#moreover there is an extensive body of academic work specifically on how to make ads more effective

[elftwink]

to preface this post i am anti-advertising i think we should explode the entire industry but it's sooo funny when you people make posts like "and they don't even work!!" like. sorry to be the bearer of bad news but yes they do. that's why we have to put up with so many despite everyone hating them and thinking its annoying. because they actually work really well and make a shit load of money

#it actually would be way better if they didnt work and made no money bc businesses would abandon them #this isnt like stocks where everythings abstract and is essentially gambling (i dont understand stocks) #like ppl in the ad industry create things. that make a tangible and quantifiable impact on the business #which is then used in further ad planning. it is NOT all smoke and mirrors #like its fake in that the industry is not providing a necessary service the way like. grocery stores are #but its not the level of fake where everything is abstract like theres deliverables #moreover there is an extensive body of academic work specifically on how to make ads more effective #ALSO i think some of u views ads like. as if they have a win condition. which is you buy product #but in current advertising this is pretty rare and comparatively ineffective #which is why you see MANY ads which dont seem to be selling anything in particular. or which have nothing all to do with the product #the 'win' condition for THAT kind of ad is something more like 'viewers remember our name' #like. ex i would say ads for temu have not been effective on me bc i havent bought anything from them #but temu probably thinks they were SUPER effective on me because i talked abt them like 5 different times at work #and i do in fact know exactly what the company does and what they sell #and they were able to capitalize on the reputations of existing companies (wish shein etc) to build their own brand #good idea generator

[circularityhealthcare-blog]

The Nobel Prize in Physiology for Medicine 2019

he Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology for Medicine jointly to William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.

SUMMARY

Animals need oxygen for the conversion of food into useful energy. The fundamental importance of oxygen has been understood for centuries, but how cells adapt to changes in levels of oxygen has long been unknown.

William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza discovered how cells can sense and adapt to changing oxygen availability. They identified molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen.

The seminal discoveries by this year’s Nobel Laureates revealed the mechanism for one of life’s most essential adaptive processes. They established the basis for our understanding of how oxygen levels affect cellular metabolism and physiological function. Their discoveries have also paved the way for promising new strategies to fight anemia, cancer and many other diseases.

Oxygen at center stage

Oxygen, with the formula O2, makes up about one fifth of Earth’s atmosphere. Oxygen is essential for animal life: it is used by the mitochondria present in virtually all animal cells in order to convert food into useful energy. Otto Warburg, the recipient of the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, revealed that this conversion is an enzymatic process.

During evolution, mechanisms developed to ensure a sufficient supply of oxygen to tissues and cells. The carotid body, adjacent to large blood vessels on both sides of the neck, contains specialized cells that sense the blood’s oxygen levels. The 1938 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Corneille Heymans awarded discoveries showing how blood oxygen sensing via the carotid body controls our respiratory rate by communicating directly with the brain.

HIF enters the scene

In addition to the carotid body-controlled rapid adaptation to low oxygen levels (hypoxia), there are other fundamental physiological adaptations. A key physiological response to hypoxia is the rise in levels of the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which leads to increased production of red blood cells (erythropoiesis). The importance of hormonal control of erythropoiesis was already known at the beginning of the 20th century, but how this process was itself controlled by O2 remained a mystery.

Gregg Semenza studied the EPO gene and how it is regulated by varying oxygen levels. By using gene-modified mice, specific DNA segments located next to the EPO gene were shown to mediate the response to hypoxia. Sir Peter Ratcliffe also studied O2-dependent regulation of the EPO gene, and both research groups found that the oxygen sensing mechanism was present in virtually all tissues, not only in the kidney cells where EPO is normally produced. These were important findings showing that the mechanism was general and functional in many different cell types.

Semenza wished to identify the cellular components mediating this response. In cultured liver cells he discovered a protein complex that binds to the identified DNA segment in an oxygen-dependent manner. He called this complex the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) . Extensive efforts to purify the HIF complex began, and in 1995, Semenza was able to publish some of his key findings, including identification of the genes encoding HIF. HIF was found to consist of two different DNA-binding proteins, so called transcription factors, now named HIF-1α and ARNT. Now the researchers could begin solving the puzzle, allowing them to understand which additional components were involved and how the machinery works.

“Figure 1. When oxygen levels are low (hypoxia), HIF-1α is protected from degradation and accumulates in the nucleus, where it associates with ARNT and binds to specific DNA sequences (HRE) in hypoxia-regulated genes (1). At normal oxygen levels, HIF-1α is rapidly degraded by the proteasome (2). Oxygen regulates the degradation process by the addition of hydroxyl groups (OH) to HIF-1α (3). The VHL protein can then recognize and form a complex with HIF-1α leading to its degradation in an oxygen-dependent manner (4).”

VHL: an unexpected partner

When oxygen levels are high, cells contain very little HIF-1α. However, when oxygen levels are low, the amount of HIF-1α increases so that it can bind to and thus regulate the EPO gene as well as other genes with HIF-binding DNA segments (Figure 1). Several research groups showed that HIF-1α, which is normally rapidly degraded, is protected from degradation in hypoxia. At normal oxygen levels, a cellular machine called the proteasome, recognized by the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose, degrades HIF-1α. Under such conditions a small peptide, ubiquitin, is added to the HIF-1α protein. Ubiquitin functions as a tag for proteins destined for degradation in the proteasome. How ubiquitin binds to HIF-1α in an oxygen-dependent manner remained a central question.

The answer came from an unexpected direction. At about the same time as Semenza and Ratcliffe were exploring the regulation of the EPO gene, cancer researcher William Kaelin, Jr. was researching an inherited syndrome, von Hippel-Lindau’s disease (VHL disease). This genetic disease leads to dramatically increased risk of certain cancers in families with inherited VHL mutations. Kaelin showed that the VHL gene encodes a protein that prevents the onset of cancer. Kaelin also showed that cancer cells lacking a functional VHL gene express abnormally high levels of hypoxia-regulated genes; but that when the VHL gene was reintroduced into cancer cells, normal levels were restored. This was an important clue showing that VHL was somehow involved in controlling responses to hypoxia. Additional clues came from several research groups showing that VHL is part of a complex that labels proteins with ubiquitin, marking them for degradation in the proteasome. Ratcliffe and his research group then made a key discovery: demonstrating that VHL can physically interact with HIF-1α and is required for its degradation at normal oxygen levels. This conclusively linked VHL to HIF-1α.

