科学技术如何干扰事实真相 | 卫报 （上篇）
科技的进步为新闻的发展带来了空前便利的环境，日新月异的科技能够帮助公众随时随地浏览讯息。但我们必须解决数字化带来的问题，并需要意识到从印刷到数字媒体的转变，不仅仅是科技的原因；我们还必须处理这些变化所产生的新动力。科技和媒体不是相互独立的，它们有助于塑造社会，反之亦然。
How Technology Disrupted the Truth
科学技术如何干扰事实真相
Social media has swallowed the news – threatening the funding of public-interest reporting and ushering in an era when everyone has their own facts. But the consequences go far beyond journalism
社交媒体吞没了新闻，威胁涉及公共利益的报道的资金来源，以及带来了一个人人都有自己认为的事实的年代。但受影响的远远不止新闻业。
by Katharine Viner
Translated by Bridget（1-7段），L的三眼皮（8-30段），DON’T CUT（31-41段），ffff?zzzz（42-50段），YL(51-59段)
Proofread by 李根琛(1-7段)，Bridget（31-41段），Haley/notting的雪（42-50段），W（8-30，51-59段）
Reviewed by Ennis
Edited by W
One Monday morning last September, Britain woke to a depraved news story. The prime minister, David Cameron, had committed an “obscene act with a dead pig’s head”, according to the Daily Mail. “A distinguished Oxford contemporary claims Cameron once took part in an outrageous initiation ceremony at a Piers Gaveston event, involving a dead pig,” the paper reported. Piers Gaveston is the name of a riotous Oxford unive the authors of the story claimed their source was an MP, who said he had seen photographic evidence: “His extraordinary suggestion is that the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal.”
去年九月某个星期一的清晨，一则关于某人道德败坏的新闻惊醒了整个英国。据每日邮报称，首相卡梅伦曾经对一个死猪的脑袋做过下流的动作，“卡梅伦牛津大学的同窗声称：卡梅伦曾参加了布灵顿俱乐部（Piers Gaveston）一场骇人的入会典礼，典礼活动涉及一只死猪”。布灵顿俱乐部是牛津大学一个放纵的餐饮俱乐部的名字；这个故事的作者们声称他们的线人是一个议员，并且看到过照片证据：“他暗示这个未来的首相将他身体的某个私密部分放入了一只动物的体内。这个暗示令人感到十分诧异”。
Member of Parliament议员
Piers Gaveston
The Piers Gaveston Society is a men-only dining club founded in 1977 at the University of Oxford. It is named in honour of Piers Gaveston, favourite and supposed lover of King Edward II of England.
The story, extracted from a new biography of Cameron, sparked an immediate furore. It was gross, it was a great opportunity to humiliate an elitist prime minister, and many felt it rang true for a former member of the notorious Bullingdon Club. Within minutes, #Piggate and #Hameron were trending on Twitter, and even senior politicians joined the fun: Nicola Sturgeon said the allegations had “entertained the whole country”, while Paddy Ashdown joked that Cameron was “hogging the headlines”. At first, the BBC refused to mention the allegations, and 10 Downing Street said it would not “dignify” the story with a response – but soon it was forced to issue a denial. And so a powerful man was sexually shamed, in a way that had nothing to do with his divisive politics, and in a way he could never really respond to. But who cares? He could take it.
这个来自卡梅伦新出版的传记的故事瞬间瞬间引发了巨大的骚动。故事虽不堪入目，但却是羞辱一位杰出首相的绝佳机会；并且很多人会感觉这件事听起来像是真的，毕竟卡梅伦是臭名昭著的布灵顿俱乐部的前任成员。短时间内，关于#猪门#和#猪梅伦#就上了推特的热搜，即使是资深政客也参与其中：Nicola Sturgeon称这项指控使“全国人民都陷入一片欢腾之中”，与此同时，Paddy Ashdown戏称卡梅伦“独霸头条”。一开始，BBC拒绝提及这个指控，唐宁街10号称将不会用回应来“美化”这个故事——但是很快它被迫站出来否认。一个如此有权有势的男人被羞辱了，以一种与他引发争议的政治毫无相关的方式，以这样一种他可能永远都无法真正作出回应的方式。但是谁在乎呢？他能经受得住。
听来真实可靠；听上去是真的
Then, after a full day of online merriment, something shocking happened. Isabel Oakeshott, the Daily Mail journalist who had co-written the biography with Lord Ashcroft, a billionaire businessman, went on TV and admitted that she did not know whether her huge, scandalous scoop was even true. Pressed to provide evidence for the sensational claim, Oakeshott admitted she had none.
