When we talk about fake news, first of all, we mean misinformation and lies. The classification and definition of these concepts can be found in the works of Shu et al. (2017) and Wardle
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(2016). In their study, Sukhodolov & Bychkova (2017) distinguish the following types of fake news:
1. Depending on the ratio of reliable and false information
● Completely false news;
● News containing lies against the background of reliable information;
● The "news" is based on a real event, fragments of which are distorted.
2. In terms of the authenticity of time and place details of the event
● An event that happened in the past is presented as fresh news;
● An event that happened in one place is presented as an event in a completely different place.
3. In terms of persons mentioned in the news
● News item that allegedly contains a link to a statement about an event by a famous person;
● News exposing a minor participant in the events as the main person;
● News based on the testimony of unverified persons.
4. Depending on the purpose of creation
● Fake news that created for entertainment purposes only;
Not all fake news is designed to misinform with malicious intent. On the Internet, we can find tons of websites that publish satirical or humorous news about certain events or individuals. Such fake news is purely entertaining.
Examples of sites that post such news include the British website The Daily Mash or the American satirical news agency The Onion.
● Fake news that created to achieve political advantage: to discredit political competitors, to provoke riots, etc;
One of the most popular and, at the same time, the dirtiest tricks in elections is denigrating an opponent. This method of power struggle reached its climax during the 2016 US presidential race when both candidates did not hesitate to throw mud at each other (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017).
● Fake news that created to discredit persons by gender, nationality, religion, etc;
Lies based on the theme of religion or racial discrimination have existed since ancient times. Unfortunately, in our time, such news also appears frequently. A good example is an article from the unreliable blog NeonNettle.com (Greenberg, 2018), which, referring to the words of Pope Francis, argued that gun owners cannot call themselves true Christians. The news sparked a lot of
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heated debate among religious gun owners in the United States before being rebutted by resources such as Politifact and Snopes.
● Fakes that created for the purpose of economic benefits;
Often, fake messages from supposedly "reliable sources" can have a strong economic impact. For example, the message about the impending deal between Twitter and Google, published on the fake Bloomberg website, triggered an 8%
rise in Twitter shares, which increased the company's capitalization by about $ 2 billion. It is difficult to call this positive information for Google, but for Twitter, this news definitely played into the hands.
● Fake news that created to increase internet traffic;
Fake news is a good way to attract more audience to a website, thereby increasing internet traffic and income from the website. When creating fake news, authors often resort to the most flashy and shocking headlines - such headlines will undoubtedly attract attention.
● Fake news that created for the purpose of illegal appropriation of funds and other property;
Sending phishing emails is the most popular way to extract personal data from users for the purpose of illegal enrichment.
● Fake news that created with the aim of damaging information on the user's computer;
Sites that host fake news may contain viruses, or the news may link to sources that could harm the reader's computer.
● Fake news that created for the purpose of drawing attention to an individual, company, or organization.
Fake news, thrown in at the right time, can have a serious impact on the image of a certain person, both by denigrating him or increasing his rating (for example, in an election race).
5. Depending on the level of perception of reliability
● Fake news perceived as fake
● Fake news that could raise doubts about the veracity of the information
● Fake news written so convincingly that the reader has no doubt about the truthfulness of the information (Sukhodolov & Bychkova, 2017).
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Fake news today can take many different forms. Fake news is not only a publication with posted false information. For example, on platforms like Instagram, fake news takes the form of photos or images with modified content. For Twitter, fake news most often takes the form of posts with inaccurate information. After analyzing the work of Wardle (2016), the following ways of distorting information can be distinguished:
1. Fabricated Images
Often a slight change to the image is enough to give it a completely different meaning.
Using photo editing programs like Photoshop, you can put a person in a photo, or vice versa, remove important details from an image. Undoubtedly, such an image can be used to fabricate accusations against individuals or entire countries.
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Figure 6: Edited photo from the G20 summit (TJournal, 2017)
2. Fabricated video
With the advancement of technology, it has become possible to fake not only images but entire videos as well. High-quality faked videos can be very confusing to the user.
An important step in creating fake videos was Deepfake technology based on "deep learning" and neural networks (Vaccari & Chadwick, 2020). This technology allows replacing one person in the video with a completely different one while being so realistic that it can mislead the viewer.
3. Fake audio
This type of fake is often used during telephone conversations. The most striking example is the so-called "telephone terrorism". This problem is very relevant at the Prague University of Economics and Business. Thus, during the exam period of 2019, the bomb was "announced" at the university 3 times (Bernáth, 2019). Another example
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of fake audio is the "intercepted conversation between Berlin and Warsaw", in which intelligence agents discuss Navalny and admire Lukashenko (Meduza, 2020).
4. False identities
Social media has a huge number of bots - lines of code that perform a specific task.
Most often, bots repost content or create the appearance of activity on the site. But some bots also pose as certain (often famous) personalities. Thus, fake news posted on behalf of a famous person is more likely to be perceived by audiences as real news.