Analysis of Fact-Checking Platforms

2022 ◽  
pp. 227-248
Author(s):  
And Algül ◽  
Gamze Sinem Kuruoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
To Receive

Social media has become a platform where fake news is abundant. This issue has shown itself effectively yet again during the COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO has named this information pollution in the COVID-19 period as “infodemic.” Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, access to authentic news has become more important than ever before in 2020. Within this context, verified news on teyit.org and dogrulukpayi.com in 2020 were analyzed. Besides, text analysis was conducted on 161 items of news originating in Twitter, and the most-commonly-used words have been found through analysis. The research suggests that news items on topics related to the agenda, which the public feels a need to be informed about, are more likely to be fake news and that Twitter, used broadly by the public to receive news, is preferred as it is easier and faster to spread fake news.

scholarly journals Public engagement and dialogic accounting through social media during COVID-19 crisis: a missed opportunity?

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Landi ◽  
Antonio Costantini ◽  
Marco Fasan ◽  
Michele Bonazzi
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Agencies

PurposeThe purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate why and how public health agencies employed social media during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to foster public engagement and dialogic accounting.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analysed the official Facebook pages of the leading public agencies for health crisis in Italy, United Kingdom and New Zealand and they collected data on the number of posts, popularity, commitment and followers before and during the outbreak. The authors also performed a content analysis to identify the topics covered by the posts.FindingsEmpirical results suggest that social media has been extensively used as a public engagement tool in all three countries under analysis but – because of legitimacy threats and resource scarcity – it has also been used as a dialogic accounting tool only in New Zealand. Findings suggest that fake news developed more extensively in contexts where the public body did not foster dialogic accounting.Practical implicationsPublic agencies may be interested in knowing the pros and cons of using social media as a public engagement and dialogic accounting tool. They may also leverage on dialogic accounting to limit fake news.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to look at the nature and role of social media as an accountability tool during public health crises. In many contexts, COVID-19 forced for the first time public health agencies to heavily engage with the public and to develop new skills, so this study paves the way for numerous future research ideas.

A Taxonomy Approach to Fake News

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Valchanov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Communication Channels ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Online Environment ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Media Corporations

The development of the Internet and social media and networks as a media environment and communication channels combined with the specificity of the journalistic profession in the online environment are a factor which contributes to the emergence and proliferation of fake news. The lack of reliable fact checking by the media and the fast news consumption by the public lead to mass disinformation about certain issues or subjects. The current paper examines fake news from several points of view and describes the models of their use – as harmless jokes, as lack of journalistic competence or professionalism and as means of manipulation and intentional misleading of public opinion. The attempts of big media corporations to fight fake news are also described.

scholarly journals Sincerely Fake: Exploring User-Generated Political Fakes and Networked Publics

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630512096382
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Ferrari
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network Sites ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Political Satire ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Networked Publics

This article investigates user-generated political satire, focusing in particular on one genre: fake political accounts. Such fakes, created as social media profiles, satirize politicians or political organizations by impersonating them. Through interviews with a sample of Italian fake accounts creators, I explore how the fakes navigate their fakeness vis-à-vis the affordances of social network sites and their publics. First, I map how the publics of the fake accounts react to the satire along two axes: one referring to the public’s understanding of the satire and the other to the uses that the public makes of the satire. Second, I show how fakeness is part of everyday interactions in networked publics. Third, I argue for fakeness as a playful, powerful, and sincere critique of the political and its pretense to authenticity. By focusing on fake political accounts, this article provides insights on the place of fakeness in online communication beyond the debate around “fake news.”

scholarly journals Social Media Infodemic During COVID-19 Outbreak

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-97
Author(s):  
Jeevan Bhatta ◽  
Sharmistha Sharma ◽  
Shashi Kandel ◽  
Roshan Nepal
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Common Platform

Social media is a common platform that enables its users to share opinions, personal experiences, perspectives with one another instantaneously, globally. It has played a paramount role during pandemics such as COVID-19 and unveiled itself as a crucial means to communicate between the sources and the individuals. However, it also has become a place to disseminate misinformation and fake news rapidly. Infodemic, a plethora of information, some authentic some not makes it even harder to general people to receive factual and trustworthy information when required, has grown to be a major risk to public health and social media is developing as a trendy platform for this infodemic. This commentary aims to explore how social media has affected the current situation. We also aim to share our insight to control this misinformation.  This commentary contributes to evolving knowledge to counter fake news or health-related information shared over various social media platforms.

scholarly journals Towards Combating Pandemic-Related Misinformation in Social Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 140-158
Author(s):  
Isa Inuwa-Dutse
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Toxic Impact ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Conventional preventive measures during pandemics include social distancing and lockdown. Such measures in the time of social media brought about a new set of challenges – vulnerability to the toxic impact of online misinformation is high. A case in point is COVID-19. As the virus propagates, so does the associated misinformation and fake news about it leading to an infodemic. Since the outbreak, there has been a surge of studies investigating various aspects of the pandemic. Of interest to this chapter are studies centering on datasets from online social media platforms where the bulk of the public discourse happens. The main goal is to support the fight against negative infodemic by (1) contributing a diverse set of curated relevant datasets; (2) offering relevant areas to study using the datasets; and (3) demonstrating how relevant datasets, strategies, and state-of-the-art IT tools can be leveraged in managing the pandemic.

scholarly journals Fact-Checking, a Public Service Value in the Face of the Hoaxes of the Healthcare Crisis

