How Can A Hoax Help To Create Social Change

Executive summary

Journalism is in a state of considerable flux. New digital platforms take unleashed innovative journalistic practices that enable novel forms of communication and greater global achieve than at whatever point in human history. But on the other hand, disinformation and hoaxes that are popularly referred to as "fake news" are accelerating and affecting the style individuals interpret daily developments. Driven past foreign actors, denizen journalism, and the proliferation of talk radio and cablevision news, many information systems have get more polarized and contentious, and in that location has been a precipitous decline in public trust in traditional journalism.

Fake news and sophisticated disinformation campaigns are peculiarly problematic in democratic systems, and there is growing debate on how to address these issues without undermining the benefits of digital media. In order to maintain an open, democratic organization, it is of import that government, business, and consumers work together to solve these problems. Governments should promote news literacy and stiff professional person journalism in their societies. The news manufacture must provide high-quality journalism in social club to build public trust and correct fake news and disinformation without legitimizing them. Technology companies should invest in tools that identify fake news, reduce fiscal incentives for those who turn a profit from disinformation, and ameliorate online accountability. Educational institutions should make informing people nearly news literacy a high priority. Finally, individuals should follow a diverseness of news sources, and be skeptical of what they read and watch.

The country of the news media

The news media landscape has changed dramatically over the past decades. Through digital sources, there has been a tremendous increment in the reach of journalism, social media, and public date. Checking for news online—whether through Google, Twitter, Facebook, major newspapers, or local media websites—has get ubiquitous, and smartphone alerts and mobile applications bring the latest developments to people instantaneously around the world. As of 2017, 93 pct of Americans say they receive news online.¹ When asked where they got online news in the final two hours, 36 percent named a news arrangement website or app; 35 percent said social media (which typically means a postal service from a news organization, only can be a friend's commentary); 20 pct recalled a search engine; fifteen percent indicated a news organisation email, text, or alert; 9 percent said it was another source; and 7 percent named a family member email or text (meet Figure 1).²

In general, young people are about likely to become their news through online sources, relying heavily on mobile devices for their communications. Co-ordinate to the Pew Research Center, 55 per centum of smartphone users receive news alerts on their devices. And about 47 per centum of those receiving alerts click through to read the story.³ Increasingly, people can customize information commitment to their personal preferences. For case, it is possible to sign up for news alerts from many organizations so that people hear news relevant to their particular interests.

There have been changes overtime in sources of news overall. Figure 2 shows the results for 2012 to 2017. It demonstrates that the biggest proceeds has been in reliance upon social media. In 2012-2013, 27 percent relied upon social media sites, compared to 51 percentage who did and so in 2017.^iv In contrast, the percentage of Americans relying upon print news has dropped from 38 to 22 percent.

A number of research organizations have found pregnant improvements in digital admission around the earth. For example, the Pew Research Middle has documented through surveys in 21 emerging nations that internet usage has risen from 45 percent in 2013 to 54 pct in 2015. That number still trails the 87 per centum usage effigy seen in 11 developed countries, but in that location clearly have been major gains in many places effectually the world.⁵

Social media sites are very pop in the developing world. As shown in Figure iii, 86 percent of Eye Eastern net users rely upon social networks, compared to 82 percent in Latin America, 76 percentage in Africa, 71 percent in the U.s., 66 pct in Asia and the Pacific, and 65 percent in Europe.

In addition, the Reuters Found for the Study of Journalism has demonstrated important trends in news consumption. It has shown major gains in reliance upon mobile news notifications. The pct of people in the United States making use of this source has risen by 8 pct points, while in that location have been gains of vii per centum points in South Korea and 4 per centum points in Australia. There besides have been increases in the use of news aggregators, digital news sources, and vocalization-activated digital assistants.⁶

Failing trust in the news media

In the U.s.a., in that location is a failing public trust in traditional journalism. The Gallup Poll asked a number of Americans over the past two decades how much trust and confidence they have in mass media reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly. As shown in Effigy 4, the percentage saying they had a cracking deal or fair corporeality of trust dropped from 53 percent in 1997 to 32 percent in 2016.^vii

