Throughout the 2016 U.S. presidential election, public debate and media coverage was shaped by so called "fake news" – news articles which were intentionally false, and designed to influence opinion and policy. Although fake news itself is not a new concept, the way in which it was covered, and the was it was spread on social media platforms, was. Given this, scholarly literature examining fake news, and specifically the content or stylistic characteristics of fake news, is minimal. My research seeks to address that gap through examining different content characteristics of fake news articles spread on social media in 2016, and testing the impact of those characteristics on Facebook engagement (the number of likes or shares an article received). I find political fake news circulated during the 2016 U.S. election is relatively homogeneous in content: it avoids policy discussion, is highly partisan, and negative in tone. Furthermore, personal content, policy discussion, partisan lean, and article tone have no detectable effect on the engagement received on Facebook. My research serves to provide avenues for future research, and increase our understanding of how fake news is spread. More importantly, given the negative influence fake news has on public discussion and democratic legitimacy, my research also increases our understanding of how to best combat the influence of fake news, and how to limit its spread. / Master of Arts / Throughout the 2016 U.S. presidential election, public debate and media coverage was shaped by so called “fake news” – news articles which were intentionally false, and designed to influence opinion and policy. Although fake news itself is not a new concept, the way in which it was covered, and the was it was spread on social media platforms, was. Given this, scholarly literature examining fake news, and specifically the content or stylistic characteristics of fake news, is minimal. My research seeks to address that gap through examining different content characteristics of fake news articles spread on social media in 2016, and testing the impact of those characteristics on Facebook engagement (the number of likes or shares an article received). I find political fake news circulated during the 2016 U.S. election is relatively homogeneous in content: it avoids policy discussion, is highly partisan, and negative in tone. Furthermore, personal content, policy discussion, partisan lean, and article tone have no detectable effect on the engagement received on Facebook. My research serves to provide avenues for future research, and increase our understanding of how fake news is spread. More importantly, given the negative influence fake news has on public discussion and democratic legitimacy, my research also increases our understanding of how to best combat the influence of fake news, and how to limit its spread.

Med deepfake-teknologi kan det skapas manipulerade videor där det produceras falska bilder och ljud som framställs vara verkliga. Deepfake-teknologin förbättras ständigt och det kommer att bli svårare att upptäcka manipulerade videor online. Detta kan innebära att en stor del mediekonsumenter omedvetet exponeras för tekniken när de använder sociala medier. Studiens syfte är att undersöka unga vuxnas medvetenhet, synsätt och påverkan av deepfake videor. Detta eftersom deepfake-teknologin förbättras årligen och problemen med tekniken växer samt kan få negativa konsekvenser i framtiden om den utnyttjas på fel sätt. Insamlingen av det empiriska materialet skedde genom en kvantitativ metod i form av en webbenkät och en kvalitativ metod med tre fokusgrupper. Slutsatsen visade på att det finns ett större antal unga vuxna som inte är medvetna om vad en deepfake video är, dock existerar det en viss oro för deepfake-teknologin och dess utveckling. Det upplevs att det finns risker för framtiden med teknologin i form av hot mot demokratin och politik, spridning av Fake news, video-manipulation samt brist på källkritik. De positiva aspekterna är att tekniken kan användas i sammanhang av humor, inom film- och TV-industrin samt sjukvård. Ytterligare en slutsats är att unga vuxna kommer att vara mer källkritiska till innehåll de exponeras av framöver, dock kommer de med stor sannolikhet ändå att påverkas av deepfake-teknologin i framtiden. / Manipulated videos can be created with deepfake technology, where fake images and sounds are produced and seem to be real. Deepfake technology is constantly improving and it will be more problematic to detect manipulated video online. This may result in a large number of media consumers being unknowingly exposed to deepfake technology while using social media. The purpose of this study is to research young adults' awareness, approach and impact of deepfake videos. The deepfake technology improves annually and more problems occur, which can cause negative consequences in the future if it’s misused. The study is based on a quantitative method in the form of a web survey and a qualitative method with three focus groups. The conclusion shows that there’s a large number of young adults who are not aware of what a deepfake video is, however there’s some concern about deepfake technology and its development. It’s perceived that there can be risks in the future with the technology in terms of threats to democracy and politics, distribution of Fake news, video manipulation and lack of source criticism. The positive aspects are that the technology can be used for entertainment purposes, in the film and television industry also in the healthcare department. Another conclusion is that young adults will be more critical to the content they are exposed to in the future, but likely be affected by deepfake technology either way.

