Prague University of Economics and Business Faculty of Informatics and Statistics
SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE PHENOMENON OF FAKE NEWS
MASTER THESIS
Study program: Information management Author: Bohdan Malynovskyi
Supervisor: Ing. PhDr., Ph.D. Antonín Pavlíček Prague, November 2020
Declaration
I hereby declare that I am the sole author of the thesis entitled “Social media and the phenomenon of fake news “. I duly marked out all quotations. The used literature and sources are stated in the attached list of references.
In Prague on 30/11/2020 Signature
Acknowledgment
I hereby wish to express my appreciation and gratitude to the supervisor of my thesis, Ing.
PhDr., Ph.D. Antonín Pavlíček for time and dedication.
Abstract
Due to the constantly growing quantity and quality of false information in the world in general and in social media in particular, social media and the phenomenon of fake news were chosen as the topic of this thesis. This work describes the concept of social media in our time, classifies them, and groups them. The thesis provides examples of the most popular social media platforms, as well as the time of using social networks in the world.
An important part of the thesis is to explain the phenomenon of fake news in the world. The thesis describes the history of the emergence of fake news, their classification, and features.
The paper describes the impact of fake news and its distribution through social media, as well as the impact of such news. In addition, the thesis describes methods of identification and methods of countering fake news.
The practical part of the work is focused on an in-depth study of the fake news phenomenon.
For this, 202 fake news articles were analyzed according to various criteria and a correlation was found between the key characteristics of fake news.
Keywords
social media, social networks, disinformation, misinformation, fake news, hoax.
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Table of Contents
1 INTRODUCTION ... 7
1.1 Topic Definition ... 7
1.2 Research Aim and Objectives ... 7
1.2.1 Aim ... 7
1.2.2 Research objectives ... 7
1.3 Research hypotheses ... 8
1.4 Review of literature ... 8
2 SOCIAL MEDIA ... 10
2.1 The emergence of the concept of social media ... 10
2.2 Features of social media ... 11
2.3 Classification ... 13
2.4 Main social media platforms ... 15
2.5 Time spent on social media ... 18
3 FAKE NEWS ... 19
3.1 Definition ... 19
3.2 Disinformation and Misinformation ... 21
3.3 History of fake news ... 22
3.4 Types of fake news ... 23
3.5 The impact of fake news ... 27
3.6 Fighting fake news ... 34
3.7 Methods of identification fakes ... 41
3.8 Websites for Fact-Checking ... 44
3.9 Fake detection software ... 46
3.10 Summing up ... 48
4 PRACTICAL PART ... 49
4.1 Objectives of the practical part ... 49
4.2 Description of analysis methods ... 49
4.3 Data analysis ... 55
4.4 Summing up ... 65
4.5 Future research suggestion ... 66
5 CONCLUSION ... 67
6 LIST OF REFERENCES ... 68
7 LIST OF FIGURES ... 77
Appendix A- The CRAAP Test Evaluation Criteria ... 79
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Appendix B- Part of the table with fake articles ... 80 Appendix C- Search engine results for the query "coronavirus is a myth" ... 94
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1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Topic Definition
The topic for writing the thesis was chosen due to the relevance of the problem of fake news in the modern media space. Today there are a huge number of sites or groups on social networks on the Internet that distribute unverified or knowingly false information. The clearest example is the US presidential elections in 2016 when Facebook and Twitter were filled with tons of fakes and misinformation towards both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This topic is also relevant to me because after the events of 2014 and the beginning of the information war between Ukraine and Russia, fake news began to flood the social media of my country.
Very often news about the same events were presented in different countries in completely different ways, and different bots or communities in social media picked up this distrustful news and spread it among the population of the countries.
1.2 Research Aim and Objectives
1.2.1 Aim
The main task of the theoretical part is an introduction to the concept of social media as well as the phenomenon of fake news that exists in them. The purpose of the practical part is to analyze the fake news spread on the Internet with the aim of a deeper study of the key characteristics of these news.
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 spend on social media in Latin America (212 minutes, which is 68 minutes more than the average time in the world), and the least time on social media is spent by users in North America (116 minutes, 28 minutes less than the world average). If we follow the time spent on specific social networks, then the undoubted leader in terms of waste of time is Facebook. On average, users of this social network spend 58 minutes a day on it. Instagram is only slightly inferior to Facebook: users spend 53 minutes a day on it. The least time users spend on Twitter- just 3 minutes a day (on average) (Famemass, 2019).
