It turns out there is no generally agreed upon definition of fake news.
Kavanagh and Rich define it narrowly by saying, “Newspaper articles, television news shows, or other information disseminated through broadcast or social media that are intentionally based on falsehoods or that intentionally use misleading framing to offer a distorted narrative.” Kavanagh, Jennifer, and Rich, Michael D. Truth Decay : An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. Santa Monica, California: RAND, 2018.
Others include various types of mis- and disinformation under the umbrella of fake news.
Clare Wardle provides helpful categories of 7 different types of misinformation, along with a graphic of the motivations behind each type, in her article, "Fake news. It's complicated."
She continues by telling us that we're adding to the problem whenever we accept information without "double-checking , or share a post, image or video before we’ve verified it." Therefore, each of us has a responsibility for independently checking what we see online so that we don't add to the amount of mis- and disinformation all around us. The more mis- and disinformation that is available and the faster it grows, the more complicated it becomes to decipher the truth and to be fooled or confused.
Wardle, Claire. "Fake News. It's Complicated." First Draft, 16 Feb. 2017, firstdraftnews.org/latest/fake-news-complicated/.
This infographic shows how fake news can be a problem. Using data from a Buzzfeed News study, the graphic from Statista shows how many more people engaged with fake news on Facebook during the 2016 Presidential election cycle compared to regular mainstream media news.
You'd be surprised how quickly and easily fake news and misinformation are created and spread. It can be spread unknowingly by your friend or relative who just saw a story on Twitter. It can be spread maliciously by someone or some bot with a motive. How do you know?
Check out the two stories below to learn how it works.