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What is being done to stop it.

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There may be actual solutions to the spread of fake news.

Fake news - from false celebrity gossip to the fabricated story of Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump - became a huge issue during the US election campaign. Those who peddled falsehoods were motivated sometimes by profit and sometimes by politics.

The third-party fact checkers, says IFCN director Alexios Mantzarlis "look at the stories that users have flagged as fake and if they fact check them and tag them as false, these stories then get a disputed tag that stays with them across the social network."

Another warning appears if users try to share the story, although Facebook doesn't prevent such sharing or delete the fake news story. The "fake" tag will however negatively impact the story's score in Facebook's algorithm, meaning that fewer people will see it pop up in their news feeds.

Mantzarlis says there is as of yet no firm evidence that this actually stops fake news spreading on a large scale, and there are questions over how sustainable the programme might be. Facebook is not paying the IFCN members to provide fact-checking services. There's also nothing stopping the fake news from being posted and spread in the first place - and perhaps quite widely before being tagged.

"There is a lag, so until and unless a story is flagged as false that story does continue to spread on the social network," says Mantzarlis.

In 2009, Le Monde, one of the biggest French newspapers, set up a fact-checking unit called Les Decodeurs (The Decoders). Increasingly the unit is turning its attention to fake news, and they've devised a web extension called Decodex.

"You just put it on your browser and then when you come to a fake news site you get a pop up appearing saying 'warning this is a fake news site'," says Samuel Laurent, editor of Les Decodeurs. "If you click on the tool you will have access to a little paper describing the website and saying why we think it's not trustworthy."

The extension is linked to a database that Les Decodeurs has compiled which ranks sites as "fake", "real" or "satire".

But there are several hurdles which likely prevent a relatively simple piece of software from being the silver bullet for fake news. Users firstly have to be aware of the problem of false stories. They have to know about the extension and be concerned enough to download it. And they have to trust Le Monde journalists and the paper's centre-left perspective.

"We know that we won't convince everyone and we know that fake news readers already think we are the fake news," Laurent says. "Our goal is to just provide this tool for people who are really sceptical or who just don't know who to trust.

"People who have already fallen into the fake news vortex, it's too late for them."

Use algorithms to fight algorithms

Algorithms are part of what spreads fake news - because juicy yet false stories which become popular can be pushed out to new eyeballs by the software that runs social networks. But some programmers think computer code could also be part of the solution.

"From an algorithmic perspective it's possible for social media sites to recognise that website was only created two weeks ago, therefore it's probably likely that this is a less trustworthy site," says Claire Wardle of journalism non-profit First Draft News.

"I'm talking about a bit like a spam folder in your email, those emails still sit there, but you have to go to your spam folder to look for it," she says.

But human language and news stories are complicated in ways that computers have difficulty dealing with, and any automated method of fact checking risks reflecting the biases of the programmers who created it.

"There are some very smart people looking at automated solutions now, around automated fact checking, which can get up to about 80% accurate," Wardle says. "I would argue we are always going to need human eyes at the very end to say 'hang on, have we got entirely duped'... we want a combination of algorithms and human experience."

More on this story

The previous solutions are technical fixes, but Bill Dodd has taken a different tack. His proposal would incorporate digital literacy into school curriculums.

"We already have a curriculum right now that teaches critical thinking skills but it hasn't kept up with the digital age," says Dodd, a Democratic lawmakers who has introduced a bill in the California state senate.

Senator Dodd admits not all the detail has yet been worked out, and it it would be the job of the California Board of Education to update the curriculum, but he has some of what might be included, including "trying to discern what the reputation of different sources are.

"If you are dealing with the BBC or the New York Times, chances are you don't have to go any further, but if you are dealing with some unnamed source, you are going to have to go in a little deeper to determine whether or not that's fact or fiction," he says.

And of course, his solution would take years to implement, and would apply to just one state in one country.

"There's so much news coming at kids, and many adults have this as well, but you got to start somewhere," Dodd says.

More from BBC Trending

During the US election, many fake news stories were written not by politically motivated Donald Trump supporters, but by people looking to make some quick cash. And so one way to stop such output would be to eliminate the financial incentives that make fake news profitable.

