The toxic proliferation of lies and fake news in the world of social media

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-213
Author(s):  
Janet Ainsworth
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The World

Spiritualism and the Resurgence of Fake News

2020 ◽  
pp. 222-237
Author(s):  
Kristy A. Hesketh
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Fake News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The World ◽  
Spirit World ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
False News

This chapter explores the Spiritualist movement and its rapid growth due to the formation of mass media and compares these events with the current rise of fake news in the mass media. The technology of cheaper publications created a media platform that featured stories about Spiritualist mediums and communications with the spirit world. These articles were published in newspapers next to regular news creating a blurred line between real and hoax news stories. Laws were later created to address instances of fraud that occurred in the medium industry. Today, social media platforms provide a similar vessel for the spread of fake news. Online fake news is published alongside legitimate news reports leaving readers unable to differentiate between real and fake articles. Around the world countries are actioning initiatives to address the proliferation of false news to prevent the spread of misinformation. This chapter compares the parallels between these events, how hoaxes and fake news begin and spread, and examines the measures governments are taking to curb the growth of misinformation.

The more you know, the less you fear: Reflexive social work practices in times of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (6) ◽  
pp. 746-752
Author(s):  
Antonio López Peláez ◽  
Chaime Marcuello-Servós ◽  
Joaquín Castillo de Mesa ◽  
Patricia Almaguer Kalixto
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Quality Information ◽  
Work Practices ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

In this article, we present the results of a strategy to disseminate best social work practices during periods of social lockdown in Spain, in a climate characterised by post-truth, misinformation and fake news. Social work is challenged with the task of delivering reliable and quality information aimed at building a better society. At the time of writing, Spain was one of the countries most affected by COVID-19, with one of the highest numbers of deaths per million inhabitants in the world. With the population in lockdown, our strategy was to design a series of innovative web seminars on both the subject and the procedures involved in social work, with the aim of sharing information and best practices to counter disinformation campaigns on social media. The results show the growing demand – both by citizens in general and students and professionals in particular – for reliable information in the field of professional practice. One of the priorities of digital social work must be to disseminate its results in the digital environment.

scholarly journals The battle to end fake news: A qualitative content analysis of Facebook announcements on how it combats disinformation

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petros Iosifidis ◽  
Nicholas Nicoli
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Culture Media ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Digital Democracy ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Media Platforms

The recent spread of online disinformation has been profound and has played a central role in the growth of populist sentiments around the world. Facilitating its progression has been politically and economically motivated culprits who have ostensibly taken advantage of the digital freedoms available to them. At the heart of these freedoms lie social media organisations that only a few years earlier techno-optimists were identifying as catalysts of an enhanced digital democracy. In order to curtail the erosion of information, policy reform will no doubt be essential. The UK's Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Disinformation and ‘fake news’ Report and Cairncross Review, and the European Commission's Report on Disinformation are three recent examples seeking to investigate how precisely such reform policy might be implemented. Just as important is how social media organisations take on more responsibility and apply self-regulating mechanisms that stifle disinformation across their platforms (something the aforementioned reports identify). Doing so will go a long way in restoring legitimacy in these significant institutions. Facebook (which includes Instagram and Whatsapp), is the largest social media organisation in the world and must primarily bear the burden of this responsibility. The purpose of this article is to offer a descriptive account of Facebook's public announcements regarding how it tackles disinformation and fake news. Based on a qualitative content analysis covering the period November 16th 2016–March 4th 2019, this article will set out some groundwork on how to hold social media platforms more accountable for how they handle disinformation.

scholarly journals Spreading Fake News in the Virtual Realm in Bangladesh: Assessment of Impact

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Sharifa Umma Shirina ◽  
Md. Tabiur Rahman Prodhan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
National Election ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Supersonic Speed ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Acute Crisis

