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My topic for our social media curation assignment is fake news and the ways it is spread across social media. Fake news can come in many different forms from death hoax's , attacks between political parties to discredit the opposing party, and bending the truth in many other news events to mislead people into believing a lie.

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Here is a link to a great definition of fake news provided by Wikipedia.

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Fake news. (2018, April 01). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news

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This article is about a general discussion of false or misleading information presented as news. For the online type and the websites that specialize in it, see Fake news website. For other uses, see Fake news (disambiguation).

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A good list of the types of fake news we encounter on social media on a daily basis. Full fabrication and misleading content are the most common types we see but, generally we do run into many of the items listed in this article from prweek.com

Reference
January 19, 2018 by Sean Czarnecki. (n.d.). A guide to the 7 types of fake news from Storyful's new editor. Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://www.prweek.com/article/1455046/guide-7-types-fake-news-storyfuls-new-editor

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"Fake news" is everywhere and everyone hates it, but no one can seem to agree on what it actually means.

Democrats and Republicans knock heads over whether the "real fake news" comes from CNN or Russian bots. Some writers argue it's merely an extension of "Yellow Journalism," an old concept reanimated by tech. Others consider it a problem of paramount concern or a weapon of despots.

Mandy Jenkins, the recently promoted editor-in-chief of Storyful, said the meaning of fake news is too broad. She called the term a "word du jour [that] everybody's starting to hate." Jenkins prefers the term "virtual disinformation" to describe news that is intentionally false or misleading.

Following President Donald Trump's inaugural Fake News Awards, here's a quick guide on the seven levels of fake news, with the help of Jenkins and other sources.

In the spectrum of fake news, this is the least harmful, Jenkins said. An amusing example would be the "Gorilla Channel."

Wow, this extract from Wolff's book is a shocking insight into Trump's mind: pic.twitter.com/1ZecclggSa
- pixelated boat (@pixelatedboat) January 5, 2018

Shortly after the election, a misquotation led to this sensational headline: " Ireland is now officially accepting Trump refugees from the U.S." The quote was attributed to an interview with Mary Heanue, a former official of Inishturk, an island off the west coast of Ireland, in The Irish Central.

The problems? Heanue disputes the context of the quote, saying the conversation wasn't political. Plus, Inishturk can't unilaterally accept refugees on behalf of Ireland. Not to mention that Never Trumpers don't qualify as refugees. And Ireland isn't accepting them anyway, unless they're tourists.

"Consider the promotional images you might see on social media or at the bottom of news sites with the headline like 'Celebrities You Didn't Know Were Dead,' with a photo of a celebrity that's alive," Jenkins said. "Of course, then you click through and find that person wasn't mentioned in the story after all."

"We've definitely seen stories from websites, such as ABCNews.com.co, ABCNews.co, or CNNNews dot 'some country code.' It was made to look like CNN, but some down market look of CNN," Jenkins said.

Snopes took a look back on 2017's " fauxtography," calling out misleading images that followed the year's biggest stories, ranging from crowd sizes to neo-Nazis and Antifa at Charlottesville, Virginia. Project Veritas also typifies this kind of content with its selectively edited "sting operations."

Full fabrication
Everything in this type of story is fake and designed with intent to do harm.

Late last year, a Gateway Pundit story featured unverified claims that women were paid by The Washington Post to make false accusations of sexual assault against then-Senate candidate Roy Moore.

A Gallup/Knight Foundation study found steep partisan divides between Democrats and Republicans on a fake news definition. Republicans generally label stories unfavorable to the president with the epithet, even if it's factually accurate. Democrats generally hew to the more general term: intentionally misleading or false content.

John McCain slammed Trump's attacks on the press in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

"The phrase 'fake news' - granted legitimacy by an American president - is being used by autocrats to silence reporters, undermine political opponents, stave off media scrutiny, and mislead citizens."
Correction: This story was updated on January 21 to change "ABCNews.com" to "ABCNews.com.co."

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A guide to the 7 types of fake news from Storyful's new editor

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"Fake news" is everywhere and everyone hates it, but no one can seem to agree on what it actually means. Democrats and Republicans knock heads over whether the "real fake news" comes from CNN or Russian bots. Some writers argue it's merely an extension of "Yellow Journalism," an old concept reanimated by tech.

