Open Access
"News you don't believe": Audience perspectives on fake news
TLDR
Nielsen et al. as mentioned in this paper analyzed data from 8 focus groups and a survey of online news users to understand audience perspectives on fake news, and found that people see the difference between fake news and news as one of degree rather than a clear distinction.Abstract:
In this RISJ Factsheet by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Lucas Graves, we analyse data from 8 focus groups and a survey of online news users to understand audience perspectives on fake news. On the basis of focus group discussions and survey data from the first half of 2017 from the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Finland, we find that: • People see the difference between 'fake news' and news as one of degree rather than a clear distinction; • When asked to provide examples of 'fake news', people identify poor journalism, propaganda (including both lying politicians and hyperpartisan content), and some kinds of advertising more frequently than false information designed to masquerade as news reports; • 'Fake news' is experienced as a problem driven by a combination of some news media who publish it, some politicians who contribute to it, and some platforms that help distribute it; • People are aware of the 'fake news' discussion and see “fake news” in part as a politicized buzzword used by politicians and others to criticize news media and platform companies; • The 'fake news' discussion plays out against a backdrop of low trust in news media, politicians, and platforms alike—a generalized scepticism toward most of the actors that dominate the contemporary information environment; • Most people identify individual news media that they consider consistently reliable sources and would turn to for verified information, but they disagree as to which and very few sources are seen as reliable by all. Our findings suggest that, from an audience perspective, 'fake news' is only in part about fabricated news reports narrowly defined, and much more about a wider discontent with the information landscape – including news media and politicians as well as platform companies. Tackling false news narrowly speaking is important, but it will not address the broader issue that people feel much of the information they come across, especially online, consists of poor journalism, political propaganda, or misleading forms of advertising and sponsored content.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Fake news as a two-dimensional phenomenon: a framework and research agenda
TL;DR: Based on an extensive literature review, the authors suggest that fake news alludes to two dimensions of political communication: the fake news genre (i.e., the deliberate creation of pseudojournalistic di...
Journal ArticleDOI
“Fake News” Is Not Simply False Information: A Concept Explication and Taxonomy of Online Content:
TL;DR: An explication of “fake news” that, as a concept, has ballooned to include more than simply false information, with partisans weaponizing it to cast aspersions on the veracity of claims made by those who are politically opposed to them is conducted.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Paradox of Participation Versus Misinformation: Social Media, Political Engagement, and the Spread of Misinformation
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the effects of informational uses of social media are not well understood, and that the mechanisms by which users of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter spread misinformation are still poorly understood.
Journal ArticleDOI
Resilience to Online Disinformation: A Framework for Cross-National Comparative Research:
TL;DR: Online disinformation is considered a major challenge for modern democracies as mentioned in this paper, and it is widely understood as misleading content produced to generate profits, pursue political goals, or maliciously deceive people.
Journal ArticleDOI
Fake News as Discursive Integration: An Analysis of Sites That Publish False, Misleading, Hyperpartisan and Sensational Information
TL;DR: After the 2016 US presidential election, the concept of fake news captured popular attention, but conversations lacked a clear conceptualization and used the label in elastic ways to describe vario... as discussed by the authors.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election
Hunt Allcott,Matthew Gentzkow +1 more
TL;DR: The authors found that people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks, and that the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them.
Book
Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited
TL;DR: In this article, Pippa Norris examines the symptoms by comparing system support in more than fifty societies worldwide, challenging the pervasive claim that most established democracies have experienced a steadily rising tide of political disaffection during the third-wave era.
Journal ArticleDOI
Selective Exposure in the Age of Social Media: Endorsements Trump Partisan Source Affiliation When Selecting News Online
Solomon Messing,Sean J. Westwood +1 more
TL;DR: It is hypothesized that social media’s distinctive feature, social endorsements, trigger several decision heuristics that suggest utility, and it is demonstrated that stronger social endorsements increase the probability that people select content and that their presence reduces partisan selective exposure to levels indistinguishable from chance.
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