This section deals with "fake news" and among the questions we try to answer are:
- What is fake news?
- Where does fake news come from?
- Where are people more likely to encounter fake news?
- How does fake news spread?
- Is fake news addictive?
- Why do people click on fake news?
“Fake News” has been part of the national dialogue for a while now. There has even been a concern that fake news helped elect a president in 2016 (for example, an August 2018 Gallup poll found that 39% of respondents believed that the Russians interfered, and changed the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election1). 39% of adults often get news on a desktop or laptop computer, 58% often get news on a mobile device2; one study found that for academic research, most students (66%) relied on library databases, and professors (62%) while 56% of students get their everyday news from social media.3 Additionally, in yet another poll, of 6,127 surveyed U.S. adults, 50% say made-up news is a bigger problem than climate change, violent crime, racism, illegal immigration, terrorism and sexism. In the same survey, 36% say journalists make up news, 25% say foreign actors make up news, and 53% say that journalists have a responsibility to reduce it, while only 12% say it's the government's role to reduce it, and 9% say it's the role of technology companies.4
There is no doubt that “fake news” plays at least some role in people’s daily life. “Fake news” has even gotten people killed5. As instruction librarians, we wanted to know how big the issue is and what it consists of, what can be done about it in a library-instruction setting, and how it affects the college classroom.
Sources:
1. Gallup. In Depth: Russia. [Website]. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1642/russia.aspx
2. Fedeli, Sophia; Matsa, Katerina Eva. July 17, 2018. Use of mobile devices for news continues to grow, outpacing desktops and laptops. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/17/use-of-mobile-devices-for-news-continues-to-grow-outpacing-desktops-and-laptops/
3 Head, A. J., Wihbey, J., Metaxas, P. T., MacMillan, M., Cohen, D., & Project Information Literacy. (2018). How Students Engage with News: Five Takeaways for Educators, Journalists, and Librarians. The News Study Executive Summary. Project Information Literacy. Project Information Literacy. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=eric&AN=ED591129&site=eds-live&custid=northwest
4. The PEW Research Center. 2019. Many Americans Say Made-Up News Is a Critical Problem That Needs To Be Fixed. Retrieved from: https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/
5. When fake news kills: Lynchings in Mexico are linked to viral child-kidnap rumors. Patrick J. Mcdonnell and Cecilia Sanchez. September 21, 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-mexico-vigilantes-20180921-story.html
Depending on the source, there are four or five.
1. made up info;
2. satire
3. Poorly-reported news that fits an agenda or political narrative
4. Misleading news designed to promote a narrative
Source: Schow, Ashe. 2017. The 4 Types of ‘Fake News’. [webpage]. The Observer. Retrieved from: https://observer.com/2017/01/fake-news-russia-hacking-clinton-loss/
1. Satire or parody;
2. Misleading news that misinterpret facts;
3. Sloppy reporting;
4. Misleading news that is not based on facts;
5. Intentionally deceptive
Source: Watts, Nicola. 2018. 5 Types of 'Fake News' and Why They Matter [webpage]. Retrieved from: https://www.ogilvy.com/feed/5-types-of-fake-news-and-why-they-matter/
People and Bots
(Noun) a person who makes a deliberately offensive or provocative online post. People who set up social media accounts for the sole purpose of spreading fake news and fanning the flames of misinformation.
(verb) to make a deliberately offensive or provocative online post with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them.
“Do not feed the troll.” (Internet slang) Said to urge another not to respond to disruptive attention-seeking behavior, particularly in online contexts, by pointing out any such response is likely to be counterproductive.
28% of Americans admitted malicious online activity directed at somebody they didn’t know. Men are more likely to get into a malicious argument than women and Millennials are twice as likely as those aged 55+ to engage in trolling behavior.
Source: Jake Gammon. October 20, 2014. Over a quarter of Americans have made malicious online comments. YouGov.com [commercial website]. Retrieved from: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/10/20/over-quarter-americans-admit-malicious-online-comm
Quote: "How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,”
Source: Max Read. Dec. 26, 208. How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html
Quote: "Bots, or Internet robots, are also known as spiders, crawlers, and web bots. While they may be utilized to perform repetitive jobs, such as indexing a search engine, they often come in the form of malware. Malware bots are used to gain total control over a computer. Malicious bots are defined as self-propagating malware that infects its host and connects back to a central server(s). The server functions as a “command and control center” for a botnet, or a network of compromised computers and similar devices. Malicious bots have the “worm-like ability to self-propagate,” and can also:
Bots are usually used to infect large numbers of computers. These computers form a “botnet,” or a bot network."