Oxygen shifts the balance

Many pieces had fallen into place, but what was still lacking was an understanding of how O2 levels regulate the interaction between VHL and HIF-1α. The search focused on a specific portion of the HIF-1α protein known to be important for VHL-dependent degradation, and both Kaelin and Ratcliffe suspected that the key to O2-sensing resided somewhere in this protein domain. In 2001, in two simultaneously published articles they showed that under normal oxygen levels, hydroxyl groups are added at two specific positions in HIF-1α (Figure 1). This protein modification, called prolyl hydroxylation, allows VHL to recognize and bind to HIF-1α and thus explained how normal oxygen levels control rapid HIF-1α degradation with the help of oxygen-sensitive enzymes (so-called prolyl hydroxylases). Further research by Ratcliffe and others identified the responsible prolyl hydroxylases. It was also shown that the gene activating function of HIF-1α was regulated by oxygen-dependent hydroxylation. The Nobel Laureates had now elucidated the oxygen sensing mechanism and had shown how it works.

“Figure 2. The awarded mechanism for oxygen sensing has fundamental importance in physiology, for example for our metabolism, immune response and ability to adapt to exercise. Many pathological processes are also affected. Intensive efforts are ongoing to develop new drugs that can either inhibit or activate the oxygen-regulated machinery for treatment of anemia, cancer and other diseases.”

Oxygen shapes physiology and pathology

Thanks to the groundbreaking work of these Nobel Laureates, we know much more about how different oxygen levels regulate fundamental physiological processes. Oxygen sensing allows cells to adapt their metabolism to low oxygen levels: for example, in our muscles during intense exercise. Other examples of adaptive processes controlled by oxygen sensing include the generation of new blood vessels and the production of red blood cells. Our immune system and many other physiological functions are also fine-tuned by the O2-sensing machinery. Oxygen sensing has even been shown to be essential during fetal development for controlling normal blood vessel formation and placenta development.

Oxygen sensing is central to a large number of diseases (Figure 2). For example, patients with chronic renal failure often suffer from severe anemia due to decreased EPO expression. EPO is produced by cells in the kidney and is essential for controlling the formation of red blood cells, as explained above. Moreover, the oxygen-regulated machinery has an important role in cancer. In tumors, the oxygen-regulated machinery is utilized to stimulate blood vessel formation and reshape metabolism for effective proliferation of cancer cells. Intense ongoing efforts in academic laboratories and pharmaceutical companies are now focused on developing drugs that can interfere with different disease states by either activating, or blocking, the oxygen-sensing machinery. Also Read: World-Famous Institute in Miami Has Reopened as ReLife Miami Institute Under the New Leadership of Famed Neurosurgeon Dr. Gelbard, Funding Led by Circularity Healthcare

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The improvement of oxygen-balanced microcirculation, i.e., blood flow to the smallest blood vessels, benefits one’s health, immune system and overall sense of well-being in a variety of ways.

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[jccamus]

The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook

The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook https://ift.tt/2LUsyve

Abstract

Commercially motivated junk news–i.e. money-driven, highly shareable clickbait with low journalistic production standards–constitutes a vast and largely unexplored news media ecosystem. Using publicly available Facebook data, we compared the reach of junk news on Facebook pages in the Netherlands to the reach of Dutch mainstream news on Facebook. During the period 2013–2017 the total number of user interactions with junk news significantly exceeded that with mainstream news. Over 5 Million of the 10 Million Dutch Facebook users have interacted with a junk news post at least once. Junk news Facebook pages also had a significantly stronger increase in the number of user interactions over time than mainstream news. Since the beginning of 2016 the average number of user interactions per junk news post has consistently exceeded the average number of user interactions per mainstream news post.

Citation: Burger P, Kanhai S, Pleijter A, Verberne S (2019) The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook. PLoS ONE 14(8): e0220446. https://ift.tt/2sPSuAj

Editor: Sabrina Gaito, Universitá degli Studi di Milano, ITALY

Received: December 21, 2018; Accepted: July 15, 2019; Published: August 1, 2019

Copyright: © 2019 Burger et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The data underlying the results presented in the study are available from Facebook, through the Facebook Graph API, https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/ Version 2.8 was accessed in the fall of 2017 for obtaining the first batch of data, and version 3.0 was accessed in the spring of 2018 for obtaining the second batch of data. The data that we obtain from the API is further specified in the section "Data download and processing" of the manuscript. We confirm that we as authors did not have any special access privileges that others would not have. The Facebook Graph API is open to everyone for data download.

Funding: From March 2017 through January 2018 Leiden University’s Nieuwscheckers project, supervised by authors PB and AP, received payments from Facebook for its services as a third-party fact-checker, publishing fact-checks of Facebook posts that were reported by users as potentially fake. The third-party fact-checkers have complete editorial independence, warranted by their adherence to the principles of the International Fact- Checking Network (IFCN). Burger and Pleijter did not receive payments from Facebook in order to fund this study, nor did Facebook have any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: Two authors, PB and AP, received payments from Facebook for their services as a third-party fact-checkers. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Introduction

Social media and Facebook in particular have become a major gateway to news. Large numbers of people access news through social media, as shown by survey data from the Reuters Digital News Report [1]. In the US, 45% of respondents used social media for news consumption on a weekly basis, with Facebook being the leading source. Unfortunately, not all news spread by social media consists of high-quality, well-edited content. An important factor in the quality of Facebook’s news feed is the widely discussed presence of ‘fake news’ and clickbait on the platform. Over the last years there has been an alleged rise in low-quality, and even completely fabricated news on social media [2].

The rise of so-called ‘fake news’ has gained much attention in academia, government and the media in the last few years. In this paper we refrain from using the term ‘fake news’ as an analytical concept, since it is imprecise and heavily politicized, encompassing connotations such as deceitful, false, and slanted [3–6]. Instead, we use the term junk news, focusing on a combination of content characteristics, production values, and types of producers. We study the money-driven, low-quality, highly shareable kind of content that is typically distributed on social media as clickbait. This genre frequently includes–but is not limited to–disinformation, i.e. completely fabricated or severely distorted information presented in news formats.