Between news coverage they don't like and fake news that is manipulative in nature, many Americans question the accuracy of their news. A recent Gallup poll found that only 37 percent believe "news organizations by and large go the facts straight." This is downwards from about half of the country who felt that way in 1998. There is also a startling partisan separate in public assessments. Only 14 percent of Republicans believe the media report the news accurately, compared to 62 percent for Democrats. Even more disturbingly, "a solid majority of the country believes major news organizations routinely produce false information."⁸

This pass up in public trust in media is dangerous for democracies. With the current political situation in a country of great flux in the U.Due south. and around the world, at that place are questions apropos the quality of the information available to the full general public and the touch of marginal media organizations on voter assessments. These developments have complicated the manner in which people hold leaders accountable and the fashion in which our political system operates.

Challenges facing the digital media landscape

As the overall media landscape has inverse, at that place take been several ominous developments. Rather than using digital tools to inform people and elevate civic discussion, some individuals accept taken advantage of social and digital platforms to deceive, mislead, or harm others through creating or disseminating false news and disinformation.

Fake news is generated past outlets that masquerade as actual media sites simply promulgate fake or misleading accounts designed to deceive the public. When these activities motion from desultory and haphazard to organized and systematic efforts, they get disinformation campaigns with the potential to disrupt campaigns and governance in entire countries.⁹

Every bit an analogy, the United States saw apparently organized efforts to disseminate faux material in the 2016 presidential election. A Buzzfeed assay plant that the virtually widely shared simulated news stories in 2016 were about "Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS, Hillary Clinton being disqualified from holding federal office, and the FBI manager receiving millions from the Clinton Foundation."^x Using a social media cess, it claimed that the xx largest false stories generated 8.7 one thousand thousand shares, reactions, and comments, compared to 7.4 million generated by the acme 20 stories from 19 major news sites.

When [fake news] activities move from sporadic and haphazard to organized and systematic efforts, they become disinformation campaigns with the potential to disrupt campaigns and governance in entire countries.

Fake content was widespread during the presidential campaign. Facebook has estimated that 126 million of its platform users saw articles and posts promulgated past Russian sources. Twitter has found 2,752 accounts established past Russian groups that tweeted 1.iv 1000000 times in 2016.¹¹ The widespread nature of these disinformation efforts led Columbia Police force School Professor Tim Wu to ask: "Did Twitter impale the First Subpoena?"¹²

A specific example of disinformation was the so-called "Pizzagate" conspiracy, which started on Twitter. The story falsely alleged that sexually abused children were subconscious at Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor, and that Hillary Clinton knew well-nigh the sex ring. It seemed so realistic to some that a North Carolina homo named Edgar Welch drove to the capital metropolis with an assault weapon to personally search for the abused kids. Later being arrested by the police, Welch said "that he had read online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves and that he wanted to meet for himself if they were there. [Welch] stated that he was armed."¹³

A post-ballot survey of 3,015 American adults suggested that information technology is difficult for news consumers to distinguish fake from real news. Chris Jackson of Ipsos Public Affairs undertook a survey that found "fake news headlines fool American adults about 75 percent of the fourth dimension" and "'fake news' was remembered past a significant portion of the electorate and those stories were seen as credible."^xiv Another online survey of ane,200 individuals after the election past Chase Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow establish that one-half of those who saw these false stories believed their content.^xv

Imitation news stories are not just a problem in the The states, simply afflict other countries around the world. For example, Bharat has been plagued by simulated news concerning cyclones, public health, and child corruption. When intertwined with religious or caste bug, the combination can be explosive and lead to violence. People have been killed when false rumors have spread through digital media about child abductions.¹⁶

Sometimes, false news stories are amplified and disseminated quickly through false accounts, or automated "bots." Most bots are beneficial in nature, and some major sites similar Facebook ban bots and seek to remove them, just there are social bots that are "malicious entities designed specifically with the purpose to harm. These bots mislead, exploit, and manipulate social media soapbox with rumors, spam, malware, misinformation, slander, or even only dissonance."¹⁷