然后，在网上狂欢了一整天之后，令人震惊的事情发生了。 Isabel Oakeshott上了电视，并且在电视上承认她压根不知道她独家报道的惊天丑闻是不是真的。Isabel Oakeshott就是那个跟亿万富翁Lord Ashcroft一起写传记的每日邮报的记者。关于这个骇人听闻的言论，Oakeshott被要求提供证据，迫于此种压力下，她不得不承认没有证据。
[N]抢先报道的新闻;独家新闻 You can use scoop to refer to an exciting news story which is reported in one newspaper or on one television programme before it appears anywhere else.
e.g. one of the biggest scoops in the history of newspapers.报业史上最大的独家新闻之一
[VERB] 抢先报道 If a newspaper scoops other newspapers, it succeeds in printing an exciting or important story before they do.
e.g. All the newspapers really want to do is scoop the opposition.所有报社真正想做的就是比对手抢先报道。
“We couldn’t get to the bottom of that source’s allegations,” she said on Channel 4 News. “So we merely reported the account that the source gave us … We don’t say whether we believe it to be true.” In other words, there was no evidence that the prime minister of the United Kingdom had once “inserted a private part of his anatomy” into the mouth of a dead pig – a story reported in dozens of newspapers and repeated in millions of tweets and Facebook updates, which many people presumably still believe to be true today.
她在第4套新闻频道中称：“我们无法对这个线人的指控进行深入挖掘。”“所以我们只能报道那个线人给我们提供的内容......我们没有表明我们是否相信这是真的”换言之，没有任何证据表明英国首相曾经把他身体的某个私密部分插到一只死猪的嘴里。然而，这个传闻被一众媒体报章报道并且反复出现在成千上万的推特和脸书的更新之中，时至今日大概还有很多人相信这是真的。
Oakeshott went even further to absolve herself of any journalistic responsibility: “It’s up to other people to decide whether they give it any credibility or not,” she concluded. This was not, of course, the first time that outlandish claims were published on the basis of flimsy evidence, but this was an unusually brazen defence. It seemed that journalists were no longer required to believe their own stories to be true, nor, apparently, did they need to provide evidence. Instead it was up to the reader – who does not even know the identity of the source – to make up their own mind. But based on what? Gut instinct, intuition, mood?Does the truth matter any more?
Oakeshott为了给自己没尽到作者应有的责任找借口开脱甚至做了更进一步的努力，她总结道：“这取决于其他人来决定他们是否赋予新闻可信度”诚然，这种没有什么确凿证据的奇葩言论被报道出来并不是第一次出现的新鲜事，但这种借口却是非比寻常的无耻的辩驳。记者似乎不再被要求确认他们故事的真实性，也不需要提供证据。反而是取决于读者本身的凭空想象。读者甚至不知道那个线人的身份。但是读者的想象是基于什么呢？本能、直觉、心情？真相还重要吗？
Nine months after Britain woke up giggling at Cameron’s hypothetical porcine intimacies, the country arose on the morning of 24 June to the very real sight of the prime minister standing outside Downing Street at 8am, announcing his own resignation.
在整个英国终于在嘲笑臆想中的卡梅伦与猪的性行为中回过神来后的9个月，在6月24号的早晨8点，整个国家苏醒过来，非常真实地看到他们的首相站在唐宁街外宣布辞职。
“The British people have voted to leave the European Union and their will must be respected,” Cameron declared. “It was not a decision that was taken lightly, not least because so many things were said by so many different organisations about the significance of this decision. So there can be no doubt about the result.”
卡梅伦宣布“英国人民公投决定脱离欧盟组织，他们的意愿必须得到尊重。”“这个决定是被严肃对待的，尤其是因为众多不同的组织都强调了这个决定的重要性，所以这个结果是毋庸置疑的”。
Piggate, alternately known as The Bae of Pigs, Hameron, or The Snoutrage, is the name of a scandal surrounding the British Prime Minister David Cameron, after an unauthorized biography claimed that he inserted his penis into the mouth of a dead pig during an induction ceremony for a secret society at Oxford University.
BACKGROUND
On September 20th, 2015, The Daily Mail published an excerpt from an unauthorized biography of British Prime Minister David Cameron by Lord Michael Ashcroft. In the book titled Call Me Dave, Ashcroft alleged that during his college years at Oxford University, Cameron was to be inducted into the infamous Piers Gaveston Society, a secret campus group known for excessive drug-taking and sexual parties. Ashcroft interviewed Cameron’s classmates, one of whom spoke about the induction ceremony for the society.
