1.2 Research Aim and Objectives
1.2.2 Research objectives
According to the aim of the work, the following objectives can be defined:
● Description and analysis of the concept of social media;
● Analysis of the phenomenon of fake news, classification, and study of the impact of fake news;
● Description of existing methods of identification and countering fake news;
● Analysis of fake news articles with the aim of a deeper study of the key characteristics of these news.
8 1.3 Research hypotheses
An important part of writing a thesis is formulating a hypothesis. A hypothesis in a thesis is a predicted result of research, a scientific assumption that must be verified empirically and either proved or refuted. Since the main goal of this work is to study the fake news phenomenon, the following hypotheses were formulated:
● Fake news, due to its origin, do not have links to sources, or the sources are not reliable;
● Fake news is written in the most accessible way, to be understood by the widest possible audience.
1.4 Review of literature
During the writing of the master's thesis, a large variety of sources were used. The first part of the theoretical part, which describes social media, is based on the research work "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media" by Kaplan & Haenlein (2010).
The main sources that were used in this work can be considered the scientific work of Sukhodolov & Bychkova (2017) "Fake news as a modern media phenomenon: definition, types, the role of fake news and ways of counteracting it", “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election” by Allcott & Gentzkow (2017), and “Fake information in Ukrainian social media: concept, types, impact on the audience” by Kitsa (2016).
Kaplan, A., Haenlein, M., 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media, Business Horizons, 53 (1), 59-68.
In their work, Kaplan and Heinlein define the concept of "social media" and describe their emergence and implementation in our lives. Kaplan & Haenlein describes the work of blogs, social networks, and virtual gaming worlds as prime examples of modern social media. Also, the authors explain the development of Web 2.0 and classify social media into six main categories by social presence/media richness and self-presentation / self-disclosure. The authors also give recommendations on the use of social media for ordinary users and organizations in modern realities.
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Sukhodolov, A., Bychkova, A, 2017. Fake news as a modern media phenomenon: definition, types, role of fake news and ways of counteracting it, THEORY OF JOURNALISM, DOI 10.17150/2308-6203.2017.6(2).143-169
This article describes the phenomenon of the emergence and spread of fake news in modern media. The authors describe in detail the concept of fake news, give them a classification, and categorize them. Also, the authors give examples of such fake news from world sources. Part of the work is devoted to the analysis of the influence of fake news on the US Presidential Election in 2016, data from sociological studies are presented. The authors also pay attention to the methods of fighting fake news in the media, as exemplified by companies such as Facebook and Google.
Allcott, H., Gentzkow, M., 2017. Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election, Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 31, Number 2—Spring 2017—Pages 211–236
In their work, the authors investigate the impact of fake news on social media on the US elections in 2016. The authors of the article define the term "fake news" and also describe the history of the development of fake news in the United States. Allcott & Gentzkow collected the most popular fake news that circulated on social networks before the elections and analyzed their focus and goals. Also, the authors are trying to identify the sources of fake news through their survey conducted using the SurveyMonkey platform. This poll is also used to identify the categories of people affected by fake news regarding elections.
Kitsa, M., 2016. Fake information in Ukrainian social media: concept, types, impact on the audience, SCIENTIFIC PAPERS 2016 / 1 (52), Pages 281-287
In his work, the author describes fake news from the point of view of the information war between Ukraine and Russia, which began after the occupation of Crimea in 2014. Kita defines and categorizes misinformation and fake information. Also, the author gives examples of fake news circulating in Ukrainian social media and also describes the impact of such information on the reader. Part of the work is devoted to methods of combating misinformation in social media in Ukraine.
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2 SOCIAL MEDIA
“We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.”
Stephen Hawking
2.1 The emergence of the concept of social media
The development of mass media has always been accompanied and even depended on the development of technologies - the development of the printing press and the development of the mass press, the invention of radio waves, the development of electronic devices (radio, television, mobile devices) and more (Fang, 1997). Social media appeared about a few decades ago and was identified exclusively with the blogosphere, but today this concept includes, in addition to blogs, social networks, Internet forums, projects, podcasts, and videos.
There are many definitions of social media. The Cambridge Dictionary defines social media as follows: “websites and computer programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet using a computer or mobile phone”. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as: "Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking."
Kaplan & Haenlein (2010) define social media as “a group of Internet applications based on one or another ideological and technological base of Web 2.0, allowing participants in social networks to create content in the process of sharing it” (p. 61).
Social media is a computer technology that facilitates the creation and information exchange, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression across virtual communities and networks.
The renowned American publisher of dictionaries and reference books Merriam-Webster defines social media as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)" (Merriam-Webster, 2004).
In the study of Marina (2012), social media are considered as the latest virtual forms of social activity of libraries in the network environment, in light of which the author proposed a number of recommendations for the promotion of libraries in the field of social media.
Currently, the main trend in the field of promoting goods and services is associated with the use of such a communication channel as social media.
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According to Manning (2014): “Two common characteristics help to define social media.