This data can distort ballot campaigns, affect public perceptions, or shape human emotions. Recent research has found that "elusive bots could easily infiltrate a population of unaware humans and manipulate them to impact their perception of reality, with unpredictable results."¹⁸ In some cases, they tin can "engage in more than circuitous types of interactions, such as entertaining conversations with other people, commenting on their posts, and answering their questions." Through designated keywords and interactions with influential posters, they tin magnify their influence and affect national or global conversations, especially resonating with like-minded clusters of people.¹⁹

An analysis after the 2016 ballot found that automated bots played a major role in disseminating fake information on Twitter. According to Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University, "what bots are doing is really getting this matter trending on Twitter. These bots are providing the online crowds that are providing legitimacy."²⁰ With digital content, the more posts that are shared or liked, the more traffic they generate. Through these means, it becomes relatively easy to spread faux information over the internet. For example, as graphic content spreads, often with inflammatory comments attached, information technology can get viral and exist seen every bit credible data by people far from the original post.

Everyone has a responsibleness to gainsay the scourge of faux news. This ranges from supporting investigative journalism, reducing financial incentives for imitation news, and improving digital literacy amongst the general public.

False data is unsafe because of its power to affect public opinion and electoral discourse. According to David Lazer, "such situations can enable discriminatory and inflammatory ideas to enter public discourse and be treated as fact. Once embedded, such ideas can in turn be used to create scapegoats, to normalize prejudices, to harden us-versus-them mentalities and even, in extreme cases, to catalyze and justify violence."²¹ As he points out, factors such equally source brownie, repetition, and social pressure affect information flows and the extent to which misinformation is taken seriously. When viewers meet trusted sources repeat certain points, they are more likely to exist influenced by that material.

Contempo polling data demonstrate how harmful these practices accept become to the reputations of reputable platforms. Co-ordinate to the Reuters Plant for the Written report of Journalism, but 24 percent of Americans today believe social media sites "practice a good job separating fact from fiction, compared to twoscore percentage for the news media."²² That demonstrates how much these developments have hurt public discourse.

The risks of regulation

Government harassment of journalists is a serious trouble in many parts of the earth. United Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur David Kaye notes that "all also many leaders see journalism equally the enemy, reporters as rogue actors, tweeps as terrorists, and bloggers as blasphemers."²³ In Freedom House'south almost recent study on global press freedoms, researchers found that media freedom was at its lowest indicate in xiii years and there were "unprecedented threats to journalists and media outlets in major democracies and new moves by authoritarian states to control the media, including beyond their borders."²⁴

Journalists can often exist accused of generating imitation news and there have been numerous cases of legitimate journalists beingness arrested or their work being subject to official scrutiny. In Egypt, an Al-Jazeera producer was arrested on charges of "incitement against state institutions and broadcasting fake news with the aim of spreading chaos."²⁵ This was after the network circulate a documentary criticizing Egyptian military conscription.

Some governments have also moved to create authorities regulations to command data flows and censor content on social media platforms. Indonesia has established a government agency to "monitor news circulating online" and "tackle imitation news."²⁶ In the Philippines, Senator Joel Villanueva has introduced a bill that would impose upward to a five-yr prison term for those who publish or distribute "simulated news," which the legislation defined every bit activities that "cause panic, division, chaos, violence, and hate, or those which exhibit a propaganda to blacken or discredit one's reputation."²⁷

Critics have condemned the bill'southward definition of social networks, misinformation, hate speech, and illegal spoken communication as too broad, and believe that information technology risks criminalizing investigative journalism and limiting freedom of expression. Newspaper columnist Jarius Bondoc noted "the bill is prone to abuse. A bigot administration can apply it to suppress the opposition. By prosecuting critics as news fakers, the regime can stifle legitimate dissent. Whistleblowers, not the grafters, would be imprisoned and fined for daring to talk. Investigative journalists would cram the jails."²⁸

In a state of affairs of false information, it is tempting for legal authorities to deal with offensive content and false news past forbidding or regulating it. For example, in Deutschland, legislation was passed in June 2017 that forces digital platforms to delete hate speech and misinformation. It requires large social media companies to "delete illegal, racist or slanderous comments and posts within 24 hours." Companies tin can exist fined up to $57 million for content that is non deleted from the platform, such every bit Nazi symbols, Holocaust denials, or language classified as hate speech communication.²⁹

The German legislation's critics accept complained that its definition of "evidently" illegal speech communication risks censorship and a loss of liberty of voice communication. As an illustration, the law applies the rules to social media platforms in the state with more than ii million users. Commentators have noted that is not a reasonable manner to ascertain relevant social networks. At that place could exist much smaller networks that inflict greater social impairment.