Figure 3: Average time spent on social media by platforms (Famemass, 2019)
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3 FAKE NEWS
As described above, social media is evolving very quickly (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Along with the development of social media, the number of people who have access to these very social media is increasing and user-generated content has become an increasingly important part of the digital world (Grossman, 2006). In addition to obvious advantages, the openness of social media to all users has brought a number of problems, one of which is fake news. Unlike traditional media, where all information is checked before publication (well, or at least should be checked), absolutely any user can post content of any kind on social media. Such content can carry disinformation, slander, and misrepresentation of the truth, etc. In 2017, Collins Dictionary named "fake news" the phrase of the year, noting that since 2016, the number of uses of the term in the media has grown by 365% (Flood, 2017). Analysis of the search query
"fake news" in Google Trends showed that this term became popular in early November 2016, which coincides with the US presidential election and the massive use of bots for misinformation and propaganda.
Figure 4: Timeline of the popularity of the search query "fake news" in the world (Google Trends, 2020)
This section will describe the concept of "false news", its characteristics and features, the history of its occurrence, as well as ways of identifying and combating false news on social media.
3.1 Definition
Nowadays, we come across the expression "fake news" very often. However, its meaning often varies from context to context. And yet, what is fake news? Cambridge dictionary defines fake
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news as “false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke” (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.).
The term "fake news" Wikipedia interprets as fully or partially fictional information about social events, certain persons, which is presented in the media under the guise of real journalistic materials. They are often humorous or satirical and are created to ridicule or draw attention to important social issues or trends (Wikipedia, n.d.). That is, this definition of fake information is positive and entertaining. However, in modern social media, fake information is aimed at misinformation, misleading the audience, which in turn causes not positive but, conversely, negative emotions. Allcott & Gentzkow (2016) define fake news as “news articles that are intentionally and verifiably false, and could mislead readers” (p. 213).
Fake news is defined as news that is entirely composed and fabricated to deceive the reader, to increase website traffic and profits. They should be distinguished from satirical news that uses exaggeration and fictional elements but is intended to entertain the reader or draw his attention to a particular issue (Hunt, 2016). Well-written fake news can easily be perceived by a user as real, which will entail the rapid spread of false information among users (Vosoughi, Roy &
Aral, 2018).
Fake information is written for a specific purpose. Answering the question "why spread lies?", we can identify several types of fakes on social media, depending on their task:
● Fakes that spread panic among people;
● Fakes that incite ethnic (racial, religious, etc.) hostility;
● Fakes that spread false thoughts in order to confuse us, to distract from the truth;
● Fakes that manipulate human consciousness;
● Fakes that advertise someone or something;
● Fakes that bring profit to the media that distributes it ("yellow press");
● Fakes that damage someone's reputation;
● Fakes that are entertaining (Kitsa, 2016).
The unfortunate thing is that people can not always distinguish a fake from reality, a distorted message from the truth. Among the titles of news are materials posted on the pages of fake publications, whose names impress or disprove the user. They arouse increased attention and interest from users, who continue to spread fake information, wanting to attract a larger audience, share it with their friends from social networks, thus becoming a tool of propaganda.
At the same time, society uses every opportunity to combat the spread of fake information.
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Vosoughi, Roy & Aral (2018) in their work found out how fake news spreads online, and also highlighted the main topics that are present in fake news. The authors analyzed real and fictional news circulating on Twitter between 2006 and 2017, analyzing over 126,000 news stories in total. The following figure represents the most popular topics for spreading fake news online:
Figure 5: The most popular topics among fake news (Vosoughi, Roy & Aral, 2018)
3.2 Disinformation and Misinformation
“Information is power. Disinformation is abuse of power.”
Newton Lee
In English, two concepts mean false or untrue information - "disinformation" and
"misinformation". Moreover, both of these words are often associated with fake news.
However, it is necessary to understand the difference between the two terms. Disinformation is specially created and disseminated false information. Disinformation is one of the ways to conduct information warfare in the modern world. Disinformation can include distributing forged documents, falsifying photographs, or spreading dangerous rumors and fabricated intelligence in order to gain an advantage over the enemy. Pope Francis has defined disinformation in the media as a situation where only information that is beneficial to someone is presented. In this case, viewers or listeners will no longer be able to draw the right conclusions because they do not have all the components. According to Pope Francis, the worst
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sins of modern media are disinformation, vilification, and defamation. And the most dangerous is disinformation (Credo, 2014).