Today's media society allows young people to come into contact with news through their everyday use of social media. News is interspersed between the friends' photos on the Instagram platform. But can everything be trusted? How do young people know what is true news and what is fake? The phenomenon of fake news refers to disinformation that is published with the aim of imitating true news articles. Thus the purpose of the study is to investigate how the use of social media has affected young Swedes' civic reasoning of news and what the consequences of fake news on Instagram may be. To investigate this, the demonstrations in Iran that started in September 2022, and which were ongoing during the study, were used as a starting point to understand how young people examine Instagram posts.The study has been carried out by compiling qualitative data, mainly from surveys, but also with quantitative data from five semi-structured interviews. The results provided an overall picture of young people's perception of fake news and an insight into what young Swedes' civic reasoning process looks like. The conclusion shows that fake news in connection with the demonstrations in Iran did not affect all young people equally. Some felt that the knowledge of fake news negatively affected their perception of the credibility of any news from the demonstrations. While others, due to the strong emotions the event evoked, saw past the problem of fake news, which affected their civic reasoning abilities. The conclusion also shows that young Swedes have a good idea of what fake news is and the motives behind the spread of fake news on Instagram. However, they feel that the credibility of true news generally decreases, as it is easy to spread fake news on Instagram. This, in turn, can lead to young people avoiding news and news accounts on Instagram to avoid questioning and reviewing news posts they see.In conclusion, young people possess civic reasoning abilities and review posts that they consider skeptical. However, these abilities vary and it is therefore important that they develop their source-critical process, above all as this is essential to be able to navigate among information online.

The purpose of this study is to examine the possibility of accurately distinguishing fabricated news from authentic news stories using Naive Bayes classification algorithms. This involves a comparative study of two different machine learning classification algorithms. The work also contains an overview of how linguistic text analytics can be utilized in detection purposes and an attempt to extract interesting information was made using Word Frequencies. A discussion of how different actors and parties in businesses and governments are affected by and how they handle deception caused by fake news articles was also made. This study further tries to ascertain what collective steps could be made towards introducing a functioning solution to combat fake news. The result swere inconclusive and the simple Naive Bayes algorithms used did not yieldfully satisfactory results. Word frequencies alone did not give enough information for detection. They were however found to be potentially useful as part of a larger set of algorithms and strategies as part of a solution to handling of misinformation. / Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka möjligheten att på ett pålitligt sättskilja mellan fabricerade och autentiska nyheter med hjälp av Naive bayesalgoritmer,detta involverar en komparativ studie mellan två olika typer avalgoritmer. Arbetet innehåller även en översikt över hur lingvistisk textanalyskan användas för detektion och ett försök gjordes att extrahera information medhjälp av ordfrekvenser. Det förs även en diskussion kring hur de olika aktörernaoch parterna inom näringsliv och regeringar påverkas av och hur de hanterarbedrägeri kopplat till falska nyheter. Studien försöker vidare undersöka vilkasteg som kan tas mot en fungerande lösning för att motarbeta falska nyheter. Algoritmernagav i slutändan otillfredställande resultat och ordfrekvenserna kundeinte ensamma ge nog med information. De tycktes dock potentiellt användbarasom en del i ett större maskineri av algoritmer och strategier ämnade att hanteradesinformation.

