Relation Between Fake News and Media

Fake news is broadly classified as an act of misleading information while legitimizing a news incident. In recent times, it has been noticed that the formulation of the news in the present times has been fabricated for commercial success (Tsfati et al.). Most importantly the growing trend of spreading fake news and articles in the digital space has seriously questioned the principles of democracy. According to Santini et al., it is being recognized as an immediate issue all over the world. The cybersecurity teams within the legislation have been working towards controlling this rapidly spreading ruckus. The aim of this research is to provide a critical synthesis paper on the topic of fake news. The paper summarises the connection and differences between several scholarly sources in the context to provide factual understanding in the paper.  

The article by Santini et al., describes the impact of the spread of disinformation during the presidential election in Brazil in 2018. The reason behind this unfortunate turn of events is considered to be the dominative dependence of the Brazilian’s access to mobile internet. The Brazilian press has denounced that a mobile disinformation campaign was orchestrated by Bolsonaro’s business backers. The use of these propaganda and false tricks has severely impacted the perception of the people on sensitive issues like elections. It has been observed from this analysis, that phenomena relate to media defamation through creating fake news is gradually progressing to be a growing trend. Following the issue of the US presential electrons in 2016, the impact of fake news becomes quite evident in shaping the political views of the people (Allen). This disinformation in the present times is responsible for increasing the turmoil during the pandemic era.

Jason Hannan in his article stresses a similar context. The author focuses on the framing issues of the post-political truths in two parts, one is the media or journalism and technological communication (Hannan). Contemplating over this context it can be understood that media is capable of locating the manipulation of political leaders. The example of the operation conducted by The New York Times has been enlightening on the power of media over handling exploitation of legislation through fake promises. Su et al., on the contrary, discusses the dissemination of fake news consumption over social media. This directs to the concerning matter of the high quantity of data consumption over social media. This empirical study helps to emphasize the detrimental effect of the defaming news that is spread all over the internet. The drivers behind the practice of this concerning matter are described in the later sections.

Configuring the various drivers of fake news in social media

The main reason behind the use of digital platforms for spreading fake news has been considered responsible due to the easy access to the internet at present. Researchers have provided several data-centric shreds of evidence on this matter which has simplified the analysis for the paper (Hassan et al.). It has been noticed that over 68% of the population in the United States alone receives updates over social and international affairs from social media by 2018. Now, comparing this data provided by Su et al., it can be noticed that back in 2012, the percentage of social media addicts had only been 49%. This increase in the population contributes to explaining the fact of the growing practice of defamation through digital media. Brian Creech on the other hand discusses the propaganda of fake news being popular and grabbing the attention of the people through a critical lens of the technology industry (Creech). Platforms like Facebook and Twitter had been recorded to be the main centers for making the false pieces of information viral. Analyzing the evidence provided by Creech, it was learned that Mark Zuckerberg conducted a meeting with the United State Congress over the constant accusations in 2018.

It can be derived from the information provided in this article that the CEOs of the digital platforms are concerned about taking responsibility for the uprising issue. This contemplates the lack of responsibility within the users. According to Hannan, even though the admission of the guilts of the renowned business personals provides a concrete inference to the public debates. However, the consequences of fake news keep the problem persists drawing attention to the evident structural problems. Simultaneously Britt Paris provides a comparative analytical study of over 200 examples of audio-visual manipulation that occurred between 2016-2021 (Paris). The propaganda of the fake news incidents has been consistently a result of the conflation concerning the issues of strategic misinformation. Considering the provided examples and empirical studies provided in the articles it has been noticed that the socio-psychological characters of the nature of fake mew are necessary for researching the concept (Tsfati).

Besides the examples of audio-visual presentations provided by Paris, the objective of the phenomena has been observed to the stringent social process. Considering the popularity of the use of social media platforms resulting from the significant technological innovations the expression of events has thoroughly changed. Since the influence of social media-generated fake news over the socio-political sentiments has been the common factor in the articles, further discussions have been made accordingly. As for Martini et al., compares various methods of detecting social bots in five consecutive political discourses it has been noticed that the dynamics of this fake news are quite substantial in moving around a network. Technological advancement has deliberately contributed to generating traffic of thoughts and expression to formulate fake news in society. Contemplating the issue of technical innovation in media communication, the development of Hologram technology has subsequently incorporated the domain of machine learning to signify the methods of detection media manipulation.