Fake news is ‘false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting.’ The upsurge of technological advancement, especially social media, has paved the way for spreading fake news. The virtual realm spurs fake news as per the speed of air. Nowadays, fake news has been one of the social problems in the world along with Bangladesh. Self-seeker groups use fake news as an ‘atomic arsenal’ to disseminate their popular rhetoric with supersonic speed for fulfilling male purposes. Fake news is usually rampant during any crisis, elections, and even in campaigns. The hoaxers and fakers exploit the opportunity of the wavering psychology of the social media users, and fake news becomes ‘viral’ on social media, Facebook. Recently Bangladesh has faced an acute crisis of spreading fake news during the ‘Movement of Nirapod Sarak Chai, ‘National election in December 2018’ and very recent ‘need child’s head for Padma Bridge.’ This study titled “Spreading Fake News in the Virtual Realm in Bangladesh: Assessment of Impact” seeks the reasons for spreading fake news and its’ social impact in Bangladesh.

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.

scholarly journals “Fake News- A Pandemic within a Pandemic”

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 629-636
Author(s):  
Priyanka Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Text Messages ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Scientific Attitude ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Digital World ◽  
The World ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
News Headlines

INTRODUCTION- Misinformation. Hoaxes. Rumours. Fake news- so many terms for the same phenomenon. It is something which is not new and has been going on since as early as any of us can remember. Although recently, it has seen a sudden boom with the advent of the digital world and suddenly everyone seems to have an opinion on everything going on in the world, however ill formed it maybe. SUMMARY- In such a situation, how could the single biggest event of 2020- the corona virus or COVID 19 pandemic, be an exception to this trend. All of us have come across some piece of “information” regarding this microscopic being which while staying invisible to the naked eye has proved to be mankind’s worst nemesis till date and has brought the world down on its knees. It proved to be an evil which could exist in any form- pictures, videos, text messages, audio messages, news headlines or a simply misconstrued interpretation of something said by a public figure. There are various reasons responsible for this surge of fake news, primarily the multitude of information available today at one’s fingertips coupled with lack of scientific attitude and awareness. The proliferation of social media has democratized access to all types of information and at the same time blurred the line between truth and falsehood. Although there is evidence that social media was used as a channel to disseminate useful information such as common symptoms of COVID infection, need for social distancing etc, the consequences of false information masquerading as verifiable truth were apparent during the peak of the pandemic crisis, with false parallels being drawn between scientific evidence and uninformed opinion. CONCLUSION- Fake news needs to be scrutinised harder than ever with the world facing its biggest health crisis in centuries.

scholarly journals A Pinnacle Technique for Detection of COVID-19 Fake News in Social Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 256-261
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Random Forest ◽  
General Public ◽  
Classification Model ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Random Forest Classification ◽  
Forest Classification ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

Today the world is gripped with fear of the most infectious disease which was caused by a newly discovered virus namely corona and thus termed as COVID-19. This is a large group of viruses which severely affects humans. The world bears testimony to its contagious nature and rapidity of spreading the illness. 50l people got infected and 30l people died due to this pandemic all around the world. This made a wide impact for people to fear the epidemic around them. The death rate of male is more compared to female. This Pandemic news has caught the attention of the world and gained its momentum in almost all the media platforms. There was an array of creating and spreading of true as well as fake news about COVID-19 in the social media, which has become popular and a major concern to the general public who access it. Spreading such hot news in social media has become a new trend in acquiring familiarity and fan base. At the time it is undeniable that spreading of such fake news in and around creates lots of confusion and fear to the public. To stop all such rumors detection of fake news has become utmost important. To effectively detect the fake news in social media the emerging machine learning classification algorithms can be an appropriate method to frame the model. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigated and implemented by collecting the training data and trained a machine learning model by using various machine learning algorithms to automatically detect the fake news about the Corona Virus. The machine learning algorithm used in this investigation is Naïve Bayes classifier and Random forest classification algorithm for the best results. A separate model for each classifier is created after the data preparation and feature extraction Techniques. The results obtained are compared and examined accurately to evaluate the accurate model. Our experiments on a benchmark dataset with random forest classification model showed a promising results with an overall accuracy of 94.06%. This experimental evaluation will prevent the general public to keep themselves out of their fear and to know and understand the impact of fast-spreading as well as misleading fake news.

