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The One and Only Way to Rebut Fake News
Online fake news is a kind of "yellow press," or rumors that contain misleading or incorrect information, that are published through social media channels or interactive media. Fake news technologies can also be used to cast doubt on the legitimacy of certain news, a type of false news called misinformation on social media, which often gives a strong media profile to different media, as it is difficult to separate today between “ordinary media” and “digital media”.
We can define two types of fake news: Misleading news and Common news, both constitute published information to detour the truth. A study on 126,000 Twitter-based news stories published by three million Twitter users over the past 10 years shows that the truth simply cannot compete with fake news and misleading rumors on the Web. The study shows that fake news is most prominent, and spread faster than true news1.
Fake news diffusion on social Medias is six times faster than true news. Fake news falls on a variety of topics like business issues, terrorism and war, science, technology and entertainment, while it is fully successful on political subjects.
There are two main types of Fake news mechanisms: the first one is automated and called (BOTS) and the second one is assisted by humans and called (TROLLS). Automated deployment uses financial or semi-financial players, and creates fake accounts on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, allowing for rapid dissemination of fake news, whether by re-tweeting, posting, or sharing…
This typical form of automated publishing activity (Bots) focuses on the production of false news, like “hashtags”, and the inducing of users to interact or to exclude them from the network. Automation plays a significant role in projecting influential positions in the electoral campaigns of many countries, as it did i.e. in Ireland and Colombia lately.
The second type called (Trolls) refers to a meaningful human posting on selected websites, in order to induce users to comment or to provoke them. The first to use this type of network publishing through "human publishing factories," was “Vkontakte” and “LiveJournal”, where they aim to create rumors, in preparation for the weakening of opposition groups2.
The main purpose of fake news on the Web is to distort the public opinion. This is done by using sensitive, synthetic, attractive, and rude headlines that attracts social media users. However, misleading information should be distinguished from cynical or admonious or sacred news, often fated to entertain readers rather than mislead the public opinion. In fact, news containing false facts attracts social media users, which benefits advertisers and creates commercial openings on the network.
To fight fake news, most of the countries are adopting practical and legislative methods. On the practical side, lots of countries created fact checking centers or taskforces that seeks to raise awareness of, and to debunk, fake news. In addition, national units could be established that monitor the news cycle for items that seem to be pushed strategically, like the Lisa case in Germany. Their task would be to alert relevant authorities and actors to the potential impact of such news and to allow them to respond in a more timely and coordinated manner with appropriate information of their own.
The governments of several countries recognize that a substantive response to disinformation could be an effective way to tackle fake news. The British government’s position is that it is more important to inform citizens of the facts than to simply rebut false information. For this purpose, a Rapid Response Unit within the executive branch monitors news and engages with the public online. In China, a government online platform called “Refuting Rumors” was launched to broadcast “real” news sourced from government agencies and state-owned media. A similar web portal allowing the public to check the authenticity of news found online has been established in Malaysia. In addition, Kenya and Sweden have general education campaigns aimed at young people in place to counter the fake news trend, as noted above3.
Yet, on the legislative side, we can refer to two international treaties that addresses fake news on the Web: The International Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace of 1936 and the International Correction Convention of 1961.
In fact, both conventions have never been applied in practice so far, and, as far as can be seen, Sweden has been the only state to implement the Broadcasting Convention in its national law since World War II. Nonetheless, from their drafting process, from the Broadcasting Convention’s late ratification by socialist states and from the fact that these conventions have never been applied in practice, insights may be gained for future attempts at regulating fake news4.
In conclusion, it is widely admitted that regulating fake news will not bring efficient outcomes, because of the international positions of each state and mainly for the political conflicts especially between big players in the world. Rebutting fake news by truthful news seems to be the only way to conquest, and this needs infrastructures and databases that operate under both automated and assisted data centers.
It seems that fighting data with data will be the most effective weapon, under development, in the near future …
Resources:
Photo credit: https://www.ey.com/en_gl/forensic-integrity-services/how-media-organizations-can-get-real-and-confront-fake-news
1. The Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News, Falsehoods almost always beat out the truth on Twitter, penetrating further, faster, and deeper into the social network than accurate information, available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104/
2. Ibidem
3. ROUDIK Peter, Initiatives to Counter Fake News in Selected Countries: Argentina - Brazil - Canada - China - Egypt – France - Germany - Israel - Japan – Kenya – Malaysia - Nicaragua - Russia – Sweden - United Kingdom, April 2019, The Law Library of Congress, Global Legal Research Directorate, available at: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/fake-news/counter-fake-news.pdf.
4. Ibidem
Photo credit: https://www.ey.com/en_gl/forensic-integrity-services/how-media-organizations-can-get-real-and-confront-fake-news