What you don’t know can’t hurt you: this seems to be the current approach for responding to disinformation by public regulators across the world. Nobody is able to say with any degree of certainty what is actually going on. Read the rest of this entry »
You’re probably more susceptible to misinformation than you think – Darren Lilleker
14 01 2020
Online misinformation works, or so it would seem. One of the more interesting statistics from the 2019 UK general election was that 88% of advertisements posted on social media by the Conservative Party pushed figures that had already been deemed misleading by the UK’s leading fact-checking organisation, Full Fact. And, of course, the Conservatives won the election by a comfortable margin. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Darren Lilleker, Fake News, The Conversation
Categories : Journalism, Social Media
How to spot fake news this election – Amy Binns
12 12 2019
The 2019 UK election campaign has been particularly dispiriting for anyone who cares about the truth. Even established parties have proven they are not above using tricks to manipulate the news. Meanwhile, politicians are quick to shout “fake news” about anything they disagree with, even accurate stories. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Amy Binns, Election 2019, Fake News
Categories : Broadcasting, Journalism
The real news on ‘fake news’: politicians use it to discredit media, and journalists need to fight back – Andrea Carson and Kate Farhall
18 10 2019
During the 2019 Australian general election, a news story about the Labor Party supporting a “death tax” – which turned out to be fake – gained traction on social media. Now, Labor is urging a post-election committee to rule on whether digital platforms like Facebook are harming Australian democracy by allowing the spread of fake news. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Andrea Carson, Fake News, Kate Farhall, The Conversation
Categories : Journalism, Media
Disinfo Wars: a taxonomy of information warfare – Hossein Derakhshan
29 09 2019
In the Information Disorder report for Council of Europe (2017), Claire Wardle and I identified three types of bad-information (mis-, dis-, and malinformation), three phases (creation, (re)production, distribution), and three elements (agent, message, interpreter) to information disorder. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Fake News, Hossein Derakhshan, LSE. Media Policy Project
Categories : Journalism, Social Media
Users (and their bias) are key to fighting fake news on Facebook: AI isn’t smart enough yet – Gianluca Demartini
24 09 2019
The information we encounter online everyday can be misleading, incomplete or fabricated. Being exposed to “fake news” on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can influence our thoughts and decisions. We’ve already seen misinformation interfere with elections in the United States. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Fake News, Gianluca Demartini, The Conversation
Categories : Internet, Journalism, Social Media
Bad News: A Psychological ‘vaccine’ against fake news – Sander van der Linden and Jon Rozenbeek
7 09 2019
Journalists, politicians, academics, and governments all agree that the problem of news manipulation needs to be addressed, even if no one seems to be able to agree on what to call it. The terms ‘fake news’, ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’, and ‘propaganda’ are all used interchangeably. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Bad News, Fake News, LSE. Media Policy Project, Sander van der Linden and Jon Rozenbeek
Categories : Journalism, Media
Case Law, Strasbourg: Brzeziński v. Poland: Fine over ‘false’ information during election campaign violated Article 10 – Ronan Ó Fathaigh
16 08 2019
On 25 July 2019, the European Court of Human Rights delivered an important judgment in Brzeziński v. Poland, (available only in French) concerning a provision in Poland’s election law which allows a court, within 24 hours, to consider whether ‘untrue information’ has been published, and to issue an order prohibiting its further distribution. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Fake News, Ronan O Fathaigh, Strasbourg Observers
Categories : Caselaw, Freedom of expression, Human Rights
Governments are making fake news a crime but it could stifle free speech – Alana Schetzer
21 07 2019
The rapid spread of fake news can influence millions of people, impacting elections and financial markets. A study on the impact of fake news on the 2016 US presidential election, for instance, has found that fake news stories about Hillary Clinton was “very strongly linked” to the defection of voters who supported Barack Obama in the previous election. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Alana Schetzer, Fake News, The Conversation
Categories : Freedom of expression, Journalism, Media Regulation
Journalism vs Churnalism: The push for “quality marks” in online news – Zoe McCallum
26 02 2019
Within a week of one another came two reports on the future of journalism in an age of big tech: The Cairncross Review (on 12 Feb) and The Commons DCMS Committee Final Report into Fake News and Disinformation (14 Feb – but with its excoriating criticism of Facebook, anything but a Valentine to Mark Zuckerberg). Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Cairncross Review, DCMS Committee, Fake News, Zoe McCallum
Categories : Journalism, Media Regulation
