How 'fake news' grew in 2016. Details here.
Before the Internet, publishing fake news and gaining an audience that could generate a profit was nearly impossible for three reasons:
- Distribution and cost: Distributing information on any kind of scale needed a prohibitively expensive media operation.
- Audiences and trust: Building a large audience took much longer, and because it was expensive to acquire and built on trust of information, publishing fake news would be damaging to reputation and thus have economic consequences.
- Law and regulation: Because it was expensive to distribute information, there were far fewer players. These abided by media law and could be regulated. Publishing fake news would likely end up with the publisher being sued.
- The creation of social networks like Facebook and Twitter allowed people to exchange information on a much greater scale than ever before.
- Publishing platforms like WordPress allowed anyone to create a dynamic website with ease.
How it works:
How to spot fake news:
Is this 'fake news?'
Other 'fake news' stories.
Click on the picture:
US election - fake news stories here.
Coca Cola damaged by fake news. Click on the picture:
More here.
Fake news & Hurricane Irma. Click on the picture.
Facebook and Google have promised to crack down on misinformation, although they have been criticised for failing to accept their place in its spread.
These include working with independent fact-checking organisations and labelling suspicious stories as such.
