Fake news, its ramifications and tools to check this menace.
- 1. Seminar on “FAKE NEWS” CHETAN THATHOO ENGLISH JOURNALISM INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MASS COMMUNICATION
- 2. Fake news(Definition by Paul Chadwick) Context Problem statement Fake news means fictions deliberately fabricated and presented as non-fiction with the intent to mislead recipients into treating fiction as fact or into doubting verifiable fact. ● “Fictions” is meant to distinguish fake news from items which have a kernel of truth but are exaggerated, out of proportion, in the cliche “sensationalised”. ● “Fabricated” emphasises the made-up, manufactured aspect of fake news. ● “Deliberately” and “intent” draw attention to how fake news is purposeful, and help to show it is distinct from the flawed journalism that can result from haste, carelessness, partiality, conflicts of interest or the successful spin of others.
- 3. Fake news(Definition by Paul Chadwick) Context Problem statement Fake news means fictions deliberately fabricated and presented as non-fiction with the intent to mislead recipients into treating fiction as fact or into doubting verifiable fact. ● “Presented as non-fiction” focuses on the premeditation and calculation which often seem to characterise the originators of fake news, as distinct from the people who simply spread it unthinkingly. ● “Mislead” indicates seriousness of purpose and distinguishes fake news from, say, entertainment, pranks or satire. ● “Treating fiction as fact” and “doubting verifiable fact” look to consequences. These seem to be the two main political purposes of those who create fake news.
- 4. Introduction: Context Problem statement ● False stories or information that is deliberately created to mislead people into believing something that is not true. ● “Fake news” is a term that can mean different things, depending on the context. News satire is often called fake news as are parodies such as the “Saturday Night Live” or the homegrown “Faking News”. ● Fake news often employs eye-catching headlines or entirely fabricated news stories to increase readership, online sharing and Internet click revenue. ● Fake news looks professional.
- 5. How are they spread? Context Problem statement ● Fake news can be spread via multiple mediums. ● Pulitzer who is considered the benchmaek in Journalism practiced Yellow Journalism in print form which can be considered as a form of fake news. ● Television has been a favourite tool of certain countries to spread lies and this form of fake news has been the most damaging. A case in point would be the story of WMDs propagated by CNN that led to USA ultimately attacking Iraq, but, the story ultimately turned out to be a hoax. ● Digital has blurred the lines between what is real and what is not. Easy access, great monetization options and a huge audience has led to a situation where anybody can cook up a story and reach a wide audience too.
- 6. Fake news and POTUS elections Context Problem statement ● The term “Fake News” broke into limelight in 2016 when American President-elect Donald Trump used it in reference to CNN. ● But, the practical usage in the POTUS election could be traced back to when Donald Trump suggested that Ted Cruz’s father knew the killers of JFK.
- 7. Fake news and POTUS elections Context Problem statement ● POTUS elections were significant as they highlighted how social media could be utilized to push such stories and on such a large scale. ● These stories were mostly broadcasted via social media especially Facebook in the form of hyperbolic articles that favored a a particular candidate, but, was later on, emulated by other candidates as well.
- 8. In terms of statistics, here is the interactivity of the American people with new media during the elections.
- 9. More than 62% of american adults consume their news via social media.
- 10. FACEBOOK was the primary source responsible for most of fake news.
- 11. Most stories favoured Trump over Clinton. To put it in perspective, the study found that in the said databse, there were 115 pro-Trump shared on Facebook, a total of 30 million times against 41 pro- Clinton fake stories that were shared on Facebook, a total of 7.6 million times.
- 12. The traffic on such fake news websites was enormous. The websites included in the study had over half the articles fake and, still they registered over 159 million hits.This is evident because most of the people on Facebook are passive news readers.
- 13. The term “Fake news” received sudden traction and kept trending for the rest of 2016.
- 14. Reasons for the prominence of this trend ● One of the prominent reason has been the erosion of trust in public Institutions. ● With tools like Photoshop, After-Effects and availability of tools online to learn these softwares, it has become easier to forge information. ● Another reason would be the bombardment of people with too much information too soon and very little attention span that has made people susceptible to “clickbait”. ● One of the major reason would be null distribution costs. Earlier, it used to cost a lot to set up and spread media, but, with the advent of social media, anyone can be a dispenser of information.