Syftet med denna uppsats var att ta reda på generationerna millennials och baby boomers inställning till mediernas sanningshalt och politiska neutralitet. Detta gjordes med hjälp av följande frågeställningar: Vilka attityder och vilken inställning har millennials och baby boomers till nyhetsmediernas sanningshalt? Finns skillnader och likheter kvar när vi väger in variablerna kön och politiskt ställningstagande?   För att definiera generationerna använde vi oss av Cliff Zukins generationsteori. Det finns flera andra teorier med olika definitioner av generationerna men vi valde att avgränsa oss till Zukins modell eftersom vi ansåg denna vara mest relevant utifrån vårt syfte. För att få ytterligare information om generationernas ställningstaganden i olika frågor har vi även utgått från Paula M Poindexters forskning i frågan, samt Göran Bolins definition av Mannheims teori. Vi har slutligen använt oss av Jesper Strömbäcks definition av dagordningsteorin när detta varit aktuellt.   Vi valde att genomföra en enkätundersökning för att på så sätt kunna nå så många respondenter som möjligt. Eftersom vi ville jämföra två specifika generationer med varandra använde vi oss av ett kvoturval. Svaren gav oss en övergripande bild av de olika generationernas attityder gentemot nyhetsmedierna.   Resultaten visade att generationstillhörighet inte påverkade det allmänna förtroendet för nyhetsmedier. När vi adderade variabeln kön blev resultatet annorlunda, den yngre generationens kvinnor hade betydligt högre förtroende än männen i samma grupp. Både de yngre och äldre männen hade en mer kritisk syn på nyhetsmediernas innehåll än kvinnorna. Detta visar att kön är en betydande variabel i frågan om förtroende.   Även politisk åsikt visade sig vara en viktig variabel. Den största skillnaden visade sig i generation baby boomers där tre fjärdedelar av de som röstar rött har ett ganska stort förtroende för nyhetsmedier. De som röstar blått i denna generation hade ett betydligt mindre förtroende.   Den största skillnaden beroende på generationstillhörighet visade sig i frågan om hur enkelt det är att upptäcka en falsk nyhet. Millennials ansåg sig ha betydligt enklare att avgöra nyheters äkthet än baby boomers. Endast två procent i den äldre generationen ansåg att det var enkelt att upptäcka, motsvarande siffra i den yngre generationen var 12 procent.   Majoriteten av alla respondenter uppgav att de tror på en stor eller ganska stor framtida ökning av falska nyheter. Det här resultatet påverkade dock inte respondenternas syn på hur enkelt det är att se om en nyhet är falsk.   Slutsatsen vi kan dra är att generationstillhörighet inte påverkar i frågan om förtroende för nyhetsmedier, däremot i hur enkelt det är att avgöra om en nyhet är sann eller falsk.Vid mätning av förtroende för nyhetsmedier var politisk åsikt den viktigaste variabeln. / The purpose of this study was to find out the generations millennials and baby boomers approach to the media's veracity and political neutrality. This was done using the following questions: What attitudes does Millennials and Baby Boomers have to the news media's veracity? Are there differences and similarities there when we look at the variables gender and political position?   To define the generations we used Cliff Zukins generation theory. There are several other theories with different definitions of generations, but we chose to limit ourselves to Zukins model because we considered this to be the most relevant to our purpose. To obtain additional information about the generation's positions on various issues, we have also assumed Paula M Poindexters research on the issue, and Göran Bolins definition of Manheims theory. Finally we used Jesper Strömbäcks definition of the agenda setting theory when it was accurate.   We chose to conduct a survey in order to be able to reach as many respondents as possible. Because we wanted to compare two specific generations with eachother, we used a quota sampling. The answers gave us an overall picture of the different generational attitudes toward the news media.   The results showed that generational affiliation did not affect public confidence in the news media. When we added the gender variable, the result is different, the younger generation of women had significantly higher confidence than men in the same group. Both the younger and the older men had a more critical view of the news media content than women. This shows that gender is a significant variable in the issue of trust.   Political opinion also turned out to be an important variable. The biggest difference was shown in the generation of baby boomers where three quarters of the red voters had a fairly strong confidence in the news media. Those who vote blue in this generation had a significantly lower confidence.   The main difference depending on generational affiliation was shown in the question of how easy it is to spot fake news. Millennials believed it was much easier to determine authenticity in news than baby boomers. Only two percent of the older generation felt that it was easy to spot, the corresponding figure in the younger generation was 12 percent.   The majority of all respondents stated that they believe in a large or fairly large future increase of false news. This result did not affect the respondents' views on how easy it is to see if the news is false.   The conclusion we can draw is that the generational affiliation does not affect the question of confidence in the news media, however, it does have an affect in how easy it is to determine if news is true or false.When measuring confidence towards the news media, political opinion was the most important variable.

