New Report: “Identifying and Countering Fake News”

From the University of Arizona:

A new report from media and internet scholars at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law addresses those questions.
The report, “Identifying and Countering Fake News”, identifies the distinct types of fake news: hoaxes, propaganda, trolling and satire, along with the motivations behind them. It also proposes a set of model solutions to reduce production and dissemination of fake news.
“The term ‘fake news’ has now been used to refer to so many things that it seems to have lost real meaning,” said lead author Mark Verstraete, a privacy and free-expression research fellow at the College of Law and a postdoctoral research associate at the UA’s Center for Digital Society and Data Studies. “Our goal is to bring clarity to that problem and prompt discussion about possible solutions. Before we can stop fake news, we have to define it.”
Verstraete co-authored the report with UA law professors Jane R. Bambauer and Derek E. Bambauer, who also are affiliated faculty with the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
What Is Fake News?
The researchers created a visual matrix to organize different types of fake news based on two criteria: whether the author intends to deceive readers and whether there is financial motivation for creating the story. The four types are:
Satire: purposefully false content that is financially motivated but not intended to deceive
Hoax: purposefully false content that is financially motivated and is intended to deceive
Propaganda: purposefully biased or false content that is politically motivated and is intended to deceive
Trolling: presenting information that has biased or fake content that is motivated by an attempt at personal humor and is intended to deceive.

Read the Complete Summary: Identifying and Countering Fake News
Direct to Full Text Report: Identifying and Countering Fake News
33 pages; PDF.
See Also: Conference Paper: “News Verification Suite: Towards System Design to Supplement Reporters’ and Editors’ Judgements” & “Deception Detection and Rumor Debunking for Social Media”

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