This Just In: Fake News Packs a Lot in Title, Uses Simpler, Repetitive Content in Text Body, More Similar to Satire than Real News
Summary:
The purpose of the study was to debunk the assumption that fake news is written to look more like a real news and to show that it is more related to a satire news. Their work can help to develop technologies that can detect malicious fake news. The study was conducted through a unique study of three data sets and features that capture the style and the language of articles. Based on multiple findings, the study provided the following conclusions:
- Fake news is more similar to satire news than real news
- Persuasion in fake news is achieved through heuristics rather than the strength of arguments
- Fake news is targeted for audiences who are not likely to read beyond titles
Reflection:
Social Media specially twitter has changed the way we acquire information in our society. This also brings a lot of challenges and one of them is the spread of fake news. We don’t have to look no more than the 2016 election to see the threat it posed in our society. I believe that this study provided a step forward in tackling this problem. Even though, I am really impressed by their findings and conclusion, the study lacked concreate arguments and a broader data set to back up their findings. Moreover, a lot of assumptions were taken which affects the creditability of their study. Nevertheless, their research gives a great insight for future studies. Considering their findings and summarization, we can reflect on different aspects and their implications on how we perceive fake news.
Part 1: From their findings that amazes me the most is that fake news is more like a satire news than real news. This makes me to question the intention and the motive of Fake news article writers. Are some fake news articles purpose is to demonize a specific person than spreading a fake news? Conducting a more intensive research on their social media account and organization affiliation might provide great awareness.
Part 2: According to their studies, “Fake news titles use significantly fewer stop-words and nouns, while using significantly more proper nouns and verb phrases.” I think this is an eye-opening discovery that can open doors for further studies.
Questions and further research
- One question we can ask is are fake news consumers interested only on the title than the content of the article? I believe that conducting a research on fake news consumers might give insights about why fake news articles poses the above format and why it is effective.
- Can we determine the standard and political affiliation of a news source based on the title of its published articles? This will help us to better distinguish a fake news from a real news.
Part 3: The other question that I discovered after reading the paper is that do fake news articles differ in terms of their approach? Do they change their approach time to time or stay consistent? I believe that doing more research on multiple fake news sources will help us to combat fake news.