Since the 2016 US elections, interest in the ‘information disorder’ [5] has boomed. Academic research has focused on the nature of the problem, its impact on the audience, and ways to counter it (e.g. [7–9]). Journalists have identified individuals and organisations spreading disinformation for ideological or commercial reasons [10]. Government bodies, think tanks, and social network platforms (Facebook, Twitter) have produced reports about covert foreign influence operations [11,12]. Within this ‘junk news universe’, research focuses predominantly on political content.

However, quantitative studies about the reach of junk news and disinformation are scarce. An extensive review of the literature on disinformation and social media, published in 2018 [13], highlights the prevalence of various kinds of disinformation as a research gap [13]. In addition, it notes an over-emphasis on Twitter and a lack of studies using Facebook data [13] and mentions restrictions imposed by the social media platforms [13].

The present study investigates the reach of junk news on Facebook. More specifically, we take the Netherlands as a case. The Dutch Facebook network is extensive: there are approximately 10.5 Million Facebook users in the Netherlands [14], on a total population of 17 Million. We compared the reach and development of commercially motivated Dutch junk news on Facebook to the reach and development of Dutch mainstream news on Facebook. For the purpose of this study we define mainstream news as well-edited content, published by established news media. We collected 117 thousand Facebook posts published by 63 junk news pages and 20 mainstream news pages over a five-year period. With these data, we study the reach of junk news and mainstream news by measuring publication activity and user engagement. Publication activity is defined by the number of posts published by a Facebook page. User engagement is defined by the number of user interactions with the published posts.

Given the alleged rise of junk news and in light of Facebook measures to improve news feed quality, the objective of this study was (1) to assess the total reach of junk news on Facebook, compared to mainstream news, in terms of user engagement; and (2) to investigate how junk news develops over time, in terms of publication activity of the junk news producers’ Facebook pages, and of user engagement with the published posts.

Background

Junk news defined

Scholars and journalists use various terms when they discuss news that is in some respects deceitful and/or unreliable. Our study concerns junk news. The bulk of the production of the junk news pages that we include consists of low-quality, sensational content. They frequently publish fabricated–i.e. completely fake–news, but as Venturini [15] argues, diffusion is the purpose, not falsity: ‘ […] spread, rather than fakeness, is the birthmark of these contents that should be called “viral news” or possibly “junk news” for, just as junk food, they are consumed because they are addictive, not because they are appreciated.’ (p.3 in [15])

‘Junk news' is also employed as a term by Oxford University’s project on Computational Propaganda [16] covering a wide range of news sources. These are rated as ‘junk news’ if they tick at least three of the following five boxes: lack of professionalism (low to non-existent journalistic standards); sensationalist style (in-your-face visuals and headlines, strong emotional appeal); low credibility (low-quality sources, no fact-checking, false information, conspiracy theories); bias (hyper-partisan reporting); and forgery (outlets imitate both news formats and specific news brands, to pass off their fakes as genuine) [17].

We adopt the term ‘junk news’ from Narayanan et al. [17], but adapt the definition in order to make it applicable to Dutch commercial junk news on Facebook. Studying social media use during elections, the Computational Propaganda (ComProp) papers focus on politically themed and motivated social media messages. The characteristics of these messages are partly similar to the Dutch source material we analysed. They differ in their emphasis on ideology and falsehood. First, the outlets we tracked are not ideology-driven, but purely commercial. In addition, though falsehoods are frequent, they only occur in a minority of items; moreover, they mostly appear to be the consequence of low production standards rather than instances of intentional deception. Finally, none of the web sites in our sample deceptively imitates a respectable news brand, so the category ‘forgery’ does not apply.

This leads us to the following characteristics that constitute our working definition of commercial junk news (henceforward: junk news):

low journalistic quality (pre-packaged content, no added research and fact-checking);

produced by non-mainstream producers;

business model based on websites with advertising and Facebook pages pushing the sites’ posts;

goal is viral success;

frequently contains fabricated or heavily distorted messages;

frequent use of clickbait headlines.

The commercial incentive of the pages implies that pages that are ideologically motivated are not covered by our definition.

Related work

Most studies in this field have been conducted from a political disinformation perspective (e.g. [7,18,19]). Few address the reach of money-driven junk news. Moreover, most of the available data on commercial junk news have been published by investigative journalists. In a seminal exposé, Buzzfeed editor Silverman [20] showed that during the 2016 US elections, the most popular fake stories about politics outperformed the most popular mainstream news stories.

Le Monde’s fact-check and data journalism team Les Décodeurs analysed 101 false claims, spread by 1,001 web pages and videos. These claims were not all about politics: notably, health-related stories were among the most popular. Links to these pages and videos generated 4.3 Million Facebook shares and some 16 Million interactions (i.e. shares, comments, and likes). Three quarters of the false stories elicited more than 10,000 interactions each [21].

Using a sample of fact-checked news items, Vosoughi et al. [22] found that news items labelled by fact-checkers as untrue travelled faster than those labelled as true. Their sample covers a minute part of the junk news universe: only those items that have been evaluated by professional fact-checkers. In contrast we study the entire output of one nation’s commercial junk news producers.

Studies addressing the reach of political fake news find that this reach seems to be overestimated. Combining survey responses with web tracking data, Guess et al. [23] estimate that in the weeks before and after the 2016 US presidential election 1 in 4 Americans visited a fake news site, but that most fake news was consumed by a small group of conservatives. Studying the fake news audience in the US, Nelson and Taneja [24] similarly conclude that this is a small subset of the heaviest Internet users. Political fake news is, essentially, niche content. In contrast, the category of money-driven junk news we study aims for the largest possible audience.

The most similar to our work is the study by Fletcher et al. [25]. Assessing the reach of both ideologically and commercially motivated fake news in France and Italy, they downplay the problem’s size, pointing out that most sites in their sample reached less than 1% of the online population in each country. ‘By comparison, the most popular news websites in France (Le Figaro) and Italy (La Repubblica) had an average monthly reach of 22.3% and 50.9%, respectively.’ [25]. Some false news outlets, though, proved exceptionally successful: ‘In France, one false news outlet generated an average of over 11 million interactions per month–five times greater than more established news brands.’ [25].

