This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MelbourneStar (talk | contribs) at 02:12, 19 February 2017 (Reverted edits by 96.42.163.157 (talk) (HG) (3.1.21)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 02:12, 19 February 2017 by MelbourneStar (talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by 96.42.163.157 (talk) (HG) (3.1.21))(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)This article is about the type of hoax. For its impact and the websites that publish it, see Fake news website. For other uses, see Fake news (disambiguation).
 | It has been suggested that this article be merged into Fake news website. (Discuss) Proposed since January 2017. |
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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:
- Consider the source (to understand its mission and purpose)
- Read beyond the headline (to understand the whole story)
- Check the authors (to see if they are real and credible)
- Assess the supporting sources (to ensure they support the claims)
- Check the date of publication (to see if the story is relevant and up to date)
- Ask if it is a joke (to determine if it is meant to be satire)
- Review your own biases (to see if they are affecting your judgement)
- 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. This was due to the constant propaganda spewed out by CNN and MSNBC among many sources claiming that President Trump was a Nazi and that he was going to start the Fourth Reich in America. 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
Main article: Fake news by countryThe 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
- ^ Hunt, Elle (December 17, 2016). "What is fake news? How to spot it and what you can do to stop it". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- ^ Woolf, Nicky (November 11, 2016). "How to solve Facebook's fake news problem: experts pitch their ideas". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- "Who's to blame for fake news and what can be done about it?". Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- Callan, Paul. "Sue over fake news? Not so fast". CNN. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- Harvey, Kerric; author; Media, the Encyclopedia of Social; Politics. "Did Social Media Ruin Election 2016?". NPR.org. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
{{cite web}}:|last2=has generic name (help) - Woolf, Nicky (November 17, 2016). "As fake news takes over Facebook feeds, many are taking satire as fact". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- "Can we develop immunity against fake news?". Pri.org. February 11, 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2017.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|authors=ignored (help) - ^ Hunt, Elle (December 17, 2016). "What is fake news? How to spot it and what you can do to stop it". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- "How to Spot Fake News". IFLA blogs. January 27, 2017. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|dead-url=(help) - http://archives.cjr.org/feature/before_jon_stewart.php
- ^ http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535
- http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-great-moon-hoax
- "To Fix Fake News, Look To Yellow Journalism | JSTOR Daily". JSTOR Daily. November 29, 2016. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say". Washington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- ^ Agrawal, Nina. "Where fake news came from — and why some readers believe it". latimes.com. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism
- "Judy Asks: Can Fake News Be Beaten?". Carnegie Europe. January 25, 2017. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
Stalin fed fake news to New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, who won a Pulitzer Prize for depicting Russia as a socialist paradise.
- Snyder 2010, p. 53. "One demographic retrojection suggests a figure of 2.5 million famine deaths for Soviet Ukraine. This is too close to the recorded figure of excess deaths, which is about 2.4 million. The latter figure must be substantially low, since many deaths were not recorded. Another demographic calculation, carried out on behalf of the authorities of independent Ukraine, provides the figure of 3.9 million dead. The truth is probably in between these numbers, where most of the estimates of respectable scholars can be found. It seems reasonable to propose a figure of approximately 3.3 million deaths by starvation and hunger-related disease in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933". sfn error: no target: CITEREFSnyder2010 (help)
- David R. Marples. Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine. p.50
- "International Recognition of the Holodomor". Holodomor Education. Retrieved December 26, 2015.
- Meyer, Karl E. (June 24, 1990). "The Editorial Notebook; Trenchcoats, Then and Now". New York Times. Retrieved September 30, 2016.
- "Behind the Headlines: Fake News". ABC 7 - KATV. November 30, 2016. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
But what exactly is fake news? How about New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief Walter Duranty? His false reports covered-up the genocide of millions of Ukrainians by the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
- http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/fake-news-is-new-but-left-shows-fabricated-reports-are-not/news-story/285e8adc912ab5c5be8e3830e4b63e77
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/27/castro-claimed-he-tricked-the-new-york-times-but-we-may-be-the-real-dupes
- https://reason.com/archives/2016/11/23/the-fake-epidemic-of-fake-news/print
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goebbels/peopleevents/e_propaganda.html
- https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007655
- http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/29/the-real-007-used-fake-news-to-get-the-u-s-into-world-war-ii.html
- http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/world-war-2-propaganda-history-books/
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goebbels/peopleevents/e_propaganda.html
- "Trump calls CNN Fake News". Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- JEREMY W. PETERS (December 25, 2016). "Wielding Claims of 'Fake News,' Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media". The New York Times.