When random users believed false or inaccurate information and shared it with relatives or friends, this is misinformation. Misinformation is also false information but disseminated without intent to mislead, spread panic, etc. Disinformation can easily turn into misinformation.
Crisis situations often contribute to the emergence of misinformation. Thus, the coronavirus epidemic was accompanied by an "infodemic", according to World Health Organization (WHO, 2020). People began to share unverified information about the coronavirus without bothering to check the facts for veracity. False information harms others and misleads them, no matter for what purpose this information was disseminated. Therefore, it is extremely important to rely only on reliable sources of information, trying to avoid rumors and speculation.
3.3 History of fake news
Lies have always existed in society. Although the term fake news emerged in the late 19th century (Merriam-Webster, n.d.), the very concept of misinformation and false messages goes back to ancient times. One of the oldest documented cases of disinformation can be considered the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. Pharaoh portrayed the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC) as a stunning victory for the Egyptians. He said that he personally defeated a huge number of enemies during the battle. However, the peace treaty between the Egyptians and the Hittites shows that the battle actually reached a dead end and neither side emerged victorious (Weir, 2009). In the first century BC, Octavian Augustus waged a disinformation campaign against Mark Antony, portraying him as a weakling, drunkard, and weak-willed puppet of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Also, Octavian published a document, allegedly from the hand of Mark Antony himself, where he bequeathed to bury himself after his death in the mausoleum of the Ptolemaic kings in Alexandria (MacDonald, 2017). Of course, this news caused a storm of indignation among the Roman population. In the end, Mark Antony committed suicide after being defeated at the Battle of Actium (31 BC).
A striking example of fake news is the case in the city of Trent, Italy, in 1475. When a two- year-old boy named Simonino had gone missing, city preacher Bernardino da Feltre blamed the local Jewish community. The preacher claimed that the Jews were like a boy, killed him,
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and then drank his blood in order to celebrate Passover. Later, he also stated that the boy's body was found in the basement of one of the Jewish houses. When rumors reached the governor of the city, he ordered the arrest of all Jews in the city. Fifteen people were found guilty and burned at the stake. When rumors reached the Vatican, the boy was canonized under the name of Saint Simonino (Soll, 2016).
Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1439 gave a huge boost to the development of fake news. Along with the spread of book printing, fake news began to spread around the world: from stories of sea monsters and ghosts to accusations of sinners for natural disasters. An earthquake in Lisbon in 1755, which took more than 12,000 lives in just 6 minutes (about 10% of the population of Lisbon) and about a thousand more from the tsunami that followed the earthquake (Albert, 2016). This event, which shocked the whole of Europe, and also exacerbated political contradictions in Portugal and ended the colonial ambitions that the country had in the 18th century. The Church and many European authorities saw in the natural disaster divine retribution for sinners. A new genre of fake news brochures (relações de sucessos) has emerged in Portugal, claiming that all survivors owe their lives to the apparition of the Virgin Mary. Such strong statements did not remain ignored and made the famous philosopher of his time, Voltaire, into an activist against false religious news (Soll, 2016).
Analyzing the history of fake news, it is impossible not to mention the main deception of the 19th century - "The Great Moon Hoax". This is a series of six essays published in the New York newspaper "Sun", the first of which appeared in print on August 25, 1835, describing the discovery of life and civilization on the Moon (Andrews, 2018). This discovery was falsely attributed to John Herschel, one of the most famous astronomers of his day. Undoubtedly, the appearance of such a serious name in the newspaper has multiplied the "truthfulness" of the article. This series of articles caused a lot of buzzes, made the newspaper incredibly popular and generated huge profits for the publisher.
Fake news became especially popular in the 20th century. However, this time the emphasis of this kind of news shifted towards military propaganda, which was facilitated by numerous conflicts, as well as the First and Second World Wars.
3.4 Types of fake news
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.
3.5 The impact of fake news
“In the absence of information, any version is acceptable.”
