Archives: Research

This essay aims to provide context to discussions about fake news, democracy, and media literacy education. It draws from media ecology and critical media studies to show how the concept of fake news cannot be separated from media technologies in which cultures grow. The authors discuss the current manifestations of this phenomenon alongside the effects of social media. 

Despite a significant rise in fake news online, very few studies have examined its impact on students. This research explores the role information literacy, in particular information evaluation has on third level students' ability to evaluate information on their social media. The study uses the questionnaire method which was disseminated through the Dublin Business Moodle site. 

This study looks into the dynamic diffusion processes of political misinformation focusing on three components: the temporal pattern. content mutation, and sources of misinformation. It traces the lifecycle of 17 popular political rumours that circulated on Twitter for over 13 months during the 2012 US presidential election.

This paper argues for a selective definition of the rapidly evolving term "fake news". The author argues that the term should be reserved for cases where false or misleading claims are done deliberately by 'design' and intent to mislead. The paper looks into the 'design' which refers to the systemic features of fake news and whether it helps pinpoint the conditions for the recent rise of fake news. 

There has been a proliferation of fake news stories in the recent times. This study looks into answering the questions of who is most likely to believe such false stories and why. To answer these questions, two online studies with over 900 participants were conducted.

Traditionally, false claims were understood to lie outside the realm of the US First Amendment protection. The 2012 US Supreme Court judgement 'United States v. Alvarez' however struck down the Stolen Valor Act 2005–which made it a crime to falsely claim receipt of military decorations or medals–and by doing so upheld a First amendment right which allows you to lie in some cases. This paper looks at the impact of such a constitutionalisation of false speech in a post Alvarez world within the context of social media. 

This paper uses a systematic literature review method to find find the most recent papers online which are related to fake news detection on social medias. The paper aims to map the state of art of fake news detection, define fake news and find the most useful machine learning technique to do so. 

This paper seeks to demonstrate one of the mechanisms which add to the believability of fake news: fluency via prior exposure. The study uses actual fake news headlines as shown on Facebook to show how even a single exposure to fake news increases subsequent perceptions of  accuracy, within the same session and after a week. 

The rapid rise of information online has made it almost impossible to decipher the truth from the false which has led to the problem of fake news. This research paper considers old and new methods of fake news detection in textual formats and includes a discussion on Linguistic Cue and Network analysis approaches. The researcher proposes a three-part method using Naive Bayes Classifier, Support Vector Machines, and Semantic analysis as an accurate way to detect fake news on social media.

In the most recent addition to Weber Shandwick, Powell Tate and KRC Research's ongoing investigation of 'Civility in America' they explore the topic of fake news. Given the contentiousness of the 2016 US elections and the heightened role of social media and news media, the researchers wanted to gather insight into how fake news was faring in the public domain. The report highlights four key findings on American's awareness of fake news, their level of concern and the impact of fake news on civil discourse and behaviour in America.