Overly restrictive regulation of internet platforms in open societies sets a dangerous precedent and tin can encourage disciplinarian regimes to keep and/or expand censorship.

In addition, information technology is not always clear how to identify objectionable content.^thirty While it is pretty clear how to define speech advocating violence or harm to other people, it is less apparent when talking about hate speech communication or "defamation of the state." What is considered "hateful" to ane individual may not be to someone else. There is some ambiguity regarding what constitutes hate speech in a digital context. Does information technology include mistakes in reporting, stance piece commentary, political satire, leader misstatements, or outright fabrications? Watchdog organizations complained that "overly broad language could affect a range of platforms and services and put decisions about what is illegal content into the easily of private companies that may be inclined to over-censor in order to avoid potential fines."³¹

Overly restrictive regulation of internet platforms in open societies sets a dangerous precedent and can encourage authoritarian regimes to go on and/or expand censorship. This volition restrict global freedom of expression and generate hostility to democratic governance. Democracies that place undue limits on speech take chances legitimizing authoritarian leaders and their efforts to crackdown basic homo rights. It is crucial that efforts to improve news quality non weaken journalistic content or the investigative landscape facing reporters.

Other approaches

There are several alternatives to deal with falsehoods and disinformation that can exist undertaken past various organizations. Many of these ideas represent solutions that gainsay false news and disinformation without endangering freedom of expression and investigative journalism.

Government responsibilities

i) One of the most of import thing governments around the earth tin can practice is to encourage contained, professional journalism. The general public needs reporters who help them brand sense of complicated developments and deal with the e'er-changing nature of social, economic, and political events. Many areas are going through transformation that I elsewhere accept chosen "megachanges," and these shifts have created enormous anger, anxiety, and defoliation.³² In a time of considerable turmoil, it is vital to accept a healthy Fourth Estate that is independent of public authorities.

ii) Governments should avert crackdowns on the news media'southward ability to cover the news. Those activities limit freedom of expression and hamper the ability of journalists to cover political developments. The Us should set up a proficient example with other countries. If American leaders censor or restrict the news media, information technology encourages other countries to do the aforementioned affair.

3) Governments should avert censoring content and making online platforms liable for misinformation. This could adjourn gratis expression, making people hesitant to share their political opinions for fear it could exist censored as fake news. Such overly restrictive regulation could set a unsafe precedent and inadvertently encourage authoritarian regimes to weaken freedom of expression.

News industry actions

1) The news manufacture should continue to focus on high-quality journalism that builds trust and attracts greater audiences. An encouraging development is that many news organizations have experienced major gains in readership and viewership over the last couple of years, and this helps to put major news outlets on a better financial footing. But there have been precipitous drops in public confidence in the news media in contempo years, and this has damaged the power of journalists to report the news and concord leaders answerable. During a time of considerable chaos and disorder, the world needs a potent and feasible news media that informs citizens about current events and long-term trends.

ii) It is important for news organizations to phone call out simulated news and disinformation without legitimizing them. They can do this by relying upon their in-house professionals and well-respected fact-checkers. In order to brainwash users about news sites that are created to mislead, nonprofit organizations such as Politifact, Factcheck.org, and Snopes estimate the accurateness of leader claims and write stories detailing the truth or lack thereof of item developments. These sources have become a visible office of ballot campaigns and candidate assessment in the United States and elsewhere. Inquiry by Dartmouth College Professor Brendan Nyhan has establish that labeling a Facebook post as "disputed" reduces the percentage of readers believing the false news by 10 percentage points.³³ In addition, Melissa Zimdars, a communication and media professor at Merrimack Higher, has created a listing of 140 websites that use "distorted headlines and decontextualized or dubious information."³⁴ This helps people rails promulgators of imitation news.