A distinguished Oxford contemporary claims Cameron once took part in an outrageous initiation ceremony at a Piers Gaveston event, involving a dead pig. His extraordinary suggestion is that the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal’s mouth.
But what soon became clear was that almost everything was still in doubt. At the end of a campaign that dominated the news for months, it was suddenly obvious that the winning side had no plan for how or when the UK would leave the EU – while the deceptive claims that carried the leave campaign to victory suddenly crumbled. At 6.31am on Friday 24 June, just over an hour after the result of the EU referendum had become clear, Ukipleader Nigel Farage conceded that a post-Brexit UK would not in fact have ?350m a week spare to spend on the NHS– a key claim of Brexiteers that was even emblazoned on the Vote Leave campaign bus. A few hours later, the ToryMEPDaniel Hannan stated that immigration was not likely to be reduced – another key claim.
然而，人们很快发现，脱欧的所有事项仍悬而未决。数月以来，拉票竞争一直霸占着新闻头条，直到最后一刻才真相大白：原来，关于英国如何脱欧、何时脱欧，获胜者都毫无头绪，欺骗性的言论将他们捧上成功之巅后，便溃于一旦。6月24日，星期五，6:31分，公投结果尘埃落定之后仅过了一个小时，独立党领袖奈杰尔·法拉奇（Nigel Farage）就承认道，实际上，英国脱欧后，无法实现每周省下3.5亿英镑来赞助国家医疗服务体系（NHS）。这一点正是脱欧阵营拉票宣言的关键，连宣传公交车上都印着这样的标语。又过了几个小时，保守党员、欧洲议会会员丹尼尔·汉南（Daniel Hannan）表明，来自欧洲的移民不太可能减少——又一项失约的关键宣言。
BACKGROUND
英国独立党（United Kingdom Independence Party），为英国极右翼政党。是英国一个反泛欧主义的政党，旗帜鲜明地支持英国脱欧，目前是英国第三大党。
英国国家医疗服务体系(National Health Service)，这个体系一直承担着保障英国全民公费医疗保健的重任，遵行救济贫民的选择性原则，并提倡了普遍性原则。
指英国保守党（Conservative Party），由于保守党发展自托利党，所以保守党亦时常被称作托利党（Tory Party）。
欧洲议会会员(Member of the European Parliament)
It was hardly the first time that 9oliticians had failed to deliver what they promised, but it might have been the first time they admitted on the morning after victory that the promises had been false all along. This was the first major vote in the era of post-truth politics: the listless remain campaign attempted to fight fantasy with facts, but quickly found that the currency of fact had been badly debased.
政客实现不了承诺，这显然不是第一次了。但获胜后的第二天早晨，他们表示这些承诺从头到尾都是虚假的，可能是头一回。英国脱欧公投是“后真相政治”时代第一场重要投票：毫无生气的留欧阵营想用事实说话，击垮幻象，但很快就发现，真相已经大幅贬值了。
Post-truth
It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.后真相，《牛津词典》将其定义为形容词，意为客观事实对公众意见的影响没有感性诉求产生的影响大。
v.降低…的价值；败坏…的名誉to make sb/sth less valuable or respected
The remain side’s worrying facts and worried experts were dismissedas “Project Fear” – and quickly neutralised by opposing “facts”: if 99 experts said the economy would crash and one disagreed, the BBC told us that each side had a different view of the situation. (This is a disastrous mistake that ends up obscuring truth, and echoes how some report climate change.) Michael Gove declared that “people in this country have had enough of experts” on Sky News. He also compared 10 Nobel prize-winning economists who signed an anti-Brexit letter to Nazi scientists loyal to Hitler.