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Sometimes from social media platforms like Facebook we get a link  to articles in which are fake, here is a good list of ways to help you determine if the news is real or not. These interesting were provided by Wikihow.com.

Reference
How to Spot Fake News Sites. (2018, February 26). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://m.wikihow.com/Spot-Fake-News-Sites

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To successfully spot fake news sites, search the name of the website followed by words like "legitimacy," "satire," or "fake" to see if it has a good reputation or is known for fictional stories. Check the website's URL for elements that don't seem right, like unnecessary words and letters or a ".co" at the end of the link. If it seems legit, look at the Contact Us page to see who owns the site and if there are multiple, trustworthy authors working for it. Stay away from websites that look poorly made or unprofessional. For advice on spotting fake news articles, scroll down!

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Fake news sites present fictional happenings as factual and often play into the hands of a political party or partisan group. As fake news articles become more common on social media, it's important for readers to be able to tell the...

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This article posted by NBC news on google talks about how fake news is spread 6 times faster than real news and the multiple reasons why this happens. Sometimes fake news spread unintentionally from people who take what the see on social media as the truth and share it on their Facebook or Twitter, from there a large audience of their friends and family get to see that post and it goes through a large multiplier effect.

Reference
Want something to go viral? Make it fake news. (n.d.). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fake-news-lies-spread-faster-social-media-truth-does-n854896

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If it seems like fake news is everywhere, that may be because it is.

Falsehoods spread like wildfire on social media, getting quicker and longer-lasting pickup than the truth, researchers reported on Thursday.

A deep dive into Twitter shows that false news was re-tweeted more often than true news was, and carried further.

"Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information," the team, led bySinan Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in the journal Science.

"It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people."

And it wasn't bots spreading most of the falsehoods, they found. It was real people doing most of it. Usually ordinary people, too, they found: so-called 'verified' users and those with many followers were not usually the source of some of the most popular untrue viral posts.

It might be because false statements sound more surprising, they said.

"We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information," they wrote.

It should come as no surprise that the internet has spawned a resurgence of fake news. Congress and the FBI are investigating evidence that Russian and other foreign users deliberately flooded social media with untrue reports and posts intended to mislead people about political candidates.

And the term "fake news" has taken on its own life, referring not only to untrue reports but being increasingly used to dismiss reports that the user does not wish to agree with.

So Aral's team decided to use the term "false news" instead. They also used a broad definition of "news". "We refer to any asserted claim made on Twitter as news," they said.

The study started with PhD research by MIT's Soroush Vosoughi, who was struck by the false reports that spread rapidly after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, in which three people were killed and 264 injured.

"Twitter became our main source of news," Vosoughi said in a statement. "I realized that ... a good chunk of what I was reading on social media was rumors," he added.

"It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people."

To objectively separate truth from lies or mistakes, Vosoughi and colleagues used sites devoted to fact-checking: factcheck.org, hoax-slayer.com, politifact.com, snopes.org, truthorfiction.com, and urbanlegends.about.com. The six sites agreed on which reports were true about 95 percent of the time, they said.

For the report, they examined 126,000 stories tweeted by about 3 million people more than 4.5 million times.

They found that false news stories were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories were.

Untrue stories also had more staying power, carrying onto more "cascades," or unbroken re-tweet chains, they found.

When they looked at who was spreading the wrong stuff, they found it was ordinary users of social media.

"We conclude that human behavior contributes more to the differential spread of falsity and truth than automated robots do," they wrote.

Why retweet that post before you know whether it's actually true?

Status, Aral said. "People who share novel information are seen as being in the know," he said.

But don't forget about the bots, argue Filippo Menczer of Indiana University and colleagues. They estimate that 60 million "bots" post automatic updates on Facebook and up to 48 million are on Twitter.

"The spreaders of fake news are using increasingly sophisticated methods," Menczer said in a statement.

Why do people fall for it, whether it's from a bot or a real friend?

"False news is more novel, and people are more likely to share novel information," Aral said. Plus, people like to repeat information that seems to affirm their beliefs.