Information technology is of import for news organizations to phone call out fake news and disinformation without legitimizing them.

Similar efforts are underway in other countries. In Ukraine, an arrangement known as StopFake relies upon "peer-to-peer counter propaganda" to dispel false stories. Its researchers assess "news stories for signs of falsified evidence, such as manipulated or misrepresented images and quotes" besides equally looking for evidence of systematic misinformation campaigns. Over the by few years, it has establish Russian social media posts alleging that Ukrainian military forces were engaging in atrocities against Russian nationalists living in eastern Ukraine or that they had swastikas painted on their vehicles.³⁵ In a related vein, the French news outlet Le Monde has a "database of more than 600 news sites that accept been identified and tagged every bit 'satire,' 'existent,' [or] 'fake.'"³⁶

Crowdsourcing draws on the expertise of large numbers of readers or viewers to discern possible bug in news coverage, and it tin can be an constructive way to deal with fake news. One example is The Guardian's effort to depict on the wisdom of the oversupply to assess 450,000 documents nigh Parliament fellow member expenses in the Britain. It received the documents but lacked the personnel chop-chop to analyze their newsworthiness. To bargain with this situation, the newspaper created a public website that allowed ordinary people to read each document and designate it into 1 of four news categories: 1) "not interesting," 2) "interesting just known," 3) "interesting," or 4) "investigate this."³⁷ Digital platforms allow news organizations to engage large numbers of readers this way. The Guardian, for example, was able "to attract 20,000 readers to review 170,000 documents in the first fourscore hours."[38] These individuals helped the newspaper to assess which documents were most problematic and therefore worthy of further investigation and ultimately news coverage.

Technology company responsibilities

1) Engineering firms should invest in technology to detect fake news and identify it for users through algorithms and crowdsourcing. In that location are innovations in fake news and hoax detection that are useful to media platforms. For case, fake news detection tin can be automated, and social media companies should invest in their ability to do and then. Former FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler argues that "public involvement algorithms" tin help in identifying and publicizing simulated news posts and therefore be a valuable tool to protect consumers.³⁹

In this vein, reckoner scientist William Yang Wang, relying upon PolitiFact.com, created a public database of 12,836 statements labeled for accuracy and developed an algorithm that compared "surface-level linguistic patterns" from faux assertions to wording contained in digital news stories. This immune him to integrate text and analysis, and identify stories that rely on fake data. His conclusion is that "when combining meta-information with text, significant improvements can be achieved for fine-grained false news detection."⁴⁰ In a similar approach, Eugenio Tacchini and colleagues say it is possible to identify hoaxes with a high degree of accuracy. Testing this proposition with a database of 15,500 Facebook posts and over 909,000 users, they find an accuracy rate of over 99 percentage and say exterior organizations can utilise their automated tool to pinpoint sites engaging in fake news.⁴¹ They utilise this consequence to advocate the development of automatic hoax detection systems.

Algorithms are powerful vehicles in the digital era and assistance shape people's quest for information and how they find online cloth. They tin can also help with automatic hoax detection, and in that location are means to place fake news to educate readers without censoring it. According to Kelly Born of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, digital platforms should down rank or flag dubious stories, and discover a way to meliorate identify and rank authentic content to improve information-gathering and presentation.⁴² As an example, several media platforms have instituted "disputed news" tags that warn readers and viewers about contentious content. This could be anything from information that is outright false to material where major parties disagree about its factualness. It is a way to warn readers well-nigh possible inaccuracies in online information. Wikipedia is another platform that does this. Since it publishes crowdsourced textile, it is subject to competing claims regarding factual accuracy. It deals with this trouble by adding tags to fabric identifying it as "disputed news."

