This Just In: Fake News Packs a Lot in Title, Uses Simpler, Repetitive Content in Text Body, More Similar to Satire than Real News
Horne and Sibel (2017) sought to explore the differences between real and fake news. Unlike prior studies, satirical news was considered an additional category. The primary question approached in the study was: “Is there any systematic stylistic and other content differences between fake and real news?” To answer this question, Horne and Sibel (2017) gathered three different data sets:
- Buzzfeed’s analysis of real and fake news items from the 2016 US Elections.
- Self-collected news articles on US politics from real, fake, and satire news sources.
- A previous study’s data set containing real and satire articles.
Contrary to the assumption that fake news is written to look like real news and fool the reader, Horne and Sibel (2017) found that the assumption is not true. Rather, the articles employ heuristics such as title structure and noun choice. It was also concluded that fake news specifically targets those who do not read beyond the title.
While I found many of the finding to be fascinating, I was once again unsurprised by many of the findings. The conclusion that fake news is most easily discernible, and most effective, via the title is something I have observed through the shared posts and associated comment sections on Facebook and Twitter for years. However, beyond this initial concern, the study raised a number of concerns and questions:
- Foremost of these concerns is their strategy for dividing sources into real, fake, and satirical sources. While these categories will work in most cases, increasingly often reputable (real) sources will have vast differences in the news they report. Depending on the event, both sources cannot be correct, and perhaps neither source is correct. Thus, bias also plays a large part in the real versus fake news cycle. It would be erroneous to determine that all real sources post only real news, and fake news sources only post fake news.
- Additionally, many, if not all, of the news articles concerned US politics. This raises the question as to whether or not these findings can be generalized to other issues.
- While Horne and Sibel (2017) raised some of the issues with reversing or combating fake news, they later failed to offer suggestions as to how to utilize their data. I feel as researchers and information scientists, it is also our duty to take the next step beyond the study, even if that next step is just providing possible uses for the data or suggesting finding derived approaches to the issue at hand. We are responsible for the information we find.
Horne, & Sibel. (2017, March 28). This Just In: Fake News Packs a Lot in Title, Uses Simpler, Repetitive Content in Text Body, More Similar to Satire than Real News. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.09398
