Fake news
Fake news is false or misleading information claiming the aesthetics and legitimacy of news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. Although false news has always been spread throughout history, the term fake news was first used in the 1890s when sensational reports in newspapers were common. Nevertheless, the term does not have a fixed definition and has been applied broadly to any type of false information presented as news. It has also been used by high-profile people to apply to any news unfavorable to them. Further, disinformation involves spreading false information with harmful intent and is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections. In some definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text. Because of this diversity of types of false news, researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term. It can spread through fake news websites.
The prevalence of fake news has increased with the recent rise of social media, especially the Facebook News Feed, and this misinformation is gradually seeping into the mainstream media. Several factors have been implicated in the spread of fake news, such as political polarization, post-truth politics, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and social media algorithms.
Fake news can reduce the impact of real news by competing with it. For example, a BuzzFeed News analysis found that the top fake news stories about the 2016 U.S. presidential election received more engagement on Facebook than top stories from major media outlets. It also particularly has the potential to undermine trust in serious media coverage. The term has at times been used to cast doubt upon credible news, and U.S. president Donald Trump has been credited with popularizing the term by using it to describe any negative press coverage of himself. It has been increasingly criticized, due in part to Trump's misuse, with the British government deciding to avoid the term, as it is "poorly defined" and "conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference".
Multiple strategies for fighting fake news are actively researched, for various types of fake news. Politicians in certain autocratic and democratic countries have demanded effective self-regulation and legally enforced regulation in varying forms, of social media and web search engines.
On an individual scale, the ability to actively confront false narratives, as well as taking care when sharing information can reduce the prevalence of falsified information. However, it has been noted that this is vulnerable to the effects of confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases that can seriously distort reasoning, particularly in dysfunctional and polarised societies. Inoculation theory has been proposed as a method to render individuals resistant to undesirable narratives. Because new misinformation emerges frequently, researchers have stated that one solution to address this is to inoculate the population against accepting fake news in general, instead of continually debunking the same repeated lies.
Defining fake news
Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. The term as it developed in 2017 is a neologism. Fake news is now used by many people as a catch-all, referring to any lies and misrepresentations, from a news distributor or not; further, a few people use the term to condemn creditable news sources they do not like, without otherwise arguing details.Fake news stories in the old sense, plus misleading headlines, are presented among other stories by news aggregators or political sites, for financial or political gain. There are also fake news websites which run only stories that have no basis in fact but are presented as being factually accurate. Some satirical sites openly label themselves as fake news or satire, or they may reveal that they are fake only on closer inspection for clues.
Overlapping terms are bullshit, hoax news, pseudo-news, alternative facts, false news and junk news.
The National Endowment for Democracy defines fake news as "isleading content found on the internet, especially on social media Much of this content is produced by for-profit websites and Facebook pages gaming the platform for advertising revenue" and distinguishes it from disinformation: "ake news does not meet the definition of disinformation or propaganda. Its motives are usually financial, not political, and it is usually not tied to a larger agenda."
While most definitions focus strictly on content accuracy and format, current research indicates that the rhetorical structure of the content might play a significant role in the perception of fake news.
Michael Radutzky, a producer of CBS 60 Minutes, said his show considers fake news to be "stories that are probably false, have enormous traction in the culture, and are consumed by millions of people." These stories are not only found in politics, but also in areas like vaccination, stock values and nutrition. He did not include news that is "invoked by politicians against the media for stories that they don't like or for comments that they don't like" as fake news. Guy Campanile, also a 60 Minutes producer said, "What we are talking about are stories that are fabricated out of thin air. By most measures, deliberately, and by any definition, that's a lie."
The intent and purpose of fake news is important. In some cases, fake news may be news satire, which uses exaggeration and introduces non-factual elements that are intended to amuse or make a point, rather than to deceive.
In the context of the United States of America and its election processes in the 2010s, fake news generated considerable controversy and argument, with some commentators defining concern over it as moral panic or mass hysteria and others worried about damage done to public trust. It particularly has the potential to undermine trust in serious media coverage generally. The term has also been used to cast doubt upon credible mainstream media.
In January 2017, the United Kingdom House of Commons commenced a parliamentary inquiry into the "growing phenomenon of fake news".
In 2016, PolitiFact selected fake news as their Lie of the Year. No single lie stood out, so the generic term was chosen. Also in 2016, Oxford Dictionaries selected post-truth as its word of the year and defined it as the state of affairs when "objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."
Roots
The term fake news gained importance with the electoral context in Western Europe and North America. It is determined by fraudulent content in news format and its velocity. According to Bounegru, Gray, Venturini and Mauri, a lie becomes fake news when it "is picked up by dozens of other blogs, retransmitted by hundreds of websites, cross-posted over thousands of social media accounts and read by hundreds of thousands".The evolving nature of online business models encourages the production of information that is "click-worthy" and independent of its accuracy.
The nature of trust depends on the assumptions that non-institutional forms of communication are freer from power and more able to report information that mainstream media are perceived as unable or unwilling to reveal. Declines in confidence in much traditional media and expert knowledge have created fertile grounds for alternative, and often obscure sources of information to appear as authoritative and credible. This ultimately leaves users confused about basic facts.
Popularity and viral spread
Fake news has become popular with various media outlets and platforms. Journalists have identified that platforms like Google or Meta profit from the distribution of fake news. Part of the reason behind the broad circulation of fake news online is that fake news websites can be profitable by monetizing them through online advertising.Researchers at Pew Research Center discovered that over 60% of Americans access news through social media compared to traditional newspaper and magazines. With the popularity of social media, individuals can easily access fake news and disinformation. The rapid spread of false stories on social media during the 2012 elections in Italy has been documented, as has diffusion of false stories on Facebook during the 2016 US election campaign.
Fake news has the tendency to become viral among the public. With the presence of social media platforms like Twitter, it becomes easier for false information to diffuse quickly. Research has found that false political information tends to spread three times faster than other false news. On Twitter, false tweets have a much higher chance of being retweeted than truthful tweets. More so, it is humans who are responsible for disseminating false news and information as opposed to bots and click farms. The tendency for humans to spread false information has to do with human behavior; according to research, humans are attracted to events and information that are surprising and new, and, as a result, cause high arousal in the brain. Besides, motivated reasoning was found to play a role in the spread of fake news. This ultimately leads humans to retweet or share false information, which are usually characterized with clickbait and eye-catching titles. This prevents people from stopping to verify the information. As a result, massive online communities form around a piece of false news without any prior fact-checking or verification of the veracity of the information.
Of particular concern regarding viral spread of fake news is the role of super-spreaders. Brian Stelter, the anchor of Reliable Sources at CNN, has documented the systematic long-term two-way feedback that developed between President Donald Trump and Fox News presenters. The resultant conditioning of outrage in their large audience against government and the mainstream media has proved a highly successful money-spinner for the TV network.