First, social media allows some form of participation. Social media are never completely passive, even if sometimes social networking sites such as Facebook may allow passive viewing of what others are posting. Usually, at a bare minimum, a profile must be created that allows for the beginning of the potential for interaction. That quality in and of itself sets social media apart from traditional media where personal profiles are not the norm. Second, and in line with their participatory nature, social media involves interaction. This interaction can be with established friends, family, or acquaintances or with new people who share common interests or even a common acquaintance circle” (p. 1158).
2.2 Features of social media
In the process of origin and development, social media acquired special qualities and characteristics that distinguish this type of mass communication from others. Obar & Wildman (2015) define the next features of social media:
● Use of interactive Internet applications Web 2.0;
● User-generated content like text messages (posts) or comments, digital photos or videos, and data obtained through all online interactions is the lifeblood of social media;
● Users create profiles for a specific website or application that are developed and maintained by a social media organization;
● Social media connects users on the Internet, thereby creating social networks.
Scoble (2007) in his article "What is Social Media?" describes in detail the distinguishing characteristics of social media:
1. Possibility of correcting published information.
2. Interactivity.
3. Affordable tracking of the popularity of publications.
4. Fast availability of old materials.
5. Multimedia.
6. Lack of procedures for approval of materials.
7. Unlimited volume.
8. Links to other materials.
12 9. Incomplete control over page content
It is clear from the definition of social media by Kaplan & Haenlein (2010) that social media allows anyone to create and share their content with others. After analyzing Сasmer's (2012) work, the following main characteristics of social media can be distinguished:
1. Social media sites encourage active participation
In their work, Duffy & McDonald (2011) point out that most of these sites have a discussion section, a comment wall, a chat, a chain of comments and links leading to other posts or websites, and a rating system. Active participation in the "life" of the site is encouraged in every possible way, for example, on the well-known site Reddit, each publication can be assessed, thus increasing the rating of the post. On YouTube, active channel owners receive "buttons" from Google that indicate the number of subscribers they have gained on the channel. So, for 100,000 subscribers to the channel, the owner receives a "silver button", for 1 million a "golden button" and for 10 million the channel owner receives a "diamond button".
2. Social media is open to share information
As Dao (2015) writes in his work, “Most social media sites are open to participation, comments, rating, downloading information, and sharing information for users” (p. 90).
Unlike standard media, social media allows any user to create, edit, and share any information, be it an image, video, or music. This freedom also has a negative meaning - tracking harmful or false content is much more difficult. This openness forces web resources to make efforts to attract users to their platform. As Kietzmann, Hermkens &
McCarthy (2011) write in their research, web resources must continually build and maintain their reputation for the site to be considered reliable and trusted by users.
3. Conversation ability
Users love to have conversations, disputes, or discussions on topics of interest to them;
such discussions can be held in blogs, forums, chat rooms (Casmer, 2012). Social media allows the user to find the topic of interest as easily as possible and to join the conversation effortlessly.
4. Social media fosters community building
An important feature of social media is the formation of various communities. Social networks allow users to create and join communities based on their interests. As Kietzmann, Hermkens & McCarthy (2011) write, the more social a social network becomes, the larger the community of friends and followers becomes. A social group
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or community on the Internet is formed in the same way as in the real world, based on common beliefs, interests, or views.
5. Connectivity between different media resources
All social media sites allow users to post links to other sites, allowing quick access to the information they need (Casmer, 2012). Most sites have a "Find us" button, thanks to which the user can track a web resource on various websites (for example, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram).
A common feature of social media and traditional media is the ability to reach a small or large audience; both a blog post and a TV show can go unnoticed and can reach millions of people.
However, social media has its own unique features and characteristics. The main difference between social media and traditional media is that users can share their own content (Kaplan
& Haenlein, 2010).
Distinctive features:
● Audience achievement - both can go global, but traditional media usually use a centralized way of organizing, producing, and distributing, while social media is by nature more decentralized and dispersed, less hierarchical;
● Accessibility - regular media is usually governmental and/or corporate, and social media is generally available to the public free of charge or cheaply;
● Usability - traditional media usually provides certain skills and abilities for their production, while social media, in theory, can be operated by anyone;
● Immediacy - The time lag between the production and publication of traditional media by users can be days, weeks, and months, compared to social media, where information is available virtually the next moment after publication;
● Immutability - traditional media cannot be changed after they have been created (a journal article cannot be corrected if it has already been published and distributed), while social media can be constantly modified by editing and adding comments.
2.3 Classification
A large number of different authors have proposed their options for classifying social media.
This thesis will take the classification of authors Kaplan & Haenlein (2010), in which the authors propose to divide social media into six different types: collaborative projects (for
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example, Wikipedia), content communities (for example, YouTube), blogs and microblogs (for example, WordPress.com), social networking sites (for example, VKontakte or
Facebook), virtual game worlds (for example, World of Warcraft) and virtual communities (for example, Second Life). It is necessary to give a more complete explanation of these categories:
1. Сollaborative projects
Collaboration projects allow a large number of users to create and edit information content at the same time (Kaplan & Haeinlein, 2014). The brightest and most famous collaborative project is Wikipedia. On the pages of this website, absolutely any user can add, remove, or make changes to the content, and so on. Although Wikipedia is a completely open-source project, public accessibility is not a requirement. For example, the corporate wiki Confluence is used internally by organizations to create a unified knowledge base.