This generally low level of measured engagement may be due to the study design. Fletcher et al. focussed on ‘outlets that consistently and deliberately publish “false news”, which we have defined elsewhere as “for-profit fabrication, politically-motivated fabrication [and] malicious hoaxes” designed to masquerade as news’ [3]. This means that they excluded sites that publish general low-quality news, including the occasional fabricated item. Moreover, one of the Italian blacklists they used was, according to its editor, incomplete and outdated [26]. Finally, employing time spent on site as a metric skews results, since users often read no more than the headline, or the abstract offered by Facebook, before hitting the share button. This latter issue was also pointed out by Coltelli [26].

Studying data that cover one year (2017), Fletcher et al. [25] did not study the longitudinal development of fake news. Covering a larger time span (Jan. 2015—July 2018), Allcott et al. [27] measure the volume of Facebook users’ engagements with sites known to spread false stories and compare this to developments in the reach of mainstream news sites and business and culture sites. After an initial rise in fake news engagement, this declined sharply from the beginning of 2017 onwards. During the same period, engagement numbers for the other categories they sampled remained more or less stable. The declining reach of fake news could be the result of Facebook actions against bad actors after the 2016 US elections.

Most studies on disinformation focus on the US. The Netherlands are different in a number of respects. Actors specializing in commercially inspired political disinformation (of the kind peddled by the notorious Macedonian fake news producers targeting Trump supporters in 2016) do not exist in the Netherlands. Neither do outlets that serve nothing but fabricated news. In their capacity of third-party fact-checkers for Facebook, two of the authors reviewed hundreds of web links submitted by Dutch Facebook users as potentially ‘fake news’. Although absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence, we can safely assume that ‘Macedonian’ sites or sites that only publish manufactured news stories, had they existed, would have come to our attention. Moreover, neither do completely fake news sites feature in the (limited) academic literature dealing with disinformation in the Netherlands [28,29] or in think tank reports [30], nor have they been detected by Dutch investigative journalists dealing with this topic [31].

In summary, the present study distinguishes itself from prior work in three respects: (a) it addresses commercial junk news as opposed to political junk news; (b) it addresses the phenomenon’s reach on Facebook as opposed to Twitter; (c) it follows a data-driven approach, including over 117 thousand published Facebook posts and the user interactions associated with these posts.

Data and methods

We compiled two seed lists of sites that we included in our sample: one of junk news sites and one of mainstream news sites.

Criteria for data sampling

The criteria for including a website in the list of junk news sites were directly deduced from the definition of junk news provided above. The sites were initially brought to the attention of two of the authors in their capacity as third-party fact-checkers for Facebook. In 2017, we fact-checked more than 70 claims submitted by Facebook users; the reports were published on Nieuwscheckers.nl. Excluding the claims published on conspiracy sites (which are at least in part ideologically motivated) and on alternative health sites (adopting a different business model: some of these also make money by selling health products), left us with some 50 claims originating from commercially driven junk news sites that do not focus on one single topic. Most news items were published on multiple sites. We found that all items we checked were lacking veracity and originality: they consisted of material that was lifted from other websites and reproduced without additional research. In many cases, the sites published manufactured stories copied from foreign sources (e.g., ‘Oprah Winfrey (63) zwanger van eerste kind’, i.e. ‘Oprah Winfrey (63) pregnant with first child’). In a few exceptional cases, the stories were invented by the site’s editors (e.g., a story about a muslim girl from the Dutch town of Deventer who received death threats from fundamentalist muslims because she performed as a singer).

By searching for other sites that had published the same news items, and by using domain information in order to identify other sites registered by the same producers, we were able to collect more junk news sites. Since many of these sites do not publish the names of their owners, we used open source information (e.g., matching Google Adsense ID numbers and public Chamber of Commerce records) to expand our list of junk news sites. We deduce the fact that the producers are not ideologically motivated from the relative absence of political content on their sites and from their personal social media use, which is also lacking political messages. We contacted seven owners and editors involved in this business, but without exception they declined to be interviewed.

In the list of mainstream news sites we included national, well-known, general news media that have their own Facebook page. In the Dutch media landscape the set of established news media is relatively small and well-defined, consisting of national newspapers, news magazines, and news broadcasts. We only included websites that predominantly publish original, well-edited content.

Data download and processing

For each domain in our junk news seed list we identified their corresponding Facebook page by crawling their homepage using Selenium [32] and Python, extracting the link to Facebook. For the mainstream news sites we manually identified the corresponding Facebook page. The resulting lists consist of 20 mainstream news pages and 63 junk pages, both shown in S1 Appendix.

We used the Facebook API [33] (version 2.8 accessed in the fall of 2017 for obtaining the junk news data, and version 3.0 accessed in the spring of 2018 for obtaining the mainstream news data) to download all posts published by these Facebook pages up until December 2017. The API did not return any junk news data before January 2013, most likely because the pages contained in the junk seed list were not yet active at that time. We sampled the same period for mainstream news to make both sets comparable. Thus, our sample contains all posts published by the 63 junk news pages between January 2013 and December 2017, and all posts published by the 20 mainstream news pages in that same period.

In December 2017, the Facebook API allowed us to get the unique identifiers of the users who posted a reaction or comment. Using these unique identifiers we were able to distil the number of people who interacted with a junk news post at least once. From February 6, 2017 it was no longer possible to retrieve information about user ids [34]. As a result, this information is missing for the mainstream news data.

Table 1 summarizes the total size of the collected data sample. Fig 1 shows the number of posts published by the individual pages, for junk news and mainstream news. The table shows that the 20 mainstream news pages have altogether published almost the same number of posts as the 63 junk news pages in the same time period. This is further illustrated by Fig 1: each of the mainstream news pages has published more than 2,000 posts in the five-year time period. Seven junk news pages have published more than 2,000 posts as well, but the large majority of the junk news pages were much less active than the mainstream news pages. Table 1 also shows that 5,29 Million individual Facebook users interacted with a junk news post at least once. 4,055,011 individual users have added a reaction to at least one junk news post and 3,018,268 added a comment to at least one junk news post.

For each post published between January 2013 and December 2017 we retrieved the following information using the Facebook API:

the publication date

the number of reactions to the post

the number of comments to the post

the number of times the post was shared

Reactions, comments and shares are three types of user interactions with posts on Facebook. A ‘reaction’ is what is commonly referred to as a ‘like’, which can have the form of a thumbs-up, a heart, a crying emoticon, a shocked emoticon, or an angry emoticon. Together they constitute the user engagement. We were unable to assess reach in terms of page views and clicks, as these are not publicly available. The publication date is needed for the longitudinal analysis of the publication activity and engagement with Facebook pages.

