Fake News and Information Warfare

Author(s):  
Rosanna E. Guadagno ◽  
Karen Guttieri

Fake news—false information passed off as factual—is an effective weapon in the information age. For instance, the Russian government perfected techniques used in its 2007 Estonian and 2008 Georgian cyber campaigns to support Donald Trump's successful candidacy in the 2016 United States presidential election. In this chapter, the authors examine fake news and Russia's cyberwarfare efforts across time as case studies of information warfare. The chapter identifies key terms and reviews extant political science and psychological research related to obtaining an understanding of psychological cyber warfare (“psywar”) through the proliferation of fake news. Specifically, the authors suggest that there are social, contextual, and individual factors that contribute to the spread and influence of fake news and review these factors in this chapter.

Author(s):  
Rosanna E. Guadagno ◽  
Karen Guttieri

Fake news—false information passed off as factual—is an effective weapon in the information age. For instance, the Russian government perfected techniques used in its 2007 Estonian and 2008 Georgian cyber campaigns to support Donald Trump's successful candidacy in the 2016 United States presidential election. In this chapter, the authors examine fake news and Russia's cyberwarfare efforts across time as case studies of information warfare. The chapter identifies key terms and reviews extant political science and psychological research related to obtaining an understanding of psychological cyber warfare (“psywar”) through the proliferation of fake news. Specifically, the authors suggest that there are social, contextual, and individual factors that contribute to the spread and influence of fake news and review these factors in this chapter.


2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (01) ◽  
pp. 141-146
Author(s):  
Gulnaz Tahir Hasanova ◽  

This study aims to highlight the growing strategic importance that cyberspace is gaining in the dynamics of international politics. After land, sea, air, and outer space, cyberspace is the fifth dimension of conflict. The type of non-military weapons used to fight, as well as the subjects targeted, make civilian systems new centers of gravity to defend against an enemy that most often "operates in the shadows." The international scenario rmation revolution (which contributed to the "democratization of information"), is radically evolving from a unipolar (American-led) to an almost multipolar architecture. The Internet today is an indispensable communication and information network for various legal and illegal subjects of international relations. Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Telegram) play a very important role in this process. The Internet can also allow manipulation or even destabilization of the international community with the spread of false information (fake news). It is also a field for intelligence activities. Finally, the Internet is becoming the field of a new form of confrontation. Thus, both states and private actors protect themselves from possible cyber attacks by developing cybersecurity. In anticipation of this, states are developing cyberspace strategies and military-digital capabilities. Key words: international relations, information, cyberspace, cybersecurity, territorial integrity, state, subjects of international relations, information warfare


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-318
Author(s):  
Munadhil Abdul Muqsith ◽  
Valerii Leonidovich Muzykant

AbstractThis paper aims to explain how fake news impacts democracy. This phenomenon is called the post-truth era. The development of information and communication technology is increasing the spread of information so that difficult to distinguish between true and false information. The research method uses normative juridical method, using secondary data obtained through literature study and qualitative analysis. The result and discussion of this research are serious threat from fake news for democracy, because it can cause social cohesion in the community. Some examples of how its impact on the world include the U.S. presidential election 2016, the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom in 2016 and the 2017 French presidential election.Keywords: Fake News, Democracy, US Presidential Election, Brexit AbstrakMakalah ini bertujuan untuk menjelaskan bagaimana berita palsu berdampak pada demokrasi. Fenomena ini disebut era pasca-kebenaran. Perkembangan teknologi informasi dan komunikasi meningkatkan penyebaran informasi sehingga sulit untuk membedakan antara informasi yang benar dan yang salah. Metode penelitian menggunakan metode yuridis normatif, menggunakan data sekunder yang diperoleh melalui studi literatur dan dianalisis secara kualitatif. Hasil dan diskusi penelitian ini merupakan ancaman serius dari berita palsu untuk demokrasi karena dapat menyebabkan kohesi sosial di masyarakat. Beberapa contoh bagaimana dampaknya terhadap dunia termasuk pemilihan presiden Amerika Serikat 2016, referendum Brexit di Inggris pada tahun 2016 dan pemilihan presiden Prancis 2017.Kata kunci: Berita Palsu, Demokrasi, Pemilihan Presiden AS, Brexit АннотацияЦель этой статьи - объяснить, как ложные новости влияют на демократию. Это явление называется эрой пост-правды. Развитие информационных и коммуникационных технологий увеличивает распространение информации, поэтому трудно различить правдивую и ложную информацию. Данное исследование использует нормативно-юридический метод и вторичные данные, полученные в результате изучения литературы и проанализируемые  качественным методом. Результаты и обсуждение этого исследования показывают, что ложные новости представляют серьезную угрозу для демократии, потому что они могут вызвать социальную сплоченность в обществе. Некоторые примеры того, какое влияние на мир оказывают президентские выборы 2016 года в США, Референдум Брексит в Великобритании в 2016 году и президентские выборы во Франции 2017 года.Ключевые слова: поддельные новости, демократия, президентские выборы США, Брексит