"People prefer information that confirms their preexisting attitudes, view information consistent with their preexisting beliefs as more persuasive than dissonant information (confirmation bias), and are inclined to accept information that pleases them," David Lazer of Northeastern University and colleagues wrote in an editorial.

And fact-checking can backfire, they noted. "Fact-checking might even be counterproductive under certain circumstances," they wrote. "There is thus a risk that repeating false information, even in a fact-checking context, may increase an individual's likelihood of accepting it as true."

They call for more high-quality research into the false news problem and what can be done about it, pointing to reforms in the early 20th century that gave rise to legitimate newspapers with ethics promoting objectivity and credibility out of the ashes of a boisterous yellow press.

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Want something to go viral? Make it fake news

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Fake news, lies and falsehoods spread like wildfire on social media, a new study confirms. People share wrong information faster than they pass along the truth.

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YouTube video on how Twitter, Facebook and Google plan to combat fake news

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YouTube video on how Twitter, Facebook and Google plan to combat fake news

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Here is a video on social media companies that have decided to combat fake news because it has become a huge problem. With the large audience that social media platforms have, fake news can definitely impact a good number of that audience who may believe what they read without researching real facts. Platforms like facebook, Twitter and google plan to fight against it because sometimes fake news can damage things like Political elections by swaying votes due to misinforming people.

Reference
W. (2016, November 16). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=NSS0ePRc1AE

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Social Media Companies Tackle Fake News and Abuse

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Everyone has a preference when it comes to a political party but, some people will do anything to gain an advantage for their party by severely discrediting and slandering other parties. Here is a Twitter blog showing the type of fake news people will post that is definitely untrue to sway people to their parties side.

Reference
[Web log post]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://twitter.com/blogTO/status/978276786751623171/photo/1

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Anti-Doug Ford posters have surfaced in #Toronto https://t.co/bd6uGU0zVt

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Anti-Doug Ford posters have surfaced in #Toronto https://t.co/bd6uGU0zVt https://t.co/6aOa7F84gx

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Anti-Doug Ford posters have surfaced in #Toronto https://t.co/bd6uGU0zVt pic.twitter.com/6aOa7F84gx
— blogTO (@blogTO) March 26, 2018

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Anti-Doug Ford posters have surfaced in #Toronto https://t.co/bd6uGU0zVt https://t.co/6aOa7F84gx

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Anti-Doug Ford posters have surfaced in #Toronto https://t.co/bd6uGU0zVt https://t.co/6aOa7F84gx

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Anti-Doug Ford posters have surfaced in #Toronto https://t.co/bd6uGU0zVt

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Spreading opinionated material about politicians

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Spreading opinionated material about politicians

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Some people create pages on social media platforms like facebook to attract people that are like minded and hopefully new comers to sway them into their view. This happens a lot towards political parties and a good portion of time people post opinionated/ nonfactual information to discredit a political party.

Reference
Kathleen Wynne for Prison. (n.d.). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://www.facebook.com/ImprisonWyne/

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Kathleen Wynne for Prison. 36,298 likes · 3,164 talking about this. The Wynne Liberals is the most corrupt government in Canada. If she was investigated by a Police Force that is not equally...

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This article/ video from CNN talks about how the younger generation is being fooled in large number by fake news. They have conducted research and said that kids are more likely to believe their family members for truthful news over their teachers, other adults or solid news sources but, they still get the majority of their news from social media platforms.

Reference
Wallace, K. (2017, April 03). Is 'fake news' fooling kids? The answer is yes. Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/10/health/fake-news-kids-common-sense-media/index.html

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Although 44% of tweens and teens in a recent survey said they can tell the difference between fake news stories and real ones, more than 30% who said they shared a news story online during the past six months admitted that they didn't get it exactly right.

They said they later found out that a story they shared was wrong or inaccurate, according to the survey by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization focused on helping parents, kids and educators negotiate media and technology.

The survey of 853 children ages 10 to 18 in the United States also asked kids how much they trust the information they received from each of their news sources.

Family got higher marks than teachers, news organizations and friends. Sixty-six percent of tweens and teens said they trust the information they received from family, compared with 48% for teachers and other adults, 25% for news organizations and just 17% for friends.