"To make any decent money, and a lot of the fake news sites do make decent money, you need to start serving millions of ads," says Cliff Lampe, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, "which is why the viral content market has been so important over the last few years."

But fake news producers, like others making content designed to go viral, are quick to adapt to platform rule changes.

"I think this will work for the moment, but I believe that people are going to be able to come up with a workaround and be able to manipulate that attention market in the future," Lampe says.

Reporting by Harriet Noble and Charlotte Prichard

You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.

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Solutions that can stop fake news spreading

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The serious attempts to try to stem the flow of made-up viral stories on Facebook and other social networks.

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Was a report that Pope Francis had endorsed the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, enough to lock down your vote on Election Day? Maybe you changed your mind after hearing that the pope had endorsed the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton? Were you startled to learn that Wikileaks "confirmed" that Secretary of State Clinton put U.S. weapons into the hands of Islamic State terrorists? If so, well, you have been had by fake news, and you were likely not alone this past November.

Pew researchers report that more than 60 percent of adults in the United States now use social media for some or even most of their news consumption. That viral spike of false reporting at the end of the race is a grave concern. A well-informed voting public is an essential component of a functioning democracy.

No version of the truth about the 2016 election will be complete without some attention to the outsized influence of fake news. Conspiracy theories and fabricated news stories were shared wildly by partisans across the social mediascape. But in the crucial final three months of the campaign, according to Buzzfeed News, such digital tall tales actually surpassed mainstream news sources in readership.

With citizen distrust of mainstream media at an all-time high, more people are getting their daily news from these mutant sources. Some are click-bait websites that produce profitable bursts of web viewers with baldly manufactured stories. Others have more demonstrated staying power but have not matured much beyond ideological ranting thinly veneered as news reporting.

The fundamentals of basic journalism are not practiced at such outlets. Facebook's algorithms are designed to keep eyeballs on content and increase active users. That profit-driven goal is coming into a critical conflict with the medium's role as an information outlet for a wide swath of Americans. Site visitors end up with highly distorted news that is often little more than a near-fact or two wrapped up in yards of speculation and conspiracy-spinning. Yet judging from miles of comments on Facebook and Twitter feeds, too many voting citizens accept content emerging from these sources as actual reporting.

The much derided mainstream media is not without bias or flaws, and it has gotten some big stories completely wrong. The 2016 election is itself a standout example. Though imperfections will persist, professional journalists hate to get their facts wrong.

That is not the case at anti-news outlets. Their ascendancy can no longer be treated as a passing cultural fad or a more or less harmless entertainment. What happens in the media's Bizarro World does not stay there; it informs decisions made by voters and can even encourage hurtful policy.

Many fact-checking and meme-vanquishing sites have arisen alongside the ideological news site phenomenon, and they are welcome. But the truth-trackers are only as effective as the number of people who bother to read them. Something like a Charity Navigator for the media seems warranted, a transparently managed site that rates the integrity of news outlets.

In the aftermath of the election, Twitter and Facebook executives acknowledged that their algorithms, designed to surface the stories users are most likely to engage with regardless of accuracy, have been at times a public disservice. The social media giants took measures to isolate or remove some purveyors of fake news, but the industry needs to do much more to combat the dissemination of fake news at the source.

That self-policing is not without hazards. Parody and satire sites could be vulnerable to over-enthusiastic self-regulation. Calling for government intervention would also be an unwholesome development. Ultimately it will be up to individual members of the body politic to better police their personal newscape. Is the nation's education system helping them do that? Considering the enveloping presence of traditional, digital and social media in contemporary life, media literacy should be part of the core, ongoing instruction from elementary school up.

Fraternal corrections from friends and family should discourage the tendency of many to push along "news" without checking the source. Remember your Facebook account is not exempt from the Eighth Commandment, even when you are only bearing false witness by hitting the forward command.

Rumor-mongering and the spreading of false, ruinous tales have been among the basket of deplorables often cited by Pope Francis. Early in his papacy he admonished the church to avoid such occasions of sin. "Calumny destroys the work of God in people, in their souls," he said. "Calumny uses lies to get ahead," Do not doubt, he warned, that "where there is calumny, there is Satan himself."

This time he is just working a keyboard.