2. Blogs and microblogs
The second type of social networking site - blog - is considered the earliest form of all (Dao, 2015). A blog (from weblog - Internet event log) is a website whose main content is posted regularly added by a person containing text, images, or multimedia. The first blog is considered to be Tim Berners-Lee's page, where he published news since 1992.
3. Content communities
Content Communities allow users to share a variety of multimedia content on the Internet.
People upload images, music, videos, or other content and provide a description that other users can then find and view. A feature of these sites allows users to add comments to the page displaying content and share links on other platforms. Content communities include sites such as YouTube, which allows you to upload and share videos, or Imgur, an online service for uploading, storing, and sharing photo images.
4. Social networking sites
The fourth group is called Social networking sites, as they are sites for social communication using the Internet (Dao,2015). Now the phenomenon of social networks does not surprise anyone (Sharma & Godiyal, 2016). Such sites allow users to create their profiles and post various digital information (articles, photos, videos, etc.). The most famous example of a social network is Facebook, the largest social network in the world (Linke, 2011).
5. Virtual game worlds
Virtual game worlds are online platforms that replace the real world with a virtual one, in which a real person creates his avatar to interact with other people and their avatars. In a sense, virtual game worlds are the highest form of social media in terms of user interaction (Kaplan &
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Haenlein, 2010). An example of an extremely popular virtual world is the online game World of Warcraft, in which millions of players around the world communicate, complete tasks, and explore the world together.
6. Virtual Social Worlds
Virtual social worlds are somewhat similar to virtual game worlds, but they also have some differences. Such worlds provide even more freedom of action for your avatar, often limited only by the basic rules of the world (for example, gravity) (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Unlike virtual game worlds, virtual social worlds do not have any plot, and everything in such worlds is based only on the interaction of players. Such worlds open up a truly wide scope for self-expression and interaction, which other types of social media cannot afford. The most famous example of a virtual social world is the Second Life project.
2.4 Main social media platforms
The percentage of people using social media is growing steadily every year. With the
increase in Internet coverage, more and more users are using social media in their daily lives.
Among the huge variety of social media platforms, there are undeniable leaders, s illustrated in the Figure 1:
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Figure 1: The most popular social media platforms worldwide (Statista, 2020)
Instagram was created in the fall of 2010. The app positions itself as a photo and video sharing platform with elements of a social network (Dubrovik, 2013). From the very beginning of its launch, the platform proved to be extremely successful, and by December 2010, Instagram had 1 million users, and in June 2011, more than 5 million people were registered on Instagram (Siegler,2011). Such success could not go unnoticed, and in April 2012 Facebook announced the purchase of the Instagram app for the US $ 1 billion (Rusli, 2012). According to Statista (2020), more than a billion users are registered on Instagram nowadays.
17 WeChat
WeChat is a Chinese mobile communication system for text and voice messaging, developed by the Chinese company Tencent. With over a billion active users, WeChat is one of the five most used social media in the world. The application is incredibly popular in Asia, while very few people have heard of it in Europe (Montag, Becker & Gan, 2018). WeChat supports text messaging, voice messaging, multi-recipient messaging, photo, and video sharing. It is possible to exchange contacts via Bluetooth and, if desired, there are various ways to establish contacts with random people. Also, It is possible to carry out money transactions inside WeChat, the internal payment system is called WeChat Pay. In 2016, WeChat had more mobile transactions over just Chinese New Year than PayPal had during the whole of 2015 (McEleny,2016). Due to the incredible popularity of Wechat in China, the government of the country began to use this application for mass surveillance of citizens (Cockerell,2019).
WhatsApp is a popular free instant messaging system for mobile and other platforms with voice and video support. Allows you to send text messages, images, videos, audio, electronic documents, and even software installations over the Internet. WhatsApp Inc. was founded on February 24, 2009, and is located in Mountain View, USA; Since October 2014, owned by Facebook Inc. The deal reached the incredible US $ 19 billion (Covert, 2014).
YouTube
YouTube is a video hosting service that provides users with services for storing, editing, and displaying videos. Users can upload, view, rate, comment, add to favorites, and share certain videos on YouTube. According to Alexa.com, YouTube is ranked second in the world in terms of the number of visitors, yielding primacy to Google search.
Facebook is the largest social network in the world (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), with over 2.5 billion active users (Statista, 2020). Facebook also owns such popular services as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR. Facebook is a popular social network for promoting products or services of companies. Facebook provides users with the ability to leave reviews since subscribers can comment on posts, rate brand pages for others to see.
18 2.5 Time spent on social media
The amount of time people spending on social media increases every year. So, for example, in 2012 the average time spent by a user on social networks was 90 minutes, and in 2019 this figure was already 144 minutes.
Figure 2: Daily time spent on social networking sites from 2012 to 2019 (Statista, 2020)
If we compare the average time spent on social media by region, then most of the time users
If we compare the average time spent on social media by region, then most of the time users