The problem here is that adults, just like children, are having some troubles differentiating between news stories that are real and those that are fake. Some are also sharing news they know is false.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, only 39% of American adults felt "very confident" that they can recognize news that is made up. In the survey of more than 1,000 adults, 23% said they have shared a fake news story. Fourteen percent said they shared a story that they knew was fake at the time, and 16% said they shared a story that they later learned was fake.

Beyond fake news, the Common Sense Media study "News and America's Kids" had some interesting findings about how kids feel about the news and about where they get their news.

Kids feel misrepresented by the news

Nearly 70% of the tweens and teens who took part in the survey said they feel that the media have no idea about the experiences of people their age.

Part of the problem, they said, is that the media don't showcase people their age nearly enough. Seventy-four percent said that instead of having grownups talk about them, the media should include more people their own age in stories. (I learned this firsthand when I did a story on the acronyms teens and tweens use on social media and failed to interview any tweens and teens for the story.)

Kids see plenty of racial and gender bias in the news

Half of kids said that when they see children who aren't white on the news, the stories are negative and/or related to crime and violence. Not surprisingly, African-American, Hispanic and Latino kids were more likely to feel this way.

When it comes to gender bias, women were less likely to feel that the media treat women and men fairly: Twenty-nine percent of young women felt this way, versus 40% of men. Only one-third of children believed there was equality in the portrayals of women and men in the media.

How the news makes them feel

I've written more times than I can count about how parents can talk to their kids about tragic news such as a school shooting or a terrorist attack and how news stories about and the images from such tragedies can dramatically impact our kids. The Common Sense Media survey reinforces that point.

For most kids, the news had a negative impact on their mood. Sixty-three percent said the news makes them feel one or more of these emotions: angry, afraid, sad/depressed.

It's no surprise that more tweens than teens said the news makes them feel afraid: 43% of tweens versus 31% of teens.

Where do they get their news?

Although they may trust their families more than any other news source, they still say social media is their preferred news source. Thirty-nine percent said they prefer to get their news from social media, versus 36% who chose family, teachers and/or friends and 24% who selected traditional media.

Teens said Facebook is their No. 1 social media news source, while tweens named YouTube.

Is news important to them?

While kids say that they feel misrepresented and that the news has a negative impact on their mood, the "news" about this new survery is not all grim: Tweens and teens still value it.

Forty-eight percent said that following the news was important to them, and half said that following the news makes them feel prepared to make a difference in their communities.

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is 'fake news' fooling kids? the answer is yes  - cnn

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Is 'fake news' fooling kids? The answer is yes

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Although 44% of tweens and teens in a recent survey said they can tell the difference between fake news stories and real ones, more than 30% who said they shared a news story online during the past six months admitted that they didn't get it exactly right.

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Some ways people use Fake news to make money

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Some ways people use Fake news to make money

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When the majority of people see a missing person link, or video online they do not think it's an opportunity for someone to profit off it but, when someone makes a fake missing person report and has a video linked on it that has advertisements it may just be fake news. With a large number of views due to liking and sharing the person who posted this could generate a lot of money due to viewers for the advertisement.

Reference
Lytvynenko, J. (n.d.). To Sell Gadgets To Facebook Users, Scammers Use Every Trick In The Book. Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/janelytvynenko/fake-news-and-ecommerce?utm_term=.qoD5Wqrgo#.dpo4qmXK6

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A Facebook video titled "UPDATE: Cop Who Arrested Malia Obama Found Dead Under Suspicious Circumstances" began spreading last month from one Facebook page to the next. It popped up on e-commerce pages with names like Cyber Monday and EShopping Bazar, as well as on fashion-oriented Facebook pages like Its Pretty and Fashion Foundry.

The video's title is copied from a completely false story published on a website that exclusively traffics in fake news articles. But the video itself had nothing to do with the hoax story.

Anyone clicking the play button was treated to a two-minute commercial for a kitchen cutter tool, complete with an upbeat harmonica soundtrack. In the video's description, the pages sharing it posted a link to let people know they could purchase the device for themselves, which led to a site called trendyarrival.com.

