#buzzsumo

For this assignment, I used a website called Buzzsumo. This is a website that is used to find different viral stories that are going on around the world. But some of these stories can not be all true. I scrolled to try and find a story that is a topic within the last couple of days. I set the filters to stories from the last 24hrs and stories from the US.

After I scrolled for a little, I spotted this story: Hurricane Milton: Peach Pass adjusting lanes to help move evacuees faster. In the next day, Florida is getting hit with a category 5 hurricane. The story had an engagement score of 22.3K. After hearing so much about this hurricane, I wanted to know if this was real.

After I clicked on the Buzzsumo link, it led me to a WSB-TV 2 Atlanta news article by news staff. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/hurricane-milton-peach-pass-adjusting-lanes-help-move-evacuees-faster/EICITJDA7RAIVNSZXTFNBLZNSM/

Before I read the article, I did a quick assessment of WSB-TV news.

A media bias checker showed that Web-TV News has a least biased viewpoint, high rating for factual reporting, and is a proper source due to credible media sources. This leads me to think this story is real but want to look into it a little more.

Next, I looked on Facebook and X to see if people were reposting this story since the engagement level was high. A couple people commented about this on Facebook. On X, PeachPassGA posted about how there are adjustments to the lanes on I-75 South Metro Express Pass due to people trying to leave Florida due to the hurricane. People were also reposting a article by the local radio channel. I then looked on Google " Peach Pass adjusting lanes for Hurricane Milton".

Did you know?

In the past two years, the number of interactive posts has increased by 33 percent, but the average number of shares has fallen by 62 percent 😳

Here are 20 examples of engaging interactive content, particularly posts that have gotten far more than the average number of shares.

Just like there are new social media platforms introduced every now and then which capture our attention and become a part of our daily lives, there are social media marketing tools as well. Every few days a new social media marketing tool is introduced which promises to save us time and effort while getting things done efficiently. These tools can perform many tasks ranging from post scheduling, analyzing data, curating content, filtering comments to email marketing and much more.

Many companies and brands today are in sore need of a reality check. In a day and age where human-centricity holds the key to building brand affinity, being human is no longer a ‘nice to have’, it’s a must have. People are drawn to brands that open up, admit their vulnerabilities, and are easy to approach. They yearn for genuine, sincere human connection. They don’t want to be intimidated, they want to be heard, and they want brands to listen.

But social media is a vast ocean of conversations and it can be challenging to navigate its tricky waters. How do we mine this fathomless, never-ending sea of information and keep up with our customers’ latent human desires and anxieties?

Enter social listening. Social listening is a digital anthropology technique that helps brands keep tabs on up-close-and-personal conversations their customers are having and meet them in the middle. By tracking different kinds of keywords (e.g. brand mentions, industry mentions, location-specific mentions) social listening softwares like #hootsuite, #sproutsocial, and #buzzsumo can help brands:

💡 monitor customer queries and concerns; 💡 proactively respond to feedback, good and bad; 💡 stay on top of the latest industry trends (and subsequently, competition); 💡 engage with existing brand advocates in addition to prospective ‘leads’; and 💡 connect with potential influencers.

It’s time for companies to extend beyond their comfort zones and reach out. Empathy takes more work, but it’s the only sure way we can connect on a human level.

- - - 📖 Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management and widely acclaimed as the ‘Father of Modern Marketing’ • Hermawan Kartajaya, Founder of MarkPlus, Inc • Iwan Setiawan, CEO of MarkPlus, Inc.

I clicked on a Buzzsumo link and was taken to the official CBS News website. The article was published on April 22, 2025. The article stated that an organization associated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) was launching a large-scale study to investigate the link between autism and environmental factors, planning to collect medical records from a large number of Americans.

My first reaction was to evaluate the source. CBS News is one of the major American television networks and a mainstream news organization, typically with editorial processes and fact-checking mechanisms. However, this does not mean that its reports should be accepted without verification.

Following the textbook principle of "upstream," I noticed that the article cited multiple sources:

The sponsor of the study: Children's Health Defense, an advocacy group founded and led by RFK Jr.

The specific name of the study and its collaborators.

Citations to outside experts who were critical of the study.

To verify the authenticity of the news and understand its full picture, I began "laterally reading."

Investigating Children's Health Defense:

I searched for "Children's Health Defense reputation" in a search engine. The results showed that the organization is widely viewed by mainstream medical circles, including the American Medical Association, as a major disseminator of vaccine misinformation. Its positions have been repeatedly censored by social media platforms and refuted by fact-checkers.

This suggests that the sponsor of the study mentioned in the news is an organization with a clear and controversial agenda, and that its research warrants caution when evaluating it.