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Our appetite for fake news does real harm to U.S. democracy

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Was a report that Pope Francis had endorsed the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, enough to lock down your vote on Election Day? Maybe you changed your mind after hearing that the pope had endorsed the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton? Were you startled to learn that Wikileaks "confirmed" that Secretary of State Clinton put U.S.

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The spread of fake news in several social media sites have been rampant. Its effect on each person differs from a simple shrug to a…

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'Do we need new laws to combat fake news?'
Back in 2013, The World Economic Forum warned that so called 'digital wildfires', that is, unreliable information going viral online (aka fake news) would be one of the biggest threats faced by society.

The most common fake stories we hear about revolve around politics, but we cannot undermine the impact that fake news stories have had on society in general.

One of the main concerns of fake news stories is that they can polarise society, particularly during political events. Leading up to the gubernatorial election in Jakarta earlier this year, more than 1,000 reports about politics and the election were confirmed as hoaxes. One particular 'fake news' campaign against the main opposition candidate, Anies Baswedan, read, "If Mr Baswedan loses the election, there will be a Muslim Revolution". Historically, the Jarkata election has always been ethnically and religiously divisive. However, this bogus claim, along with similar fake stories, exacerbated the divisions in society and pulled cultures within the nation even further apart.

Fake news stories can not only polarise different groups within a nation but also affect international relations. In May 2017 Qatar's state news agency claimed that its Twitter account had been compromised, and hackers had published fake comments allegedly made by the emir criticising aspects of US and Arab Gulf foreign policy towards Iran. Although the news agency was quick to label the comments as false, this did not prevent neighbouring countries Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt severing diplomatic ties with the country.

On a more social level, never has society been so obsessed with the 'celebrity' concept. Celebrity scandals dominate the tabloids on a daily basis. Even though some of these scandals are so far-fetched that it would seem obvious they're not real, we've already seen, in an earlier blog in this series that most readers are unable to distinguish these from real stories. Only this week, a cruel hoax tweet went viral claiming that iconic movie star Clint Eastwood had been found dead at his home. We can only imagine how Eastwood and his family might react to the story, but perhaps the scene from Dirty Harry where he reprises his 'Do you feel lucky, punk?' speech might go some way here.

Fake scandals often seem more believable than the truth and have led to racism, harassment, intimidation and damage to reputation. A recent story about a jewellery shop in the US published by Buzzfeed, claiming that the shop replaced real diamonds for fake ones, led to a fall in the brand's stock by 3.7% and caused irreparable reputational damage and loss of business.

Fake news through social media

The biggest factor behind the success of fake news stories is their high level of social engagement. In the lead-up to the 2016 US election, the public's engagement with fake news through Facebook was higher than through mainstream sources.

Social networks connect us with other like-minded people. Our networks of 'friends' on Facebook, or 'followers' on Twitter, generally consist of people who share our values and beliefs. These values may be social, political or economic, and the information we share through these networks helps to define who we are and what we believe in.

This identity is then reinforced the more we read similar news stories shared through our social network, confirming our ideas and biases. And herein lies the underlying force that propagates false information and further polarises society's partisan. Quite ironic really, considering Facebook's sole mission statement has been to 'connect the world.'

According to Damian Collins, Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the increase of fake news is 'a threat to democracy and undermines confidence in the media in general'. With fake news sites increasing their revenue through digital advertising, the credibility of media organisations and public trust in journalism is under threat.

Matahari Timoer, one of the members of Jakarta based Internet watchdog ICT Watch said "Our digital life has entered a dark age, that is why we need people to do their part as a lantern to light up, and fight this dark period". So are we, the audience, responsible for filtering what we read and share, or should the responsibility fall on the government?

For more information about how to enter or attend the competition go to www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/advocacy

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The Impact of Fake News: Society | Criminal Law Blog | Kingsley Napley

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'Do we need new laws to combat fake news?' Back in 2013, The World Economic Forum warned that so called 'digital wildfires', that is, unreliable information going viral online (aka fake news) would be one of the biggest threats faced by society.

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September 1, 2017

It's too soon to say whether Google's and Facebook's attempts to clamp down on fake news will have a significant impact. But fabricated stories posing as serious journalism are not likely to go away as they have become a means for some writers to make money and potentially influence public opinion. Even as Americans recognize that fake news causes confusion about current issues and events, they continue to circulate it. A December 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center suggests that 23 percent of U.S. adults have shared fake news, knowingly or unknowingly, with friends and others.