The pages using the fake headline to sell a kitchen gadget are part of a network of more than 40 pages identified by BuzzFeed News that have been using every trick in the online scam playbook to build an audience and make money on Facebook. They post pictures of people with disabilities and beg fans to like and comment on them in order to help the posts spread further, thereby attracting new fans for the page. They publish images and videos with inspirational quotes or stories asking for sympathy. And, yes, they share fake news articles.

The network appears to be largely geared towards driving traffic to a group of websites, at least one of which earned money from Google's lucrative AdSense advertising network. (The site appears to have been removed from AdSense after BuzzFeed News contacted Google for comment.) The network of pages and related websites illustrates how scammers, spammers, and other malicious actors operate in plain sight and continue to exploit social platforms and ad networks using a variety of tactics.

The person, or people, running this particular group of pages and sites appears to be enjoying some success: In the last month, the link to buy the kitchen slicer has been clicked on 11,600 times, according to stats from Bit.ly.

BuzzFeed News provided Facebook with an initial list of 10 of the 44 pages involved in the same activity. The social network shut down those 10 pages, saying that they violated a policy that states, "Pages must not contain false, misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive claims or content."

The company then banned an additional 29 pages for similar violations, according to a person familiar with Facebook's actions. As of today, 22 of the pages initially identified by BuzzFeed News remain online but no longer have misleading or false content on their timelines.

"We rely on a combination of automated detection systems, as well as reports from the community, to help identify suspicious activity on the platform and ensure compliance with our policies," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. "In this case, we responded to a community report from a reporter. We're constantly making improvements to our automated systems."

David Carroll, an associate professor at New York's Parsons School of Design who studies media, design, and data, has noted the relationship between tech giants and the reporters who unearth scams on their platforms.

"They should be very thankful for the work that you guys do, but at the same time it draws attention to the commercial content moderation labor force that's hidden that itself is a whole other dark side of the attention economy," he said.

For Carroll, that relationship is symbiotic, but ultimately Facebook has a financial incentive to clean up its platform to attract legitimate advertisers.

"If there isn't any human intervention and quality control then it is just a race to the bottom," he said.

Mark Zuckerberg seems to think so too. In a New Year's message, the Facebook founder said, "we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we're successful this year then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory."

The Facebook pages in the network all had generic-sounding names like Classy Babe, American Way, Fashion in Fashion, Giveaway Corner, and the Real Campers. Along with posting photos and videos, they all posted links to a group of websites with the domain names newzmagazine.com, sharedthis.com, newslyupdates.com, and dailybuzzfeeds.com. The pages also regularly shared links to products sold on the trendyarrival.com website.

Content on the news sites includes unproven "natural" health cures, false political news, heartwarming stories, and fake announcements of attractive women going missing. Sharedthis.com scored a viral hit with its story "World's First Artificial Kidney Is All Set To Replace Dialysis in 2-3 Years. Here is how it works!" This piece earned just over 380,000 shares, likes, and comments on Facebook.

The store itself and three of the websites - sharedthis.com, newslyupdates.com, and dailybuzzfeeds.com - are registered to someone using the name Ifra Akram. Domain registration records listed an address in the UK for Akram. The email address used to register the websites is also linked to a Facebook profile using the same name. The profile doesn't offer much information and uses a photo of actor Emma Watson instead of a personal picture. Requests for comment sent by email were not answered.

Some of the most popular posts on the pages were images of people with disabilities. They frequently asked users to comment, like, or share the images to show their sympathy or support. Many Facebook users wrote "amen" under the posts, which regularly received hundreds of engagements.

Some pages in the networks capitalized on the trend of turning static images into video to game Facebook's algorithm, which many people believe gives a preference to video. One of the most popular videos, which drew over a million views and nearly 20,000 shares, is a joke about women who are blonde superimposed on stock photos. Another is a slideshow of photos from Tiffany Trump's Instagram.

Overall, the main content strategy for the pages appeared to be to try any and every technique and content type that could attract engagement. In many cases the goal was to drive sales at trendyarrival.com.

Aside from the kitchen cutter, its products include a twerking Santa, a selection of rings, an acupuncture pen, and hair dye, along with many products that have appeared in infomercials.

People do seem to be buying, though not everyone is happy.

The site's most popular product, a cross between a sweatshirt and a baby carrier, features two reviews from people who are wondering where their order is.

