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OCTOBER 11,2017 Understanding the lifecycle of fake news in a digital age Experts discuss the origins and spread of fake news stories in the internet era Patrick Larsen Contributor | @elonnewsnetwork President Donald Trump pop ularized the term “fake news” during his 2016 presidential cam paign when he used it to label the content of numerous news outlets such as CNN and Buzzfeed. Trumps use of “fake news” is one explanation for the populari ty of the term, but his use of the term is oversimplified — “fake news” can describe a wide variety of articles, ranging from The On ion writing about Anthony Weiner sending an “Apology Sext to Entire Clinton Campaign,” to Alex Jones of Info Wars claiming Lady Gaga was ready to perform a satanic rit ual at the Super Bowl. Claire Wardle, strategy and re search leader at First Draft News, said the first step to understanding fake news is knowing the differ ence between misinformation and disinformation - misinformation being “the inadvertent sharing of false information,” and disinfor mation being “the deliberate cre ation and sharing of information known to be false.” Specific names are helpful, if not essential, when discussing fake news. In his article for BuzzFeed News, “This Is How Your Hy perpartisan Political News Gets Made,” Buzzfeed News media ed itor Craig Silverman asked why two articles about Kellyanne Con way from entirely different sites, one liberal and one conservative, looked almost identical. “Using domain registration re cords and Google Analytics and AdSense IDs, BuzzFeed News de termined that both sites are owned by American News LLC of Miami,” Silverman said. Silverman found that Amer ican News LLC is tied to several sites that post clickbait articles. These sites are usually monetarily focused, putting traffic-generating content ahead of the truth. But fake news is not just a US. phenomenon. The origins of fake news A town in Macedonia that ' gained attention during the elec tion for being, “the registered home of at least 100 pro-Trump ' websites,” said Samanth Subrama- nian of Wired. It is unclear how much these websites affected election, but it is clear why so many of these sites and articles came to the forefront of our attention — money. “Boris,” the main subject of Subramanian’s article, dropped out of high school to run pro-Trump websites. It paid off, too. “Between August and Novem ber, Boris earned nearly $16,000 off his two pro-Trump websites," Subramanian said. “The average monthly salary in Macedonia is $371.” Some believe the most unset tling origin of fake news stories are intentional misinformation campaigns. Essentially, these are social media campaigns that rely on profiling all individual mem bers of a targeted group, weTl say voters in a presidential election, and give them bits of information that are tailored to them. TYPES OF MIS- AND DISINFORMATION Satire or parody: No intention to cause harm but has potential to fool False connection: - - When headlines, visuals or captions don’t support the content Misleading content: Misleading use of information to frame an issue or individual False context: When genuine content is shared with false contextual information Imposter content: When genuine sources are impersonated Manipulated content: when genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive Fabricated content: New content is false, designed to deceive and do harm That means that all of a per son’s likes, comments, friends and countless other data points could be gathered by one of these com panies to feed them tailored pro paganda. This tactic was used by Cam bridge Analytica (CA), a data an alytics firm hired by the Trump campaign. Essentially, CA’s job was to at tempt to individually profile every American voter using data gath ered from social media, internet history, ad interactions and many more data sets. CA isn’t the only organization gathering information from inter net histories, just as it wasn’t the only distributor of propaganda. Jonathan Albright, assistant professor of communications at Elon, said he wanted to figure out exactly where it was coming from. “For the most part. I’m looking at fake news from a system-level perspective,” Albright said in re search published by Medium. “I found evidence that many factors are overlooked in the fake news debate. These include ad tracking technology, content delivery and web hosting providers, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and that mis information tends to flow from smaller sites in the hyper-biased political news sphere into social media platforms.” As previously mentioned, Cambridge Analytica (CA) used internet data points gathered from ; individual voters to create person ality profiles on each different per son. From there, advertising could : be targeted on a level mostly