"Fake news" is a term that can mean different things, depending on the context. News satire is often called fake news as are parodies such as the "Saturday Night Live" mock newscast Weekend Update. Much of the fake news that flooded the internet during the 2016 election season consisted of written pieces and recorded segments promoting false information or perpetuating conspiracy theories. Some news organizations published reports spotlighting examples of hoaxes, fake news and misinformation on Election Day 2016.

The news media has written a lot about fake news and other forms of misinformation, but scholars are still trying to understand it - for example, how it travels and why some people believe it and even seek it out. Below, Journalist's Resource has pulled together academic studies to help newsrooms better understand the problem and its impacts. Two other resources that may be helpful are the Poynter Institute's tips on debunking fake news stories and the First Draft Partner Network, a global collaboration of newsrooms, social media platforms and fact-checking organizations that was launched in September 2016 to battle fake news. In mid-2018, JR's managing editor, Denise-Marie Ordway, wrote an article for Harvard Business Review explaining what researchers know to date about the amount of misinformation people consume, why they believe it and the best ways to fight it.

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"The Science of Fake News"
Lazer, David M. J.; et al. Science, March 2018. DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2998.

Summary: "The rise of fake news highlights the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age. Concern over the problem is global. However, much remains unknown regarding the vulnerabilities of individuals, institutions, and society to manipulations by malicious actors. A new system of safeguards is needed. Below, we discuss extant social and computer science research regarding belief in fake news and the mechanisms by which it spreads. Fake news has a long history, but we focus on unanswered scientific questions raised by the proliferation of its most recent, politically oriented incarnation. Beyond selected references in the text, suggested further reading can be found in the supplementary materials."

"Who Falls for Fake News? The Roles of Bullshit Receptivity, Overclaiming, Familiarity, and Analytical Thinking"
Pennycook, Gordon; Rand, David G. May 2018. Available at SSRN. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3023545.

Abstract: "Inaccurate beliefs pose a threat to democracy and fake news represents a particularly egregious and direct avenue by which inaccurate beliefs have been propagated via social media. Here we present three studies (MTurk, N = 1,606) investigating the cognitive psychological profile of individuals who fall prey to fake news. We find consistent evidence that the tendency to ascribe profundity to randomly generated sentences - pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity - correlates positively with perceptions of fake news accuracy, and negatively with the ability to differentiate between fake and real news (media truth discernment). Relatedly, individuals who overclaim regarding their level of knowledge (i.e. who produce bullshit) also perceive fake news as more accurate. Conversely, the tendency to ascribe profundity to prototypically profound (non-bullshit) quotations is not associated with media truth discernment; and both profundity measures are positively correlated with willingness to share both fake and real news on social media. We also replicate prior results regarding analytic thinking - which correlates negatively with perceived accuracy of fake news and positively with media truth discernment - and shed further light on this relationship by showing that it is not moderated by the presence versus absence of information about the new headline's source (which has no effect on perceived accuracy), or by prior familiarity with the news headlines (which correlates positively with perceived accuracy of fake and real news). Our results suggest that belief in fake news has similar cognitive properties to other forms of bullshit receptivity, and reinforce the important role that analytic thinking plays in the recognition of misinformation."

"Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election"
Allcott, Hunt; Gentzkow, Matthew. Working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, No. 23089, 2017.

Abstract: "We present new evidence on the role of false stories circulated on social media prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Drawing on audience data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not dominant source of news in the run-up to the election, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their "most important" source of election news; (ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared eight million times; (iii) the average American saw and remembered 0.92 pro-Trump fake news stories and 0.23 pro-Clinton fake news stories, with just over half of those who recalled seeing fake news stories believing them; (iv) for fake news to have changed the outcome of the election, a single fake article would need to have had the same persuasive effect as 36 television campaign ads."

"Debunking: A Meta-Analysis of the Psychological Efficacy of Messages Countering Misinformation"
Chan, Man-pui Sally; Jones, Christopher R.; Jamieson, Kathleen Hall; Albarracín, Dolores. Psychological Science, September 2017. DOI: 10.1177/0956797617714579.

