protection of the royal family.Their decision to step down has made the situation even worse, as the paparazziare looking for every opportunity to catch the couple in public.

According to Express, Charles and William have grown very concerned about Harry and Meghans well-being and have reached out in a show of support.

View this post on Instagram

After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution. We intend to step back as senior members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen. It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment. We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America, continuing to honour our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages. This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity. We look forward to sharing the full details of this exciting next step in due course, as we continue to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen, The Prince of Wales, The Duke of Cambridge and all relevant parties. Until then, please accept our deepest thanks for your continued support. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex For more information, please visit sussexroyal.com (link in bio) Image PA

A post shared by The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (@sussexroyal) on Jan 8, 2020 at 10:33am PST

A source claims that Prince Charles and Prince William have told the Sussexes that they are welcome to return to the U.K. and will not be forced to take on any royal responsibilities. They are also preparing for the worst and are setting up a plan to get Harry and Meghan back if things turn south quickly.

Harry and Meghan announced their plan to away from the royal family earlier this month. As part of their new deal, the couple plans on splitting their time between the U.K. and Canada, though there has been some doubt about them ever returning to the U.K.

One reason Harry and Meghan decided to step down was to livea quieter life outside of the public eye. While they enjoyed a quieter life inCanada over the holidays, things have reached a tipping point since theirannouncement.

Harry and Meghan, for example, issued a statement warning the media against intruding on their private lives after the Duke of Sussex reunited with his family in Canada last week. Before the announcement, cameras caught Meghan hiding behind a row of bushes while she walked her son, Archie Harrison, and their two pets.

In light of the situation, palace courtiers say that the royal family is worried about Harry and Meghans safety. Although they dont expect the couple to return to the U.K. in the near future, they are making plans in the event that their stay in Canada turns bad.

The palace is very worried about the Sussexes, because theyare vulnerable outside the embrace of the family, the insider shared. Theyare making contingency plans in case the Sussexes suddenly turn round and say:Can we come back under your wing?

The insider added that the plans are for the future and thatPrince Charles and Prince William are not setting up a timeline. They justbelieve that Prince Harry and Meghans situation is very fragile and could getout of control quickly.

A few weeks ago, Harry and Meghan announced that they are nolonger going to be senior members of the royal family. Aside from living partof the year in Canada, they revealed that they want to become financiallyindependent from the crown.

Prince Harry met with Prince Charles, Prince William, and Queen Elizabeth in the days following his stunning announcement. Following the meetings, the royals revealed that Harry and Meghan will no longer be using their HRH titles.

The couple also plans to pay back the money that was used torenovate Frogmore Cottage, which was around $2.5 million.

It is unclear how Meghan and Harry plan on funding theiryearly endeavors, but they certainly have a lot of options to explore.

If what the sources say is true, then moving to Canada mightnot be in the best interest of Meghan and Harry. Although Meghan lived inToronto while filming Suits, it is acompletely different ball game now that she is a member of the royal family.

The biggest issue with relocating to Canada is the media.The press is Canada enjoys more freedom of expression than their Britishcounterparts, which could create a lot of problems for the couple down theroad.

If they do get tired of living in Canada, sources say theroyals will welcome them back with open arms.

Prince Charles has not commented on Prince Harry and Meghans decision.

Read the original post:
Prince Charles and Prince William Have Been 'Reaching Out' to 'Vulnerable' Prince Harry and Meghan Markle - Showbiz Cheat Sheet