What is Fake News

Fake news is defined as an article which is verifiably and intentionally false and presented in the market to mislead the readers. It means intentionally fabricating a news article. Fake news can be categorised in four parts generally. Those are:

Category 1: False, fake and regularly misleading websites which are published on social media.

Category 2: There are some websites which circulates unreliable or misleading information.

Category 3: Some websites uses clickbait-y headlines and some media descriptions.

Category 4: Comedy websites that offers important criticism or commentary on political and society issues having the potential of being shared as literal news.

But there may be situation that a misleading or false news which is entirely fabricated (category 1), simultaneously it may be intentional misrepresentation of facts or data (Category 2), it may also be partially accurate but uses an attractive title to catch the attention of public ( Category 3), and have a critical impact on the society ( Category 4). The Macquarie dictionary defined fake news as a disinformative and hoaxed material that are published through websites to drive the web traffic and passing incorrect information via social media. The immense spead of fake news has been recognized as global risk. The main purpose behind publishing fake news is the intention to mislead to cause damage to an entity, a person or make political or financial gain[1]. It often undermines the important media coverage and makes it difficult for the journalists to create serious news stories. False news are used as a tool to attract the readers or users and cause an advantage to advertisers. The main reasons or scope of spreading fake news are the increased political polarization, popularity of social media and easy access to the online advertisement revenue. Fake news can be distinguished by the falsity of its content and by the character of their online circulation.

Fake news is a serious threat to the nation at large. Countries have taken some significant steps in fighting fake news and its impact over the society. Legislations are used to fight against spreading of fake news. Fake news is considered as illegal as it goes against the right to know the correct information. As long as the real facts are presented before a person, one can make up their mind. It destroys the credibility of an individual; if a person makes an argument based on a false information, it may cause a harm in their integrity. Fake news have no legal basis as it can cause hurt to lot of other people. It is an infringement of the right of a person to have access to correct and sufficient knowledge about a thing[2]. It was found on the Digital News Report: Australia 2018 that Australians thinks that it is the breach of the responsibilities of journalists and media companies to fight fake news. 68% of the Australian population thinks that Government should take a stand and solve the problem.

The spread of fake news could be one of the biggest threat that the society may face. One of the major issues that fake news create is that they might polarise the society during a political event. Fake news can also have an impact over the international relations between countries. Fake news has often led to be more believable than the truth and have caused racism, intimidation, damage to reputation and harassment. It has resulted in a declination of trust in true news.

Is Fake News Legal

In a recent case study, Sophie Mirabella, an Australian lawyer and former MP has sued a rural Victorian newspaper for an article which had published a fake news[3]. The article falsely accused her that she punished an opponent during a campaign while a photo opportunity in the federal election of 2016. Mirabella has said to the jury that there was no dispute that the defendant had got the thing wrong. Her barrister Georgina Schoff QC told that the newspaper itself admitted that the article was wrong[4].

Dr Claire Wardle, who is an expert on social media said at the Navigating the News Conference in Hobart, where she was a guest speaker that fake news was being used as a “weapon” against the media. She further mentioned that it is a global issue.

A case happened in 2009 in Australia regarding fake news. It was claimed in the report of Deception Detection Across Australian Populations of a “Levitt Institute” that Sydney was held as a most native city. In spite of the fact that the article itself had a cue amongst the mathematical gibberish, a statement was there which stated that the result was fully made up to be a fictional material using a process of revised truth. The Parliament of Australia investigated into the concept of fake news, with regards to the issues relating to the fake news which was spread around at the time of United States Election of 2016. The investigation looks in the areas of Australia that makes the audiences most exposed to fake news having into consideration the impact on traditional news articles. The inquiry tried to evaluate the responsibility of the online advertisers and regulate the spread of the hoaxes[5]. By this inquiry the parliament attempted to fight the threat of social media power over the spread of fake news as it resulted into a negative effect on the public. In a findings of a global survey of credibility and trust in institutions, it was found that consumers struggle really hard to spot the differences between real news and fake news, and the trust over the media is as low as of just 31% in the Australia. According to Steve Spurr, the head of Edelman Australia, the declination in the trust in media had resulted into growing distastes for social media by the public. As per his comment, 57% of the population in Australia is concerned about that fake news is being used as weapon of propaganda. Also, 65% of them are not sure that how to detect and fake news[6]. This has become such a major issue that the global average trust in the traditional media of news is just 62%.

By the recent times, the fake news has affected not only the media or the celebrity. It is a global issue overall. Several techniques and tools are used to create fake news[7]. Some of the techniques are:

Manipulation of photos: Photos of politicians and celebrities has been manipulated over the times to create a hoax. At a first glance, they seem so convenient that people may find it reasonable. Even it can be detected, it cannot be stopped in the first place from going viral. In a BBC report it was found that, the altered images can affect the reader in such a way to change their behaviour or memory.

What Problems Does Fake News Create

Video tricks: Manipulation of video is also considered as one of the way to spread fake news. For fooling the audiences, fake videos are created with voice impersonations. Fake video destroys the trust of general public over a person or phenomena. People are tend to see and share manipulated content as they are presented in such an appealing way to the public. An example for this is the Synthesizing Obama Project, which was studied by the University of Washington. In the study, they found that the video was manipulated from one of the speeches of Obama using a complete different video footage of a former US President.