Abstract: "This meta-analysis investigated the factors underlying effective messages to counter attitudes and beliefs based on misinformation. Because misinformation can lead to poor decisions about consequential matters and is persistent and difficult to correct, debunking it is an important scientific and public-policy goal. This meta-analysis (k = 52, N = 6,878) revealed large effects for presenting misinformation (ds = 2.41-3.08), debunking (ds = 1.14-1.33), and the persistence of misinformation in the face of debunking (ds = 0.75-1.06). Persistence was stronger and the debunking effect was weaker when audiences generated reasons in support of the initial misinformation. A detailed debunking message correlated positively with the debunking effect. Surprisingly, however, a detailed debunking message also correlated positively with the misinformation-persistence effect."

"Displacing Misinformation about Events: An Experimental Test of Causal Corrections"
Nyhan, Brendan; Reifler, Jason. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2015. doi: 10.1017/XPS.2014.22.

Abstract: "Misinformation can be very difficult to correct and may have lasting effects even after it is discredited. One reason for this persistence is the manner in which people make causal inferences based on available information about a given event or outcome. As a result, false information may continue to influence beliefs and attitudes even after being debunked if it is not replaced by an alternate causal explanation. We test this hypothesis using an experimental paradigm adapted from the psychology literature on the continued influence effect and find that a causal explanation for an unexplained event is significantly more effective than a denial even when the denial is backed by unusually strong evidence. This result has significant implications for how to most effectively counter misinformation about controversial political events and outcomes."

"Rumors and Health Care Reform: Experiments in Political Misinformation"
Berinsky, Adam J. British Journal of Political Science, 2015. doi: 10.1017/S0007123415000186.

Abstract: "This article explores belief in political rumors surrounding the health care reforms enacted by Congress in 2010. Refuting rumors with statements from unlikely sources can, under certain circumstances, increase the willingness of citizens to reject rumors regardless of their own political predilections. Such source credibility effects, while well known in the political persuasion literature, have not been applied to the study of rumor. Though source credibility appears to be an effective tool for debunking political rumors, risks remain. Drawing upon research from psychology on 'fluency' - the ease of information recall - this article argues that rumors acquire power through familiarity. Attempting to quash rumors through direct refutation may facilitate their diffusion by increasing fluency. The empirical results find that merely repeating a rumor increases its power."

"Rumors and Factitious Informational Blends: The Role of the Web in Speculative Politics"
Rojecki, Andrew; Meraz, Sharon. New Media & Society, 2016. doi: 10.1177/1461444814535724.

Abstract: "The World Wide Web has changed the dynamics of information transmission and agenda-setting. Facts mingle with half-truths and untruths to create factitious informational blends (FIBs) that drive speculative politics. We specify an information environment that mirrors and contributes to a polarized political system and develop a methodology that measures the interaction of the two. We do so by examining the evolution of two comparable claims during the 2004 presidential campaign in three streams of data: (1) web pages, (2) Google searches, and (3) media coverage. We find that the web is not sufficient alone for spreading misinformation, but it leads the agenda for traditional media. We find no evidence for equality of influence in network actors."

"Analyzing How People Orient to and Spread Rumors in Social Media by Looking at Conversational Threads"
Zubiaga, Arkaitz; et al. PLOS ONE, 2016. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0150989.

Abstract: "As breaking news unfolds people increasingly rely on social media to stay abreast of the latest updates. The use of social media in such situations comes with the caveat that new information being released piecemeal may encourage rumors, many of which remain unverified long after their point of release. Little is known, however, about the dynamics of the life cycle of a social media rumor. In this paper we present a methodology that has enabled us to collect, identify and annotate a dataset of 330 rumor threads (4,842 tweets) associated with 9 newsworthy events. We analyze this dataset to understand how users spread, support, or deny rumors that are later proven true or false, by distinguishing two levels of status in a rumor life cycle i.e., before and after its veracity status is resolved. The identification of rumors associated with each event, as well as the tweet that resolved each rumor as true or false, was performed by journalist members of the research team who tracked the events in real time. Our study shows that rumors that are ultimately proven true tend to be resolved faster than those that turn out to be false. Whilst one can readily see users denying rumors once they have been debunked, users appear to be less capable of distinguishing true from false rumors when their veracity remains in question. In fact, we show that the prevalent tendency for users is to support every unverified rumor. We also analyze the role of different types of users, finding that highly reputable users such as news organizations endeavor to post well-grounded statements, which appear to be certain and accompanied by evidence. Nevertheless, these often prove to be unverified pieces of information that give rise to false rumors. Our study reinforces the need for developing robust machine learning techniques that can provide assistance in real time for assessing the veracity of rumors. The findings of our study provide useful insights for achieving this aim."

