Burning Calories and Trump's Fake News on Fake News

Alan Bennett posted his photos of yesterdays charity fashion event, with the ability to download copies and the suggestion to contribute to Karen and Janet's charities. Here Monty and I are trying to look suave in pyjama trousers and a white t-shirt.

Here's a link if any one else wants to contribute towards Mind as part of Karen's Great Wall of China Challenge: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Karen-Williams-trek-china

Slept in after the excitement of yesterday and to kill off a developing migraine. Louise had arrived last night for a visit and we took the opportunity to photograph some of her new work in readiness for our shared Cambridge Open Studios.

After lunch, Jane and Louise hit the fabric shops in Ely whilst I used the afternoon to take pictures of diatoms Surirella gemma and Campylodiscus using phase A contrast for processing tomorrow.

Took Louise back to St Neots, where S had cooked us a welcome cottage pie. Louise also finally got her Christmas chocolate pudding, which went down well with chocolate ice cream. We watched the video of Get Smart together. Aware that I had been sitting around all day, I enjoyed the film from S's exercise bike, clocking 28 kilometers and allegedly burning 430 kcalories during the 1h 45m of the video. The one advantage of an indoor cycle machine is the total absence of wind, though you can set the pedal resistance.

President Trump holds a rally in Florida that is very popular with his supporters, reiterating his policy promises re immigration, combating crime and protecting US businesses and jobs. He also slams the media again re the 'fake news'that they are spreading about him. These continued attempts to de-legitimise the media are quite worrying and quite frankly hypocritical, considering that his messages about the state of the nation, the danger from immigrants, and the absence of vetting prior to permission to live in the US are blatantly fake news themselves when you reference fact checking sites. Similar attacks and diminution of the free press have been seen in increasingly autocratic regimes, such as Russia and Turkey.

Yet, interestingly, the media Trump is most critical of, were not the main media that voters were accessing. Fox news dominated as an information source in 2016 (19% of voters), though primarily for Trump supporters (40% of  Trump supporters). CNN came second at 13% of all voters, 18% of Clinton voters. Source information here: http://www.journalism.org/2017/01/18/trump-clinton-voters-divided-in-their-main-source-for-election-news/. Facebook featured as the third largest source of information at around 8% in both camps.

But even the generally more Trump/Republican biased Fox News viewed his press conference last Thursday with a pinch of salt regarding some of his claims and gave credit to justified reporting in other media.

The impact of social media is increasingly under the spotlight, with 78% of US population having a social media profile (https://www.statista.com/statistics/273476/percentage-of-us-population-with-a-social-network-profile/). Back in October 2016, the proportion of visits to social media sites in the US was 42%  Facebook, 25% YouTube and 5% Twitter (https://www.statista.com/statistics/265773/market-share-of-the-most-popular-social-media-websites-in-the-us/).

My impression is that, seeing as the majority of US citizens receive their news through conventional media, the impact of Twitter and Facebook is actually through retelling selective elements of their content in TV, radio and newspapers.