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Fake news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media.[1][2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news

The false information is then often reverberated as misinformation in social media, but occasionally finds its way to the mainstream media as well.[3] Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically,[4][5][6] often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines to increase readership, online sharing, and Internet click revenue.

In the latter case, it is similar to sensational online "clickbait" headlines and relies on advertising revenue generated from this activity, regardless of the veracity of the published stories.[4]

Intentionally misleading and deceptive fake news differs from obvious satire or parody, which is intended to amuse rather than mislead its audience.

In 2018,[98] researchers from Princeton University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Exeter examined the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

Their findings showed that Trump supporters and older Americans (over 60) were far more likely to consume fake news than Clinton supporters. Those most likely to visit fake news websites were the 10% of Americans who consumed the most conservative information.

There was a very large difference (800%) in the consumption of fake news stories as related to total news consumption between Trump supporters (6.2%) and Clinton supporters (0.8%). [ 98][99]

The study also showed that fake pro-Trump and fake pro-Clinton news stories were read by their supporters, but with a significant difference: Trump supporters consumed far more (40%) than Clinton supporters (15%). Facebook was by far the key "gateway" website where these fake stories were spread, and which led people to then go to the fake news websites. Fact checks of fake news were rarely seen by consumers,[98][99] with none of those who saw a fake news story being reached by a related fact check. [100]

Brendan Nyhan, one of the researchers, emphatically stated in an interview on NBC News: "People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites – full stop."[99]

NBC NEWS: "It feels like there's a connection between having an active portion of a party that's prone to seeking false stories and conspiracies and a president who has famously spread conspiracies and false claims. In many ways, demographically and ideologically, the president fits the profile of the fake news users that you're describing."

NYHAN: "It's worrisome if fake news websites further weaken the norm against false and misleading information in our politics, which unfortunately has eroded. But it's also important to put the content provided by fake news websites in perspective. People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites – full stop." [99



Identifying

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) published a summary in diagram form (pictured at right) to assist people in recognizing fake news.[28] Its main points are:



United States

Fake news became a global subject and was widely introduced to billions as a subject mainly due to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[2][268][269][270][271][272][273] Numerous political commentators and journalists wrote and stated in media that 2016 was the year of fake news and as a result nothing will ever be the same in politics and cyber security.[274]

Due to the fair amount of fake news in 2016, it became hard to tell what was real in 2017. Donald Trump tweeted or retweeted posts about "fake news" or "fake media" 176 times as of Dec. 20, 2017, according to an online archive of all of Trump's tweets.[275]

Governmental bodies in the U.S. and Europe started looking at contingencies and regulations to combat fake news specially when as part of a coordinated intelligence campaign by hostile foreign governments.[276][277]

Online tech giants Facebook and Google started putting in place means to combat fake news in 2016 as a result of the phenomenon becoming globally known.[278][279] Google Trends shows that the term "fake news" gained traction in online searches in October 2016.[280]

Professor Philip N. Howard of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford studied web traffic in the United States prior to the election. He found that about one half of all news on Twitter directed at Michigan was junk or fake, and the other half came from actual professional news sources.[92]

According to BuzzFeed, during the last three months of the presidential campaign, of the top twenty fake election-related articles on Facebook, seventeen were anti-Clinton or pro-Trump. Facebook users interacted with them more often than with stories from genuine news outlets. [68]

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