Vasily Golovachev
Ever since the term "fake news" came into daily use around 2016, humanity has witnessed an increasing spread of false information and methods of its dissemination. Along with reputational risk and misinformation, fake news can strongly promote a particular person, organization, or company. However, when we talk about fake news, we mean this term in a negative sense. The positive and negative effects of fake news were studied in the work of Berdyugina, Vladimirova & Chernyaeva (2019), as shown on figure 7:
. Figure 7: Consequences of fake news (Berdyugina et al, 2019)
USA
Fake news has become a serious problem after the 2016 US presidential election when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton fought for the presidency (Hunt & Gentzkow, 2017). Various news sites and blogs were filled with false news related to candidates and elections. Users shared such news many times more often than news from serious sources, generating about 8.7 million
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likes and comments to posts. One of the main sources of fake news was Facebook, where the most popular fake news garnered a larger audience than the New York Times, Washington Post, or BBC News in the same period. Until the last three months of the campaign, mainstream election content from major media easily outpaced fake election news on Facebook. Then, as the election approached, engagement in fake Facebook content skyrocketed and outnumbered posts from mainstream news outlets. (Silverman, 2016).
The figure below shows the number of reactions, posts, and likes of users to fake news and news from trusted sources in the 3 months before the start of the US presidential elections in 2016:
Figure 8: Comparison of the number of fake news and mainstream news (Buzzfeed, 2016)
Most of the fake news was aimed at discrediting Hillary Clinton and supporting Donald Trump (Silverman, 2016). Such news claimed that Clinton was selling weapons to ISIS (Roberts, 2016) or, for example, that the Pope supported Trump in his fight for the presidency (Evon, 2016). The picture below illustrates the top 5 most popular fake posts during the 2016 US elections shared by users on Facebook:
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Figure 9: Top 5 Fake Elections Stories (Buzzfeed, 2016)
A poll conducted in 2017 showed that 33% of the respondents have definitely encountered fake news during the 2016 presidential election. Another 34% noted that they most likely faced such news, and only 3% of respondents said that they had not witnessed fake news (Statista, 2018).
Figure 10: Share of adults who saw any fake news stories (Statista, 2018)
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In November 2016, many American news sites began to publish false information about
“Pizzagate”. The articles stated that the owners of the restaurant Comet Ping Pong and supporters of Hillary Clinton from the Democratic Party are members of an influential pedophile organization. The story went viral on fake news sites with lightning speed. A SubjectPolitics post claimed that the New York Police Department had raided Hillary Clinton's home, and a news headline on the Conservative Daily Post said the FBI had "confirmed" the story (Emery, 2016). Comet Ping Pong pizzeria received hundreds of threatening messages and phone calls from people who believed in fake news. The restaurant's owners and staff were harassed and threatened on social media. The Pizzagate theory has been criticized and labeled fake news by many major media outlets.
Ukraine
Today, Ukraine is in the midst of an information war, one of the tools of which is fakes (dissemination of false information). They are distributed through the media and social networks. There are many fakes not only on the Internet but also in traditional media. The main bridgehead for creating fake news can be called a hybrid war between Ukraine and Russia. It is characterized by a combination of fundamentally different types and methods of warfare, which are used in a coordinated manner to achieve certain goals. And although the concept of
"fake news" became widely used in the media and on the Internet precisely after the presidential elections in the United States in 2016 (Hunt & Gentzkow, 2017), Ukraine faced "fake news" 2 years earlier, more precisely at the end of 2013 - beginning of 2014. As a result of the overthrow of the government in Ukraine after the events of the "Euromaidan", which began in November 2013, and the arrival of pro-European forces in the government, relations between Russia and Ukraine sharply deteriorated. The Russian government, in addition, made a decision "to begin preparations for the return of Crimea to Russia," which they soon began to implement. In connection with the activities of Russia in the Crimean direction, crowned with the actual loss of the Crimean Peninsula by Ukraine, in March 2014, the Ukrainian ambassador to the Russian Federation was recalled to Kyiv, and in April 2014 the Ukrainian parliament adopted a law recognizing the territory of Crimea as the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine. A further escalation of relations between states occurred due to Russia's support for militias in eastern Ukraine, and in the new military doctrine of Ukraine approved in September 2015, the Russian Federation was declared a military enemy of Ukraine.
As we know, war is a springboard for lies and disinformation. Of course, fake news began to spread rapidly in the media regarding the conflict in the East and the annexation of Crimea. In
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Ukraine, researchers began to deal with the problems of information warfare and the fight against propaganda only after the events of 2013. As for specifically false information and fake news in the media, the scientific work on this topic is virtually absent (Kitsa, 2016).
