scholarly journals Objective Knowledge Mediates the Relationship between the Use of Social Media and COVID-19-Related False Memories

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 1489
Author(s):  
Chiara Scuotto ◽  
Ciro Rosario Ilardi ◽  
Francesco Avallone ◽  
Gianpaolo Maggi ◽  
Alfonso Ilardi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
False Memories ◽  
Coping Mechanisms ◽  
Anxiety Symptoms ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
Depression And Anxiety ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Reasoning Skills ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
And Coping

The exposure to relevant social and/or historical events can increase the generation of false memories (FMs). The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a calamity challenging health, political, and journalistic bodies, with media generating confusion that has facilitated the spread of fake news. In this respect, our study aims at investigating the relationships between memories (true memories, TMs vs. FMs) for COVID-19-related news and different individual variables (i.e., use of traditional and social media, COVID-19 perceived and objective knowledge, fear of the disease, depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms). One hundred and seventy-one university students (131 females) were surveyed. Overall, our results suggested that depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms did not affect the formation of FMs. Conversely, the fear of loved ones contracting the infection was found to be negatively associated with FMs. This finding might be due to an empathy/prosociality-based positive bias boosting memory abilities, also explained by the young age of participants. Furthermore, objective knowledge (i) predicted an increase in TMs and decrease in FMs and (ii) significantly mediated the relationships between the use of social media and development of both TMs and FMs. In particular, higher levels of objective knowledge strengthened the formation of TMs and decreased the development of FMs following use of social media. These results may lead to reconsidering the idea of social media as the main source of fake news. This claim is further supported by either the lack of substantial differences between the use of traditional and social media among participants reporting FMs or the positive association between use of social media and levels of objective knowledge. The knowledge about the topic rather than the type of source would make a difference in the process of memory formation.

Exploring fake news identification using word and sentence embeddings

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
V.T Priyanga ◽  
J.P Sanjanasri ◽  
Vijay Krishna Menon ◽  
E.A Gopalakrishnan ◽  
K.P Soman
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Supervised Machine Learning ◽  
Breeding Ground ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Liar

The widespread use of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, etc. has changed the way News is created and published; accessing news has become easy and inexpensive. However, the scale of usage and inability to moderate the content has made social media, a breeding ground for the circulation of fake news. Fake news is deliberately created either to increase the readership or disrupt the order in the society for political and commercial benefits. It is of paramount importance to identify and filter out fake news especially in democratic societies. Most existing methods for detecting fake news involve traditional supervised machine learning which has been quite ineffective. In this paper, we are analyzing word embedding features that can tell apart fake news from true news. We use the LIAR and ISOT data set. We churn out highly correlated news data from the entire data set by using cosine similarity and other such metrices, in order to distinguish their domains based on central topics. We then employ auto-encoders to detect and differentiate between true and fake news while also exploring their separability through network analysis.

scholarly journals Do tabloids poison the well of social media? Explaining democratically dysfunctional news sharing

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 4255-4274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Chadwick ◽  
Cristian Vaccari ◽  
Ben O’Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
News Article ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Status ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
News Sharing

The use of social media for sharing political information and the status of news as an essential raw material for good citizenship are both generating increasing public concern. We add to the debates about misinformation, disinformation, and “fake news” using a new theoretical framework and a unique research design integrating survey data and analysis of observed news sharing behaviors on social media. Using a media-as-resources perspective, we theorize that there are elective affinities between tabloid news and misinformation and disinformation behaviors on social media. Integrating four data sets we constructed during the 2017 UK election campaign—individual-level data on news sharing ( N = 1,525,748 tweets), website data ( N = 17,989 web domains), news article data ( N = 641 articles), and data from a custom survey of Twitter users ( N = 1313 respondents)—we find that sharing tabloid news on social media is a significant predictor of democratically dysfunctional misinformation and disinformation behaviors. We explain the consequences of this finding for the civic culture of social media and the direction of future scholarship on fake news.

scholarly journals Social Media and Fake News in the Post-Truth Era: The Manipulation of Politics in the Election Process

2020 ◽  
pp. 177-196
Author(s):  
Turgay Yerlikaya ◽  
Seca Toker
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Election Process ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Positive Effect

This article focuses on how virtual social networks affect socio-political life. The main theme of the article is how social networks such as Facebook and Twitter can direct voters’ electoral preferences, especially during election time, through the dissemination of manipulative content and fake news. The use of social media, which was initially thought to have a positive effect on democratization, has been extensively discussed in recent years as threat to democracy. Examples from the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, France, Brexit, Germany, the UK and Turkey will be used to illustrate the risks that social networks pose to democracy, especially during election periods.

Stress, Coping, and Social Media Use

2020 ◽  
pp. 241-267
Author(s):  
Dilek Demirtepe-Saygili
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Negative Evaluation ◽  
Social Media Use ◽  
Coping Process ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
And Coping ◽  
Source Of Information

Social media has become a part of people's lives and many psychological processes are suggested to be related with social media use. This chapter examines social media use from a stress and coping perspective. Social media can be a stressor for users with the content of posts they see, with a fear of negative evaluation, as an unhealthy attachment to social media accounts, and as a result of cyberbullying. Social media use can also be a problem-focused coping as a source of information, an emotion-focused coping as a distraction, and a source of social support. Lastly, it can be a predictor or a part of well-being as well as a moderator or mediator between coping and well-being. After elaborating on social media use as a part of the coping process, implications for research and practice are discussed. The key points from a coping viewpoint are specified for users, parents, teachers, and professionals. While problematic use of social media can be part of dysfunctional coping and a worse well-being, healthy use can help individuals deal with stresses and lead to a better well-being.