Jane Lytvynenko is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Toronto, Canada. PGP fingerprint: A088 89E6 2500 AD3C 8081 BAFB 23BA 21F3 81E0 101C.

Contact Jane Lytvynenko at jane.lytvynenko@buzzfeed.com.

Got a confidential tip? Submit it here.

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To Sell Gadgets To Facebook Users, Scammers Use Every Trick In The Book

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A Facebook video titled "UPDATE: Cop Who Arrested Malia Obama Found Dead Under Suspicious Circumstances" began spreading last month from one Facebook page to the next. It popped up on e-commerce pages with names like Cyber Monday and EShopping Bazar, as well as on fashion-oriented Facebook pages like Its Pretty and Fashion Foundry.

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Some people have a twisted sense of humour and decide to post material online claiming that certain celebrities have died. The targeted celebrity is always alive and well but, this fake death news will have a large audience of social media users believing otherwise. This news article from BBC talks about one of the recent death hoax's that targeted Sylvester Stallone.

Reference
Sylvester Stallone 'still punching' despite death hoax. (2018, February 20). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43130898

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To paraphrase the great American humourist Mark Twain, Twitter reports of Sylvester Stallone's death are an exaggeration.

Stallone and his brother confirmed on social media the actor was alive and well after he was the victim of a "death hoax".

How did the hoax unfold?

Death hoaxes usually originate from a website or person intending to spread the rumour, and go viral as web-users are duped into believing the claim.

In Stallone's case, pranksters even mocked up fake pictures showing the actor in his "final days".

The hoax, which started overnight in the US while the actor and his representatives were asleep, raced across the internet.

By morning, Stallone was already being mourned by a legion of adoring fans.

As Stallone's name topped internet searches, a 2012 video about the death of his son resurfaced as the most watched video on the BBC News website.

You might also like:

Who was behind 'Queen is dead' conspiracy hoax?

The Avril Lavigne conspiracy theory returns

Man killed in Call of Duty 'swatting' hoax

What did the actor say about it?

Rocky refused to stay down.

The 71-year-old actor and his brother took to social media to debunk the prank.

"Please ignore this stupidity," Stallone wrote in an Instagram post.

"Alive and well and happy and healthy."

Content is not available

Stallone, who recently appeared in the NBC television series This Is Us, said he was "still punching".

His brother railed against the perpetrators of the death hoax.

"Rumors that my brother is dead are false," Frank Stallone wrote on Twitter.

"What kind of sick demented cruel mind thinks of things like this to post?

"People like this are mentally deranged and don't deserve a place in society."

Who else has the internet killed off?

Death hoaxes are not uncommon.

While they occurred before the internet, the web has amplified their impact.

Such hoaxes typically target celebrities or politicians.

In fact, Stallone was the victim of another death hoax in 2016, according to NME.

Musician Jon Bon Jovi was notably "killed" by the internet in 2011.

The Livin' on a Prayer singer posted a photo of himself smiling and holding a sign that said: "Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey."

The date and time was written beneath it.

Actor Jackie Chan was also the victim of a death hoax.

The Rush Hour star had the dubious pleasure of having more than 50 RIP Facebook pages in his honour, despite being alive.

The 63-year-old has "died" several times.

In 2011, his representatives took to Facebook to debunk a rumour that he had suffered a fatal cardiac arrest.

"He did not suffer a heart attack and die, as was reported on many social networking sites and in online news reports," said the post.

"Jackie is fine and is busy preparing for the filming of his next movie."

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Sylvester Stallone brushes off death hoax

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To paraphrase the great American humourist Mark Twain, Twitter reports of Sylvester Stallone's death are an exaggeration. Stallone and his brother confirmed on social media the actor was alive and well after he was the victim of a "death hoax".

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A funny picture that relates to the topic using a character that looks like Pinocchio to illustrate fake news is filled with lies. In addition an article that adds more to the topic on how fake news has evolved through time.

Reference
[Web log post]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/millennials-unplugged-road-from-fake-real-news-bob-pearson

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Bob Pearson

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Vice Chair, Chief of Innovation

Fake news is not a new topic. It's been around since the beginning of time. What is new are our media habits, which make us more susceptible to bias and fake content.

