Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity or making money through advertising revenue. The term was first used in the 1890s when sensational reports in newspapers were common. However, the term does not have a fixed definition and has been applied more broadly to include any type of false information, including unintentional and unconscious mechanisms, and also by high-profile individuals to apply to any news unfavourable to their perspectives.
Furthermore, disinformation is an insidious type that involves spreading false information with harmful intent and is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections.
In some definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text. Because of this diversity of types of false news, recent researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term.
The prevalence of fake news has increased recently with the rise of social media, especially the Facebook News Feed, and this misinformation has gradually seeped into the mainstream media. Several factors have been implicated in the spread of fake news, such as political polarization, post-truth politics, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and social media algorithms.
For example, a BuzzFeed analysis found that the top fake news stories out of the 2016 U.S. presidential election received more engagement on Facebook than top stories from major media outlets. It also particularly has the potential to undermine trust in serious media coverage.
The term has at times been used to cast doubt upon credible news, and former U.S. President Donald Trump has been credited with popularizing the term by using it to describe any negative press coverage of himself. It has been increasingly criticized, due in part to Trump’s misuse, with the British government deciding to avoid the term, as it is “poorly-defined” and “conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference”.
Fake news and its Impact on Society