Nevertheless this cannot be relied on past itself. A survey of vii,500 individuals undertaken by David Rand and Gordon Pennycook of Yale Academy debate that alerting readers most inaccurate information doesn't help much. They explored the bear on of independent fact-checkers and merits that "the being of 'disputed' tags made participants just 3.seven percentage points more likely to correctly approximate headlines as faux."⁴³ The authors worry that the outpouring of imitation news overwhelms fact-checkers and makes information technology impossible to evaluate disinformation.

Algorithms are powerful vehicles in the digital era, and they tin help constitute automatic hoax detection systems.

ii) These companies shouldn't make coin from fake news manufacturers and should brand information technology hard to monetize hoaxes. Information technology is of import to weaken financial incentives for bad content, particularly faux news and disinformation, as the manufacturing of fake news is often financially motivated. Like all clickbait, simulated information can exist profitable due to advertising revenues or general brand-building. Indeed, during the 2016 presidential campaign, trolls in countries such as Macedonia reported making a lot of coin through their dissemination of erroneous material. While social media platforms like Facebook accept made it harder for users to profit from fake news,⁴⁴ ad networks can do much more to stop the monetization of faux news, and publishers tin cease carrying the advertizing networks that turn down to exercise so.

3) Strengthen online accountability through stronger real-proper noun policies and enforcement against simulated accounts. Firms can do this through "real-name registration," which is the requirement that internet users have to provide the hosting platform with their truthful identity. This makes it easier to hold individuals accountable for what they post or disseminate online and also stops people from hiding behind imitation names when they make offensive comments or appoint in prohibited activities.⁴⁵ This is relevant to false news and misinformation because of the likelihood that people will engage in worse behavior if they believe their actions are bearding and non likely to be made public. As famed Justice Louis Brandeis long ago observed, "sunshine is said to be the best of disinfectants."⁴⁶ It helps to proceed people honest and accountable for their public activities.

Educational institutions

1) Funding efforts to enhance news literacy should be a high priority for governments. This is peculiarly the instance with people who are going online for the first fourth dimension. For those individuals, it is hard to distinguish simulated from existent news, and they need to learn how to evaluate news sources, not have at face up value everything they see on social media or digital news sites. Helping people become better consumers of online data is crucial as the world moves towards digital immersion. There should be coin to support partnerships between journalists, businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations to encourage news literacy.

two) Education is especially important for immature people. Research by Joseph Kahne and Benjamin Bowyer found that third-party assessments matter to young readers. Nevertheless, their effects are limited. Those statements judged to be inaccurate reduced reader persuasion, although to a lower extent than alignment with the individual's prior policy beliefs.⁴⁷ If the person already agreed with the statement, it was more difficult for fact-checking to sway them against the information.

How the public can protect itself

1) Individuals tin protect themselves from false news and disinformation by following a multifariousness of people and perspectives. Relying upon a pocket-sized number of like-minded news sources limits the range of textile available to people and increases the odds they may autumn victim to hoaxes or simulated rumors. This method is not entirely fool-proof, but it increases the odds of hearing well-counterbalanced and diverse viewpoints.

2) In the online world, readers and viewers should be skeptical about news sources. In the rush to encourage clicks, many online outlets resort to misleading or sensationalized headlines. They emphasize the provocative or the attention-grabbing, even if that news claw is deceptive. News consumers have to keep their guard up and understand that not everything they read is authentic and many digital sites specialize in false news. Learning how to judge news sites and protect oneself from inaccurate data is a high priority in the digital age.

Conclusion

From this analysis, it is clear in that location are a number of means to promote timely, authentic, and civil discourse in the face of fake news and disinformation.⁴⁸ In today's globe, at that place is considerable experimentation taking identify with online news platforms. News organizations are testing products and services that help them place detest speech and language that incites violence. There is a major flowering of new models and approaches that bodes well for the future of online journalism and media consumption.

At the aforementioned fourth dimension, everyone has a responsibleness to combat the scourge of imitation news and disinformation. This ranges from the promotion of strong norms on professional journalism, supporting investigative journalism, reducing financial incentives for fake news, and improving digital literacy among the general public. Taken together, these steps would further quality discourse and weaken the environment that has propelled disinformation around the globe.