"Miley, CNN and The Onion"Berkowitz, Dan; Schwartz, David Asa. Journalism Practice, 2016. doi: 10.1080/17512786.2015.1006933.

Abstract: "Following a twerk-heavy performance by Miley Cyrus on the Video Music Awards program, CNN featured the story on the top of its website. The Onion - a fake-news organization - then ran a satirical column purporting to be by CNN's Web editor explaining this decision. Through textual analysis, this paper demonstrates how a Fifth Estate comprised of bloggers, columnists and fake news organizations worked to relocate mainstream journalism back to within its professional boundaries."
"Emotions, Partisanship, and Misperceptions: How Anger and Anxiety Moderate the Effect of Partisan Bias on Susceptibility to Political Misinformation"
Weeks, Brian E. Journal of Communication, 2015. doi: 10.1111/jcom.12164.

Abstract: "Citizens are frequently misinformed about political issues and candidates but the circumstances under which inaccurate beliefs emerge are not fully understood. This experimental study demonstrates that the independent experience of two emotions, anger and anxiety, in part determines whether citizens consider misinformation in a partisan or open-minded fashion. Anger encourages partisan, motivated evaluation of uncorrected misinformation that results in beliefs consistent with the supported political party, while anxiety at times promotes initial beliefs based less on partisanship and more on the information environment. However, exposure to corrections improves belief accuracy, regardless of emotion or partisanship. The results indicate that the unique experience of anger and anxiety can affect the accuracy of political beliefs by strengthening or attenuating the influence of partisanship."

Abstract: "A fake news detection system aims to assist users in detecting and filtering out varieties of potentially deceptive news. The prediction of the chances that a particular news item is intentionally deceptive is based on the analysis of previously seen truthful and deceptive news. A scarcity of deceptive news, available as corpora for predictive modeling, is a major stumbling block in this field of natural language processing (NLP) and deception detection. This paper discusses three types of fake news, each in contrast to genuine serious reporting, and weighs their pros and cons as a corpus for text analytics and predictive modeling. Filtering, vetting, and verifying online information continues to be essential in library and information science (LIS), as the lines between traditional news and online information are blurring."

Abstract: "This research assesses possible associations between viewing fake news (i.e., political satire) and attitudes of inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism toward political candidates. Using survey data collected during the 2006 Israeli election campaign, the study provides evidence for an indirect positive effect of fake news viewing in fostering the feelings of inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism, through the mediator variable of perceived realism of fake news. Within this process, hard news viewing serves as a moderator of the association between viewing fake news and their perceived realism. It was also demonstrated that perceived realism of fake news is stronger among individuals with high exposure to fake news and low exposure to hard news than among those with high exposure to both fake and hard news. Overall, this study contributes to the scientific knowledge regarding the influence of the interaction between various types of media use on political effects."

Abstract: "In today's world, online social media plays a vital role during real world events, especially crisis events. There are both positive and negative effects of social media coverage of events. It can be used by authorities for effective disaster management or by malicious entities to spread rumors and fake news. The aim of this paper is to highlight the role of Twitter during Hurricane Sandy (2012) to spread fake images about the disaster. We identified 10,350 unique tweets containing fake images that were circulated on Twitter during Hurricane Sandy. We performed a characterization analysis, to understand the temporal, social reputation and influence patterns for the spread of fake images. Eighty-six percent of tweets spreading the fake images were retweets, hence very few were original tweets. Our results showed that the top 30 users out of 10,215 users (0.3 percent) resulted in 90 percent of the retweets of fake images; also network links such as follower relationships of Twitter, contributed very little (only 11 percent) to the spread of these fake photos URLs. Next, we used classification models, to distinguish fake images from real images of Hurricane Sandy. Best results were obtained from Decision Tree classifier, we got 97 percent accuracy in predicting fake images from real. Also, tweet-based features were very effective in distinguishing fake images tweets from real, while the performance of user-based features was very poor. Our results showed that automated techniques can be used in identifying real images from fake images posted on Twitter."

