What is fake news? Defin­i­tion, types, and how to detect them

A growing number of people use the internet to stay informed and share millions of posts, articles, and videos across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The rapid adoption of social media has led to a rise in in­form­a­tion-sharing among users, with fake news becoming a component of our digital daily routines. The spread of mis­in­form­a­tion is in part at­trib­uted to social media failing to verify the au­then­ti­city of a news item. This makes it easy to share seemingly real images and videos which have been skilfully ma­nip­u­lated. It is now well-known that mis­in­form­a­tion has a sig­ni­fic­ant influence on public opinion and discourse.

In this article, we explain what fake news is and how you can detect false news reports quickly.

The term fake news eludes to reports, images, and videos that are shared to pur­pose­fully spread mis­in­form­a­tion i.e. in­form­a­tion that is factually incorrect. These news items may appear authentic at first and attempt to attract attention, shock, or shape opinions. Fake news can be created by in­di­vidu­als or groups who are acting in their own interests or those of third parties. The creation of mis­in­form­a­tion is usually motivated by personal, political, or economic agendas.

The sharing of fab­ric­ated news to shape public opinion on certain topics is not a recent phe­nomen­on. Sen­sa­tion­al headlines or political articles used to spread lies and pro­pa­ganda have been around since the emergence of print media. In times of digital in­form­a­tion exchange, fake news has become more of an online phe­nomen­on that is difficult to control. Fake news can reach high levels of vis­ib­il­ity in a short amount of time because it’s easy to share via social media and social bots.

Fake news is mostly used to ma­nip­u­late public opinion for political or com­mer­cial gain. But false reports are also regularly used as part of sen­sa­tion­al headlines in the form of clickbait, which aims to attract people to click through to linked websites and generate ad­vert­ising income. Phishing attemps also use simulated in­form­a­tion and abuse the trust of internet users. Seemingly authentic contact forms are used to collect personal user data for the purpose of identity theft. Other common phenomena are email hoaxes in the form of chain mail which threaten re­cip­i­ents with issues in case they fail to share an email.

These are four common types of fake news:

• Targeted mis­in­form­a­tion: Fic­ti­tious piece of in­form­a­tion shared for self-serving interests. Targeted mis­in­form­a­tion is often directed at groups that are most sus­cept­ible to receiving this type of in­form­a­tion and easily accept and share po­lar­ising content without verifying its au­then­ti­city.
• Fake headlines: Headlines depicting fic­ti­tious facts to generate attention. These are regularly employed by less credible pub­lic­a­tions such as tabloid news­pa­pers. Readers often quickly realise that the content of the article does not match the headline. Their titles are referred to as ‘clickbait headlines’.
• Viral posts: There’s a plethora of new articles and content on social media networks. As a con­sequence, users often do not take the time to au­then­tic­ate posts. Because large social networks favour shares, likes, and followers, popular posts are shown more often in a user’s threat – even if that content is fake news.
• Satire: Satirical news pick up on current affairs and news items and mix them with fic­ti­tious, and often absurd events. Satire is often employed to raise awareness of social issues or criticise political wrong­do­ing. But there’s always the danger that humorous com­pon­ents go un­detec­ted and the pieces are con­sidered to be true.

Although lots of fake news appears be­liev­able at first, it’s also easy to debunk. If you follow a few of the methods described below regularly, it should become easy to dis­tin­guish real from fake news.

Verify the social media profile of a sender before you share a post. Ask yourself the following questions:

• How old is their social media account?
• Does the account have a blue veri­fic­a­tion mark?
• How many followers and friends does the account have?
• Which types of content are pre­dom­in­antly shared?

A new social media account with few friends/followers sharing sen­sa­tion­al content could point to a social bot or internet troll.

Visual content can be quickly taken out of context. Watch out for location markers such as ad­vert­ising signs, road signs, or car licence plates, and check whether they match the image’s location. Another useful tool is a reverse image search using URL tools such as Tineye or Chrome extension Reveye. These can be used to verify when and in which context a picture was published for the first time.