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel ◽  
Elizabeth Ann Harris ◽  
Philip Pärnamets ◽  
Steve Rathje ◽  
Kimberly Doell ◽  
...  

The spread of misinformation, including “fake news,” propaganda, and conspiracy theories, represents a serious threat to society, as it has the potential to alter beliefs, behavior, and policy. Research is beginning to disentangle how and why misinformation is spread and identify processes that contribute to this social problem. We propose an integrative model to understand the social, political, and cognitive psychology risk factors that underlie the spread of misinformation and highlight strategies that might be effective in mitigating this problem. However, the spread of misinformation is a rapidly growing and evolving problem; thus scholars need to identify and test novel solutions, and work with policy makers to evaluate and deploy these solutions. Hence, we provide a roadmap for future research to identify where scholars should invest their energy in order to have the greatest overall impact.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-133

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, attacks on the media have been relentless. “Fake news” has become a household term, and repeated attempts to break the trust between reporters and the American people have threatened the validity of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In this article, the authors trace the development of fake news and its impact on contemporary political discourse. They also outline cutting-edge pedagogies designed to assist students in critically evaluating the veracity of various news sources and social media sites.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 556
Author(s):  
Thaer Thaher ◽  
Mahmoud Saheb ◽  
Hamza Turabieh ◽  
Hamouda Chantar

Fake or false information on social media platforms is a significant challenge that leads to deliberately misleading users due to the inclusion of rumors, propaganda, or deceptive information about a person, organization, or service. Twitter is one of the most widely used social media platforms, especially in the Arab region, where the number of users is steadily increasing, accompanied by an increase in the rate of fake news. This drew the attention of researchers to provide a safe online environment free of misleading information. This paper aims to propose a smart classification model for the early detection of fake news in Arabic tweets utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, Machine Learning (ML) models, and Harris Hawks Optimizer (HHO) as a wrapper-based feature selection approach. Arabic Twitter corpus composed of 1862 previously annotated tweets was utilized by this research to assess the efficiency of the proposed model. The Bag of Words (BoW) model is utilized using different term-weighting schemes for feature extraction. Eight well-known learning algorithms are investigated with varying combinations of features, including user-profile, content-based, and words-features. Reported results showed that the Logistic Regression (LR) with Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) model scores the best rank. Moreover, feature selection based on the binary HHO algorithm plays a vital role in reducing dimensionality, thereby enhancing the learning model’s performance for fake news detection. Interestingly, the proposed BHHO-LR model can yield a better enhancement of 5% compared with previous works on the same dataset.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 300-333
Author(s):  
José Ricardo Ledur ◽  
Renato P. dos Santos