scholarly journals The Negative Impact of Social Media during COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-507
Author(s):  
Astha Kumari
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The World ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Government ◽  
World Information

It has been observed that social media platforms have had both a positive and negative effect on how India has dealt with the COVID 19 pandemic. As the coronavirus took over the world, many took to social media to learn about how the virus spreads and what it is. Although this helped inform everyone on how to take precautions against this deadly virus, a lot of the information that users were reading was not verified or fact-checked and labeled as "fake news". In the modern world, information is spread very quickly through a variety of social media platforms. Because of this, there was widespread panic even before the COVID-19 virus had even reached India. Many citizens bought an excessive surplus of supplies such as masks, hand sanitizers, and food, which ultimately led to a shortage of these supplies for the 1.3 billion people in this country. The shortage of supplies along with the lockdown process which severely impacted the economy has led to an increase in price to the majority of essential products such as food, hand sanitizers, masks, etc. The most affected were the average day workers. Social media has caused widespread panic and hogging of essential supplies along with false facts of the virus itself, however, there are some things that we have benefited from due to social media. For example, social media has shown us the importance of social distancing and activities that we can do to keep our mental health in check while under lockdown. In short, I believe social media should be regulated and kept under watch by the government in certain aspects when it comes to spreading information about pandemics like covid19. If regulated properly we can avoid mass panic and anarchy and will be able to survive this pandemic as one.

scholarly journals Combating Fake News, Misinformation, and Machine Learning Generated Fakes: Insight's from the Islamic Ethical Tradition

ICR Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-212
Author(s):  
Talat Zubair ◽  
Amana Raquib ◽  
Junaid Qadir
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Deep Learning ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Security And Privacy ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Islamic Ethics ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Filter Bubbles

The growing trend of sharing and acquiring news through social media platforms and the World Wide Web has impacted individuals as well as societies, spreading misinformation and disinformation. This trend—along with rapid developments in the field of machine learning, particularly with the emergence of techniques such as deep learning that can be used to generate data—has grave political, social, ethical, security, and privacy implications for society. This paper discusses the technologies that have led to the rise of problems such as fake news articles, filter bubbles, social media bots, and deep-fake videos, and their implications, while providing insights from the Islamic ethical tradition that can aid in mitigating them. We view these technologies and artifacts through the Islamic lens, concluding that they violate the commandment of spreading truth and countering falsehood. We present a set of guidelines, with reference to Qur‘anic and Prophetic teachings and the practices of the early Muslim scholars, on countering deception, putting forward ideas on developing these technologies while keeping Islamic ethics in perspective.

scholarly journals Fake News in Social Kurdish Media in Kurdistan Region

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-150
Author(s):  
Nawzad Sadiq Muhammad ◽  
Kamil Omer Sleman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Focus Group Interview ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Spot Area ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Environmental

Fake news becomes a phenomenon in the Kurdish social media. The easiness of use and the political and social environmental crisis of northern Kurdistan besides non-professional dealing by a number of journalists worsen the situation. Despite the fact that fake news does not stemmed from the modern technology of information and the advent of using media for psychology and propaganda war but, the easiness of accessing social media makes the online platforms to be the main mediums of disseminating fake news. The openness of northern Kurdistan towards new communication technology and the semi-freedom of journalistic working and partisan activities help this part of the world to be a spot area for spreading fake news phenomenon; which became an interesting topic for many scholars around the world mainly after the presidential elections of United States of America in 2016. In this exploratory study, focus group interview used for collecting data and thematic analysis approach adopted for analysing it. Results show that spreading fake news through the Kurdish social media becomes a prevailing phenomenon. Various political and economy purposes can be identified behind disseminating fake news. Adding to increasing activity of variety of pages and accounts created with this respect through different names. Although of prevailing of the phenomena, a number of procedures can be taken in order to put a line for common of the phenomena including covering fake news through creating parasite account and pages and detecting the source of such piece of information.

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