Videos are more difficult to au­then­tic­ate. In­tel­li­gent computer editing software allows users to create deepfake videos, which replaces faces in original videos. The YouTube DataView­er by Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al can be used to find an original video.

Some websites contain imprints or in­form­a­tion on copyright and authors. If this type of in­form­a­tion is missing you should not trust the source of shared content.

Some types of fake news take on the design of well-known media brands to evoke trust­wor­thi­ness. In this case, it’s advisable to verify a URL in a browser. Sometimes the only dif­fer­ence is a hyphen or the domain ending such as .net instead of .com.

While some pieces of fake news are re­l­at­ively harmless, others can cause sig­ni­fic­ant damage because they foster anti-demo­crat­ic thinking. Experts an­ti­cip­ate that fake news in com­bin­a­tion with social bots have had a major influence on world events including the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote in 2016 and the United States pres­id­en­tial election in 2017. Here are three examples of ‘suc­cess­ful’ fake news which in­flu­enced public opinion globally:

• AIDS con­spir­acy: Even before the di­git­al­isa­tion of in­form­a­tion, blind media trust was used to spread wrongful in­form­a­tion. On behalf of secret services by the GDR and Soviet Union, West German media in the 1980s spread the news that the AIDS virus had been created by US secret service CIA. This is called a dis­in­form­a­tion campaign.
• The Bitcoin scam: As crypto­cur­ren­cies gained pop­ular­ity in recent years, the number of scams and fraud­u­lent practices have increased. Alleged bitcoin trading platforms ad­vert­ised their services using fic­ti­tious reviews by famous people to grow public trust. The reviews suggested high gains to potential investors.
• Fake news on im­mig­ra­tion crisis: During the im­mig­ra­tion crisis, many items of fake news were being spread to polarise the European public. In February 2017, for example, British newspaper Daily Express published an article claiming that Germany hoped to bring in 12 million migrants. This was later revealed untrue by the German in­vest­ig­at­ive newsroom correctiv.org.

Once cel­eb­rated as a demo­crat­ic medium, the World Wide Web has gained a bad repu­ta­tion when it comes to the re­li­ab­il­ity of in­form­a­tion. That’s because anyone can create, share, and ma­nip­u­late in­form­a­tion online. And with a growing majority of people using online media as their primary source, fake news presents a huge challenge. On the one hand, democracy thrives because of freely ac­cess­ible in­form­a­tion, which helps us un­der­stand political, societal, and eco­nom­ic­al con­nec­tions. On the other hand, fake news fosters mistrust and sceptical thinking, and hinders dis­cus­sions or conflict res­ol­u­tion.

More and more social media channels are reacting to demands for improved control measures when it comes to the spreading of fake news. However, each platform deals with fake news dif­fer­ently.

Twitter, for example, in May 2020, fact-checked a tweet by US president Donald Trump who shared non-veri­fi­able claims about US postal votes.

In con­nec­tion to the coronavir­us crisis and many con­spir­acy theory videos emerging online, YouTube adjusted its community guidelines. These enable the platform to delete videos with fab­ric­ated content.

Facebook, on the other hand, works with around 50 in­de­pend­ent fact checking or­gan­isa­tions such as The Pulitzer Center, Media Legal Defence Ini­ti­at­ive (MLDI), or World As­so­ci­ation of News Pub­lish­ers. Posts that are found to be fake according to Facebook criteria are marked and become less visible in the news feed, and posts and adverts by politi­cians are being checked and verified too.

In June 2020, the EU Com­mis­sion released new guidelines to fight mis­in­form­a­tion through social media networks. As part of this guidance, social networks should share monthly reports on content and reach of fake posts and fake user accounts. Social media platforms are en­cour­aged to fight actively mis­in­form­a­tion by fact checking content.