College & Research Libraries News vol. 83, no. 11 December 2022) December 2022 534C&RL News Gary Pattillo is reference librarian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, e-mail: pattillo@email.unc.edu USA doctorate numbers declined “The number of doctorates awarded by American universities fell 5.4 percent in 2021, according to the latest Survey of Earned Doctorates, making it the steepest decline in Ph.D. production in the survey’s 65-year history. According to the survey, 52,250 doctoral degrees were awarded in 2021. That’s nearly 3,000 Ph.D.s fewer than in 2020, when the number of Ph.D. recipients, at 55,224, had fallen 0.7 percent from the previous year.” Audrey Williams June, “America’s Ph.D. Production Experienced Its Steepest Drop on Re- cord,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 18, 2022, https://www.chronicle.com/article/ americas-ph-d-production-experienced-its-steepest-drop-on-record. National Assessment of Educational Progress “A majority of (U.S.) states saw scores decline for fourth- and eighth-graders in mathematics and reading between 2019 and 2022, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The national average score declines in mathematics for fourth- and eighth-graders were the largest ever recorded in that subject. Nationally, the average mathematics score for fourth-graders fell five points since 2019, while the score for eighth- graders dropped eight points. In reading, average scores for both grades fell three points.” Grady Wilburn and James Elias, “Mathematics and Reading Scores of Fourth- and Eighth- Graders Declined in Most States During Pandemic, Nation’s Report Card Shows,” press release, National Assessment of Educational Progress, National Center for Education Statistics, October 24, 2022, https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/support- ive_files/2022_rm_press_release.docx. Disinformation “An investigation by Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy (C4D) team at NYU Tandon looked at Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube’s ability to detect and remove election disinformation (advertisements) in the run up to the US midterm elections. TikTok fared the worst; the platform . . . approved a full 90 percent of the ads containing outright false and misleading election misinformation. Facebook was only partially effective in detecting and removing the problematic election ads. Only YouTube succeeded both in detecting the ads and suspending the channel carrying them, though this http://www.chronicle.com/article/americas-ph-d-production-experienced-its-steepest-drop-on-record http://www.chronicle.com/article/americas-ph-d-production-experienced-its-steepest-drop-on-record http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/supportive_files/2022_rm_press_release.docx http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/supportive_files/2022_rm_press_release.docx December 2022 535C&RL News is in glaring contrast to the platform’s record in Brazil, where similar ads were approved.” “TikTok and Facebook Fail to Detect Election Disinformation in the US, While YouTube Suc- ceeds,” Global Witness, Center for Cybersecurity at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, October 21, 2022, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/facebook-and-tiktok-fail- block-deceptive-ads-blatant-us- midterms-disinformation. People get news from TikTok “A small but growing share of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on TikTok. In just two years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has roughly tripled, from 3 percent in 2020 to 10 percent in 2022. Adults under 30 are the most likely group to say they regularly get news on TikTok. About a quarter of Americans in this age group (26 percent) say they regularly get news there, higher than in 2021 and 2020.” Katerina Eva Matsa, “More Americans Are Getting News on TikTok, Bucking the Trend on Other Social Media Sites,” Pew Research Center (blog), October 21, 2022, https://www.pe- wresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/10/21/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-th e-trend-on-other-social-media-sites. Internet use in the United States “There were 307.2 million internet users in the United States in January 2022. The United States’s internet penetration rate stood at 92.0 percent of the total population at the start of 2022. Kepios analysis indicates that internet users in the USA increased by 8.4 million (+2.8 percent) between 2021 and 2022. For perspective, these user figures reveal that 26.71 million people in the USA did not use the internet at the start of 2022, meaning that 8.0 percent of the population remained offline at the beginning of the year.” Simon Kemp, “Digital 2022: The United States of America,” DataReportal—Global Digital Insights, February 9, 2022, https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-united-states-of-america. http://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/facebook-and-tiktok-fail-block-deceptive-ads-blatant-us- http://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/facebook-and-tiktok-fail-block-deceptive-ads-blatant-us- http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/10/21/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-th http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/10/21/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-th https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-united-states-of-america