Manipulated data: Some data are openly spread over the internet or media, which is no way authenticate, reliable or correct. These are spread as a genuine data, and audiences are convinced in a way to believe in the data that those data impacts their life as a whole[8].

Use of the media: In the modern times, media is being misused to create and spread fake news for a mischief purpose. The first think that comes into the mind after hearing the word fake news, is the social media posts which carries implausible and fantastic stories[9]. The media platform is used to spread misinformation.

Australian security and counter-terrorism has reported that the changes in the law can make a person jailed for 20 years for spreading hoaxes. The changes in the Australian National Security Law will criminalise an attempt to undermine the ability of the media to act in public interest[10]. As described by the policy experts, the legislation will make it illegal if any person communicates or deals with an information that is likely to create harm to the Australia’s interests. Australian Government has taken up some technological steps to combat this issue such as machine learning and artificial intelligence and[11].

 The Australian Government has progressed to establish a “Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism” that would identify and examine the effect of fake news and countermeasures. The accountable parties under this proposal are the companies, technologies, online advertisements and others who could gain benefit from the misinformation[12]. On the public hearing of 22 August 2017, Facebook and Google has made a submission which includes action required and undertaken to combat fake news.

References

Abc.Net.Au, 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-21/nuclear-secrets-and-deadly-coffee-australian-fake-news-on-social/10002246. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

Australia’S Stake In Shaking Up Fake News, 2018, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/australia-s-stake-shaking-fake-news. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

Balmas, Meital. “When fake news becomes real: Combined exposure to multiple news sources and political attitudes of inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism.” Communication Research41.3 (2014): 430-454.

Chen, Yimin, Niall J. Conroy, and Victoria L. Rubin. “Misleading online content: Recognizing clickbait as false news.” Proceedings of the 2015 ACM on Workshop on Multimodal Deception Detection. ACM, 2015.

Conroy, Niall J., Victoria L. Rubin, and Yimin Chen. “Automatic deception detection: Methods for finding fake news.” Proceedings of the 78th ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Information Science with Impact: Research in and for the Community. American Society for Information Science, 2015.

COUNTERING FAKE NEWS A SURVEY OF RECENT GLOBAL INITIATIVES. (2018). [ebook] rsis.edu.sg. Available at: https://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PR180307_Countering-Fake-News.pdf [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Rubin, Victoria, et al. “Fake news or truth? using satirical cues to detect potentially misleading news.” Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Computational Approaches to Deception Detection. 2016.

Shane, Scott. “From headline to photograph, a fake news masterpiece.” The New York Times 18 (2017).

Shu, Kai, et al. “Fake news detection on social media: A data mining perspective.” ACM SIGKDD Explorations Newsletter19.1 (2017): 22-36.

Theguardian.Com, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/apr/26/sophie-mirabella-defamation-case-hears-paper-published-fake-news. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

Theguardian.Com, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/07/australias-trust-in-media-at-record-low-as-fake-news-fears-grow-survey-finds. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

Younger, Emma. Abc.Net.Au, 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-26/claim-sophie-mirabella-pushed-political-rival-not-true-court/9698736. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

[1] Shane, Scott. “From headline to photograph, a fake news masterpiece.” The New York Times 18 (2017).

[2] Balmas, Meital. “When fake news becomes real: Combined exposure to multiple news sources and political attitudes of inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism.” Communication Research41.3 (2014): 430-454.

[3] Younger, Emma. Abc.Net.Au, 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-26/claim-sophie-mirabella-pushed-political-rival-not-true-court/9698736. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

[4] Theguardian.Com, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/apr/26/sophie-mirabella-defamation-case-hears-paper-published-fake-news. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

[5] Rubin, Victoria, et al. “Fake news or truth? using satirical cues to detect potentially misleading news.” Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Computational Approaches to Deception Detection. 2016.

[6] Abc.Net.Au, 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-21/nuclear-secrets-and-deadly-coffee-australian-fake-news-on-social/10002246. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

[7] Conroy, Niall J., Victoria L. Rubin, and Yimin Chen. “Automatic deception detection: Methods for finding fake news.” Proceedings of the 78th ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Information Science with Impact: Research in and for the Community. American Society for Information Science, 2015.

[8] Chen, Yimin, Niall J. Conroy, and Victoria L. Rubin. “Misleading online content: Recognizing clickbait as false news.” Proceedings of the 2015 ACM on Workshop on Multimodal Deception Detection. ACM, 2015.

[9] Shu, Kai, et al. “Fake news detection on social media: A data mining perspective.” ACM SIGKDD Explorations Newsletter19.1 (2017): 22-36.

[10] Theguardian.Com, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/07/australias-trust-in-media-at-record-low-as-fake-news-fears-grow-survey-finds. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

[11] Australia’S Stake In Shaking Up Fake News, 2018, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/australia-s-stake-shaking-fake-news. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.

[12]COUNTERING FAKE NEWS A SURVEY OF RECENT GLOBAL INITIATIVES. (2018). [ebook] rsis.edu.sg. Available at: https://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PR180307_Countering-Fake-News.pdf [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].