Falling for fake news: investigating the consumption of news via social media

Flintham, Martin; Karner, Christian; Creswick, Helen; Bachour, Khaled; Gupta, Neha; Moran, Stuart

Abstract

In the so called ‘post-truth’ era, characterized by a loss of public trust in various institutions, and the rise of ‘fake news’ disseminated via the internet and social media, individuals may face uncertainty about the veracity of information available, whether it be satire or malicious hoax. We investigate attitudes to news delivered by social media, and subsequent verification strategies applied, or not applied, by individuals. A survey reveals that two thirds of respondents regularly consumed news via Facebook, and that one third had at some point come across fake news that they initially believed to be true. An analysis task involving news presented via Facebook reveals a diverse range of judgement forming strategies, with participants relying on personal judgements as to plausibility and scepticism around sources and journalistic style. This reflects a shift away from traditional methods of accessing the news, and highlights the difficulties in combating the spread of fake news.

Citation

Flintham, M., Karner, C., Creswick, H., Bachour, K., Gupta, N., & Moran, S. (2018). Falling for fake news: investigating the consumption of news via social media. In CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173950

• Conference Name: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2018
• Conference Location: Montreal, Canada
• Start Date: Apr 21, 2018
• End Date: Apr 26, 2018
• Acceptance Date: Jan 1, 2018
• Publication Date: Apr 21, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jan 19, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 21, 2018
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• Chapter Number: Paper No. 376
• ISBN: 978-1-4503-5620-6
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173950
• Keywords: Post-truth; fake news; social media; verification; Facebook; trust
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/927301
• Publisher URL: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3173574.3173950
• Additional Information: doi:10.1145/3173574.3173950.; Published in: CHI'18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Montreal, Canada, 21-26 April 2018. New York : ACM, 2018. Paper 376. ISBN 978-1-4503-5620-6. doi:10.1145/3173574.3173950