We used R for the quantitative analysis of the collected data. We generated two types of statistics: statistics of the publication activity of the Facebook pages in our sample (number of posts published per month), and statistics of the user engagement with the published posts: numbers of reactions, comments and shares.

Analysis and results

The reach of junk news and mainstream news on Facebook

In this section we address our first objective: to assess the total reach of junk news on Facebook, compared to mainstream news, in terms of user engagement.

Table 2 lists the numbers of interactions per post over the complete five-year period, for junk news and mainstream news. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the number of reactions, comments and shares on junk news and mainstream news. There was a significant difference between junk news and mainstream news for reactions, comments, and shares (P<0.0001 for all three comparisons). Thus, junk news on Facebook has significantly larger user engagement than mainstream news, for all engagement metrics: number of reactions, number of comments, and number of shares. For example, the table shows that the median number of reactions to a junk news post is 70, compared to 42 for mainstream news. The large standard deviations and large differences between the medians and means indicate the presence of outliers. This is further illustrated by Fig 2. Fig 2A shows the dispersions of number of reactions for each news post, on a logarithmic scale. Fig 2B shows the dispersions of numbers of reactions, comments and shares per posts, also on a logarithmic scale. The figures show large variations, with a small number of posts receiving a high number of interactions. The highest number of reactions for a single post is 107,414.

Fig 2. Interactions with Facebook posts.

(Fig 2A) The dispersions of numbers of reactions for each news post, on a logarithmic scale; (Fig 2B) The dispersions of numbers of interactions per individual post for the junk news sites, on a logarithmic scale.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220446.g002

The development of junk news and mainstream news over time

In this section, we address our second objective: to investigate how junk news develops over time, in terms of publication activity of the junk news producers’ Facebook pages, and of user engagement with the published posts.

Publication activity over time.

Fig 3 shows the publication activity over time. The average number of published posts per page per month is 50 for mainstream news (stdev = 6) and 53 for junk news (stdev = 21). A Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test indicates that the distributions in the two groups do not differ significantly (n1 = n2 = 60, p = 0.76); thus the average publication activity per page per month is comparable between junk news pages and mainstream news pages. However, the post activity for junk news on Facebook is more irregular with a much larger standard deviation, than the post activity for mainstream news. In addition, Fig 3B shows a strong increase in the number of posts published per junk news page in the last three months of the measured time period (October–December 2017).

Fig 3. Activity of Facebook pages.

(a) the number of publishing Facebook pages per month; (b) the post activity for the Facebook pages, normalized by the number of pages (average number of posts published per page per month). In both graphs, the red dots/line represents the junk news counts and the blue dots/line the mainstream news counts.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220446.g003

User engagement over time.

Fig 4 shows the average user engagement counts per post of junk news and mainstream news over the complete time period.

Fig 4. Numbers of interactions with Facebook pages over time.

(a) average number of reactions per post per month; (b) average number of comments per post per month; (c) average number of shares per post per month. In all three graphs, the red line represents the junk news counts and the blue line the mainstream news counts. Note that the y-axes of the figures have different scales.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220446.g004

Looking at the number of user interactions over time, we see that the lines for junk news and mainstream news have different peaks. We quantitatively analysed the development of the user engagement by computing a linear least squares regression line (line of best fit) for each graph. We found that the user engagement with both types of news is growing over time, but the engagement with junk news grows faster: the slope of the trend line for reactions on junk news posts is 7.55 compared to 3.99 for mainstream news. For comments the slopes are 4.05 for junk news and 1.94 for mainstream news. For shares, the slopes are 2.40 and 0.18 respectively. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the slopes of the regression lines for the change in numbers of interactions over time. There was a significant difference between junk news and mainstream news for reactions, comments, and shares. The difference between the increase of reactions on junk news (b = 7.55, s.e. = 167.4) and the increase of reactions of mainstream news (b = 3.99, s.e. = 155.2) was significant with t(116) = 2.1, p = 0.039. The difference between the increase of comments on junk news (b = 4.05, s.e. = 39.6) and the increase of comments on mainstream news (b = 1.94, s.e. = 21.5) was highly significant with t(116) = 5.5, p < 0.0001. The difference between the increase of shares of junk news (b = 2.40, s.e. = 77.9) and the increase of shares of mainstream news (b = 0.18, s.e = 50.5) was highly significant with t(116) = 3.2, p = 0.0017

Thus, the posts published by junk news pages increasingly receive more user interactions than mainstream news. However, there is one caveat to this analysis, and that is the observation that the numbers of reactions, comments and shares for junk news pages have only decreased since the summer of 2017. This is striking because Fig 3 has indicated that the junk news pages have become increasingly active in publishing posts in the same period, with a steep growth since September 2017.

Discussion

Quantitative research has mostly overlooked the phenomenon of money-driven junk news, focusing on junk news and fake news characterized by political content and ideological motivation. Whereas the audience for political fake news is relatively small, consisting of politically polarized, heavy media users [23,24], commercial junk news appears to reach the broad audience it aims for. We have shown that commercial junk news receives significantly more user interactions (reactions, comments and shares) than mainstream news on Facebook. Hiding in plain sight, this category does not strive for brand recognition or loyalty. We have demonstrated that the reach of this kind of news warrants academic attention.

In fact, the figures we present likely underestimate the reach of junk news distributed by Facebook in the Netherlands, because we estimated reach by the number of interactions with a post. The reach of content however can be larger than the number of interactions: the number of Facebook users who consumed at least part of the story is probably higher than the number of people who interacted with the post [35]. The data for shares, reactions, and comments are the most robust indication for the reach of junk news among Dutch Facebook users, but the number of users who must have at least scanned the headline is most likely even larger. Similarly, the number of individual users reached by the pages we sampled must be higher than the 5,3 Million users who added a reaction or comment to at least one of the posts.

During the period covered by our data (January 2013 until December 2017) Facebook’s popularity in the Netherlands has slightly grown from 9.6 million users in 2014 to 10.4 million users in 2017 [14]. A similar development could be expected for its popularity as a medium for spreading content and in user engagement with the news pages. However, the user engagement with those pages show a sharper increase than the overall Facebook popularity in the same time period. Moreover, the increase of interactions with junk news is event significantly stronger than the increase of interactions with mainstream news.

