NEWS INFORMATION CREDIBLE: WHICH FACEBOOK PAGE IS CREDIBLE

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The internet continues to evolve into a major news source. On a single day thousands of people visited
online news sites and almost says Internet is their main source of news. In my research, more news
sites are becoming profitable, and news organizations are investing more money in online journalism.

With about 60 million Facebook users, the Philippines has one of the largest and most active population
on the social network. It is therefore no surprise that it also counts numerous business pages on
Facebook gathering millions of Filipino followers.

However, questions have been raised about the credibility of online news. Teaching students how to
evaluate and use online resources. These concern is significant in that journalism’s online credibility gap.
If the public does not trust the press, some or they likely to pay attention and will start comparing the
internet sources on media credibility measures, lack of trust in information coming from the internet
could keep it from becoming an even more important and influential news source. The credibility of
facebook pages as news source are being questioned for the reason that several uncredible pages starts
popping out and starts feeding the public with unssuported and fake news without the public noticing
due to lack of knowledge regarding to which page is credible and which is not especially on unpopular
news pages setting aside the known pages such as GMA NEWS, ABS-CBN and Rappler.

RATIONALE

A related research study from Stanford University in 2018 with a title "Trends in the Diffusion of
Misinformation on Social Media" Says that "the results show that interactions with the fake news sites
in our database rose steadily on both Facebook and Twitter from early 2015 to the months just after the
2016 election. Interactions then declined by more than half on Facebook, while they continued to rise
on Twitter.

Our results also reveal that the absolute level of interaction with misinformation remains high,
and that Facebook continues to play a particularly important role in its diffusion. In the period
around the election, fake news sites received almost as many Facebook engagements as the 38
major news sites in our sample. Even after the post-election decline, Facebook engagements with fake
news sites still average roughly 70 million per month."
What's missing is the criteria needed to identify what's fake from not and if what should the people use
as a basis to tell if which page are credible and which are not. Another missing information is if how
people tend to fall for mis information over and over again until today.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVES

-what are the criteria and things to consider in identifying the credibility of the facebook page?

- how many percent of the research respondents knows if which sites are credible and which sites are
not?

- how often does facebook users specifically the research respondents shares news information on their
feeds from not credible pages?

SCOPES AND LIMITATION

This research study is limited to philippine based facebook pages which are classified as 'news and
information' pages.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This paper aims to explore related challenges and research directions. The relative importance of
credibility such as the characteristics of participants, the type of the source and the type of information.
However, the internet, digital technology, and social media have introduced significant changes for how
this information is shared, publicized, evaluated and utilized. Some of this changes are positive, such as
rapid distribution of needed information, where others are negative, such as widespread dissemination
and influence of fake news and misinformation.

The purpose of this study is to determine which facebook page is credible in providing news information
and to explore to which percentage does research respondents know if which pages are credible and
which are not. Among all social media platforms Facebook is one of the most prone social media
platform when it comes in providing unsupported news,unsupported facebook pages in particular. In
today’s fragmented media environment, this prevalence of news in one’s media depends on social
media one uses and how saturated these platforms are with current affairs information. Facebook usage
has a significantly different impact on their knowledge acquisition. Facebook users with little knowledge
on how things work on social media tends to be the target of such pages .