---

Note: I wish to thank Hillary Schaub and Quinn Bornstein for their valuable research assistance. They were very helpful in finding useful materials for this project.

The Brookings Establishment is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent enquiry and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The conclusions and recommendations of any Brookings publication are solely those of its author(s), and practise not reverberate the views of the Institution, its direction, or its other scholars.

Back up for this publication was generously provided past Facebook. Brookings recognizes that the value it provides is in its absolute commitment to quality, independence, and impact. Activities supported past its donors reverberate this commitment.

Footnotes

1. Pew Research Middle, "Digital News Fact Canvas," August vii, 2017.
2. Pew Enquiry Center, "How Americans Encounter, Recall, and Act Upon Digital News," February 9, 2017.
3. Pew Research Center, "More Than Half of Smartphone Users Go News Alerts, Simply Few Get Them Ofttimes," September 8, 2016.
4. Nic Newman, "Digital News Sources," Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2017.
5. Jacob Poushter, "Smartphone Ownership and Internet Usage Continues to Climb in Emerging Economies," Pew Inquiry Center, February 22, 2016.
6. Nic Newman, "Digital News Sources," Reuters Found for the Report of Journalism, 2017.
7. Gallup Poll, "Americans' Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low," September 14, 2016.
8. Gallup Poll, "Republicans', Democrats' Views of Media Accuracy Diverge," Baronial 25, 2017.
9. Jen Weedon, William Nuland, and Alex Stamos, "Data Operations," Facebook, Apr 27, 2017.
10. Craig Silverman, "This Assay Shows How Viral Imitation Ballot News Stories Outperformed Real News on Facebook," BuzzFeedNews, Nov 16, 2016.
11. Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin, "Russian Content on Facebook, Google and Twitter Reached Far More Users Than Companies First Disclosed, Congressional Testimony Says," Washington Postal service, October thirty, 2017.
12. Tim Wu, "Did Twitter Impale the Get-go Amendment?", New York Times, Oct 28, 2017, p. !a9.
13. Marc Fisher, John Cox, and Peter Hermann, "Pizzagate: From Rumor, to Hashtag, to Gunfire in D.C.," Washington Mail, December 6, 2016.
14. Craig Silverman and Jeremy Singer-Vine, "Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe Information technology, New Survey Says," BuzzFeed News, December 6, 2016.
15. Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow, "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," NBER Working Newspaper, April, 2017, p. four.
16. Vidhi Doshi, "India's Millions of New Internet Users are Falling for Fake News – Sometimes with Deadly Consequences," Washington Mail service, October one, 2017.
17. Emilio Ferrara, Onur Varol, Clayton Davis, Filippo Menczer, and Alessandro Flammini, "The Rise of Social Bots," Communications of the ACM, July, 2016.
18. Emilio Ferrara, Onur Varol, Clayton Davis, Filippo Menczer, and Alessandro Flammini, "The Rise of Social Bots," Communications of the ACM, July, 2016.
19. Michela Del Vicario, Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zollo, Fabio Petroni, Antonio Scala, Guido Caldarelli, Eugene Stanley, and Walter Quattrociocchi, "The Spreading of Misinformation Online," PNAS, Jan xix, 2016.
20. Marc Fisher, John Cox, and Peter Hermann, "Pizzagate: From Rumor, to Hashtag, to Gunfire in D.C.," Washington Post, Dec 6, 2016.
21. David Lazer, Matthew Baum, Nir Grinberg, Lisa Friedland, Kenneth Joseph, Will Hobbs, and Carolina Mattsson, "Combating False News: An Agenda for Enquiry and Action," Harvard Shorenstein Centre on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, May, 2017, p. 5.
22. Nic Newman, "Digital News Sources," Reuters Found for the Study of Journalism, 2017.
23. Office of the Un High Commissioner for Human Rights, "UN Expert Urges Governments to Finish 'Demonization' of Critical Media and Protect Journalists," May 3, 2017.
24. Freedom House, "Printing Freedom's Night Horizon," 2017.
