Since the 2016 Presidential election, it seems that the term “fake news” has become a common phrase in everyday parlance to describe situations, articles, or stories that aren’t true. The term has become so ubiquitous that many use it facetiously in everyday conversations when they don’t agree or believe something. However, “fake news” is an important topic when talking about news, politics, and science and is an important topic in the information science field.
Fake news is any content that purposefully ignores, misrepresents, or invents facts (Ireland, 2018). To really dissect “fake news” Wardle (2017) divides it into seven categories which include satire or parody; misleading, imposter, fabricated, or manipulated content; false connection; and false context. With its ambiguous and complicated definition, it’s no wonder that spotting fake news is a serious endeavor that many of the general public do not perform while utilizing things like social media.
Though some form of “fake news” has been around since the advent of information, its rampant usage and timeliness across social media make it an important topic for discussion. With today’s technology, “fake news” is so easily created by bots and shared by so many that it has created an atmosphere of distrust (Zhang & Ghorbani, 2019). Learning how to spot “fake news” and search for information from reliable resources will continue to be an important job of information science professionals as technology advances. The work being done now by organizations such as PolitiFact and Snopes.com only work when users seek out the truth of their information. Though automated programs are being created to help stem the onslaught of “fake news” the best medicine is still going to be human teachers training audiences on how to detect, deflect, and suppress the malicious intents.
References
Ireland, S. (2018). Fake news alerts: Teaching news literacy skills in a meme world. The
Reference Librarian, 59(3), 122-128. DOI: 10.1080/02763877.2018.1463890
Wardle, C. (2017, February 16). Fake news. It’s complicated. First Draft. Retrieved from https://firstdraftnews.org/latest/fake-news-complicated
Zhang, X., & Ghorbani, A. A. (2019). An overview of online fake news: Characterization,
detection, and discussion. Information Processing and Management, 57(2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2019.03.004
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