留欧派的顾虑，和忧心忡忡的专家一样，被称作“恐惧计划”而束之高阁。与之对立的“事实”很快打消了忧虑：要是99位专家预测经济即将崩溃，而一人不同意，英国广播公司（BBC）会告诉我们，面对现状，两派持有不同观点。（这种错误是灾难性的，会掩盖事实，让人想起某些关于气候变化的报道。）迈克尔·戈夫（Michael Gove）在天空新闻台（Sky News）的节目上说道：“专家的话，英国人受够了。”他还把十位诺贝尔经济学奖得主写联名信反对脱欧的行为比作纳粹科学家忠于希特勒。
v.搁置，不予考虑to refuse to give consideration to something
天空新闻台,来自英国的24小时新闻频道
It can become very difficult for anyone to tell the difference between facts that are true and 'facts' that are not
要去辨别什么是真正的事实，什么是所谓的“事实”，是十分困难的。
For months, the Euroscepticpress trumpetedevery dubious claim and rubbished every expert warning, filling the front pages with too many confectedanti-migrant headlines to count – many of them later quietly corrected in very small print. A week before the vote – on the same day Nigel Farage unveiled his inflammatory“Breaking Point” poster, and the Labour MP Jo Cox, who had campaigned tirelessly for refugees, was shot dead – the cover of the Daily Mail featured a picture of migrants in the back of a lorry entering the UK, with the headline “We are from Europe – let us in!” The next day, the Mail and the Sun, which also carried the story, were forced to admit that the stowawayswere actually from Iraq and Kuwait.
数月以来，持有欧洲怀疑论的新闻媒体一面鼓吹可疑的言论，一面诋毁专家的警告。杜撰出来的反移民标题数不胜数，挤满了首页——许多印行量小的刊物后来悄悄改正了说法。公投前一周，就在奈杰尔·法拉奇为煽动性海报“突破点”揭幕的那天，工党议员乔·考克斯遭枪击身亡——她为了难民的利益，坚持不懈地反对脱欧。《每日邮报》的封面照片，却是移民坐在驶入英国的卡车后舱，配有标题“我们来自欧洲，让我们进来！”。第二天，刊载了此则报道的《星期天邮报》和《太阳报》应要求公开承认，封面的偷渡者实则来自伊拉克和科威特。
Eurosceptic
n./adj.欧洲怀疑论者
a British person, especially a politician, who is not in favor of closer links between Britain and the European Union
v.宣扬；鼓吹；吹嘘
to talk about sth publicly in a proud or enthusiastic way
to create something by combining different materials or items
Inflammatory
adj.煽动性的
intended to cause very strong feelings
somebody who hides on a ship or aircraft in the hope of being taken somewhere without paying
The brazendisregard for facts did not stop after the referendum: just this weekend, the short-lived Conservative leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom, fresh from a starring role in the leave campaign, demonstrated the waningpower of evidence. After telling the Times that being a mother would make her a better PM than her rival Theresa May, she cried “gutter journalism!” and accused the newspaper of misrepresenting her remarks – even though she said exactly that, clearly and definitively and on tape. Leadsom is a post-truth politician even about her own truths.
公投结束了，可是厚颜无耻之徒依旧漠视事实：就在这周，昙花一现的保守党领袖候选人、脱欧阵营的主要成员安德烈娅·利德索姆（Andrea Leadsom）的行为显示出，证据的力量正逐渐衰退。利德索姆向泰晤士报（the Times）说道，自己身为一位母亲，比起对手特蕾莎·梅，更适合成为首相。但事后她抱怨道：“无良媒体！”，还谴责报社歪曲了她的言论——即使她确实是这么说的，录音清晰，字句确凿。利德索姆是一位“后真相”政客，连自己说出的真相也不放过。
adj.厚颜无耻的
open and without shame, usually about sth that people find shocking
v.衰退 a gradual lessening of power or intensity
When a fact begins to resemble whatever you feel is true, it becomes very difficult for anyone to tell the difference between facts that are true and “facts” that are not. The leave campaign was well aware of this – and took full advantage, safe in the knowledge that theAdvertising Standards Authorityhas no power to policepolitical claims. A few days after the vote, Arron Banks, Ukip’s largest donor and the main funder of the Leave.EU campaign, told the Guardian that his side knew all along that facts would not win the day. “It was taking an American-style media approach,” said Banks. “What they said early on was ‘Facts don’t work’, and that’s it. The remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. It just doesn’t work. You have got to connect with people emotionally. It’s the Trump success.”