25. Committee to Protect Journalists, "Egypt Arrests Al-Jazeera Producer on Fake News Charge," Dec 27, 2016.
26. Straits Times, "Indonesia to Set Up Agency to Combat Fake News," January 6, 2017.
27. Mong Palatino, "Philippine Senator Moves to Criminalize 'Fake News' – Could This Atomic number 82 to Censorship?", Global Voices, July 7, 2017.
28. Mong Palatino, "Philippine Senator Moves to Criminalize 'Imitation News' – Could This Pb to Censorship?", Global Voices, July 7, 2017.
29. Melissa Eddy and Marking Scott, "Delete Hate Speech or Pay Up, Germany Tells Social Media Companies," New York Times, June xxx, 2017.
30. European Digital Rights, "Recommendations on the German Neb 'Improving Law Enforcement on Social Networks'", June twenty, 2017.
31. Courtney Radsch, "Proposed German Legislation Threatens Broad Cyberspace Censorship," Committee to Protect Journalists, April twenty, 2017.
32. Darrell M. West, Megachange: Economic Disruption, Political Upheaval, and Social Strife in the 21^st Century, Brookings Institution Printing, 2016.
33. Brendan Nyhan, "Why the Fact-Checking at Facebook Needs to Be Checked," New York Times, October 23, 2017.
34. Kelly Born, "The Future of Truth: Tin can Philanthropy Assistance Mitigate Misinformation?", William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, June 8, 2017 and Ananya Bhattacharya, "Hither's a Handy Cheat Sheet of False and Misleading 'News' Sites," Quartz, November 17, 2016.
35. Maria Haigh, Thomas Haigh, and Nadine Kozak, "Stopping Fake News: The Piece of work Practices of Peer-to-Peer Counter Propaganda," Announcer Studies, March 31, 2017.
36. Kelly Born, "The Future of Truth: Can Philanthropy Help Mitigate Misinformation?", William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, June viii, 2017.
37. Reinhard Handler and Raul Conill, "Open Data, Crowdsouring and Game Mechanics: A Case Study on Borough Participation in the Digital Age," Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2016.
38. Reinhard Handler and Raul Conill, "Open Data, Crowdsouring and Game Mechanics: A Case Report on Civic Participation in the Digital Historic period," Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2016.
39. Tom Wheeler, "Using 'Public Interest Algorithms' to Tackle the Problems Created by Social Media Algorithms," Brookings TechTank, November 1, 2017.
40. William Yang Wang, "'Liar, Liar Pants on Fire', A New Benchmark Dataset for Simulated News Detection", Computation and Language, May, 2017.
41. Eugenio Tacchini, Gabriele Ballarin, Marco Della Vedova, Stefano Moret, and Luca de Alfaro, "Some Like It Hoax: Automated False News Detection in Social Networks, Human being-Reckoner Interaction, Apr 25, 2017.
42. Kelly Built-in, "The Future of Truth: Can Philanthropy Help Mitigate Misinformation?", William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, June eight, 2017.
43. Jason Schwartz, "Study: Tagging Fake News on Facebook Doesn't Work," Pol, September thirteen, 2017, p. 19.
44. Mike Isaac, "Facebook Mounts Endeavour to Limit Tide of Fake News," New York Times, December xv, 2016.
45. Zhixiong Liao, "An Economic Assay on Internet Regulation in Prc and Proposals to Policy and Law Makers," International Journal of Technology Policy and Law, 2016.
46. Brainy Quote, "Louis Brandeis," undated.
47. Joseph Kahne and Benjamin Bowyer, "Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age: Confronting the Challenges of Motivated Reasoning and Misinformation," American Educational Research Journal, February, 2017.
48. Darrell M. Due west and Beth Stone, "Nudging News Producers and Consumers Toward More Thoughtful, Less Polarized Discourse," Brookings Institution Center for Effective Public Management, February, 2014.

[On platforms banning contents over government requests] In that location's only so many shades of grey, and I fear that many other governments volition make requests of many other platforms in many other political contexts to take downward content that they view equally problematic or opposed to their interests.

Source: https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-to-combat-fake-news-and-disinformation/

Share this post