Source: What are bots? Norton. 2019. Retrieved from: https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-malware-what-are-bots.html
People
1) Quote: " One study analyzing the spread of rumors on Twitter suggests that false news spreads farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it. Falsehoods were 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth.
Source: Church, Zach. 2018. Study: False news spreads faster than the truth. MIT Sloan School of Management. Retrieved from: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-false-news-spreads-faster-truth
2) Quote: On average, users over 65 shared nearly seven times as many articles from fake news domains as the youngest age group.
Source: Andress Guess, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua Tucker. 2016. Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook. Science Advances. Retrieved from: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586
1) Head, A. J., Wihbey, J., Metaxas, P. T., MacMillan, M., Cohen, D., & Project Information Literacy. (2018). How Students Engage with News: Five Takeaways for Educators, Journalists, and Librarians. The News Study Executive Summary. Project Information Literacy. Project Information Literacy. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=eric&AN=ED591129&site=eds-live&custid=northwest
How students engage with news. October 16, 2018. This study found that the majority of students relied on library databases (66%) and professors (62%) to fulfill academic assignment requirements, while for everyday needs, social media networks (56%) or relatively newer media sources (55%), such as BuzzFeed or Politico, were more popular
2) Students could soon get lessons in "fake news". (2019, March 4). CNN Wire. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A576881194/AONE?u=txshracd2503&sid=AONE&xid=9729a9b7 One of the largest factors in fake news is the rise of social media. The anonymity of the internet means stories are easy to make up. About two thirds of Americans occasionally get their news on social media, according to the Pew Research Center. However, 57% of these people see news on social media as largely inaccurate.
1) Head, A. J., Wihbey, J., Metaxas, P. T., MacMillan, M., Cohen, D., & Project Information Literacy. (2018). How Students Engage with News: Five Takeaways for Educators, Journalists, and Librarians. The News Study Executive Summary. Project Information Literacy. Project Information Literacy. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=eric&AN=ED591129&site=eds-live&custid=northwest
P. 25- g. Findings suggested a gulf between students’ academic and personal news-seeking habits (Figure 10). The majority of students relied on library databases (66%) and professors (62%) to fulfill academic assignment requirements, while for everyday needs, social media networks (56%) or relatively newer media sources (55%), such as BuzzFeed or Politico, were more popular. Figure 10: Sources of news for fulfilling academic vs. personal needs
Social Media Use and News
1) Pew Research Center, "Social Media Fact Sheet" February 5, 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/
2) Pew Research Center, "Share of U.S. adults using social media, including Facebook, is mostly unchanged since 2018," April 10, 2019. Retrieved from:
3) Pew Research Center. "Digital News Fact Sheet" June 6, 2018. retrieved from: https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/digital-news/
4) Pew Research Center. February 9, 2017. "How Americans Encounter, Recall and Act Upon Digital News." Retrieved from: Retrieved from: https://www.journalism.org/2017/02/09/how-americans-encounter-recall-and-act-upon-digital-news/
Though they sense these stories are spreading confusion, Americans express a fair amount of confidence in their own ability to detect fake news, with about four-in-ten (39%) feeling very confident that they can recognize news that is fabricated and another 45% feeling somewhat confident. Overall, about a third (32%) of Americans say they often see political news stories online that are made up. While it is difficult to measure the precise extent to which people actually see news that has been completely fabricated – given that news consumers could see but not recognize made-up news stories as well as mistake factual stories for false ones — these figures provide a high-level sense of the public’s perception of this kind of content.
And some Americans say they themselves have shared fake news. Overall, 23% say they have ever shared a made-up news story, with 14% saying they shared a story they knew was fake at the time and 16% having shared a story they later realized was fake.
5) Pew Research Center. December 15, 2016. "Many Americans Believe Fake News Is Sowing Confusion". Retrieved from: https://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing-confusion/
1) Martínez, Marcos. 12 November 2018. Burned to death because of a rumour on WhatsApp. BBC. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46145986
2) Shao, C., Hui, P.-M., Wang, L., Jiang, X., Flammini, A., Menczer, F., & Ciampaglia, G. L. (2018). Anatomy of an online misinformation network. PLoS ONE, 13(4), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0196087
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