What is Fake News?
It's a term we hear all the time, tossed around by politicians, journalists, and media critics, Donald Trump, Eric Schmidt, and the Washington Post. However, despite the widespread use of the term, the meaning of "Fake News" has changed over time.
Started in late 2016 as a reference to made-up stories, hoaxes, and Onion-style parodies, "Fake News" has since been adopted by Donald Trump and his supporters to describe any negative press. Those in many establishment news sources often use "Fake News" to refer to "exaggerated, hyper-partisan, and conspiratorial journalism."
Fake News is thus perhaps best understood as a rhetorical weapon in a multi-faceted Information War. This fight has many sides, from Trump-supporting Breitbart-style propaganda to liberal establishment journalism to the subversive narratives of Russian networks such as RT, Rutply, and Sputnik, alongside traditional forms of left-wing alternative media.
Understanding the way "Fake News" operates can help the average citizen- and the warring parties- to more fully comprehend the emerging political and media landscape, which is increasingly dominated by large tech companies such as Alphabet, Facebook, and Twitter. These companies, though algorithms and advertising dollars, may hold the final say on the spread- and censorship of "Fake News."
A pioneering article on the topic, this piece describes the perceived rise in Internet hoaxes, false, and conspiratorial content from a centrist viewpoint
TruthDig: The Silencing of Dissent
Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and RT employee Chris Hedges, this article looks at the establishment medias's use of "Fake News" from a left-wing perspective, arguing that it is used as a pretext to crack down on independent media and anti-imperialist voices
New York Times: RT, Sputnik, and Russia's New Theory of War
An exhaustive coverage of Russian state media in the United States and Europe, citing researches who claim that Russia is trying to promote extremist politics in the West as well as what they describe as misinformation and Fake News
World Socialist Website: Google’s new search protocol is restricting access to 13 leading socialist, progressive and anti-war web sites
The WSWS, a left-wing website cited by scholars and researches across the globe, has published a pathbreaking and ongoing series of stories on what they describe as an effort by Google, Facebook, and nation-states to censor the Internet and restrict access to alternative media. This series was recently cited in the New York Times, RT, WikiLeaks, Indymedia, and other outlets
Reuters: Fighting Fake News in France
This article describes efforts by Internet companies to stop Fake News during the 2017 French Presidential Election
Media Roots Radio Looks at "Fake News" Narratives
TeleSur host Abby Martin and her brother Robbie Martin deliver an intelligent and controversial analysis of the US government's use of the term "Fake News" to attack RT
Reuters: Fake News Can Damage Brands
A large reason why "Fake News" is considered a issue is due to its proximity to advertising. Most companies do not want their products linked to what they see as toxic content, giving social media companies an incentive to crack down
Indymedia: Holding Out for Un-Alientated Communication
The Indymedia network discusses the limits of Twitter, Google, and other platforms for information, and stresses the importance of creating alternative media sourced independent of corporate news outlets.
“Repair The Trust”: Randall Rothenberg addresses IAB Annual Leadership Meeting
The head of a major worldwide internet media and marketing firm describes Fake News as "a crisis of society writ large," and says that it undermines the trust that undergirds democratic capitalism."
A group backed by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Bing, The Trust Project brings together news organizations including The Economist, The Globe and Mail, the Independent Journal Review, La Repubblica and La Stampa, and The Washington Post to create "consistent technical standards that search engines and social media platforms need to surface quality news."
PropOrNot
The first major online effort to track "Russian Fake News," this group came to the attention of most people when it was featured in a Washington Post story. It later came under fire for poor methodology and a lack of transparency
Hamilton68
Founded by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a neoconservative and NATO-linked think tank, this website purports to track Russian influence campaigns on Twitter in both the United States and Germany.
Jigsaw
Jigsaw is a division of Alphabet (Google) that works to combat "Fake News," "Violent Extremism," and "Online Hate Speech," by using algorithms and targeted advertising. It is headed by Jared Cohen, a liberal internationalist at the Council on Foreign Relations
European Commission
The EU is launching what they call a public consultation on fake news and online disinformation. They also plan to set up a "high-level expert group" to stop the spread of what they describe as fake news. Citizens, journalists, and others can participate by sharing examples of fake stories.
Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University
This website describes how the structure and the economics of social platforms incentivize the spread what researchers consider low-quality content over high-quality material and also attempts to make algorithms used by social media and search engines more transparent
DNI Report: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution
This report, published by US intelligence agencies in an attempt to explain what they describe as Russian meddling in the US elections, delves into the news channel RT, which they insinuate to be fake news. This report has been criticized by independent analysts for offering little proof and accusing Abby Martin's 2014 show, "Breaking The Set," of swaying the election, despite being off the air for two years by the time of the election.
