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v t e

Fake news is a type of hoax or deliberate spread of misinformation, be it via the traditional news media or via social media, with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically. It often employs eye-catching headlines or entirely fabricated news-stories in order to increase readership and online sharing. Profit is made in a similar fashion to clickbait and relies on ad-revenue generated regardless of the veracity of the published stories. Easy access to ad-revenue, increased political polarization and the ubiquity of social media, primarily the Facebook newsfeed have been implicated in the spread of fake news. Anonymously hosted websites lacking known publishers have also been implicated, because they make it difficult to prosecute sources of fake news for slander.

Definition

Fake news has been defined as news which is "completely made up and designed to deceive readers to maximize traffic and profit". News satire uses exaggeration and introduces non-factural elements, but is intended to amuse or make a point, not deceive.

Identifying

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) published a summary in diagram form to assist people to recognise fake news. Its main points are:

1. Consider the source (to understand its mission and purpose)
2. Read beyond the headline (to understand the whole story)
3. Check the authors (to see if they are real and credible)
4. Assess the supporting sources (to ensure they support the claims)
5. Check the date of publication (to see if the story is relevant and up to date)
6. Ask if it is a joke (to determine if it is meant to be satire)
7. Review your own biases (to see if they are affecting your judgement)
8. Ask experts (to get confirmation from independent people with knowledge).

Historical examples

This section needs expansion. You can help by making an edit requestadding to it . (January 2017)

Ancient and medieval

Significant fake news stories can be traced back to the forged 8th century Donation of Constantine, and Octavian's 1st century campaign of misinformation against Mark Antony.

Nineteenth century

The term "fake news" itself arose in the United States in the late 19th century. One of the earliest instances of fake news was the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. The New York Sun published articles about a real-life astronomer and a made-up colleague who, according to the hoax, had observed bizarre life on the moon. The fictionalized articles successfully attracted new subscribers, and the penny paper suffered very little backlash after it admitted the series had been a hoax the next month.

Twentieth century

Fake news is similar to the concept of yellow journalism and political propaganda, frequently employing the same strategies used by early 20th century penny presses. In the late 1800s, Joseph Pulitzer and other yellow press publishers goaded the United States into the Spanish–American War, which was precipitated when the U.S.S. Maine exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has published that, through its reporter Walter Duranty, The New York Times printed "fake news" "depicting Russia as a socialist paradise." During 1932–1933, The New York Times published numerous articles by its Moscow bureau chief, Walter Duranty, denying that the Soviet Union at that time starved to death between 2.4 and 7.5 million of its own citizens, a genocide now known as the Holodomor. The New York Times now claims this was "some" of "its worst" reporting. This years-long fake news episode has been noted by multiple pundits in Australia, the U.S., and the UK.

After Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power in Germany in 1933, they established the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under the control of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis used both print and broadcast journalism to promote their agendas, either by obtaining ownership of those media or exerting political influence. Throughout World War II, both the Axis and the Allies employed fake news in the form of propaganda to persuade publics at home and in enemy countries. The British Political Warfare Executive used radio broadcasts and distributed leaflets to discourage German troops.

Twenty-first century

In the 21st century, the use and impact of fake news became widespread, as well as the usage of the term. Besides being used to designate made up stories designed to deceive readers to maximize traffic and profit, the term was also used to refer to satirical news, whose purpose is not to create fake news but rather to highlight and inform people about real news using exaggeration and other comedic techniques, and as an accusation of bias or mislead against mainstream media sources. American examples of satire (as opposed to fake news) include the television show Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and The Onion newspaper.

Russia used "dezinformatsiya" (дезинформация) or disinformation in 2014 to create a counter narrative after Russian-backed Ukrainian rebels shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 using a Russia-supplied missile. False news stories often originated with Russia's state-sponsored television news, RT. In 2016, NATO claimed it had seen a significant rise in Russian propaganda and fake news stories since the invasion of Crimea in 2014.

In the United States during the 2016 election campaign for the 45th President, fake news was particularly prevalent, although a working paper by researchers at Stanford University and New York University concluded that fake news had "little to no effect" on its outcome, noting that only 8 percent of voters read a fake news story and that recall of the stories was low. CNN was called out by U.S. President Donald Trump as "fake news" before and after the election along with MSNBC, NBC, and several news providers. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel became a target for fake news in the run-up to the 2017 German federal election following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

In the early weeks of his presidency, U.S. President Donald Trump frequently used the term "fake news" to refer to traditional news media, creating confusion about its meaning. On February 14, 2017, Columbia Journalism Review staff writer David Uberti declared, "'Fake news' is dead." After Colorado Republican Senator Ray Scott used the term as a reference to a column in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the newspaper's publisher threatened a defamation lawsuit.

Impact

The impact of fake news is global and part of a worldwide phenomenon. The capacity of fake news to mislead would always lead to impaired judgements about truth and consequently ill-informed judgements about what actions and policies are appropriate. Fake news is spread through social media and also often through the use of fake news websites, which, in order to gain credibility, specialize in inventing attention-grabbing news, often impersonating well-known news sources. Fake news has been used in email phishing attacks for many years, with sensationalist fabrications providing incentive for users to click links and have their computers infected with malware.

Involvement of social media

In the 21st century, the capacity to mislead was enhanced by the widespread use of social media. For example, one 21st century that enabled fake news' proliferation was the Facebook newsfeed. In late 2016 fake news gained notoriety following the uptick in news content by this means, and its prevalence on the micro-blogging site Twitter.

In the United States, a large portion of Americans use Facebook or Twitter to receive news This, in combination with increased political polarization and filter bubbles, led to a tendency for readers to mainly read headlines. Fake news was implicated in influencing the 2016 American presidential election. Fake news saw higher sharing on Facebook than legitimate news stories, which analysts explained was because fake news often panders to expectations or is otherwise more exciting than legitimate news. Facebook itself initially denied this characterization. A Pew Research poll conducted in December 2016 found that 64% of U.S. adults believed completely made-up news had caused "a great deal of confusion" about the basic facts of current events, while 24% claimed it had caused "some confusion" and 11% said it had caused "not much or no confusion". Additionally, 23% of those polled admitted they had personally shared fake news, whether knowingly or not.

Research from Northwestern University concluded that 30% of all fake news traffic, as opposed to only 8% of real news traffic, could be linked back to Facebook. Fake news consumers, they concluded, do not exist in a filter bubble; many of them also consume real news from established news sources. The fake news audience is only 10 percent of the real news audience, and most fake news consumers spent a relatively similar amount of time on fake news compared with real news consumers—with the exception of Drudge Report readers, who spent more than 11 times longer reading the website than other users.

After the 2017 American election and the run-up to the German election, Facebook began labeling and warning of inaccurate news and partnered with independent fact-checkers to label inaccurate news, warning readers before sharing it.

In China, fake news items have occasionally spread from such sites to more well-established news-sites resulting in scandals including "Pizzagate".In the wake of western events China's Ren Xianling of the Cyberspace Administration of China suggested a "reward and punish" system be implemented to avoid fake news.

See also

• Black propaganda
• False flag
• Fallacy of false attribution
• Lying press - German phrase

References

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Further reading

• Inside a Fake News Sausage Factory: ‘This Is All About Income’ New York Times Nov 25, 2016

• Journalism

External links

• Archive-It: "Fake News"

• Articles to be merged from January 2017
• Criticism of journalism
• Fake news
• Deception
• Disinformation operations
• Journalistic hoaxes
• News media manipulation
• Propaganda techniques
• Internet hoaxes
• Confidence tricks
• Social engineering (computer security)