Comparison to related studies

Two recent studies that attempt to compare the reach of mainstream news versus fake news or junk news on Facebook present findings that are less dramatic than ours. Assessing the reach of fake news in France and Italy (including money-driven fake news), Fletcher et al. [25] state that most sites in their sample reached less than 1% of the online population. A French outlier however generated an average of over 11 million interactions per month, outperforming more established news brands.

Our results deviate from Fletcher et al.’s finding that ‘ […] in most cases, in both France and Italy, false news outlets do not generate as many interactions as established news brands.’ [25]. Our findings and our interpretation are less optimistic than those by Fletcher et al. on ‘fake’ news in Italy and France: their findings are restricted to sites that predominantly publish completely fabricated items and their use of time spent on site as a metric neglects the fact that many users will not read beyond the headline.

Our findings also differ from those of Allcott et al. [27], who compared the Facebook reach of sites known for spreading false stories with that of other news, business or culture sites. The decrease of false stories they note since early 2017 is only partly reflected in the Dutch junk news data: Our data show that junk news pages have become increasingly active in publishing posts in the second half of 2017, with a steep growth since September 2017. However, we have also observed that the numbers of reactions, comments and shares for junk news pages have decreased since the summer of 2017. We speculate that there might be a relation with Facebook’s efforts to reduce the visibility of junk news on the platform (listed in the Appendix, Table 1 of Allcott et al., 2018 [27]). In May 2017, Facebook announced that ‘misinformation, sensationalism, clickbait and posts that fall outside of [their] Community Standards’ will be demoted [36].

Facebook data provided by the platform itself could possibly clarify this matter, but the lack of transparency about its algorithms and about the effectiveness of its actions against bad actors are a recurring obstacle for researchers in this field. As government pressure on the platforms increases [37], this may change in the future. In fact, in April 2018 Facebook and Social Science One announced a partnership in which the tech company shares data with social scientists studying fact-checking and misinformation on the platform [38,39].

Dutch junk news Facebook pages frequently promote fake, i.e. fabricated, stories [40]. Although these stories are not representative for the output as a whole, they can reach a sizeable audience. This is worrying, since some of these stories contain misleading health advice or false information about social groups. A completely bogus story about animal abuse by asylum seekers has been published on 13 different websites [41]. Using Netvizz [42], we found that between its first publication on 17 March 2017 and 13 May 2017, the story was shared 55,292 times.

However, focusing on fabricated stories with possible social and political consequences obscures the bigger point about junk news: thriving on the core components of social media use, this highly spreadable, low-quality category of news threatens to drown out better-quality news [15].

Conclusions

We studied the reach of commercial junk news on Facebook, by analysing 117 thousand posts published by 63 junk news pages and 20 mainstream news pages in the Netherlands.

In our five-year sample, there is significantly larger user engagement with junk news items than with mainstream news items, for each of the three interaction metrics (reactions, comments, and shares). In terms of different people reached junk news is widespread on Facebook: 5,3 Million individual Facebook users commented or reacted on a junk news post at least once. On a total number of 10 Million Facebook users in the Netherlands this is an impressive volume of engagement.

Junk news pages have been increasingly successful in attracting user engagement over the five-year time period 2013–2017, and the increase is significantly stronger than for mainstream news. From the beginning of 2016 junk news has consistently attracted more user interactions per post than mainstream news.

In conclusion, junk news pages are more successful than mainstream news in generating user engagement with posts. This user engagement feeds the business success for commercial junk news outlets on social media.

References

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16. Howard PN, Bradshaw S, Kollanyi B, Desigaud C, Bolsover G. Junk News and Bots during the French Presidential Election: What Are French Voters Sharing Over Twitter? COMPROP DATA MEMO. 2017.

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24. Nelson JL, Taneja H. The small, disloyal fake news audience: The role of audience availability in fake news consumption. new media & society. 2018; 1461444818758715.

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35. Tucker JA, Guess A, Barbera P, Vaccari C, Siegel A, Sanovich S, et al. Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific Literature. SSRN. 2018. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3144139

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37. Drozdiak N. Google, Facebook and Twitter Agree to Fight Fake News in the EU. 2018.

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39. Funke D, Mantzarlis A. We asked 19 fact-checkers what they think of their partnership with Facebook. Here’s what they told us. Poynter; 2018.

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41. Burger P. HOAX: Asielzoekers mishandelen puppy. Nieuwscheckers; 2017.

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https://ift.tt/2rTVNG5 via PLOS | Public Library Of Science January 4, 2020 at 01:12PM

#IFTTT #Feedly

[realmonstersrp]

❛ the end was soon / to bethlehem / it slouched and then / must’ve caught a good look at you 

INTRODUCING KATIE NHAN, OUR NEWEST STUDENT WITH THE POWER OF PHANTASMA.

WELCOME TO GUMI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FOR THE POWERED.

WHO ARE THEY?

PERSONALITY

(+) exuberant, relentless, loyal (–) self-serving, dishonest, temperamental

BACKGROUND

born in cerritos, california; family consists of: father, mother, older sibling

parents worked as a marine biologists/researchers, and were pioneers in discovering a particular species of marine ‘monsters’ in the US; their research went from academic study to a secret governmental programme to possibly weaponise these creatures.

her parents cooperated, but they worked not to weaponise them but instead study their genetic makeup in order to breed a tamer and (they hoped) less aggressive species to discourage the government from their original plans.

the genetic modification was partly successful – in creating a more docile species, these creatures were more obedient than their counterparts and less aggressive. however, they were also much more susceptible to the whims of their stronger, highly aggressive and strong-minded counterparts who had not been modified and breeding the two species together counterintuitively created the ideal bioweapon the government had been aiming for.

however, this specific breed was uncontainable despite their best efforts, and incredibly resistant to training or direction from anyone and anything beyond their own species – these genetically engineered ‘monsters’ spread past US waters to the pacific and further beyond, possibly breeding with other creatures already present in the pacific and proliferating multiple different breeds and adding onto the depths of the unknown marine ‘monsters’.

the spread of the marine creatures was largely kept under wraps, and the programme was dismantled given its abject failure; while their existence was common knowledge, the origins and modifications of certain species are less well-known.

the appearance of multiple ‘monsters’ matching the description of her parents’ breed of the speicies in gumi alerted them; they chose to move to south korea to investigate and hopefully correct their mistake.

old enough that her parents shared the knowledge of the failed programme and the possible presence of these creatures in gumi, katie applied and was accepted to gumi international in order to hone her own abilities but also to learn more about and perhaps help her parents.