Fake News Detection

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 575-580
Author(s):  
Aniket Kumar ◽  
Saurabh Kumar Pal ◽  
Kumar Dhruv Roy ◽  
Mr. Ragunthar T
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Fake News ◽  
False Information ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Now-a-days it's exceedingly common in this digital world that someone for his or her benefit try to manipulate a mass with false information. With the massive use of social media by the population which is beneficial for the users most of the time, can also be used as a really good platform to spread a fake news and at worse try to create chaos in society. Fake death news of celebrities, fake news regarding wars and fake news related to politics are the day-to-day life examples.

The effect of news consumption on fake news efficacy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Chan-Olmsted ◽  
Yufan Sunny Qin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Consumption ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Source ◽  
Perceived Effects ◽  
Use Of Social Media

The increasing use of social media has led to the growing reliance of social media as a news source. The viral nature of social platforms inevitably elevates the viral impact of fake news. As both academia and practitioners touted media literacy as a means of combating fake news or misinformation, little is known about the nature of relevant efficacies. Existent literature points to the plausible contribution of media consumption, self-efficacy of fake news and perceived impact of fake news in this process. Therefore, this study explored the relationship between consumers’ news consumption, such as fake news experiences/perceptions, news sources and news consumption motives; and fake news perceptions like self-efficacy and impacts. This study conducted an online survey to examine the proposed hypotheses and research questions. The findings suggest that consumers’ previous experiences and consumption motives are connected with their perceived effects and efficacy of fake news. In addition, different news sources (i.e. mainstream media and social media) exert diverse effects on fake news self-efficacy.

Fake News

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leticia Bode ◽  
Emily K. Vraga ◽  
Kjerstin Thorson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Fake News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Insight Into

Chapter 7 tackles the challenges posed by misinformation campaigns and fake news, an issue of growing concern in America and around the world. Following the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, academics and pundits alike struggled to make sense of what happened, and many pointed to the role of fake news and misinformation more broadly in leading voters astray in their assessments of the two major candidates for president. This chapter draws on survey data to investigate how media use in general, and use of social media and partisan media more specifically, affected belief in six fake news stories directly following the 2016 election. The analysis assesses whether use of different types of media affected belief in misinformation—including messages congruent and incongruent with their own candidate preferences—providing insight into what was to blame for belief in fake news in the 2016 elections.

Fake News and Social Media about SARS-CoV-2: Insights from Peru (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aldo Alvarez-Risco ◽  
Christian R. Mejia ◽  
Jaime Delgado-Zegarra ◽  
Shyla Del-Aguila-Arcentales ◽  
Arturo A. Arce-Esquivel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Control And Management ◽  
Inadequate Health Literacy ◽  
Selection Of

UNSTRUCTURED Fake news has become a common practice in recent years, which is facilitated by the overwhelming use of social media by the general public. This viewpoint paper aims to analyze a selection of fake news disseminated in Peru about SARS-CoV-2 and we propose specific strategies to deal with it. In the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the need for providing official and timely information is key in the control and management of the COVID-19 disease. However, health authorities are struggling not only with providing proper patients’ care, but also dealing with appropriate risk communication given the massive spread of misinformation and fake news. Inadequate health literacy and lack of digital health literacy skills might worsen the problem. There is an urgent need to build capacity in schools and promote trusted sources in Peru and to educate on digital health literacy to combat misinformation from social media venues.

scholarly journals Entrepreneurial marketing and digital political communication – a citizen-led perspective on the role of social media in political discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Nihar Amoncar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Entrepreneurial Marketing ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Purpose The paper intends to explore the role and function of citizen-led social media forums in the marketing of political discourse. Using the entrepreneurial marketing (EM) perspective of “co-creation of value”, this paper aims to explore the manner in which consumers of political communications in a specific region have created user generated value via setting up Facebook forums to manage the risk created by fake news and the trust deficit between citizens and mainstream media (MSM). Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a “netnographic” approach to investigation and the data is analysed manual coding (Kozinets, 2015). Facebook groups form the virtual research field in in the context of this study. This approach is adopted because in a social media environment, netnography capitalises over a growing virtual and online communities and allows researchers to study the richness of these online communities (Mkono and Markwell, 2014). Findings The study provides insights on how administrators and moderators of Facebook groups create value for other users by identifying and communicating the risks emerging from social media-based political communication. The study finds that such citizen-led initiatives act as online social aggregators. The value that such groups offer its users/members resides within a well-bound, controlled and moderated online medium that encourages users to counter fake news and misinformation – thereby solving a key problem within the user market i.e. citizen-media trust deficit. Research limitations/implications The study uses a qualitative, netnographic approach and the emerging insights cannot be generalised. The emergent findings are specific to the context of this study and researchers are encouraged to further test the propositions emerging from this research in varied contexts. Practical implications The study extends the application of EM in political contexts using the seven dimensions of EM, which will provide impetus for future political campaigns in terms of unique value creation for publics. The paper also emerges with the role citizen-initiated forums can play in the effective dissemination of digital political communication as user generated content is aiding political debate. Social implications The study helps highlight the role Facebook forums can play in informing the political discourse within a region. The general distrust amongst the citizens over information produced by MSM has meant vocal critics have taken to Facebook to provide their subjective opinions. Although the findings of this study show that such forums can help identify “fake news” and help citizens discuss and debate the truth, it can also become an avenue to manage propaganda amongst the “unaware” citizens. This paper flags up the issues and benefits of using Facebook forums and in conclusion relates them to similar occurrences of the past to make society aware of the pitfalls of managed propaganda. Originality/value The paper takes initiative in investigating the use of social media in politics from the citizens’ perspective, which is comparatively marginalised against the number of studies taking place, which investigate the political party end use of social media for political marketing.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document