当事实与感觉的界限模棱两可时，要去辨别什么是真正的事实，什么是所谓的“事实”，是十分困难的。脱欧阵营十分清楚这一点，并加以充分利用，又因广告标准管理局没有权力监管政治言论，所以毫无风险。公投后，独立党、脱欧阵营主要赞助人艾伦·班克斯（Arron Banks）告诉卫报，脱欧派一直心知肚明，摆事实是不会胜出的。“我们采取了美国媒体的工作方式，”他说，“那些媒体说过，事实没什么用，就是如此。留欧阵营只注重事实，事实，事实，事实，事实。这没一点用处。一定要用感情把民众凝聚在一起。这是特朗普式成功的秘诀”。
Advertising Standards Authority
英国广告标准管理局，由英国广告业成立的一个自律组织。它是一个非法定机构，因此没有执法权。该机构没有获得英国政府资助，而是在广告业征收获得资金。
v.监督；管制
to make sure that a particular set of rules is obeyed
Win the day
to be successful in dealing with opposition or an opponent
It was little surprise that some people were shocked after the result to discover that Brexit might have serious consequences and few of the promised benefits. When “facts don’t work” and voters don’t trust the media, everyone believes in their own “truth” – and the results, as we have just seen, can be devastating.How did we end up here? And how do we fix it?
公投结果揭晓后，有人惊讶地发现，英国脱欧可能会导致严重后果，承诺了的福利也难以实现——这样的惊讶不足为奇。既然“事实没什么用”，投票者不相信媒体，那么每个人只能相信自己的“真相”，而我们刚刚见证了，只相信自己，结果惨不忍睹。我们为何会变成如此？我们要怎样修补这样的信任危机？
Twenty-five years after the first website went online, it is clear that we are living through a period of dizzying transition. For 500 years after Gutenberg, the dominant form of information was the printed page: knowledge was primarily delivered in a fixed format, one that encouraged readers to believe in stable and settled truths.
迄今，距第一个网页上线已有25年了，很显然，我们活在令人目眩的过渡期中。自从五百年前古腾堡发明了印刷术，纸张印刷一直是承载信息的主要媒介：信息的传递基本遵循固定格式，这种格式鼓励读者相信稳定不变的真相。
约翰·古腾堡（Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg）是西方活字印刷术的发明人，他的发明导致了一次媒体革命，迅速地推动了西方科学和社会的发展。
Now, we are caught in a series of confusing battles between opposing forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour,
between the few and the many, the connect between the open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it and the gated enclosures of Facebook and o between an informed public and a misguided mob.
如今，我们带着困惑，被卷入一场又一场对立势力的较量：真与假，事实与谣言，善意与残忍；少与多，团结与孤立，建设者所想象的开放网络平台与设立门槛的社交网络（如脸书）；收获信息的公众与遭受误导的人群。
What is common to these struggles – and what makes their resolution an urgent matter – is that they all involve the diminishing status of truth. This does not mean that there are no truths. It simply means, as this year has made very clear, that we cannot agree on what those truths are, and when there is no consensus about the truth and no way to achieve it, chaos soon follows.
上述争论无一不体现着真相的地位正日渐降低，这也说明了解决问题，刻不容缓。真相地位的下降并不意味着真相不存在，而仅仅是这几年来，我们难以确定哪些是真相，一致同意无法达成时，混乱就接踵而来。
Increasingly, what counts as a fact is merely a view that someone feels to be true – and technology has made it very easy for these “facts” to circulate with a speed and reachthat was unimaginable in the Gutenberg era (or even a decade ago). A dubious story about Cameron and a pig appears in a tabloid one morning, and by noon, it has flown around the world on social media and turned up in trusted news sources everywhere. This may seem like a small matter, but its consequences are enormous.
渐渐地，所谓事实不过是有些人认为正确的观点罢了。科技为这些“事实”的散布提供了便利，其传播速度与波及范围是古腾堡时代无法想象的，甚至十年前的人也想不到。早上，一份小报刊载了卡梅伦和猪之间的可疑事件，到了中午，全世界的社交媒体上都流传着此事，连各地可信的新闻源也报道不断。此事看似不大，但其影响却难以估量。
n.波及范围；影响范围
the limit to which sb/sth has the power or influence to do sth
In the digital age, it is easier than ever to publish false information, which is quickly shared and taken to be true
相比过去，数字时代的到来使得发布错误信息变得容易，这些信息又能即时共享，人们便信以为真。
“The Truth”, as Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie wrote in Stick It Up Your Punter!, their history of the Sun newspaper, is a “bald statementwhich every newspaper prints at its peril”. There are usually several conflicting truths on any given subject, but in the era of the printing press, words on a page nailed things down, whether they turned out to be true or not. The information felt like the truth, at least until the next day brought another update or a correction, and we all shared a common set of facts.