In today's world, we have so many choices on where we consume our news that we do not have the controls we once had for journalism to thrive. When Bob grew up, you listened to the networks, the local and national newspapers and they told you what was important. Those articles were written by career journalists. Now, as Brittany grows up, millennials get their "news" from a far wider variety of channels, often from secondary sources.

So we asked 22 millennials to give us perspective on what is really happening. In addition to asking questions about fake news, we also provided 10 headlines for review just to show how hard it really is to decipher what is true or false. We just wanted to get their perspective on what they are seeing and observing.

Here are our key insights:

Fake news is an everyday issue - the belief is that we are encountering fake news every day and it may be impacting how we think. 2/3 of our audience believe they see fake news every day and 1/3 are not sure. All that really matters is our perception that it may be happening.

Facebook & Twitter are becoming "News Replacers" - Facebook and Twitter are the two go to's for news for millennials. Yes, they check in with mainstream news outlets, but social channels are filling the void and we have a tendency to believe what we read in the channels we visit most often.

Plausibility is a Problem - the definition of plausible is that it "describes that which has the appearance of truth, but might be deceptive" What we're hearing is that if you see enough of something, you become unsure - if you keep hearing about a topic, you wonder if it is fake? Or is it being pushed by people with a heavy bias that is mostly truthful, but not 100%? Or is it real? For most topics, we don't pay enough attention, yet we hear about the topic on a regular basis. Frequency builds familiarity and with time, some ideas start to seem plausible.

We fill in our knowledge gaps ourselves - if we don't know for sure, our biases and preconceived notions kick in to help us make our decisions. We just aren't often that aware of our own biases.

The lack of journalistic standards in social media is leading to increasing acceptance and/or ignorance of what real news is - if you don't realize what the standards should be, like ensuring you have two sources that are fact-checked, you don't realize what you are missing. We need more education on what the journalistic gold standard means!

Bias can be confused with fake news -- 59% say fake news shows an extreme bias on a topic. This is not a definition of fake, of course. But what it shows is that with journalists often not being the primary source for news, we are starting to trust and believe anybody who writes/posts online and we are seeing a rise in experts on social media who are highly biased in their views

We often just aren't sure what we read - one of our headlines we asked about was "Florida Democrats Just Voted to Impose Sharia Law on Women". Most people said this didn't happen, but not everyone was sure. The story is definitely false, but there were bloggers out there trying to say it did happen. So depending on your informal news sources, you may believe what was clearly false, might be plausible.

Fake news triggers our biases faster - if we already believe a certain way, we are more likely to be accepting of fake news, even if we know this particular article may not be accurate. Basically, our biases can grow via fake news, which is not a good thing for future rational discussion. This happens more and more as we narrow cast how we learn, e.g. only going to certain channels to talk with the same group of people and accepting what they say as the truth.

One of our favorite fake news headlines -- was "Florida man dies in meth-lab explosion after lighting farts on fire" - most of those we surveyed thought it was false but it could have happened. We agree...it's absurd, but it is also so odd you think "well, maybe?"..although it would never have happened to Walter White.... Jesse possibly ....

Our key insight applies to millennials, boomers and everyone in between. We need to put more emphasis on journalistic standards for news in social channels and we need to educate our peers on what real news looks like.

Real news trumps fake news.....as long as we know what to look for. It's going to be up to all of us to do a better job on education and even embracing standards in the wild west of social media news.

Enjoy, Brittany (millennial) and Bob (boomer)

Vice Chair, Chief of Innovation

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Millennials Unplugged: The Road From Fake to Real News

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Fake news is not a new topic. It's been around since the beginning of time. What is new are our media habits, which make us more susceptible to bias

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Some statistics on large Fake news stories

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Some statistics on large Fake news stories

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Here are some statistics to some of the largest fake news stories and the amount of engagements that were received due to them from 2016

Reference
Armstrong, M., & Richter, F. (2016, November 17). Infographic: Fake News Is A Real Problem. Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://www.statista.com/chart/6795/fake-news-is-a-real-problem/

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Infographic: Fake News Is A Real Problem

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This chart shows the Facebook engagement of fake news stories on the US election 2016.