If all is fair in war, then in information war it is even more so. Since the beginning of the hybrid war between Russia and Ukraine, a huge amount of fake news has been created. Most of this misinformation is trying to portray the Ukrainian army as a bunch of fascists and Nazis killing the Russian-speaking population and supporting Hitler's ideas. On July 12, 2014, the entire world community was stirred up by a story shown on the Russian Pervyy Kanal (Channel One).
In the report, the journalist of Pervyy Kanal interviewed a resident of Slovyansk city, previously liberated by the Ukrainian Army. A resident of the city claimed that the Ukrainian Army, having forced out the militias of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic, began to massacre the remaining militias in the city. Moreover, she claimed that she personally saw how the soldiers executed her husband and how the soldiers crucified her little son on a cross (Musafirova & Makarenko, 2015). Of course, this news was completely fake. The scandalous story received a significant public response. Some saw it as evidence of extreme unprofessionalism and the use of Russian state-owned media in information warfare with the aim of inciting hatred and enmity, while others saw it as evidence that "disinformation" and
"lies" "became the norm" for Russian state-owned media (Van Herpen, 2016).
There is a lot of fake news like this. However, a new wave of disinformation emerged during the tragedy with the Malaysian Boeing 777 on July 17, 2014. The crash of flight MH17 was the largest (in terms of the number of fatalities) in aviation history since September 11, 2001, entered the ten largest plane crashes in history, and became the largest plane crash in the post- Soviet space. Sometime after the plane crash, many Russian media began to post a satellite photo, which allegedly shows how a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter shot down a Boeing 777. This version was refuted in the course of an international investigation, which established that the plane was shot down from the territory controlled by the separatists with the help of a Russian- made air defense system “Buk”. The disaster became a significant reason for the adoption of new EU and US sanctions against Russia and one of the official reasons.
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Figure 11: "Sensational photo", which captures the attack of a Ukrainian military aircraft on the Malaysian Boeing MH17 (Ukrinform, 2017)
Stories like this one appear with enviable frequency both on television and on social media. As long as the "hybrid war" continues between Russia and Ukraine, fake news will be created and disseminated. Undoubtedly, the Ukrainian media have also created and are creating false and misleading news about Russia, but the severity of their stories is still much inferior to Russian scales.
Coronavirus of disinformation virus
The coronavirus epidemic could not stay away from fake news. Disinformation and distorted facts began to appear almost immediately after the outbreak of the virus in China in December 2019. Misinformation about the virus has spread through social media and classical media.
There are also known cases of xenophobia and discrimination against the Chinese people and people from regions with a high level of infection. Even before the official announcement of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on March 11, 2020, conspiracy theories and misinformation regarding the origin, scale, and other aspects of this disease began to spread on the Internet. Among the most common versions of this kind are claimed that the virus is a biological weapon with a patented vaccine or a tool for population regulation (McDonald, 2020). On February 2, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a "massive infodemic", pointing out an abundance of misleading information about the virus that "prevents people from finding reliable sources and reliable recommendations when they need it" (UN News, 2020). On January 22, 2020, the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws published an
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interview with little-known therapist Chris van Kerkhoven, who stated that mobile communications of the new 5G standard are dangerous to health and that the epidemic of the new coronavirus may be in some way connected with 5G; A journalist commenting on the interview noted that a network of 5G communication towers was deployed around the Chinese Wuhan city, which at that time was accounted for most of the cases of the disease. The interview was published in print only in one of the regional versions of the newspaper, and its electronic version was removed from the newspaper's website a few hours later, but this unsubstantiated publication managed to give rise to a variety of conspiracy theories: that radio emission from 5G antennas suppresses the human immune system making it more vulnerable to the virus, or somehow carries the virus, or causes symptoms of the disease itself. An anti- 5G petition on Change.org garnered over 110,000 votes against the technology (Temperton, 2020). In early April, 20 cell towers were burned or otherwise damaged in the UK, mostly around Birmingham and the West Midlands. Operators noted that due to the slow deployment of 5G networks in the UK, many of the burned towers did not even contain 5G equipment, but belonged to the previous generations of 3G and 4G. Similarly, four towers were burned in the Netherlands. Undoubtedly, statements about the danger of 5G towers, and even more so about the connection of towers with the spread of the coronavirus, have no basis, which is confirmed by many studies (BBC News, 2019).