“真相是枯燥无味的陈述，而每家报社都要自担风险。”彼得·奇平戴尔（Peter Chippindale）和克里斯·霍利（Chris Horrie）在讲述《太阳报》历史的《Stick It Up Your Punter!》一书中写道。通常，既定的主题下都会有几个互相矛盾的真相，但在印刷时代，仅凭纸上字句就能打造板上钉钉的事实，丝毫不管对错与否。我们感觉今天信息是真的，至少在明天的更新或更正到来之前是真的。我们就这样共享着相同的事实。
At its peril
at one's peril
承担风险,自负后果,咎由自取
Bald statement
a bald statement, fact, truth, etc. is something you say in a direct way, without trying to be sensitive or polite
Printing press
a machine that produces books, newspapers, etc. by pressing a surface covered in ink onto paper
This settled “truth” was usually handed down from above: an established truth, often fixed in place by an establishment. This arrangement was not without flaws: too much of the press often exhibited a bias towards the status quoand a deferenceto authority, and it was prohibitively difficult for ordinary people to challenge the power of the press. Now, people distrust much of what is presented as fact – particularly if the facts in question are uncomfortable, or out of syncwith their own views – and while some of that distrust is misplaced, some of it is not.
通常，确定的“真相”来自上级领导的指示：民众看到的客观真相都经由当局政府敲定。这种安排并不完美：不计其数的新闻媒体对现状的分析有失偏颇，又对权威言听计从，而普通人想挑战报社的影响力，比登天还难。现在，大家不再相信报道就是事实，尤其在话题令人不适，或与读者观点不一致时。这种不信任时对时错。
Status quo
现状；原来的状况
the situation as it is now, or as it was before a recent change
n.尊重；遵从；听从
behaviour that shows that you respect sb/sth
Out of sync
不一致；不协调
not in agreement with sb/ not working well with sb/sth
In the digital age, it is easier than ever to publish false information, which is quickly shared and taken to be true – as we often see in emergency situations, when news is breaking in real time. To pick one example among many, during the November 2015 Paris terror attacks, rumours quickly spread on social media that the Louvre and Pompidou Centre had been hit, and that Fran?ois Hollande had suffered a stroke. Trusted news organisations are needed to debunksuch tall tales.
相比过去，数字时代的到来使得发布错误信息变得容易，这些信息又能即时共享，人们便信以为真。紧急情况发生时，我们经常能目睹新闻实时出错的状况。2015年11月，巴黎发生恐怖袭击事件，社交媒体上一时间谣言四起，有的说卢浮宫和蓬皮杜艺术中心遭遇不测，有的说总统奥朗德（Fran?ois Hollande）不幸患了中风——而这只是万千虚假新闻中的一两条罢了。人们急需负责可信的新闻机构，去揭穿荒诞不经的谣言。
the fact that there is only a very short time between a computer system receiving information and dealing with it
v.批判；驳斥；揭穿…的真相
to show that an idea, a belief, etc. to show that sth is not as good as people think it is
Tall tales
n.怪谈，滑稽故事something that someone tells you that sounds so exciting, dangerous, unpleasant, etc. that you do not believe it is true. The British word is tall story
Sometimes rumours like these spread out of panic, sometimes out of malice, and sometimes deliberate manipulation, in which a corporation or regime pays people to convey their message. Whatever the motive, falsehoods and facts now spread the same way, through what academics call an “information cascade”. As the legal scholar and online-harassment expert Danielle Citron describes it, “people forwardon what others think, even if the information is false, misleading or incomplete, because they think they have learned something valuable.” This cycle repeats itself, and before you know it, the cascade has unstoppable momentum. You share a friend’s post on Facebook, perhaps to show kinship or agreement or that you’re “in the know”, and thus you increase the visibility of their post to others.
谣言的传播有时出于恐慌，有时出于恶意，有时则是企业、政治团体的蓄意操纵，通过雇佣水军传达信息。不管怀有何种动机，如今谎言和事实的传播方式并无二致，学者把这种方式称作“信息瀑布”（information cascade）。法学家、网络骚扰专家丹妮尔·西琼（Danielle Citron）描述道：“网民转发别人的想法，即便其承载的信息是错误的、误导性的、不完善的。究其原因，是他们认为自己了解到了有价值的信息。”如此怪圈循环往复，人们还蒙在鼓里，信息瀑布已经势不可挡。你在脸书上转发了朋友的文章，可能是想秀亲密、表赞同，或是显示自己消息灵通，而在此同时，你也让更多读者接触到了这篇文章。
to send a letter, package, e-mail, etc. that has been sent to your address to someone else at another address
Algorithmssuch as the one that powers Facebook’s news feed are designed to give us more of what they think we want – which means that the version of the world we encounter every day in our own personal stream has been invisibly curatedto reinforce our pre-existing beliefs. When Eli Pariser, the co-founder of Upworthy, coined the term “filter bubble” in 2011, he was talking about how the personalised web – and in particular Google’s personalised search function, which means that no two people’s Google searches are the same – means that we are less likely to be exposed to information that challenges us or broadens our worldview, and less likely to encounter facts that disprove false information that others have shared.