Abstract: "This study builds on research about political humor, press meta-coverage, and intertextuality to examine the effects of news coverage about political satire on audience members. The analysis uses experimental data to test whether news coverage of Stephen Colbert's Super PAC influenced knowledge and opinion regarding Citizens United, as well as political trust and internal political efficacy. It also tests whether such effects depended on previous exposure to The Colbert Report (Colbert's satirical television show) and traditional news. Results indicate that exposure to news coverage of satire can influence knowledge, opinion, and political trust. Additionally, regular satire viewers may experience stronger effects on opinion, as well as increased internal efficacy, when consuming news coverage about issues previously highlighted in satire programming."

Abstract: "This article examines the news behaviors and attitudes of teenagers, an understudied demographic in the research on youth and news media. Based on interviews with 61 racially diverse high school students, it discusses how adolescents become informed about current events and why they prefer certain news formats to others. The results reveal changing ways news information is being accessed, new attitudes about what it means to be informed, and a youth preference for opinionated rather than objective news. This does not indicate that young people disregard the basic ideals of professional journalism but, rather, that they desire more authentic renderings of them."
Keywords: alt-right, credibility, truth discovery, post-truth era, fact checking, news sharing, news literacy, misinformation, disinformation
5 fascinating digital media studies from fall 2018

Facebook and the newsroom: 6 questions for Siva Vaidhyanathan

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Fake news and the spread of misinformation - Journalist's Resource

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September 1, 2017 It's too soon to say whether Google's and Facebook's attempts to clamp down on fake news will have a significant impact. But fabricated stories posing as serious journalism are not likely to go away as they have become a means for some writers to make money and potentially influence public opinion.

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Fake news, or fabricated content deceptively presented as real news, has garnered a lot of interest since the U.S. presidential election last fall.

Although hardly a new phenomenon, the global nature of the web-based information environment allows purveyors of all sorts of falsehoods and misinformation to make an international impact. As a result, we talk of fake news and its impact not only in the United States, but also in France, Italy and Germany.

Even though the rise of fake news in recent months is undeniable, its impact is a different story. Many argue that fake news, often highly partisan, helped Donald Trump get elected. There was certainly evidence of fake news stories getting a lot of traction on social media, at times even outperforming actual news stories.

However, a closer analysis shows even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans. And the persuasive effects of these stories have not been tested.

It's likely that they were shared primarily as a way to signal support for either candidate, and not as evidence of news consumers actually believing the content of the story. This raises questions about whether fake news has any real impact at all and whether we, as a society, should be worried about it.

Separating fact from fiction

The real impact of the growing interest in fake news has been the realization that the public might not be well-equipped to separate quality information from false information. In fact, a majority of Americans are confident that they can spot fake news. When Buzzfeed surveyed American high schoolers, they too were confident they could spot, and ignore, fake news online. The reality, however, is that it might be more difficult than people think.

I began to test that notion recently in a study I conducted on about 700 undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia.

The design was simple. I showed students a variety of screenshots of actual news website banners - ranging from established news sources like the the Globe and Mail, more partisan sources like Fox News and the Huffington Post, online aggregators like Yahoo! News and social media outlets like Upworthy - and asked them to rate their legitimacy on a scale of zero to 100.

I also included actual screenshots of fake news websites, some of which gained prominence during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. One of these fake news sources was a website called ABCnews.com.co, which is made to look like ABC News, and featured some false content that gained prominence after it was retweeted by Eric Trump. The others were the Boston Tribune and World True News.

(Shutterstock)

The findings are troubling. Even though the sample group was mostly composed of politically sophisticated and engaged news consumers (by their own admission), the respondents attributed more legitimacy to fake news outlets like ABCnews.com.co or the Boston Tribune than to Yahoo! News, an actual news organization.

Although these results are preliminary and part of a larger study, they are consistent with other research: people, and especially young people, have a hard time separating good sources of information from questionable ones or determining whether a photograph is authentic or fabricated.

Furthermore, ideology seems to impact the assessment of news legitimacy to a troubling degree. Left-leaning students see no difference between an extremist source like Breitbart and Fox News, which, in addition to right-wing partisan commentary, also features news reporting that adheres to standard journalistic norms.