- 15. Reasons for the prominence of this trend ● The American election was one of the highly debated and polarised event globally which became an ideal ground for people to earn monetary profits from it. ● Easy monetization options like Google Adsense helped sustain this trend monetarily and pumped in more and more superficial information into the system. ● Another reason would be more psychological called “Confirmation Bias”. This is the ability of one’s mind to interpret new evidence as a confirmation of one’s belief. The ideological drift was a major contributer to it.
- 16. Indian Case ● Fake news in Indian context too has been very dynamic and this main promoter of Fake news in India is believed to be WhatsApp. ● Interestingly, this could be because Internet penetration is increasing in India, but, these new users are still not news literate in WhatsApp’s largest market in the world. ● Stiff competition from Telegram and privacy issues forced it to introduce End-to-End encryption which makes it even more difficult to flag and find Fake News.
- 17. Indian Case ● Twitter seems to be another casualty where Fake news seems to be common and has resulted in widespread bickering across the platform. ● Indian case is also, important because it has given us an insight into a country that was suddenly hit by global media and brands and is still, yet to hit the balance between realizing fake news and truth.
- 18. Indian Case ● One of the prominent cases of fake news was the presence of a tracking chip in the new Rs. 2000 note. This was covered even by the MSM, but, eventually turned out to be a lie.
- 19. Indian Case ● In an another instance, a video of a girl resembling Gurmehar Kaur was going viral on social media which too, later on turned out to be a hoax.
- 20. Indian Case ● Then, there were instances sof fake news where it was reported that the first day earnings of “Bahubaali 2” were going to be donated to Indian Army.
- 21. Indian Case(Exception) ● But, an interesting case happened in Indian context too wherein the Govt. launched a scheme where people could donate money to the Army, but, everyone believed it to be fake news, but, it ultimately came out to be as true.
- 22. Indian Case(Exception) ● An Indian magazine apologized when it was revealed by an Indian fact checking site that what they had posted was fake.
- 23. Case studies across different nations(France) ● The French election too was embroiled in controversy as Russia was, again accused of sabotaging French elections. ● French fake news sites are, generally, independent with some having the sole of earning money. A case in point was the circulation of news that the victims in Bataclan massacre were mutilated which was denied by the Parliamentary inquiry commission. ● Emanuel Macron was also a victim of fake news when it was accused that he had extra-marital gay encounters which forced him to come out and deny these allegations.
- 24. Case studies across different nations(Germany) ● Russian and German media covered the fake news over reports that a 13-year-old girl of Russian origin, had been raped in Berlin by refugees from the Middle East. ● Even the BfV, the German Intelligence accuses FSB of using fake media to influence the upcoming German elections.
- 25. Case studies(Miscellaneous) ● Not only mainstream media corporations, even United Nations contributed to fake news in one instance. ● During the last stages of siege of Aleppo, UN reported that Syrian forces had killed 82 civilians which was carried by every MSM and added more tension to the already worse condition. This however, later turned out to be fake news.
- 26. Case studies (Miscellaneous) ● Not only are elections the casualty of this phenomenon, but, it is also used by terrorist organisations like IS to spread their propaganda. ● Spreading doctored videos and fake news stories on Telegram that provides encryption has led to terrorist attacks all across the world.
- 27. Tools to check the veracity of fake news ● FACT CHECKING SITES: ○ These websites do the work of an overviewer and because of their reputation are assigned this task. These websites check via means of reputed sources whether a news item that was flagged was true or not. ○ Websites like Snopes, politifact are examples of global fact checking websites and have over 2.5 million unique visitors every month. ○ Its Indian counterpart would be AltNews, FactChecker, SMHOAXSLAYER etc that have done a great job in flagging news on various Indian sites.
- 28. Tools to check the veracity of fake news ● A lot of news corporations also, have used other innovative ways in the meanwhile to deal with this menace like bots. ○ For example, The Times launched a bot that busts the filter bubble. Filter Bubble is how algorithms only suggest a particular type of news feed to a person based on his previous searches. ● Continuing wih that, BBC too launched a Brexit focused bot and a section called “Reality Check” that debunks myths and provides material for research.
