Can You spot a fake news? Try it out with our quiz!!!
Introduction on the problem of fake news
Internet has evolved to a global ecosystem of human interaction. Our modern lives are constantly online, surrounded by posts in social media, status updates and the agony of the likes, news feeds, reviews, ratings and comments. A major part of our social interaction has shifted also online, as so our opinion’s exchange and debates. Things we previously discussed only with our friends and peers now are public and exposed to criticism by anyone.
With Web2.0 and the appearance of social media our digital habits changed for ever. The shift of the readers away from the traditional news media and the potential influence into people’s behaviour was noted by the marketers and the strategists. The online platforms developed ways to influence the public for economic and political gain. In the recent years internet analysts and the public at large have expressed increasing concern that the content, tone and intent of online interactions have undergone an evolution that threatens its future.
People have shifted their habits and most users nowadays get their information from social media posts of their friends and newsfeeds. Often is difficult to examine the credibility of the published stories in an ocean of information and multiple copies of the same story. Additionally, the algorithms behind the social media and the search engines are designed to provide personalized information customised to our online footprints and profiles. What is offered to us is, in a way, is created by us. When online, by searching or browsing the social media, we are generally presented with articles and stories based on our previous searches, likes and online interaction in general. The resulting content reflects our likes, views and beliefs. The result of it is a filter bubble that isolates us and our piers from different or opposite views and opinions.
Fake news have also become a profitable business for publishers of viral stories generating large sums of advertising revenues. In the quest for popularity robots have been created to support the spread of the stories and drive the web traffic.
Categories of fake news
- Clickbaits: These are stories designed to attract website visitors and increase the advertising profits for the sites. Clickbait stories use attractive or deceptive headlines to grab the attention and drive through the clicks to the publisher’s website.
- Satire/parody: It is not unfamiliar for sites and mostly social media accounts, to post fake news stories for entertainment and parody, like The Onion, The Daily Mash, etc
- Conspiracy theories: Stories that reject the standard explanations of important or unexplained events and instead support the theory of a covert plot largely unknown to the public.
- Misleading Headings: These are stories that are not entirely fake but use misleading or sensationalist headlines in order to spread quickly through social media. Typically, in the social media only the headlines and small snippet of the article is displayed in the newsfeed.
- Propaganda: Fake news stories fabricated to intentionally mislead or bias the public on specific economic or political agendas.
- Biased News: Typically, most of the readers follow stories that confirm their own beliefs or views. Social media and search engines algorithms are designed to provide personalized information tailored to the readers’ online profiles and habits.
- Deep Fakes: The improvement of the video editing software combined with Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning provides the opportunity to create realistic fake videos. Deep fakes are an emerging threat as it makes possible to create footages to show something happened or said that did not. Seeing is believing will not exist anymore.
How fake news are spread
The ease and widespread use of internet gives almost everyone the possibility to become a publisher with his own blog, YouTube channel or Facebook account encouraging the spread of fake stories on the internet. Furthermore, internet has emerged as the new arena either for large advertising revenues or for influence of the public. For that, technology by taking advantage of the main characteristic of anonymity and ubiquity of the internet has invented new tools to circulate fake and biased stories. Specifically designed robots crawl the internet constantly reposting stories endlessly in a race to make them viral and credible to our perception. Armies of trolls are ready to reply anytime in our comments or to engage to flame wars. Artificial Intelligence is being trained to get into the battle of impersonating famous persons to say and show things that never happened. You should be familiar with the following terms:
- Bots, are autonomous software, designed to circulate social media content without human intervention. Typically, bots simply share messages, tweets or photos, respond to certain keywords but can also be designed to resemble actual users. According to recent studies, bots are responsible for as many as two-thirds of all tweets that link to popular websites or Instagram could have as many as 95 million bots posting as actual users.
- Troll refers to omnipresent online personas, always ready to provoke other users or to start flame wars. They may act for their amusement or as members of a coordinated campaign.
- Troll Factory is an entity spreading disinformation on the Internet with a political or economic agenda. Their activity is often concealed behind another entity, e.g., public relations agency. The aims of the Troll Factory can vary between attacking political opponents, a competing company or state, influencing the public internally or externally, or simply harvesting the clicks and the advertising revenues. Troll factories achieve their goals using, fake news, conspiracy theories, social engineering and hate speech. They involve a large number of employees, working in shifts and handling simultaneously many fake internet personas. Extra care is taken to the authenticity of the fake accounts. For that, the profiles feature information about private life with photos collected from internet databases and a social network for the fake profiles is created to resemble a real one.
Best practices
It always relies on the user’s critical thinking to distinguish between true and fake. Anyone receiving information from the internet, but mostly the young people, should develop the skills to critically evaluate the false information as early as possible. Best practices you can aplly can be:
- Check the source of news especially if is published on social media. Look if the site or the author publishing the information is trustworthy. Check out the “About us” section of the webpage for more information about the site and its purpose. If a post is shared in social media, check if a real person is sharing it. Look for photos, past posts, account images and try to find glitches and mismatches.
- Check the quality of the text: Lots of grammar or syntax errors should ring a bell that the author is not human. Credible news sources always proofread and have standards for their articles. It’s common nowadays for a lot of sites to create content through automatic translations of other sites. Check also the dates and the timeline of the story as the story might be out-dated.
- Read beyond the title: Headlines may be misleading or exaggerating. Many sites use sensational or shocking headlines to grab readers’ attention – and clicks of course – to their site. Read the article to find the details and understand if the information is real and true.
- Check other sources: Check whether the story is published by other reputable media. Check also the sources provided in the story and especially their reliability or even their existence.
- Fact-check the information: If still not convinced then search elsewhere. There are websites built purposefully to check whether articles/posts/texts are true or not.
- Think if it is joke: Satirical sites are popular in the social media and might be quite convincing as a real story instead of a parody. Check if the site is known for creating funny stories.