WHAT CAN THEY DO?

phantasma (sensory manipulation); the ability to manipulate the physical or biological senses of herself and others. this is done by sending the wrong signals to the parts of the brain that correspond to the main five senses and is activated through direct eye contact. she works as a sort of sensory deprivation chamber – direct eye contact allows her to alter the targeted sense, and in the absence of the accurate sensory information, she is able to thus send the ‘wrong’ signals to the target’s brain, which processes this as a true sensory experience. by either reducing or amplifying the senses, she can incapacitate the target through sensory deprivation or overload.

visual manipulation: the most extensive use of her ability, she can alter the target’s sight in terms of what in the surroundings is seen and how well they see. under certain circumstances, she can induce weak visual illusions.

auditory manipulation: she has the greatest mastery of this sense; she can alter the target’s hearing by creating false sounds, as well as amplifying or blocking out sounds present in the surroundings.

gustatory manipulation: she can alter the target’s ability to taste; either enhancing certain tastes of the target or reducing their gustatory ability.

olfaction manipulation: she can alter the target’s sense of smell by blocking certain scents from the target. this has a limited effect on taste.

tactile manipulation: she can alter the target’s sense of touch, for example, running one’s hand across a wall can feel as if it is akin to dragging it across hot coals or sharp thorns.

WEAKNESSES

visual: she does not have the ability to create completely new sights, or entire visual illusions, as that ability would require her to be able to construct and conceptualise a complete scene. although she can significantly reduce the target’s visual acuity, she cannot remove the sense of sight completely.

auditory: while she has almost completely mastered the application to remove or enhance the hearing of the target, she cannot create false sounds in conjunction with altering the auditory acuity. this means she can only choose one ‘type’ of auditory manipulation.

gustatory: she cannot create new tastes, only the perception of tastes present.

olfaction: she is less skilled at this application due to lack of practical use, she can only block specific scents from the target, particularly those she is familiar with. she cannot amplify or create new scents.

tactile: the weakest of her applications, she cannot localise any tactile information manipulated and her manipulations can only be full-bodied.

overall:

time limit: she can only maintain this ability for at most 5-10 minutes, before the target’s senses stop responding to her manipulation. moreover, these sensory manipulations are easily broken if the target is able to perceive that the sensory information they are receiving is false.

physical flaw: much of what she can manipulate of the senses is limited to the present surroundings and her knowledge of the sensory experience itself. she cannot, for example, make it seem as if the target is tasting chalk if she does not know what chalk tastes like herself. additionally, she can only manipulate one sense at a time, and not more than that.

range: her ability is activated through direct eye contact; her range is thus limited to the distance that she can make eye contact with the target, which is somewhere around 5m. beyond that, she cannot make the eye contact needed to activate her ability.

sensory manipulation in animals/non-humans: her understanding of her perception of her senses is integral to the ability; she is, essentially, projecting her own knowledge and experience of the sensory trait she is manipulating. thus, the closer an animal’s senses are to that of a human’s, the more accurately she can manipulate them, but the differences (however minute) mean that sensory manipulation in animals is much less effective and may not have the effect intended; it may not even be activated if the animal is genetically distant enough from the homo sapiens sapiens species (ie, the modern human being).

DID YOU KNOW?

(doylist) her surname means ‘colourful’ // (watsonian) speaks english, vietnamese and basic korean

#rmaccepted #lana condor #lotus #subp: simon says

[honeyvevo-blog]

Plastic Surgical procedure and Deciding upon a Plastic Surgeon

chirmed košice What is Plastic Surgical procedure? Plastic surgical treatment requires surgical reconstruction of unique places of the entire body. You may possibly be interested in plastic surgery owing to delivery flaws, disorder, burns or for other and additional personalized beauty motives. A plastic surgeon is a effectively-described surgical specialist. The very best in the discipline have finished up to 11 many years of mixed academic needs, residency demands, internship and authorized residency in plastic and reconstructive surgical procedure, furthermore an extra two years in real practice in advance of getting board licensed by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons, the Gold standard in the plastic surgical procedure field. This is the public's assurance that they are dealing with a single of the finest plastic surgeons offered. Plastic surgery can assist strengthen the way you appear and enhance your first capabilities. Whether or not you are seeking to have plastic surgery mainly because of start problems or for private factors, the outcomes can enhance your self self-assurance, construct your self esteem and offer you with an solely distinct outlook on lifestyle. There are quite a few possibilities that can increase your life and accurate disfigurements or enrich your appearance. Some of the far more normally common plastic surgical treatment techniques are Breast Augmentation, Abdominoplasty (Tummy Tuck), Liposuction for Overall body Lifts, Arm Lifts, etc., facial surgeries these kinds of as Encounter Lifts and Rhinoplasty, as effectively as nonsurgical methods like Botox injections. Moreover some of the more recent technologies are enabling us to do intricate female surgical procedures these as correcting vaginal leisure working with Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation methods. This was usually a medical procedures only accessible through typical procedures until finally just lately. By using laser technological innovation and laser surgical strategies, a plastic surgeon qualified and accredited in these tactics can eradicate the risks inherent with invasive traditional surgical approaches, meaning significantly less blood loss as lasers are self-cauterizing, considerably less danger of an infection and difficulties, nearly no clinic time and significantly a lot quicker recovery occasions. Choosing A Plastic or Beauty Surgeon In this article are some issues to aid you select a significant quality plastic or beauty surgeon. one. Are you Board Qualified by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons? This should be the quite very first problem you request. There is significantly community confusion about certification and there are several unique certifications accessible, for instance, state certification. Nonetheless, to make sure you are obtaining the optimum skilled plastic surgeon accessible, certification by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons is the designation you are in search of. They are the only board for occasion, that can certify in each plastic and reconstructive operation. two. Find out who will be helping your plastic surgeon for the duration of your procedure: There are a lot of persons wanted as a support staff for your surgical treatment to go effortlessly and limit the odds of any troubles. Usually, your guidance group will include things like experienced nursing staff members, an anesthesiologist, restoration space nursing staff, and any other professionals or support wanted for your specific method. Locate out what and who they are and their qualifications. three. Wherever will my operation be performed? When some plastic surgical treatment treatments may well be carried out in the cosmetic surgeon's place of work, most call for hospitalization or a surgical treatment heart. Be sure and check with about the services in which you will be obtaining surgical treatment and if individuals amenities are accredited or certified by the proper companies. four. What are the likely dangers or facet results of my plastic operation treatment? Just about every medical procedures carries the possible of risk, for instance too much blood loss, an infection, or other difficulties that might be unforeseen or that can arise. Even though very rare with modern day plastic surgery tactics, they can come about, and when they happen it can mean you have to have more operation that will place an added financial risk or load on you. Find out what these hazards are. Dr. Vu, for occasion, is the only Portland plastic surgeon that has been permitted by CosmetAssure. CosmetAssure is essentially complications insurance coverage, and provides Dr. Vu's individuals with an added layer of money security should that rare complication occur. A beauty surgeon accepted for CosmetAssure carries the greatest credentials, a spotless surgical document and possesses the greatest surgical expertise. five. How lengthy is the Restoration Time for my process? Uncover out, just about every process may differ, but being aware of in advance of time will enable you system for time off get the job done or prepare for any added property assistance help you may want. 7. What form of Anesthesia ought to you decide on? Anesthesia is often one particular of the larger risks of any kind of surgery and there are in essence 3 kinds. A community anesthesia which is incredibly reduced danger and mostly only used in the course of very low possibility, reduced invasive office environment procedures, an IV sedation, referred to as "twilight slumber" and standard anesthesia. The choice is generally still left up to the affected person for the latter two, but you need to have to know the hazards connected with every single, and the cosmetic surgeon can make a suggestion to you relying upon any extra personal dangers you have, this sort of as smoking cigarettes, medications you happen to be at present having, and so on. Be certain and cover this subject matter extensively.