Tripodos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (47) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
María José Ufarte-Ruiz ◽  
Belén Galletero-Campos ◽  
Ana María López-Cepeda
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Web Content ◽  
The Public ◽  
Service Value ◽  
The Face ◽  
Healthcare Crisis ◽  
The Media ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
Public Entity

The dissemination of fake news is an increasing issue in the media ecosys­tem, which has worsened with the current healthcare crisis. Pandemic-re­lated hoaxes challenge media, which have not hesitated to implement dif­ferent plans to combat these contents. The objective of this research is to ana­lyse the structure, make-up and proce­dures of fact-checking units that have been created in the newsrooms of the public service media (PSM) in Spain to refute false and unreliable information related to coronavirus. Two initiatives were studied: RTVE Verifica, belonging to the Spanish Radio and Television Corporation, and Coronabulos, from the public entity of the Basque govern­ment, EiTB. The method used is based on case studies, web content analysis and in-depth semi-structured inter­views with those responsible for these departments. Such a triangulation of techniques has allowed us to draw conclusions and provide interesting ex­amples to the research. The results re­veal that these sections use traditional techniques and technological applica­tions to verify content related mainly to healthcare and pseudoscientific infor­mation, which are published on corpo­rate websites and social media. Keywords: hoaxes, coronavirus, healthcare crisis, fact-checking, public service media.

scholarly journals Intentional or inadvertent fake news sharing? Fact-checking warnings and users’ interaction with social media content

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Ardèvol-Abreu ◽  
Patricia Delponti ◽  
Carmen Rodríguez-Wangüemert
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
False News ◽  
News Sharing

The main social media platforms have been implementing strategies to minimize fake news dissemination. These include identifying, labeling, and penalizing –via news feed ranking algorithms– fake publications. Part of the rationale behind this approach is that the negative effects of fake content arise only when social media users are deceived. Once debunked, fake posts and news stories should therefore become harmless. Unfortunately, the literature shows that the effects of misinformation are more complex and tend to persist and even backfire after correction. Furthermore, we still do not know much about how social media users evaluate content that has been fact-checked and flagged as false. More worryingly, previous findings suggest that some people may intentionally share made up news on social media, although their motivations are not fully explained. To better understand users’ interaction with social media content identified or recognized as false, we analyze qualitative and quantitative data from five focus groups and a sub-national online survey (N = 350). Findings suggest that the label of ‘false news’ plays a role –although not necessarily central– in social media users’ evaluation of the content and their decision (not) to share it. Some participants showed distrust in fact-checkers and lack of knowledge about the fact-checking process. We also found that fake news sharing is a two-dimensional phenomenon that includes intentional and unintentional behaviors. We discuss some of the reasons why some of social media users may choose to distribute fake news content intentionally.

Post-Truth and Marketing Communication in Technological Age

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-108
Author(s):  
Manpreet Arora
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Marketing Communication ◽  
Marketing Tactics ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Corporate World ◽  
Communicative Interactions ◽  
Complex Technology ◽  
False News

The way by which the communication is done depends upon the purpose of the communication. The complex technology-driven environment is affected by a syndrome called post-truth. Post-truth scenario is marred with a situation where there are spread of lies, rumors, propaganda, and deceit. Human perception is distorted by the spread of lies and fake news. We struggle hard to decide whether any communication which we read, or listen to, or share is true or untrue. The strategic advancements aspired by any company are based more or less on the marketing tactics of the product or service. Many strategies of the organisations are based on the communicative interactions of the corporate world with the consumers. The era of post-truth is based on emotions, opinions, and distorted facts. False advertising tactics are hitting the emotions and sentiments of the public at large. Many social media players in the move to curb the menace of false news, misinformation, and false advertisements have opted for a voluntary code of ethics.This chapter analyses the marketing communication in the era of post-truth.

Fake News and Social Media Censorship

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-92
Author(s):  
Adebowale Jeremy Adetayo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Ripple Effect ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Censorship

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a surge of fake news on social media. This dilemma has caused a ripple effect in society with increasing censorship on social media, which threatens the freedom of expression. The populace cannot effectively progress until they understand the threat posed by fake news and censorship. To protect our fundamental rights of expression, society must learn from librarians. The chapter explores the role of librarians in mitigating fake news. The chapter also identifies possible societal consequences of fake news. The chapter concludes that librarians should inoculate the public to pre-empt them from accepting fake news.

scholarly journals Appealing to Sense and Sensibility: System 1 and System 2 Interventions for Fake News on Social Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 987-1006
Author(s):  
Patricia L. Moravec ◽  
Antino Kim ◽  
Alan R. Dennis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Other ◽  
Presentation Format ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Awareness Training ◽  
The World ◽  
System 2 ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
Sense And Sensibility ◽  
System 1

Disinformation on social media—commonly called “fake news”—has become a major concern around the world, and many fact-checking initiatives have been launched in response. However, if the presentation format of fact-checked results is not persuasive, fact-checking may not be effective. For instance, Facebook tested the idea of flagging dubious articles in 2017 but concluded that it was ineffective and removed the feature. We conducted three experiments with social media users to investigate two different approaches to implementing a fake news flag—one designed to be most effective when processed by automatic cognition (System 1) and the other designed to be most effective when processed by deliberate cognition (System 2). Both interventions were effective, and an intervention that combined both approaches was about twice as effective. The awareness training on the meaning of the flags increased the effectiveness of the System 2 intervention but not the System 1 intervention. Believability influenced the extent to which users would engage with the article (e.g., read, like, comment, and share). Our results suggest that both theoretical routes can be used—separately or together—in the presentation of fact-checking results in order to reduce the influence of fake news on social media users.

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