Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This chapter presents the related literature and studies after the thorough and in-depth
search done by the researchers. This will also present the synthesis of the art, conceptual
framework to fully understand the research to be done and lastly the definition of terms for better
Not a new concept, "fake news" refers to intentionally and verifiably false stories that are
largely disseminated through social media networks. It can be very persuasive and therefore it is
necessary to develop strategies to identify and critically assess news you read on social media. A
recent (March 2018) article in Science evaluated the dissemination of "fake news" on Twitter
between 2006-2017 (Queens University Library, 2019). Fake news is not a new phenomenon.
Tabloid magazines have been around since the beginning of the 20th century and fake news, for
example, played a role in America becoming involved in World War I (Lippmann, 1946, c/o
Lazer et al., 2017). Nonetheless, fake news as it has been discussed recently (e.g., Allcott &
Gentzkow, 2017; Shane, 2017) seems a new category of misinformation. Although there are
many forms of “fake news”, here we follow Lazer et al. who define fake news as:
“… information that mimics the output of the news media in form, but not in
organizational process or intent—e.g., lacking editorial norms and processes to weed out
the untrue in favor of the true. Fake news is thus a subgenre of the broader category of
Given that the creators of fake news are not beholden to editorial norms, it is important to
understand the cognitive factors that allow readers to weed out the untrue in favor of the true. In
a classic study of wartime rumors, Allport and Lepkin (1945) found that individuals who had
previously heard of a rumor were far more likely to believe it. This finding coincides with
research on the illusory truth effect in which the repetition of, for example, obscure trivia
statements increases perceptions of accuracy (Dechene, Stahl, Hansen, & Wanke, 2010; Fazio,
Brashier, Payne, & Marsh, 2015; Hasher, Goldstein, & Toppino, 1977). Extending work on the
illusory truth to the domain of fake news, Pennycook, Cannon, and Rand (2018) found that
simply reading a fake news headline once is sufficient to increase later perceptions of its
accuracy. It is perhaps surprising that familiarity plays an important role in belief about fake
news, given that fake news content is often quite implausible. For example, the headline “Trump
to Ban All TV Shows that Promote Gay Activity Starting with Empire as President” was only
rated as accurate by 5% of Pennycook et al.’s (2017) sample upon first exposure. A single prior
exposure doubled the fraction of participants rating it as accurate - and these effects compounded
with a subsequent exposure and were still present in a follow-up session one week later.
Fake news has seriously caught on. It has greatly influenced the way media platforms
operate, the public’s perception of information, and even how governments confront its
proliferation. The internet radically changed the way news is published. The effects of fake news
can be very destructive — both on a social and economical way. If even just one person would
say one bad thing about a certain product, all he or she would need is another person to comment
or agree and this would make it sound true for most. According to Ces Drilon, in an American
last July 25, 2018, one of the reasons why fake news can be very convincing is that massive
amounts of it could make it believable. The sheer volume of content about one specific rumor
concerned about the effect that fake news has in the workplace. Fake news can have a negative
impact on workplace behavior. For example, by damaging learning culture, and causing rumor
and mistrust to spread. So, it's vital to know how to separate the real from the fake. (Leadership
IQ, 2019). The same study suggests on how to identify fake news and these six steps are the
following: (a) develop critical mindset; (b) check the source; (c) see who else is reporting the
story; (d) examine the evidence; (e) look for fake images; and (f) check that it “sounds right.”
Fake news had always been around, but nowadays, the main differences lie in the way its
being spread and read. At present, information, whether true or false, travels faster. People could
easily access tons of news and information through different media platforms through the
internet. In addition to this, images are making it even more believable — the better the image,
the more convincing the story is. Perception can be constantly manipulated to make it better and
Fake news is nothing new. But, what is new is how easy it's become to share information
– both true and false – on a massive scale. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and
LinkedIn allow almost anyone to publish their thoughts or share stories to the world. The trouble
is, most people don't check the source of the material that they view online before they share it,
which can lead to fake news spreading quickly or even "going viral." At the same time, it's
become harder to identify the source of news stories, particularly on the internet, which can
make it difficult to assess their accuracy. This has led to a flood of fake news. In fact, one study
found that more than 25 percent of Americans visited a fake news website in a six-week period
during the 2016 U.S. presidential election (Reifler, J., 2016) But, not all fake news stories are
found online (Murphy, M., 2017). Mokhtar Elareshi and Barrie Gunter (2009), supported the
idea that not all fake news can be found online and that it can also be in other mode of news such
The relationship between young adults and use of news media has been studied for many
years (Sherr 2005). It has been observed that young people display a weak interest in
conventional forms of news and have been less likely than older people to engage with
traditional news sources (Sherr 2005, Kaufhold 2008). In general, young adults were found to
rely primarily on TV as their main source of news (Walma vander Molen, J.H., van der Voort
2000). Even with television, however, older viewers were more likely than young adult viewers
to use television news. Nevertheless, interest in news was observed to increase across university
If the children are the future, the future might be very ill-informed. That's one implication
of a new study from Stanford researchers that evaluated students' ability to assess information
sources and described the results as "dismaying," "bleak" and "[a] threat to democracy." The
students displayed a "stunning and dismaying consistency" in their responses, the researchers
wrote, getting duped again and again. They weren't looking for high-level analysis of data but
just a "reasonable bar" of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from
neutral sources and ads from articles (Wineburg, S., McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., and Ortega, T.,
2016). Young adults are likely to be chosen to this study because during their late teens and early
20s, young people begin to establish a bigger appetite for news. It is during this period of their
development also when they become more actively politically engaged and turn to news media in
this context (Henke 1985, Karam 2007a, Vincent, Basil 1997). Young people nevertheless may
display distinct preferences in the news topics that appeal to them and in the news sources they
consume to use different news sources for news reason (Pew Research Centre for the People &
the Press 2002, Pew Internet & American Life Project 2010).
“How does new technology disrupt how information is spread? Simply put, each
communication method has its associated societal norms and customs—i.e, the way things are
“supposed to be done”. However, new technology disrupts these norms, because none existed up
to that point. Until society agrees to the norms—whether through government regulation or
societal self-regulation—various parties will abuse it to serve their agendas. This results in false
know as fake news today. The internet is only the latest communications technology used to
spread propaganda. It allows a small number of individuals to influence and manipulate the
opinions of a larger audience. In addition, the targeting and crowd dynamics created by social
media allows for ideas—true or otherwise—to spread faster than ever before,” (Lion Gu, V., and
For every challenge facing this nation, there are scores of websites pretending to be
something they are not. Ordinary people at once relied on the publishers, editors and subject
matter experts to vet the information consumed. But on the unregulated Internet, all bets are off.
Michael Lynch, a philosopher who studies technical change, observed that the internet is “both
the world’s best fact checker and world’s best bias confirmer – often at the same time (Lynch,
M., 2016). Never have we had so much information at our fingertips. Whether this bounty will
make us smarter and better informed or more ignorant and narrow minded will depend our
awareness of this problem and our educational response to it and how this fake news will be
identified by young adolescents and other people to prevent disinformation about civic issues to