Online media, fake news, partisanship and the 2019 Nigerian presidential elections

Resumen: El manejo de las fuentes informativas en la cobertura periodística de las crisis supone un enorme desafío para los periodistas. Esta investigación se enfoca concretamente en el uso como fuente informativa de las redes sociales oficiales (las pertenecientes a las organizaciones involucradas en la gestión de una crisis) y las no oficiales (víctimas, afectados, ciudadanos, etc.) en coberturas de emergencias y desastres. Los datos proceden de una encuesta online aplicada a los directores de los 30 medios de comunicación más relevantes de España en los cuatro soportes estudiados: televisión, radio, prensa y prensa digital. Los resultados demuestran que, en la cobertura periodística de las crisis, los periodistas confían mucho en la información de la Web oficial (Administraciones públicas, Policía, Bomberos, Protección Civil, etc.), bastante en la procedente de las redes sociales oficiales y poco en la suministrada por las RR.SS. no oficiales (víctimas, afectados, ciudadanos, etc.). De todas las redes sociales oficiales analizadas: Facebook es la que menos confianza inspira a los periodistas como fuente informativa en un contexto actual marcado por el riesgo de las fake news y la desinformación. En cuanto a la finalidad, la mayoría de los periodistas emplean la información de las redes sociales o RR.SS. para contrastar y conseguir contactos.Palabras clave: redes sociales; crisis; desastre; comunicación; fuente; confianza; medios; Twitter.Abstract: The use of sources of information in news media coverage of the crises is a huge challenge for journalists. This research focuses specifically on the use as an informative source of official social media (those belonging to organizations involved in the management of a crisis) and unofficial social media (victims, affected, citizens, etc.) in emergency and disaster coverage. The data comes from an online survey applied to the directors of the 30 most important media in Spain in the four-mass media studied: television, radio, press and online media. The results show that in journalistic coverage of crises, journalists rely a lot on the information from the official website (Public administrations, Police, Firefighters, Civil Defense, etc.), quite a bit on the one coming from the official social media and little in that provided by the unofficial social media (victims, affected, citizens, etc.). Of all the official social networks analyzed: Facebook is the one that inspires less confidence as a source for journalists, in a current context marked by the risk of fake news and misinformation. Regarding the purpose, most journalists use information from social media to verify news stories and get contacts.Keywords: social media; crisis; disaster; communication; source; trust; online media; Twitter.

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Remix’s retreat? Content moderation, copyright law and mashup music

New Media & Society ◽

10.1177/14614448211026059 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 146144482110260

Author(s):

Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen ◽

Ellis Jones

Keyword(s):

Online Survey ◽

Copyright Infringement ◽

Copyright Law ◽

Online Media ◽

Economic Power ◽

Grey Zone ◽

Negative Effect ◽

State Of Affairs ◽

Political Economic ◽

And Control

Many online media platforms currently utilise algorithmically driven content moderation to prevent copyright infringement. This article explores content moderation’s effect on mashup music – a form of remix which relies primarily on the unauthorised combining of pre-existing, recognisable recordings. Drawing on interviews ( n = 30) and an online survey ( n = 92) with mashup producers, we show that content moderation affects producers’ creative decisions and distribution strategies, and has a strong negative effect on their overall motivation to create mashups. The objections that producers hold to this state of affairs often strongly resonate with current copyright exceptions. However, we argue that these exceptions, which form a legal ‘grey zone’, are currently unsatisfactorily accommodated for by platforms. Platforms’ political-economic power allows them, in effect, to ‘occupy’ and control this zone. Consequently, the practical efficacy of copyright law’s exceptions in this setting is significantly reduced.

