How Can Social Media Play a Role in Combating Fake News

Research Article
Open access

How Can Social Media Play a Role in Combating Fake News

Yueyan Duan 1*
  • 1 Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom, S10 2TN    
  • *corresponding author yduan25@sheffield.ac.uk
LNEP Vol.4
ISSN (Print): 2753-7056
ISSN (Online): 2753-7048
ISBN (Print): 978-1-915371-33-1
ISBN (Online): 978-1-915371-34-8

Abstract

The shift from a mass media culture to a social media culture has allowed people to access information in more diverse ways. The emergence of social media has provided people with a fast and efficient platform to exchange information and has gradually become the main channel for people to share information and get news. However, the double-edged sword effect of social media has gradually become apparent, with a large number of fake news stories mixed in. This paper will examine six different types of fake news through a literature review approach: satire, parody, fabrication, manipulation, advertising and propaganda, and the motives of the purveyors. It also uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a background and selects social media such as Facebook and Twitter to discuss the role they play in combating fake news, misinformation, and disinformation. Facebook has taken the approach of partnering with professional agencies to provide accurate information about the epidemic on its social media platforms; Twitter has also reduced the amount of misinformation spread by adjusting its internal algorithmic pushing mechanism and hashtags.

Keywords:

social media, fake news, misinformation, dissemination, free speech

Duan,Y. (2023). How Can Social Media Play a Role in Combating Fake News. Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media,4,822-827.
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References

[1]. Wardle C. (2017). Fake news. It’s complicated. https://firstdraftnews.org/articles/fake-news-complicated/

[2]. Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-36. https://doi.org/ 10.1257/jep.31.2.211

[3]. Tandoc, E. C., Wei, L. Z. & Ling, R. (2018). Defining “Fake News”, Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137-153. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143

[4]. Brewer P. R., Young G. D., & Morreale M. (2013). The Impact of Real News about “Fake News”: Intertextual Processes and Political Satire. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 25(3), 323–343. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edt015

[5]. Albright, J. (2016). The #Election 2016 Micro-Propaganda Machine. https://medium.com/@d1gi/the-election2016-micro-propaganda-machine-383449cc1fba.

[6]. Chen, Y., Conroy, N. J., & Rubin, V. L. (2015). Misleading Online Content: Recognizing Clickbait as “False News”. WMDD '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM on Workshop on Multimodal Deception Detection, 15-19. https://doi.org/10.1145/2823465.2823467

[7]. Jewitt, R. (2009). The trouble with twittering: Integrating social media into mainstream news. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 5(3), 233-240.

[8]. Tandoc, E. C., & Vos, T. P. (2015). The Journalist is Marketing the News: Social Media in The Gatekeeping Process. Journalism Practice, 10(8), 950–966. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2015.1087811

[9]. Luengo, M., & García-Marín, D. (2020). The performance of truth: politicians, fact-checking journalism, and the struggle to tackle COVID-19 misinformation. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 8(3), 405-427.

[10]. Jin, K. (2020). Keeping People Safe and Informed About the Coronavirus. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/coronavirus/

[11]. Zubair, T., Raquib, A., & Qadir, J. (2019). Combating Fake News, Misinformation, and Machine Learning Generated Fakes: Insight's from the Islamic Ethical Tradition. ICR Journal, 10(2), 189-212. https://doi.org/10.52282/icr.v10i2.42

[12]. Twitter Inc. (2021) Coronavirus: Staying safe and informed on Twitter. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/covid-19

[13]. Westfall, C. (2020). The free speech face-off between Facebook and Twitter: Are warnings justified? https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2020/05/30/free-speech-facebook-twitter-george-floyd-demonstrations-censorship/#1620affe6e90

[14]. United Nations (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

[15]. Heins, M. (2013). The brave new world of social media censorship. Harvard Law Review Forum, 127, 325–330.

[16]. Domenico, G. D., Nunan, D., Sit, J. & Pitardi, V. (2021). Free but fake speech: When giving primacy to the source decreases misinformation sharing on social media. Psychology & Marketing, 38(10), 1700-1711. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21479

[17]. Ullmann, S. & Tomalin, M. (2020). Quarantining online hate speech: technical and ethical perspectives. Ethics and information technology, 22(1), 69–80. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-019-09516-z

Cite this article

Duan,Y. (2023). How Can Social Media Play a Role in Combating Fake News. Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media,4,822-827.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

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About volume

Volume title: Proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies (ICIHCS 2022), Part 3

ISBN：978-1-915371-33-1(Print) / 978-1-915371-34-8(Online)
Editor：Muhammad Idrees, Matilde Lafuente-Lechuga
Conference website: https://www.icihcs.org/
Conference date: 18 December 2022
Series: Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media
Volume number: Vol.4
ISSN：2753-7048(Print) / 2753-7056(Online)

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References

[1]. Wardle C. (2017). Fake news. It’s complicated. https://firstdraftnews.org/articles/fake-news-complicated/

[2]. Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-36. https://doi.org/ 10.1257/jep.31.2.211

[3]. Tandoc, E. C., Wei, L. Z. & Ling, R. (2018). Defining “Fake News”, Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137-153. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143

[4]. Brewer P. R., Young G. D., & Morreale M. (2013). The Impact of Real News about “Fake News”: Intertextual Processes and Political Satire. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 25(3), 323–343. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edt015

[5]. Albright, J. (2016). The #Election 2016 Micro-Propaganda Machine. https://medium.com/@d1gi/the-election2016-micro-propaganda-machine-383449cc1fba.

[6]. Chen, Y., Conroy, N. J., & Rubin, V. L. (2015). Misleading Online Content: Recognizing Clickbait as “False News”. WMDD '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM on Workshop on Multimodal Deception Detection, 15-19. https://doi.org/10.1145/2823465.2823467

[7]. Jewitt, R. (2009). The trouble with twittering: Integrating social media into mainstream news. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 5(3), 233-240.

[8]. Tandoc, E. C., & Vos, T. P. (2015). The Journalist is Marketing the News: Social Media in The Gatekeeping Process. Journalism Practice, 10(8), 950–966. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2015.1087811

[9]. Luengo, M., & García-Marín, D. (2020). The performance of truth: politicians, fact-checking journalism, and the struggle to tackle COVID-19 misinformation. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 8(3), 405-427.

[10]. Jin, K. (2020). Keeping People Safe and Informed About the Coronavirus. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/coronavirus/

[11]. Zubair, T., Raquib, A., & Qadir, J. (2019). Combating Fake News, Misinformation, and Machine Learning Generated Fakes: Insight's from the Islamic Ethical Tradition. ICR Journal, 10(2), 189-212. https://doi.org/10.52282/icr.v10i2.42

[12]. Twitter Inc. (2021) Coronavirus: Staying safe and informed on Twitter. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/covid-19

[13]. Westfall, C. (2020). The free speech face-off between Facebook and Twitter: Are warnings justified? https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2020/05/30/free-speech-facebook-twitter-george-floyd-demonstrations-censorship/#1620affe6e90

[14]. United Nations (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

[15]. Heins, M. (2013). The brave new world of social media censorship. Harvard Law Review Forum, 127, 325–330.

[16]. Domenico, G. D., Nunan, D., Sit, J. & Pitardi, V. (2021). Free but fake speech: When giving primacy to the source decreases misinformation sharing on social media. Psychology & Marketing, 38(10), 1700-1711. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21479

[17]. Ullmann, S. & Tomalin, M. (2020). Quarantining online hate speech: technical and ethical perspectives. Ethics and information technology, 22(1), 69–80. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-019-09516-z

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