Archives: Research

The rise of new media has radically altered the way political institutions function, the way political leaders communicate, the way elections are contested , and how citizens engage. The dynamic role of new media continues to grow and develop in novel, and sometimes unanticipated ways, that have serious consequences for democratic governments and politics. This essay seeks to examine the impact of new media on political life in greater detail. 

Social media has become the dominant source of information for society and is both a boon and a curse in its ability to strengthen free speech in general.  This paper focuses on how social media negatively influences public debate with its influence on democracy in Western countries. It also makes recommendations on how to effectively address these risks that arise due to social media.

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 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. 

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. 

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 report by the UK House of Commons highlights significant concerns about the impact of fake news on their  democracy and values. The focus of inquiry regarding fake news has shifted from understanding it as a social media phenomenon to an issue concerning the very future of democracy. This is an interim report which will later be followed by an extensive inquiry in 2018. The report highlights significant concerns and recent revelations about fake news and also areas which require urgent action by the government and other regulatory agencies against misinformation and disinformation.

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.