However, fake news can be spread not only by anonymous or little-known sources. During a telephone interview in August 2020, US President Donald Trump stated that children are immune from the coronavirus and therefore fears of teachers and parents about reopening schools are unfounded. A little later, this message appeared on the president's page on Facebook and Twitter. A few hours later, the message was removed from the official page of the US President on the social network. The campaign said that Facebook was forced to do so because the posted "video contains false claims that a certain group of people is immune from the coronavirus." After a while, the publication was blocked on Twitter. This statement by Trump was regarded as fake news since although the chance of contracting the coronavirus among children is low, there is no category of people completely immune to the virus (Belyaninov, 2020).
Various rumors and false reports have linked the pandemic to the name of American multibillionaire Bill Gates and his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates pointed to the danger posed by infectious diseases and spoke of them as the most likely threat to humanity - for example, in 2015 at a TED conference, he stated that a new pandemic like the Spanish flu could happen in the very near future and that the world is completely unprepared for this threat
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(Gates, 2015). According to various conspiracy theories and unverified rumors, Gates seeks to reduce the population of the Earth or to "chip" people under the pretext of vaccination - secretly implanting RFID tags or some kind of microcircuits, supposedly to control behavior. Rumors about Gates 'plans to "chip" people are connected with Gates' statement on the Internet forum Reddit about "digital certificates" for patients with coronavirus infection.
A survey conducted in August 2020 in the United Kingdom found that almost one-third of respondents are confronted with misinformation regarding the coronavirus at least several times a week.
Figure 12: Survey of residents of the United Kingdom on the frequency of fake news about the coronavirus (Statista, 2020)
3.6 Fighting fake news
“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda.
It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
Garry Kasparov Media giants
Due to the widespread availability of social media, absolutely any user can post absolutely any information there, from really verified facts to absolute misinformation. Therefore, the reliability of information obtained from social media often leaves much to be desired. This
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information is also confirmed by a study that showed that in the period from 2012 to 2020 social media are the most distrustful sources of information, and most of the respondents trust mainly traditional media or search engines.
.
Figure 13: Most trusted sources of information worldwide from 2012 to 2020 (Statista, 2020)
2016 was a turning point in fake news history(Hunt & Gentzkow, 2017). The scandals and misinformation around the US elections, as well as the direct influence of social media (mainly Facebook and Twitter) on the spread of fake, forced many countries around the world to tighten control over the dissemination of information. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who initially denied the influence of the social network on the spread of fake news and the impact on elections, admitted that Facebook has certain problems and announced the implementation of certain measures to suppress fake news on the social network (Sukhodolov & Bychkova, 2017). In June 2018, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, in an interview with Wired.com (Thompson, 2018) revealed how Facebook began to fight fakes. This is done as follows:
1. Algorithms identify messages that become popular and spread rapidly
2. Such type of content is sent to professional fact-checkers who find out the validity of the content.
3. All news that fact-checkers receive is prioritized. The content with the largest number of users should be checked first.
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4. After checking the veracity of the information, the distribution of the news is stopped, and those users who are going to share the news are warned about the misleading content.
5. All viral photos are analyzed according to two parameters: whether the images are falsified and whether they are taken out of context. This principle will apply to other multimedia formats on Facebook and Instagram as well.
6. The last stage is the use of artificial intelligence, which will analyze the reaction of people to a fake - whether users recognized the information as false. In addition, the algorithms will search and delete news similar to those already found fakes.
According to Adam Mosseri, vice-president of Facebook (2016 to 2018), the social network fights fake news in three main categories:
1. Undermining economic incentives for creating fake news, since most of such news is financially motivated;
2. Creation of new products to prevent the spread of fake news;
3. Help users make more informed decisions when faced with fake news (Facebook, n.d.).
The goal of the first step in countering fake news is extremely simple - to remove the economic incentive to publish this kind of news. As Sukhodolov and Bychkova (2017) wrote, fake news allows you to increase web traffic, and, accordingly, advertising revenues.
The second step is to create and implement projects to identify and stop the spread of fake news. Facebook began to cooperate with independent third-party fact-checking organizations.
Also, today any Facebook user can complain about a post on a social network, marking it as
"fake news".
The third category includes the Facebook Journalism Project, in which the company partners with news organizations to develop tools and products for journalists to provide better and more accurate information (Facebook, n.d.).