2.Verifying the Study and Other Reports:

I searched for the name of the study mentioned in the news and found that other mainstream media outlets, such as the Associated Press and the New York Times, had also reported on it.

These reports largely aligned with the CBS News narrative, all mentioning the study's plan to collect medical records and citing serious concerns from the scientific community about the study's methodology and potential bias. This confirms that the core facts in the CBS report are accurate and not fabricated.

3.Evaluating Expert Commentary:

The news report cited criticism from the Autism Science Foundation, claiming that the study was intended to gain support for its preconceived conclusions. They cited the CDC's scientific report, which lends the criticisms considerable weight.

By tracing back to the source and reading laterally, I can conclude the following:

News Veracity: This CBS News report is true. It accurately describes a real research initiative initiated by an organization affiliated with RFK Jr.

The Full Story: However, the deeper value of this report lies in its lateral reading, which reveals the complexity of the event. It goes beyond simply reporting on a scientific research project to reveal an organization with a specific political and ideological agenda, launching a study with questionable methods and objectives, considered by the mainstream scientific community.

To finally sum up our fact checking blogs, we were tasked to head over to the website Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo credits itself as a tool that can aid content creation, marketers and SEO professionals in order to analyze the performance of ones content, find influencers, growing trends and create new content ideas. This trends can range from content ideas to recreate and have your shot at a viral video and news stories from all over the world. In order to chose my fact checking news story, I set my Buzzsumo filters to the last 24 hours, English and any location in the world.

From here, I chose a news story with a trending score of 511, or which news stories have received the most attention. This news story was the 2nd headline from the top which read, “Afghanistan national plots election terror attack in US”. The engagement was well over 3k with most of the attention coming from Facebook and X. I questioned the validity of this story and began conducting my research into its truthfulness.

Clicking on the Buzzsumo link, it redirected me to an article from foxnews.com written by Louis Casiano and David Spunt.

Ahead of reading the article, I began a deep dive into both authors and the validity of Fox News’ creation of this article.

Mediabiasfactcheck.com revealed that Fox News is a questionable source and holds an almost extreme far right view point. On the basis of factual reporting, they hold a mixed stance. Among the detailed report, MBFC credits their questionable reasoning to “Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, Propoganda, Poor Sources and Numerous Failed Fact Checks”. Continuing, the MBFC gives them a rating of low credibility. Although the uncovered findings from the media bias fact checker paint Fox News to be a questionable source, that did not completely discredit my chosen article.

From here, I began my research on both Louis Casiano and David Spunt. Questioning what credibility and expertise they hold. Beginning on Casiano, he has his own page on the Fox News website which describes him as “A breaking news protester for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. He joined Fox News in September 2018 after freelancing. Since coming to Fox News, he has covered crime, foreign affairs, immigration and the economy”. Within his LinkedIn profile, Casiano has graduated from the University of Houston with a degree in Journalism. So, no background on politics.

Next, I did the same thing for David Spunt. Typing his name followed by Fox News into my search bar and seeing what popped up in regards to him. In his Fox News biography, he is a correspondent for the news outlet based in Washington D.C. He joined Fox News around the same time as Casiano in December 2018. For Spunt, he received a bachelors degree in political science and journalism from Miami University. Spunt may have some credibility here.

Now, I began reading the article and its detailed claims. In summation, the article states that an Afghan man going by the name of Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, aged 27, obtained firearms and ammunition in order to conduct a violent attack on Election Day.

Tawhedi entered the United States on September 9th, 2021 using a “special immigrant visa”. Tawhedi was then subsequently arrested on Monday. Tawhedi was then charged with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to ISIS and receiving a firearm to be used to commit a felony or federal crime of terrorism. He then appeared in Oklahoma federal court on Tuesday.

Casiano and Spunt then go on to detail the court hearing and statement by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

From this, I searched up any relating headlines on Google. There were many articles of the same nature from News 9, CBS News and Reuters. I decided to view the Reuters article due to its unbiased nature. The article is titled, “Afghan man in Oklahoma City arrested for plotting Election Day attack”, where I will then compare the information in both articles.

The Reuters article confirmed the same name and age as Fox News. As well as affirming the correct date in which Tawhedi entered the U.S. It also included some detailed information about what the Special Immigrant Visa Program was as well as that Tawhedi searched for firearm laws and accessed Washington D.C. cameras- specifically the White House and Washington Monument.

Shockingly, Tawhedi and his underage brother in law met with FBI assets to buy two AK-47 rifles and ammunition. Within his post arrest interview, Tawhedi states “The attack planned to target large gatherings of people, during which he and his co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs” (Ward).

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/afghan-man-oklahoma-city-arrested-plotting-election-day-attack-2024-10-08/