un precedented in U.S. politics. How does it spread? When it comes to targeted fake news campaigns, it is not so much about people falling for it as it’s about people having it fed to them strategically. This is a good lens through which to look at the fake news seen today. Fake news takes ad vantage of social media and search history “echo chambers” by being sensational. It uses language that preys on people’s existing preju dices. Breitbart, a well-known fake news publication, has plenty of headlines that do just this. Take for example. “Planned Parenthood’s Fllf PHOTO BV MALI TAUXE Body Count Under Cecile Rich ards Is Up to Half a Holocaust.” This is an article written by former senior editor Milo Yiannopou- los about undercover videos of Planned Parenthood employees. The article itself is filled with in accurate or misleading statements about the business model of Planned Parenthood. All of this is done to fire up pro-life individu als in order to get more shares and push Breitbart’s ideology. At the end of the day, it’s tough to say what the best course of ac tion is for those who believe fake news is a systematic problem. I dont think there is an easy fix,” Albright said. “What’s cur rently happening is a problem that will never really disappear.” Fact checking to the rescue Alexios Mantzarlis, faculty and director at Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network, said he doesnt think we should sit back and watch the problem grow. He thinks we should put a stronger emphasis on fact cheeking. In his article, “Journalism can’t afford for corrections to be next victim of‘fake news’ frenzy,” Man tzarlis wrote about the threat to fact checking posed by the term lake news.” In this instance, a newspaper was fact checking its own work af ter publishing an unfortunate, but mostly innocuous error. yie Texas newspaper’s top headline on Feh. 21 incorrectly indicated that Lt. Gen, McMaster Vice President Mike Pence - rather than the out- going National Security Adviser Michael Flynn,” Mantzarlis said Ihe error must have been hor- HOW TO DEAL WITH FAKE NEWS Spot it: Understand warning siai, ■ Sloppy or lazy website lavou , ■ Sensational/partisan lanmat Lack of sources ^ • Overwhelming advertisements Fact Check: Search for quotes to verify context/accuracy Use a credible source Find original source of article’s info — is it reliable? Search for the story on Google — does the info that pops up align? ' Determine credibilty of author Use Snopes and AllSlides to see if the article is biased or not factual What's Next? Take a note of the website'1 remember to either avoid it or be extra careful around it in the future • If found on Facebook, report it — the company has promised to fight fake news Practice fact checking - learn what sites are best sources of facts President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. At the time, Tmmp was still locked in a battle to become the Republican party’s nominee. rifying to the newspaper, but it seems more comedic than prob lematic when looking back. That’s the opinion of Mantzarlis — not so much of some commenters. “Hey, did anyone think of proofreading your headline today before the paper went to press?’ reader Barbara Tyler said. “I am pretty sure Trump did not replace his vice president. Fake news at its best.- Sometimes I wonder why 1 continue to subscribe to your pa per.” This sort of outlook goes hand in hand with why fact checking is so important to Mantzarlis. Fact checking seems to work, too - to a certain extent. In anoth er article, “Fact-checking changes minds but not votes, according to new research,” Mantzarlis dis cussed the findings of a study Roy al Society Open Science. The study worked by asking people to assess several different statements used during the presi dential campaign. Some were fac tual, others were not, some were attributed, others were not. From there, iparticipants were asked to assess the statements after seeing a fact-check either confirming or denying it. ^The results are clear; Reg^rd- lessiof partisan preference, belief in Trump falsehoods fell after these were corrected,” Mantzarlis said. This study did not show that fact-checking has a measurable impact on ballot choices, but that it does hold weight against misin* formation. John Robinson, adjunct prO' fessor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and for mer editor of the Greensboro News and Record, said he thinks that fact checking is an imperfect solution. “There are two responsibilities) Robinson said. “One is on the news consumer to make sure that they are getting factual informa tion and absorbing it and unden standing what the information is as best [they] can.The other side o it is the people who are presenting the information. There’s a lot of m sponsibility to go around.”
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