- http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a23798/michael-che-weekend-update-snl/
- http://www.npr.org/2013/08/29/216439725/area-man-realizes-hes-been-reading-fake-news-for-25-years
- http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/books/article121956252.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html?_r=0
- http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-media-idUSKBN15Q0MG?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social
- Christopher Ingraham (January 24, 2017). "Real research suggests we should stop freaking out over fake news". The Washington Post.
- Crawford, Krysten. "Stanford study examines fake news and the 2016 presidential election". Stanford News. Stanford University. Retrieved February 4, 2017.
- "Trump calls CNN Fake News". Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- "Angela Merkel replaces Hillary Clinton as prime target of fake news, analysis finds". Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- http://www.npr.org/2017/02/17/515630467/with-fake-news-trump-moves-from-alternative-facts-to-alternative-language
- http://www.cjr.org/criticism/fake_news_trump_white_house_cnn.php
- http://www.denverpost.com/2017/02/17/grand-junction-daily-sentinel-fake-news-libel-ray-scott/
- http://www.npr.org/2017/02/17/515760101/when-a-politician-says-fake-news-and-a-newspaper-threatens-to-sue-back
- Connolly, Kate; Chrisafis, Angelique; McPherson, Poppy; Kirchgaessner, Stephanie; Haas, Benjamin; Phillips, Dominic; Hunt, Elle; Safi, Michael (December 2, 2016). "Fake news: an insidious trend that's fast becoming a global problem". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- Chen, Adrian (June 2, 2015). "The Agency". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 25, 2016.
- LaCapria, Kim (November 2, 2016), "Snopes' Field Guide to Fake News Sites and Hoax Purveyors - Snopes.com's updated guide to the internet's clickbaiting, news-faking, social media exploiting dark side.", Snopes.com, retrieved November 19, 2016
- Ben Gilbert (November 15, 2016), "Fed up with fake news, Facebook users are solving the problem with a simple list", Business Insider, retrieved November 16, 2016,
Some of these sites are intended to look like real publications (there are false versions of major outlets like ABC and MSNBC) but share only fake news; others are straight-up propaganda created by foreign nations (Russia and Macedonia, among others).
- Tomlinson, Kerry (January 27, 2017). "Fake news can poison your computer as well as your mind". Retrieved January 28, 2017.
- Isaac, Mike (December 12, 2016). "Facebook, in Cross Hairs After Election, Is Said to Question Its Influence". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- ^ Matthew Garrahan and Tim Bradshaw, Richard Waters, (November 21, 2016). "Harsh truths about fake news for Facebook, Google and Twitter". Financial Times. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "The Long and Brutal History of Fake News". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- Gottfried, Jeffrey; Shearer, Elisa (May 26, 2016). "News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016". Pew Research Center's Journalism Project. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- "Forget Facebook and Google, burst your own filter bubble". Digital Trends. December 6, 2016. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- Solon, Olivia (November 10, 2016). "Facebook's failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- "This Analysis Shows How Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook". BuzzFeed. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- ^ "Just how partisan is Facebook's fake news? We tested it". PCWorld. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- "Fake news is dominating Facebook". 6abc Philadelphia. November 23, 2016. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- Isaac, Mike (November 12, 2016). "Facebook, in Cross Hairs After Election, Is Said to Question Its Influence". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- Barthel, Michael; Mitchell, Amy; Holcomb, Jesse (December 15, 2016). "Many Americans Believe Fake News Is Sowing Confusion". Pew Research Center's Journalism Project. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
- http://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-facebook-audience-drudge-breitbart-study.php
- http://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-facebook-audience-drudge-breitbart-study.php
- http://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-facebook-audience-drudge-breitbart-study.php
- Stelter, Brian (January 15, 2017). "Facebook to begin warning users of fake news before German election". CNNMoney. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- "Clamping down on viral fake news, Facebook partners with sites like Snopes and adds new user reporting". Nieman Lab. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- Kuchler, Hannah (January 15, 2017). "Facebook rolls out fake-news filtering service to Germany". Financial Times. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- Stelter, Brian (January 15, 2017). "Facebook to begin warning users of fake news before German election". CNNMoney. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- "Clamping down on viral fake news, Facebook partners with sites like Snopes and adds new user reporting". Nieman Lab. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- Kuchler, Hannah (January 15, 2017). "Facebook rolls out fake-news filtering service to Germany". Financial Times. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
- "Evidence ridiculously thin for Clinton sex network claim". @politifact. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- "China says terrorism, fake news impel greater global internet curbs". Reuters. November 20, 2016. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
Further reading
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