技术人员开发新算法，本想让我们得到更多，比如脸书的动态消息（news feed）功能，但算法能提供的，只是他们以为我们想要的信息罢了。我们每天在个人信息流中看见的世界，都处于算法毫无声息的掌控之下，这种模式强化了我们已有的看法。 2011年，媒体公司Upworthy的创始人之一伊莱·帕里泽（Eli Pariser）首次提出“过滤气泡”的说法。他想要阐明，对于挑战自我、开阔视野的信息，或是别人驳斥错误消息的分享，个性化网站的用户浏览到的可能性不大——在使用谷歌个性化搜索功能尤为明显，因为每个人的谷歌搜索页面内容都不同。
Algorithms
a set of rules for solving problems or doing calculations, especially rules that a computer uses
v. 管理to select, organize and look after the objects or works
Pariser’s plea, at the time, was that those running social media platforms should ensure that “their algorithms prioritise countervailingviews and news that’s important, not just the stuff that’s most popular or most self-validating”. But in less than five years, thanks to the incredible power of a few social platforms, the filter bubble that Pariser described has become much more extreme.
当时，帕里泽呼吁社交媒体平台应保证“其算法把互相抗衡的观点和重要新闻放在优先位置上，而不是只提供风靡一时的消息、自说自话的主张。”。但是，在过去的五年内，由于一些社交平台势力强大，帕里泽描述的“过滤气泡”现象反而变本加厉。
Countervailing
adj.抗衡的；抵消的
having an equal but opposite effect
On the day after the EU referendum, in a Facebook post, the British internet activist and mySocietyfounder, Tom Steinberg, provided a vivid illustration of the power of the filter bubble – and the serious civic consequences for a world where information flows largely through social networks:
公投后的第二天，英国互联网活动家、mySociety 创始人汤姆·斯坦因伯格（Tom Steinberg）在脸书上发表文章，生动地说明了“过滤气泡”的力量，以及社交网络信息大量流动的社会影响：
mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy.It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, as those tools were open source, the code could be and soon was redeployed in other countries.（wikipedia）
I am actively searching through Facebook for people celebrating the Brexit leave victory, but the filter bubble is SO strong, and extends SO far into things like Facebook’s custom search that I can’t find anyone who is happy *despite the fact that over half the country is clearly jubilant today* and despite the fact that I’m *actively* looking to hear what they are saying.
我在脸书上主动搜索人们庆祝脱欧成功的消息，但由于“过滤气泡”太强势，脸书的自定义搜索也难逃一劫——尽管今天一半以上的国民显然是兴高采烈的，我很期待听听他们的心声，但我就是找不到为脱欧感到高兴的人。
This echo-chamberproblem is now SO severe and SO chronic that I can only beg any friends I have who actually work for Facebook and other major social media and technology to urgently tell their leaders that to not act on this problem now is tantamountto actively supporting and funding the tearing apart of the fabric of our societies … We’re getting countries where one half just doesn’t know anything at all about the other.
现在，回声室问题十分严峻，难以根除。我只能向那些在脸书或其他社交媒体工作的朋友寻求帮助，恳求他们告诉领导，不想办法解决这个问题无异于为社会结构的分崩离析摇旗呐喊……我们快要生活在一个两派人老死不相往来的国度里了。
Echo-chamber
回声室效应在媒体上是指在一个相对封闭的环境上，一些意见相近的声音不断重复，并以夸张或其他扭曲形式重复，令到处于相对封闭环境中的大多数人认为这些扭曲的故事就是事实的全部。在现代社会中，由于互联网的应用，社交媒体的发展，令得这个现象更加深刻，因为部分商业网站会根据搜寻结果记录提供相类近性质的网站资料。The echo chamber effect（回声室效应） reinforces one's own present world view, making it seem more correct and more universally accepted than it really is. Another emerging term for this echoing and homogenizing effect on the Internet within social communities is cultural tribalism.（wikipedia）
Tantamount
adj.~to sth无异于；等于；效果与…一样坏
having the same bad effect as sth else
But asking technology companies to “do something” about the filter bubble presumes that this is a problem that can be easily fixed – rather than one baked into the very idea of social networks that are designed to give you what you and your friends want to see.