[candycr4sh-blog]

Plastic Surgical procedure and Deciding on a Plastic Surgeon

plasticka chirurgia nitra What is Plastic Surgery? Plastic surgical procedure entails surgical reconstruction of various regions of the entire body. You may be interested in plastic operation due to start defects, disease, burns or for other and much more individual beauty reasons. A plastic surgeon is a very well-outlined surgical professional. The finest in the subject have completed up to eleven many years of mixed academic specifications, residency necessities, internship and permitted residency in plastic and reconstructive surgical treatment, plus an additional 2 yrs in genuine apply ahead of being board licensed by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons, the Gold regular in the plastic surgical treatment discipline. This is the public's assurance that they are working with a single of the greatest plastic surgeons offered. Plastic operation can support increase the way you look and improve your first attributes. Whether or not you are wanting to have plastic surgical treatment due to the fact of beginning defects or for individual causes, the effects can boost your self self-confidence, develop your self esteem and provide you with an totally various outlook on lifetime. There are a lot of selections that can strengthen your lifestyle and right disfigurements or improve your appearance. Some of the more commonly well-liked plastic medical procedures methods are Breast Augmentation, Abdominoplasty (Tummy Tuck), Liposuction for Human body Lifts, Arm Lifts, and many others., facial surgeries this sort of as Face Lifts and Rhinoplasty, as effectively as nonsurgical treatments like Botox injections. Moreover some of the newer systems are allowing us to do intricate female surgeries these kinds of as correcting vaginal leisure working with Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation procedures. This was typically a surgical procedure only readily available by means of typical techniques until lately. By making use of laser technologies and laser surgical tactics, a plastic surgeon trained and accredited in these strategies can eradicate the hazards inherent with invasive conventional surgical approaches, that means less blood loss as lasers are self-cauterizing, considerably less threat of an infection and complications, nearly no clinic time and a lot more rapidly recovery times. Deciding upon A Plastic or Cosmetic Surgeon In this article are some concerns to assist you opt for a large high quality plastic or cosmetic surgeon. one. Are you Board Accredited by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons? This must be the quite 1st issue you ask. There is a lot general public confusion about certification and there are many diverse certifications obtainable, for instance, state certification. On the other hand, to guarantee you are acquiring the maximum skilled plastic surgeon available, certification by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons is the designation you are searching for. They are the only board for occasion, that can certify in each plastic and reconstructive surgical procedure. two. Find out who will be helping your plastic surgeon during your treatment: There are several people necessary as a guidance workforce for your surgical procedure to go efficiently and limit the probabilities of any issues. Normally, your assist team will include things like educated nursing personnel, an anesthesiologist, restoration area nursing workers, and any other technicians or support required for your specific method. Locate out what and who they are and their skills. 3. In which will my surgical procedure be done? While some plastic surgery procedures may well be carried out in the cosmetic surgeon's office environment, most call for hospitalization or a surgical treatment centre. Be sure and question about the amenities exactly where you will be having surgical treatment and if people facilities are accredited or licensed by the proper organizations. 4. What are the probable dangers or facet consequences of my plastic medical procedures technique? Every single medical procedures carries the prospective of risk, for instance extreme blood decline, infection, or other difficulties that may well be unexpected or that can take place. While really uncommon with modern day working day plastic surgical procedure methods, they can come about, and when they occur it can suggest you need further operation that will place an added money threat or load on you. Uncover out what these dangers are. Dr. Vu, for instance, is the only Portland plastic surgeon that has been approved by CosmetAssure. CosmetAssure is generally issues insurance policy, and provides Dr. Vu's individuals with an added layer of economic safety need to that uncommon complication occur. A cosmetic surgeon accredited for CosmetAssure carries the optimum credentials, a spotless surgical report and possesses the optimum surgical capabilities. five. How lengthy is the Recovery Time for my method? Discover out, each process differs, but realizing in advance of time will assist you strategy for time off get the job done or prepare for any more household services aid you could want. seven. What kind of Anesthesia should you choose? Anesthesia is often a single of the much larger risks of any sort of surgery and there are in essence three forms. A local anesthesia which is extremely minimal risk and principally only used in the course of low chance, minimal invasive workplace treatments, an IV sedation, referred to as "twilight slumber" and standard anesthesia. The choice is usually left up to the patient for the latter 2, but you want to know the dangers linked with each, and the beauty surgeon can make a recommendation to you based on any additional particular pitfalls you have, this kind of as using tobacco, medications you happen to be at the moment getting, and so forth. Be confident and deal with this subject matter extensively.