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Analyzing the Perceived Utility of Covid-19 Countermeasures: The Role of Pronominalization, Moral Foundations, Moral Disengagement, Fake News Embracing, and Health Anxiety

Psychological Reports ◽

10.1177/00332941211027829 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 003329412110278

Author(s):

Alessandro Ansani ◽

Marco Marini ◽

Christian Cecconi ◽

Daniele Dragoni ◽

Elena Rinallo ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Structural Equation ◽

Moral Disengagement ◽

Online Survey ◽

Health Anxiety ◽

Personal Characteristics ◽

Moral Values ◽

Equation Model ◽

Moral Foundations ◽

Fake News ◽

Perceived Utility

An online survey (N = 210) is presented on how the perceived utility of correct and exaggerated countermeasures against Covid-19 is affected by different pronominalization strategies (impersonal form, you, we). In evaluating the pronominalization effect, we have statistically controlled for the roles of several personal characteristics: Moral Disengagement, Moral Foundations, Health Anxiety, and Embracing of Fake News. Results indicate that, net of personal proclivities, the you form decreases the perceived utility of exaggerated countermeasures, possibly due to simulation processes. As a second point, through a Structural Equation Model, we show that binding moral values (Authority, Ingroup, and Purity) positively predict both fake news embracing and perceived utility of exaggerated countermeasures, while individualizing moral values (Harm and Fairness) negatively predict fake news embracing and positively predict the perceived utility of correct countermeasures. Lastly, fake news embracing showed a doubly bad effect: not only does it lead people to judge exaggerated countermeasures as more useful; but, more dangerously, it brings them to consider correct countermeasures as less useful in the struggle against the pandemic.

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An Ontological Approach to Detecting Fake News in Online Media

10.1109/acit52158.2021.9548394 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Svitlana Mazepa ◽

Serhiy Banakh ◽

Andriy Melnyk ◽

Sergiy Pugach ◽

Oleksandra Yavorska ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Online Media ◽

Fake News ◽

Ontological Approach

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Research note: The scale of Facebook’s problem depends upon how ‘fake news’ is classified

10.37016/mr-2020-43 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Richard Rogers

Keyword(s):

Presidential Elections ◽

Mass Scale ◽

Research Note ◽

User Engagement ◽

Fake News ◽

Scale Problem ◽

Media Organizations ◽

False News

Ushering in the contemporary ‘fake news’ crisis, Craig Silverman of Buzzfeed News reported that it outperformed mainstream news on Facebook in the three months prior to the 2016 US presidential elections. Here the report’s methods and findings are revisited for 2020. Examining Facebook user engagement of election-related stories, and applying Silverman’s classification of fake news, it was found that the problem has worsened, implying that the measures undertaken to date have not remedied the issue. If, however, one were to classify ‘fake news’ in a stricter fashion, as Facebook as well as certain media organizations do with the notion of ‘false news’, the scale of the problem shrinks. A smaller scale problem could imply a greater role for fact-checkers (rather than deferring to mass-scale content moderation), while a larger one could lead to the further politicisation of source adjudication, where labelling particular sources broadly as ‘fake’, ‘problematic’ and/or ‘junk’ results in backlash.

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The Dangers of Hoaxes in Building Civil Society in the Era of the Industrial Revolution 4.0

International Journal of Social Science and Religion (IJSSR) ◽

10.53639/ijssr.v2i2.42 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 117-138

Author(s):

Muhamad Basitur Rijal Gus Rijal ◽

Ahyani Hisam ◽

Abdul Basit

Keyword(s):

Civil Society ◽

Public Space ◽

Free Speech ◽

Industrial Revolution ◽

Online Media ◽

Fake News ◽

The Public ◽

Technological Advances ◽

The Impact ◽

The Ideal

Civil society (civil society) as the ideal structure of society's life that is aspired to, but building a civil society is not easy. There are preconditions that must be met by the community in making it happen. Coupled with technological advances in the era of the Industrial Revolution 4.o like today, where information can spread easily through various online media unlimitedly in spreading hoaxes. This research seeks to uncover the dangers of hoaxes in building civil society. This research uses descriptive analytical method by examining the sources of literature related to building civil society in the Industrial Revolution 4.o. This research found that the public space is a means of free speech; democratic behavior; tolerant; pluralism; and social justice can shape civil society. whereas the impact of hoax news greatly affects the way people perceive a certain issue, so that people cannot distinguish which news is real or fake news which causes them to be incited by fake news that is spread.