- 29. Tools to check the veracity of fake news ● Many Universities like Stony Brook University have come up with courses for News Literacy wherein they teach high school students how to identify fake news stories, propaganda etc. ● Finland and 11 other EU countries are currently working on a project that will lead to the establishment of an Institute in Helsinki that will deal with the problem of hybrid warfare. ● This will be a huge boost as it will not only work towards eradicating fake news, but, also, help in making sure that it acts as a nodal authority in case of a global hybrid attack.
- 30. Tools to check the veracity of fake news ● A novel way is being put into action at Spiegel Gruppe wherein the publishing group has implemented fake news detection in its editorial workflow. ● This whole idea is called ‘dokumentation’ and has different desks wherein each desk is headed by a Ph.D and thus, provides consultation to journalists. ● These desks of over 70 fact checkers add over 60,000 articles per week which serves as an authority to check the authenticity of related data or any other events.
- 31. Automated Tools to check the veracity of fake news ● Last, but, not the least, many educational institutes like MIT and Indiana University have come up with many tools to check fake news. Many of them are The Trust Project, Rumour Lens, FactMinder etc ● These automated tools are based on very deep learning of human language and could be used on very large datasets to give the desired results.
- 32. Hoaxy ● Hoaxy, visualizes the claims in the news and fact checks those claims that spread online through social networks. ● Hoaxy provides users a physical map of how each unverified article has spread, and provides related links to fact-checking websites, allowing users to draw their own conclusions.
- 33. FactMata ● Factmata is built upon cutting- edge academic research in natural language processing and information retrieval. ● This is a product in the making that engages people in the process of correcting news articles, identifying fallible claims, and supporting more accurate information on the web.
- 34. Rumourgauge ● Motivated by this, we are creating computational models of false and true information on Twitter to investigate the nature of rumors surrounding real-world events. ● The models have been trained and evaluated on several real-world events, such as the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, the 2014 Ferguson riots, and the Ebola epidemic, with promising results
- 35. IBM’s Watson ● IBM Watson’s Angles app, is also an interesting development that checks stories against a trove of 55 million previously published news articles. ● It assembles basic facts relevant to the topic at hand and offers context, a timeline and key quotes that are germane to the topic at hand.
- 36. Criticism of these Fact Checking Tools ● These fact checking tools undoubtedly help us differentiate real news from fake news, but, they do raise some eyebrows. ● In the case of Facebook(in Germany and USA) which in an attempt to weed out fake news brought in IFCN(CONNECT!V in Germany), a fact-checking organization led to a lot of concerns like Facebook using the media to kill stories that don’t fit their or the organisation’s agenda.
- 37. Criticism of these Fact Checking Tools ● Add to that, these Fact-Checking organizations are funded by very rich Industrialists that can also use these organizations to push their agenda. ● Critics have pointed out that rather than using these tools, one should trust the human instinct and let one be the decision maker of what is right and what is wrong.
- 38. Post Truth ● The word gained so much importance in the aftermath of POTUS elections that it was named the “Word of the year” by Oxford Dictionary. ● Relates to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. ● This concept is very relevant in American scenario with debates on topics like Global Warming going on, but, not much has been researched in the Indian context.
- 39. Alternative facts ● During his press briefings, Sean Spicer accussed the media of deliberately trying to underestimate the size of crowd at the Trump’s inaugural ceremony. ● When Spicer couldn’t corroborate the data, Kellyane Conway defended him by saying that he was talking about “alternative facts”. ● The term was not accepted by “The Guardian” whereas far-right website “Breitbart” accepted its use. The critic panned her for the use of the word blatantly calling “alternative facts” just lies. ● Later in the week, she discussed "alternative facts", substituting the phrases "alternative information" and "incomplete information".
- 40. Alternative facts ● Continuing with the previous trends, Alternative Facts too saw an upward trend on Google Search.
- 41. Conclusion ● The concept of Fake News is very interesting, yet, it has been prevalent since, a long time. But, as we have done before and should keep doing it further after is that we should let ourselves be the judge rather than allowing machines to think for us. ● Rest assured, objectivity never loses its customers.