As a result, something that looks and feels real, like the Boston Tribune, is given more legitimacy than an actual news source that students are familiar with, but dislike for ideological reasons. In fact, something that looks and feels fake, like World True News, is given more legitimacy than a real news outlet.

All of this suggests that even though we have been fairly lucky in Canada to avoid the spread of fake news which has plagued recent elections in other developed nations, it doesn't mean we're immune to the phenomenon. In many ways, the foundation has been already laid.

Canadians polarized too

According to research done by my colleague, Eric Merkley, Canadians are increasingly polarized along ideological lines, and this affective polarization tends to trigger motivated reasoning - an unconscious, biased way of processing information which makes even smart people believe in falsehoods that support their ideological and partisan predispositions.

Additionally, the fragmentation and digitization of the news media landscape is not an American phenomenon, but a global one. According to the most recent study, nearly 80 per cent of Canadians get their news online, and nearly 50 per cent get news on social media, a platform that greatly contributed to the spread of misinformation in the United States. Taken together, the conditions are ripe for fake news to take off in Canada.

Sadly, there's no easy fix to the problem. Tweaking algorithms - something Facebook and Google are trying to do - can help, but the real solution must come from the news consumers. They need to be more skeptical and better-equipped to rate the quality of information that they encounter.

A crucial part of that strategy should involve media literacy training and equipping news consumers with tools that will allow them to gauge the legitimacy of the news source, but also become aware of their own cognitive biases.

The problem will only get worse without proper action as more people get their news online and politics becomes more tribal and polarized.

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Fake news, or fabricated content deceptively presented as real news, has garnered a lot of interest since the U.S. presidential election last fall. Although hardly a new phenomenon, the global nature of the web-based information environment allows purveyors of all sorts of falsehoods and misinformation to make an international impact.

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If the last quarter of 2017 has taught us anything, it's that fake news isn't just a harmless, digital waste product.

This month, it led an armed vigilante to a Washington pizzeria, falsely reported to be the headquarters of a child abuse ring led by children's advocate, mother and grandmother, Hilary Clinton.

In November, fake news created a twisted multiverse, where Donald Trump was tiptoeing towards the White House at the same time as Hilary supporters were performing victory dances at her rallies.

This weird dissonance didn't happen in a cultural vacuum, either; a BuzzFeed analysis of Facebook engagement during the U.S. election showed that fake - and shall we say partisan - news played a role. It outperformed content from verified publishers, and suggested that social media - the main platform for consumption - was one factor creating this baffling gap between perception and reality.

It's bad enough that sites like Facebook already cocoon users in what author Eli Pariser calls The Filter Bubble. In this warm and cosy (if mind-numbing) echo chamber, your feed serves up what it thinks you want to see and hear, based on what you've already seen and heard. It's confirmation bias on steroids. And now we learn that, on top of this, the information may not even be true.

Interestingly, and worryingly, social scientists say a cherry-picked worldview isn't the only psychological effect we have to be concerned about.

A study titled, " When Corrections Fail" conducted the following experiment: subjects read mock news articles with misleading claims - followed by a correction. The results found not only that, "corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions" but that they often cause a "'backfire effect' in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question."

Oh dear. When corrections fail, indeed.

But on a serious note, this isn't good. If even misinformation that comes labelled with a health warning causes us to double down on misguided beliefs, and we only get exposed to ideas and opinions that we like, it really isn't good.

As an Atlantic article exploring the effects of political correctness on college campuses pointed out, padded echo chambers run counter to the psychology of a healthy mind. Techniques like cognitive behavioural therapy seek to reduce anxiety, trauma and fear by exposing our assumptions and challenging them, not by filtering, enabling and embellishing them.

By that rationale, filter bubbles lend themselves to psychological frailty; a mind-set that interprets any dissenting opinion as an attack, and foments under-preparedness and a fear of difference.

That's already proved not to be so good for democracy, and it's also not good for us.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If the last quarter of 2017 has taught us anything, it's that fake news isn't just a harmless, digital waste product. This month, it led an armed vigilante to a Washington pizzeria, falsely reported to be the headquarters of a child abuse ring led by children's advocate, mother and grandmother, Hilary Clinton.