37 Twitter
Twitter, like Facebook, is a major source of fake news. During the 2016 US campaign, roughly 25% of all Twitter tweets were fake (Bovet & Makse, 2019). Russia, which actively intervened in the elections, was named as a major source of disinformation. In January 2017, the US intelligence agency released a report highlighting the role of RT (Russia Today), which has close ties to the Russian government, allegedly played in attempts to interfere with the 2016 US elections and undermine the country's democratic credibility. An integral part of Twitter are bots: automatic accounts that generate specific content. Bots generate a huge amount of content both on Twitter and on the Internet. According to a report from the Knight Foundation (2018), about 4 thousand bots accounts connected to Russia and actively spreading fake news during the 2016 US elections were identified on Twitter (Hindman & Barash, 2018).
In September 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter would no longer allow political ads on its platform. In addition, warnings may appear under the messages of public figures and politicians in the near future that they contain incorrect or fake information.
Warnings are written on a bright orange background; such messages indicate that the tweet contains "harmful misinformation" and that this will reduce the frequency of its delivery.
Figure 14: An example of messages that Twitter would identify as "harmful misinformation" (Twitter, 2020)
In early February 2020, the Twitter administration announced another innovation that will help combat misinformation - the social network will mark fake videos and photos that can harm users. This will be done automatically: the social network will take into account the accompanying text of the tweet, as well as changes in the structure of the content - in particular, overlaying subtitles or inserting additional frames into the original video (Roth & Achuthan, 2020).
38 Google
And although search engines are considered more reliable sources of information than social networks (Statista, 2020), nevertheless fake news is widespread there as well. Now Google is not only the most popular search engine but also a huge company that owns the most popular video hosting in the world - YouTube.Therefore, it is extremely important for the company to provide users with reliable content. For example, the company announced in 2018 that it will spend more than $ 300 million over the next three years on various initiatives to help news organizations as well as foster quality journalism (Jaikumar, 2018). The company has created the Google News Initiative, the main task of which will be to combat fake news, especially during situations of extremely urgent and important news. Google also partners with fact- checking organizations such as the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). So news that has been checked for authenticity will be displayed on the search page with a checkmark.
Google is working with IFCN in three main ways: increasing the number of verified facts on the web, extending its principles to new regions, and providing users with free fact-checking tools. To achieve its goals, Google plans to host workshops and provide training and financial assistance to new fact-checking organizations (Conditt, 2017).
At the 2019 Munich Security Conference, Google unveiled a 30-page white paper detailing how it tackles misinformation in Google Search, Google News, Google Ads, and YouTube.
The document provides an understanding of the definition of "disinformation". According to Google, these are "deliberate attempts to trick and mislead users using the speed, scale, and technology of the open Internet." The search giant's job of countering disinformation generally boils down to three things: creating quality content, countering attackers, and creating a context for users (Mozul, 2019).
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic, Google has recorded a huge increase in the popularity of YouTube videos spreading false information about the virus. The company deprives monetization of all videos that use the coronavirus theme for their own purposes and also blocks videos and their authors that spread misinformation about the disease. A YouTube search for specific conspiracy videos about the coronavirus, such as that the virus was developed as a biological weapon, only reveals videos that debunk those myths. YouTube searches also prioritize official information from medical organizations and trusted media. And some virus-related apps have been blocked from the Google Play app store. The company motivated the massive purge by saying that developers are capitalizing on the disaster by selling games and fraudulent apps.
39 Fighting fake news in the EU and Ukraine
In addition to combating fake news and disinformation on social media, many countries also have special laws and institutions that allow regulating the flow of misinformation.
European Union
The population of the European Union is estimated at 447 million people, with about 80% of which use the Internet. Most of these internet users are exposed to misleading or false news almost every day. To combat misinformation and fake news аn East StratCom Task Force was set up in the European Union in April 2015 based on a decision taken at a meeting on 19-20 March 2015 on the need to counter ongoing disinformation campaigns by Russia. The group aims to support European Union delegations in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia and publishes a weekly collection of disinformation materials disseminated by pro-Kremlin media and independent Russian media, as well as presenting major trends in Russian social media (Jozwiak, 2019).
In 2018, a large-scale survey on the topic of fake news was conducted across the entire European Union. Among 26,576 respondents, 44% answered that fake news is a serious problem, and 41% said that to some extent. At the same time, the largest indicator of concern about fake news was in Cyprus, and the lowest level of concern about fake news was in Belgium.
Figure 15: The problem of fake news in EU countries (Statista, 2020)
