Fake News

Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren, Nov. 25, 2019, Rolling Stone.
"Fake news" is not always false. However, the motivation for sending it might not be what you would think. This article discusses Russian troll campaigns that focus on getting people to share uplifting posts and amassing an audience that will later be exposed to disinformation.

This 26-page document (PDF) reports on organized disinformation campaigns (troll farms, authoritarian propaganda) that manipulate social media to spread fake news. The report reveals that more countries are being affected by these campaigns as time goes on, and that Facebook is the most popular site for such "computational propaganda".
Samantha Bradshaw & Philip N. Howard. (2019) The Global Disinformation Disorder: 2019 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation. Working Paper 2019.2. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda.

Daniel Funke and Susan Benkelman, April 2, 2019, Poynter.
"Today [April 2] is the third annual International Fact-Checking Day. The IFCN launched the holiday in 2017 to be a rallying cry for more facts in politics, journalism and everyday life."

Megan Molteni, Jan. 31, 2019, Wired
Discusses the story of the supposed cancer cure that was touted by a biotech company and reported uncritically by major news outlets.

Anisa Subedar, Nov. 27, 2018, BBC.
A fake-news maven shares his reasons for planting false stories in social media.
"Once his stories go viral, the Facebook comments burst forth. And that’s when Christopher Blair the fake news writer becomes Christopher Blair the crusading left-wing troll."

Gloria Origgi, March 14, 2018, Aeon
A philosophical look at the relationship between the relative "truth" of news and the reputation of who is disseminating it.

Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy and Sinan Aral, March 9, 2018, Science.
Researchers from MIT studied the creation and dissemination of fake news on Twitter, concluding that fake news reaches more people in a shorter period of time than true news. This is likely due to the novelty and emotional reaction associated with fake news stories.

Robinson Meyer, March 8, 2018, The Atlantic.
The Atlantic discusses the conclusions of the Science article on fake news.

Ann Reynolds, March 8, 2018, ABC News.
[AUTOPLAY VIDEO] News report of the MIT study that concludes "false information spread significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information."

Eli Rosenberg, February 21, 2018, The Washington Post.
Twitter has deactivated accounts thought to be used by Russian bots, leading to claims of censorship.

Steve Erlanger, Dec. 12, 2017, New York Times.
Erlanger argues that Trump's constant use of the term "fake news" is influencing autocrats in other countries.

Shawn Boburg, Aaron C. Davis and Alice Crites, Nov. 27, 2017, The Washington Post.
The Washington Post relates the attempt of Project Veritas to persuade them to print fake news.

John Timmer, Nov. 15, 2017, Ars Technica.
Article discusses a study showing that the motivation, and not just the ability, to think critically is important in spotting and unraveling fake news.

Ben Collins, Joseph Cox, Nov. 7, 2017, Daily Beast.
Russian "troll farms" have been discovered feeding fake news and memes to influence the 2016 U.S. election. The "Jenna Abrams" Twitter account is an example of how this misinformation became embedded into social media.

Bethania Palma and Vinny Green, September 29, 2017, Snopes.
This article discusses how a number of verified celebrity Facebook accounts are being manipulated to spread fake news and click bait articles.

Adrian Chen, Sept. 4, 2017, The New Yorker.
An article about political and propaganda use of the ability of "fake news" to spread widely across the Internet.

Ashley Rodriguez, May 16, 2017, Quartz.
The author talks to the founders of Snopes and Storyful, and a neuroscientist who has written a book on critical thinking.

John Bohannon, May 15, 2017, Gizmodo.
The author relates how he performed a "scientific study" that was picked up as fact by news outlets, even though the science behind it was faulty.

Samanth Subramanian, Feb. 15, 2017, Wired.
This article discusses the activities of a fake-news author, "Boris", a teenager living in a small town in Macedonia.

Eugene Kiely and Lori Robertson, Nov. 18, 2016, FactCheck.org.
A number of tips to make sure you are not taken in by a fake story.

Nadia Dreid, Nov. 17, 2016, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
An article about Melissa Zimdars of Merrimack College, who has been maintaining a list of "False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical 'News' Sources."

Chris Woolston, July 24, 2015, Nature.
A report of a scientific article that criticizes how scientific articles are reported. Includes link to scientific article.

"A Field Guide to “Fake News” and Other Information Disorders explores the use of digital methods to study false viral news, political memes, trolling practices and their social life online." A project of the Public Data Lab.

Multidisciplinary. No login required.