Detection of the development and spreading of fake news

The problem of fake news in the pandemic era has been an enraging concern in society at present. Technology has had been a major influence over changing the course of operations in society (Creech). With the increasing notion of media communication through social media sites it has been noticed that during the pandemic several news and articles have been shared with forged data. The issue has been raised in the UK parliament to undermine the influence of the fake new sin shaping the public opinion regarding the spread of the virus. Kacper Gradon has contemplated the rise of fake news and disinformation campaigns in the time of the covid pandemic. Apart from the disinformation campaign, several WhatsApp shares about fake remedial measures have also contributed to increasing the panic in the society (Kacper). The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has also suggested that the objective of these campaigns was responsible for sowing a particular threat in spreading health-related rumors during worldwide emergencies. Likewise. Hassan et al., covers the techniques applied in tracking fake news on social networking sites. Hence, to focus on the topic of detecting the considerable influence of this issue of fake news, two significant approaches can be highlighted- the network approach and the linguistic approach.

The network-based approaches have been responsibly handling the rampaging impact of the social network behaviors. Fake detection is often identified through analyzing two specific sources- social context and news content. According to Creech, the linguistic features capture the writing styles like the headlines of the news alongside the visuals used in the paper to attract the reader’s attention. The use of edited images to express a false idea is detected through the guidelines in the linguistic features. Whereas, the social context technique is responsible for contemplating om the features of measuring the reliability of the social characteristics lie the optimization of user-profiles and shared posts over the social media platform. Lastly, Tsfati et al., direct to the consequences of mainstream media dissemination of fake news. The role of news media in optimizing the societal conditions over the contemporary time. The empirical research in the articles provides considerable information on the subject of academic and public debate over the significant issue. The availability of lower data quality in the various surveys conducted to assess the capabilities of the people in identifying fake news directs to the manipulative capacity of the circulated fake news (Shu et al.).

Conclusion

From the above analysis, it can be concluded that the issue of progressing fake news has been a serious problem in society. Moreover, the primary connection between these articles is to research the issue and implications of the growing trend of fake news over social media. The analysis of the above-presented articles has been made to discuss the various methods to track the development and spread of fake news. The discourse of the synthesis paper has consistently highlighted the main areas of the articles with a personal reflection on the topic. The synthesis has been differentiated from a mere summary by critically analyzing the content of scholarly sources on the topic of “Fake News”. The various implications of fake news have been highlighted over several specific roles of media in identifying and controlling the enraging issue of fake news. The influence of the disinformation campaign over the political and societal sentiments of the individuals has also been covered in the paper. 

References 

Creech, Brian. “Fake news and the discursive construction of technology companies’ social power.” Media, Culture & Society 42.6 (2020): 952-968.

Grado?, Kacper. “Crime in the time of the plague: Fake news pandemic and the challenges to law-enforcement and intelligence community.” Society Register 4.2 (2020): 133-148.

Hannan, Jason. “Trolling ourselves to death? Social media and post-truth politics.” European Journal of Communication 33.2 (2018): 214-226.

Hassan, Isyaku, Mohd Nazri Latiff Azmi, and Akibu Mahmoud Abdullahi. “Evaluating the spread of fake news and its detection. Techniques on social networking sites.” Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations 22.1 (2020): 111-125.

Martini, Franziska, et al. “Bot, or not? Comparing three methods for detecting social bots in five political discourses.” Big Data & Society 8.2 (2021): 20539517211033566.

Paris, Britt. “Configuring Fakes: Digitized Bodies, the Politics of Evidence, and Agency.” Social Media+ Society 7.4 (2021): 20563051211062919.

Santini, Rose Marie, et al. “Do You Believe in Fake After All? WhatsApp Disinformation Campaign During the Brazilian 2018 Presidential Election.” Politics of Disinformation: The Influence of Fake News on the Public Sphere (2021): 49-66.

Shu, Kai, et al. “Hierarchical propagation networks for fake news detection: Investigation and exploitation.” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. Vol. 14. 2020.

Tsfati, Yariv, et al. “Causes and consequences of mainstream media dissemination of fake news: literature review and synthesis.” Annals of the International Communication Association 44.2 (2020): 157-173.