It's a term we hear all the time, tossed around by politicians, journalists, and media critics, Donald Trump, Eric Schmidt, and the Washington Post. However, despite the widespread use of the term, the meaning of "Fake News" has changed over time.
Started in late 2016 as a reference to made-up stories, hoaxes, and Onion-style parodies, "Fake News" has since been adopted by Donald Trump and his supporters to describe any negative press. Those in many establishment news sources often use "Fake News" to refer to "exaggerated, hyper-partisan, and conspiratorial journalism."
Fake News is thus perhaps best understood as a rhetorical weapon in a multi-faceted Information War. This fight has many sides, from Trump-supporting Breitbart-style propaganda to liberal establishment journalism to the subversive narratives of Russian networks such as RT, Rutply, and Sputnik, alongside traditional forms of left-wing alternative media.
Understanding the way "Fake News" operates can help the average citizen- and the warring parties- to more fully comprehend the emerging political and media landscape, which is increasingly dominated by large tech companies such as Alphabet, Facebook, and Twitter. These companies, though algorithms and advertising dollars, may hold the final say on the spread- and censorship of "Fake News."
Below is a series of links from reliable websites on the "Fake News" phenomenon looking at the problem in differing ways (more will be added over time)
New York Times: The Media's Next Challenge: Overcoming the Threat of Fake News:A pioneering article on the topic, this piece describes the perceived rise in Internet hoaxes, false, and conspiratorial content from a centrist viewpoint
TruthDig: The Silencing of Dissent
Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and RT employee Chris Hedges, this article looks at the establishment medias's use of "Fake News" from a left-wing perspective, arguing that it is used as a pretext to crack down on independent media and anti-imperialist voices
New York Times: RT, Sputnik, and Russia's New Theory of War
An exhaustive coverage of Russian state media in the United States and Europe, citing researches who claim that Russia is trying to promote extremist politics in the West as well as what they describe as misinformation and Fake News
World Socialist Website: Google’s new search protocol is restricting access to 13 leading socialist, progressive and anti-war web sites
The WSWS, a left-wing website cited by scholars and researches across the globe, has published a pathbreaking and ongoing series of stories on what they describe as an effort by Google, Facebook, and nation-states to censor the Internet and restrict access to alternative media. This series was recently cited in the New York Times, RT, WikiLeaks, Indymedia, and other outlets
Reuters: Fighting Fake News in France
This article describes efforts by Internet companies to stop Fake News during the 2017 French Presidential Election
Media Roots Radio Looks at "Fake News" Narratives
TeleSur host Abby Martin and her brother Robbie Martin deliver an intelligent and controversial analysis of the US government's use of the term "Fake News" to attack RT
Reuters: Fake News Can Damage Brands
A large reason why "Fake News" is considered a issue is due to its proximity to advertising. Most companies do not want their products linked to what they see as toxic content, giving social media companies an incentive to crack down
Indymedia: Holding Out for Un-Alientated Communication
The Indymedia network discusses the limits of Twitter, Google, and other platforms for information, and stresses the importance of creating alternative media sourced independent of corporate news outlets.
“Repair The Trust”: Randall Rothenberg addresses IAB Annual Leadership Meeting
The head of a major worldwide internet media and marketing firm describes Fake News as "a crisis of society writ large," and says that it undermines the trust that undergirds democratic capitalism."
More resources:
Trust ProjectA group backed by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Bing, The Trust Project brings together news organizations including The Economist, The Globe and Mail, the Independent Journal Review, La Repubblica and La Stampa, and The Washington Post to create "consistent technical standards that search engines and social media platforms need to surface quality news."
PropOrNot
The first major online effort to track "Russian Fake News," this group came to the attention of most people when it was featured in a Washington Post story. It later came under fire for poor methodology and a lack of transparency
Hamilton68
Founded by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a neoconservative and NATO-linked think tank, this website purports to track Russian influence campaigns on Twitter in both the United States and Germany.
Jigsaw
Jigsaw is a division of Alphabet (Google) that works to combat "Fake News," "Violent Extremism," and "Online Hate Speech," by using algorithms and targeted advertising. It is headed by Jared Cohen, a liberal internationalist at the Council on Foreign Relations
European Commission
The EU is launching what they call a public consultation on fake news and online disinformation. They also plan to set up a "high-level expert group" to stop the spread of what they describe as fake news. Citizens, journalists, and others can participate by sharing examples of fake stories.
Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University
This website describes how the structure and the economics of social platforms incentivize the spread what researchers consider low-quality content over high-quality material and also attempts to make algorithms used by social media and search engines more transparent
DNI Report: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution
This report, published by US intelligence agencies in an attempt to explain what they describe as Russian meddling in the US elections, delves into the news channel RT, which they insinuate to be fake news. This report has been criticized by independent analysts for offering little proof and accusing Abby Martin's 2014 show, "Breaking The Set," of swaying the election, despite being off the air for two years by the time of the election.