然而，人们要求科技企业针对“过滤气泡”现象采取措施，是认为这个问题很容易解决，而没有想到——“过滤气泡”问题之所以产生，是因为社交网络的关键理念，就是提供你和你朋友想看见的内容。
Facebook, which launched only in 2004, now has 1.6bn users worldwide. It has become the dominant way for people to find news on the internet – and in fact it is dominant in ways that would have been impossible to imagine in the newspaper era. As Emily Bell has written: “Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything. It has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, personal histories, the leisure industry, retail, even government and security.”
脸书发布于2004年，如今在世界范围内坐拥16亿用户。社交媒体已经成为公众在互联网上浏览新闻的主要方式，报纸时代是无法想象的。艾米丽·贝尔（Emily Bell）写道：“社交媒体不仅仅吞噬了新闻业，而是囊括一切，包括政治选举，银行系统，个人经历，娱乐业，零售业，甚至包括政府和安保”。
Bell, the director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia University – and a board member of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian – has outlined the seismic impact of social media for journalism. “Our news ecosystem has changed more dramatically in the past five years,” she wrote in March, “than perhaps at any time in the past 500.” The future of publishing is being put into the “hands of the few, who now control the destiny of the many”. News publishers have lost control over the distribution of their journalism, which for many readers is now “filtered through algorithms and platforms which are opaqueand unpredictable”. This means that social media companies have become overwhelmingly powerful in determining what we read – and enormously profitable from the monetisation of other people’s work. As Bell notes: “There is a far greater concentration of power in this respect than there has ever been in the past.”
哥伦比亚大学陶式数字新闻中心主任、斯科特信托基金会（Scott Trust，该基金会掌握《卫报》的拥有权）董事会成员艾米丽·贝尔概述了社交媒体对新闻业的重大影响。“过去五年里，新闻生态系统发生了巨变，”她在3月写道，“如此巨大的改变在过去的五百年里都没有出现过。”出版行业的未来交付到了“少数人的手中，如今，少数派控制多数派的命运”。出版者失去了新闻传播的控制权，“读者只能接触到被算法和平台过滤的新闻，这些新闻显得隐晦又难以捉摸”。这就意味着，社交媒体公司拥有压倒性的势力，来规定我们浏览的内容，同时通过把别人的作品货币化，公司又能赢得巨大利益。贝尔写道：“媒体的集权现象走向登峰造极”。
adj.难懂；模糊；隐晦；不清楚dif not clear
adj.影响深远的；重大的
having of very great size
Publications curated by editors have in many cases been replaced by a stream of information chosen by friends, contacts and family, processed by secret algorithms. The old idea of a wide-open web – where hyperlinks from site to site created a non-hierarchicaland decentralised network of information – has been largely supplanted by platforms designed to maximise your time within their walls, some of which (such as Instagram and Snapchat) do not allow outward links at all.
许多情况下，由编辑出版的读物已经被一连串的信息取代，这些信息在不为人知的时候经过算法加工，再由人们的亲朋好友进行选择。完全开放的互联网——一个个网页上的超链接组成的一个非层级且分散的信息网络——这一旧时的想法已被平台大量取代，这些平台的目的是让你在他们的墙内花最多的时间。一些平台（比如Instagram和Snapchat）根本不允许外部链接进入。
Hierarchical
adj. 按等级划分的;等级制度的:
if a system, organization etc is hierarchical, people or things are divided into levels of importance
e.g. a hierarchical society
《卫报》（The Guardian）是英国的全国性综合内容日报。与《泰晤士报》、《每日电讯报》被合称为英国三大报。由约翰·爱德华·泰勒创办于日。因总部设于曼彻斯特而称为《曼彻斯特卫报》。日改为现名。该报注重报道国际新闻，擅长发表评论和分析性专题文章。一般公众视《卫报》的政治观点为中间偏左，对国际问题持“独立”观点。该报主要读者为政界人士、白领和知识分子。
发展至今，《卫报》成了严肃的，可信的，独立的新闻的代名词，是一份定位于高端市场的主流大报。在英国，人们也把《卫报》戏称为愤青报纸。
旗下有子报《观察家报》，《卫报周刊》。
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