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Exploring Author Profiling for Fake News Detection

10.36227/techrxiv.17197655 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Shloak Rathod

Keyword(s):

False Positive Rate ◽

True Positive Rate ◽

Supervised Machine Learning ◽

Online Media ◽

Fake News ◽

Writing Style ◽

Short Term ◽

Positive Rate ◽

Rapid Dissemination ◽

Author Profiling

<div><div><div><p>The proliferation of online media allows for the rapid dissemination of unmoderated news, unfortunately including fake news. The extensive spread of fake news poses a potent threat to both individuals and society. This paper focuses on designing author profiles to detect authors who are primarily engaged in publishing fake news articles. We build on the hypothesis that authors who write fake news repeatedly write only fake news articles, at least in short-term periods. Fake news authors have a distinct writing style compared to real news authors, who naturally want to maintain trustworthiness. We explore the potential to detect fake news authors by designing authors’ profiles based on writing style, sentiment, and co-authorship patterns. We evaluate our approach using a publicly available dataset with over 5000 authors and 20000 articles. For our evaluation, we build and compare different classes of supervised machine learning models. We find that the K-NN model performed the best, and it could detect authors who are prone to writing fake news with an 83% true positive rate with only a 5% false positive rate.</p></div></div></div>

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Reluctant to Share: How Third Person Perceptions of Fake News Discourage News Readers From Sharing “Real News” on Social Media

Social Media + Society ◽

10.1177/2056305120955173 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 205630512095517

Author(s):

Fan Yang ◽

Michael Horning

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Behavioral Intentions ◽

Online Survey ◽

Fake News ◽

Third Person Effect ◽

The Third ◽

Third Person ◽

The Third Person ◽

Significant Attention

Rampant fake news on social media has drawn significant attention. Yet, much remains unknown as to how such imbalanced evaluations of self versus others could shape social media users’ perceptions and their subsequent attitudes and behavioral intentions regarding social media news. An online survey ( N = 335) was conducted to examine the third person effect (TPE) in fake news on social media and suggested that users perceived a greater influence of fake news on others than on themselves. However, although users evaluated fake news as socially undesirable, they were still unsupportive of government censorship as a remedy. In addition, the perceived prevalence of fake news leads audiences to reported significantly less willingness to share all news on social media either online or offline.

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The agenda-setting power of fake news: A big data analysis of the online media landscape from 2014 to 2016

New Media & Society ◽

10.1177/1461444817712086 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 20 (5) ◽

pp. 2028-2049 ◽

Cited By ~ 105

Author(s):

Chris J Vargo ◽

Lei Guo ◽

Michelle A Amazeen

Keyword(s):

Big Data ◽

News Media ◽

Agenda Setting ◽

News Coverage ◽

Big Data Analysis ◽

Online Media ◽

Fake News ◽

News Websites ◽

Partisan Media ◽

Selection Of

This study examines the agenda-setting power of fake news and fact-checkers who fight them through a computational look at the online mediascape from 2014 to 2016. Although our study confirms that content from fake news websites is increasing, these sites do not exert excessive power. Instead, fake news has an intricately entwined relationship with online partisan media, both responding and setting its issue agenda. In 2016, partisan media appeared to be especially susceptible to the agendas of fake news, perhaps due to the election. Emerging news media are also responsive to the agendas of fake news, but to a lesser degree. Fake news coverage itself is diverging and becoming more autonomous topically. While fact-checkers are autonomous in their selection of issues to cover, they were not influential in determining the agenda of news media overall, and their influence appears to be declining, illustrating the difficulties fact-checkers face in disseminating their corrections.

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