Disinformation, sharing false information to deceive and mislead others, can take many forms. From edited “deepfake” videos made on smartphones to vast foreign-led information operations, politics and elections show how varied disinformation can be. Hailed as “the year of elections”, with the majority of the world’s population going to the polls, 2024 will also be …
Terms like misinformation, disinformation and ‘fake news’ are all words we are familiar with. They are also all modifications of existing words: Information → misinformation Information → disinformation News → fake news On this blog I talk a lot about terminology, and the importance of understanding these terms when we use them in research, whether …
Disinformation is a complex topic. Truth and lies are never clear-cut categories and there are fuzzy boundaries that separate them. Lots of work has focused on how disinformation exists, and how it spreads, is amplified and is received and consumed online and offline. This is all important work and contributes to our understanding of what …
Misinformation and disinformation are two terms that are often used interchangeably in research, but what do they mean and what is the difference between the two? This is a quick blog post to clarify the notions of misinformation, disinformation and "fake news". The primary difference between mis- and dis- is intent to deceive. The prefix …
Continue reading What are the differences between “misinformation” and “disinformation”?
IntroductionI was recently looking at a fake news article that didn’t have the date the article was published anywhere on the page. I learnt a quick tip a few months ago to remedy this – you view the source code of the page and find the date in there, it normally looks something like:<meta property="article:published_time" …
Continue reading Long Form: The Online Services That Support Fake News
Protesters and counter-protesters are currently facing off in the eastern German city of Chemnitz. Following the fatal stabbing of a man (and the non-fatal stabbing of two others) at a festival in the city by two men originating from Syria and Iraq, city-wide anti-immigrant protests and riots are taking place as far-right protesters clash with anti-fascist …
On the 6th August, New Zealand MP Judith Collins tweeted out a link with the title “France Passes Law Saying Children Can Consent To Sex With Adults” from the notorious fake news site YourNewsWire.com. As seen below, she directed the tweet at NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern asking if she was “willing to denounce this …
SummaryThis claim is false and originates from a satirical article published on Facebook. This is backed up by the lack of evidence in Hobhouse's expenses information on the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority website and has been confirmed to be false by the office of Wera Hobhouse MP. Full Fact Check ContextBrowsing through Facebook on Tuesday I saw …
This week’s fake news profile is on Sweden. Misinformation is endemic in Sweden due to foreign state produced content and in recent years the Swedish security service have increased their efforts to stop its spread. In 2016, the Swedish security service Säkerhetspolisen (Säpo for short) published a report on Russian produced propaganda in Sweden. It …
This week’s fake news profile is on Kenya. Since their independence in 1963, Kenya has had a complex media history and recent tumultuous political events combined with wide resentment of mainstream media sources make it an interesting case study for fake news. Kenya’s first media publication, The Standard, began publishing daily in 1902 and today …
FakeBelieve - The Disinformation Research Blog 