Context: The production of scientific knowledge is not clearly understood by most individuals. In the information age, society faces challenges generated by discrediting institutions, including science, the proliferation of false news, disinformation and the relativisation of truth. These are significant issues that the school cannot refrain from discussing if it wants to educate for citizenship. Objectives: To investigate how conceptions about science influence and are influenced by fake news conveyed by the media and the contribution of literacy to minimise the effects of misinformation. Design: The methodology used in this research used a mixed-methods approach through content analysis of students’ responses combined with descriptive statistical techniques. Environment and participants: The research was carried out with 32 students, divided into two groups, attending the 9th grade of an elementary public school in Bom Princípio/RS. Data collection and analysis: Two questionnaires were applied: one for the conceptions about science and another to identify fake news. Results: Most students have a limited view of science and find it difficult to identify fake news through verification criteria. A correlation between student perceptions and the identification of false news was observed. Conclusions: Knowledge about science possibly enhances students’ perception of doubtful information. It is crucial to develop mediatic and information literacy skills as they can positively impact the identification of fake news and reduce its shares.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 351-368
Author(s):  
Vience Mutiara Rumata ◽  
◽  
Fajar Kuala Nugraha ◽  

Social media become a public sphere for political discussion in the world, with no exception in Indonesia. Social media have broadened public engagement but at the same time, it creates an inevitable effect of polarization particularly during the heightened political situation such as a presidential election. Studies found that there is a correlation between fake news and political polarization. In this paper, we identify and the pattern of fake narratives in Indonesia in three different time frames: (1) the Presidential campaign (23 September 2018 -13 April 2019); (2) the vote (14-17 April 2019); (3) the announcement (21-22 May 2019). We extracted and analyzed a data-set consisting of 806,742 Twitter messages, 143 Facebook posts, and 16,082 Instagram posts. We classified 43 fake narratives where Twitter was the most used platform to distribute fake narratives massively. The accusation of Muslim radical group behind Prabowo and Communist accusation towards the incumbent President Joko Widodo were the two top fake narratives during the campaign on Twitter and Facebook. The distribution of fake narratives to Prabowo was larger than that to Joko Widodo on those three platforms in this period. On the contrary, the distribution of fake narratives to Joko Widodo was significantly larger than that to Prabowo during the election and the announcement periods. The death threat of Joko Widodo was top fake narratives on these three platforms. Keywords: Fake narratives, Indonesian presidential election, social media, political polarization, post.


Author(s):  
Fakhra Akhtar ◽  
Faizan Ahmed Khan

<p>In the digital age, fake news has become a well-known phenomenon. The spread of false evidence is often used to confuse mainstream media and political opponents, and can lead to social media wars, hatred arguments and debates.Fake news is blurring the distinction between real and false information, and is often spread on social media resulting in negative views and opinions. Earlier Research describe the fact that false propaganda is used to create false stories on mainstream media in order to cause a revolt and tension among the masses The digital rights foundation DRF report, which builds on the experiences of 152 journalists and activists in Pakistan, presents that more than 88 % of the participants find social media platforms as the worst source for information, with Facebook being the absolute worst. The dataset used in this paper relates to Real and fake news detection. The objective of this paper is to determine the Accuracy , precision , of the entire dataset .The results are visualized in the form of graphs and the analysis was done using python. The results showed the fact that the dataset holds 95% of the accuracy. The number of actual predicted cases were 296. Results of this paper reveals that The accuracy of the model dataset is 95.26 % the precision results 95.79 % whereas recall and F-Measure shows 94.56% and 95.17% accuracy respectively.Whereas in predicted models there are 296 positive attributes , 308 negative attributes 17 false positives and 13 false negatives. This research recommends that authenticity of news should be analysed first instead of drafting an opinion, sharing fake news or false information is considered unethical journalists and news consumers both should act responsibly while sharing any news.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 350-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teri Finneman ◽  
Ryan J. Thomas

“Fake news” became a concern for journalists in 2017 as news organizations sought to differentiate themselves from false information spread via social media, websites and public officials. This essay examines the history of media hoaxing and fake news to help provide context for the current U.S. media environment. In addition, definitions of the concepts are proposed to provide clarity for researchers and journalists trying to explain these phenomena.


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