Background – Our digitalized society is constantly increasing, and with the development, the importance of the Internet for political knowledge generation is also increasing. The digital development has caused a series of problems that can disturb the prevailing democracy due to that many individuals create their political identity through social media as a communication channel. In addition to the fact that the majority of the younger generation use social media as their primarily communication channel, there is also cause for concern that individuals tend to avoid news due to current news skepticism. News skepticism has grown as fake news has increased, especially since the US presidential election in 2016, and even though fake news is identified and corrected, it is often the fake information that people tend to remember. Furthermore, it is also important to emphasize that the dissemination of information through digital media is extensive to the extent that individuals cannot be source critical towards it all. Social media has also become a platform that is used to promote hidden intentions, for example, that politicians use bots to generate popularity. Further, today's journalism has been influenced by digital developments and has changed how news are spreading on digital platforms. Finally, many individuals perceive that they no longer need to actively seek out news and to further generate knowledge because they personally stress the fact that important news always finds them, also known as "news-finds-me". Aim -The aim is to create an understanding of the relationship between communication channels and knowledge generation within the context of political involvement, digitalization and news skepticism. Methodology -The empirical material is based on a mixed method research and the empirical data has been collected through a qualitative and a quantitative survey. The qualitative research method consisted of six semi-structured interviews in contrast to the quantitative research methodthat consisted of a survey. Conclusion–An increasing amount of people deselect traditional media and it should therefore be a change in how knowledge generation occurs. Furthermore, there is a distinct relationship between knowledge generation and communication channels. The result shows that digital media are the basis of the change that has taken place in knowledge generation rather than the generation of which you belong. Finally, we believe that a crucial factor for knowledge generation is the desireto actively seek out knowledge and not to wait for news to find you. / Bakgrund –Digitaliseringen ökar ständigt och i och med utvecklingen ökar även internets betydelse för politisk kunskapsgenerering. Den digitala utvecklingen har medfört en mängd problem som kan störa den rådande demokratin då många individer skapar sin politiska identitet genom sociala medier som kommunikationskanal. Utöver att många tillhörande den yngre generationen använder sociala medier som sin främsta kommunikationskanal finns det även oro att individer tenderar att undvika nyheter på grund av rådande skepticism. Skepticismen har växt i takt med att fake news har ökat, främst sedan det amerikanska presidentvalet 2016, och även om falska nyheter identifieras och tillrättagörs är det ofta den falska informationen som blir ihågkommen. Vidare är det även av vikt att belysa att informationsspridningen via digitala medier är så pass omfattande att individer inte hinner vara källkritisk gentemot all rapportering. Sociala medier har även kommit att bli en plattform som utnyttjas för att främja dolda avsikter, exempelvis att politiker använder sig av botar för att generera popularitet. Ytterligare har dagens journalism påverkats av den digitala utvecklingen och har förändrat hur nyheter sprids på digitala forum. Slutligen uppfattar många individer att de inte längre behöver aktivt söka upp nyheter och vidare generera kunskap då de menar att viktiga nyheter alltid når dem, även kallad “news-finds-me”. Syfte -Syftet är att skapa förståelse för relationen mellan kommunikationskanaler och kunskapsgenerering inom kontexten avpolitiskt engagemang, digitalisering och nyhetsskepticism. Metod -Studien genomfördes genom flermetodsforskning då den empiriska datan har samlats in genom en kvalitativ samt kvantitativ undersökning. Den kvalitativa undersökningen bestod av sex semistrukturerade intervjuer medan den kvantitativa undersökningen genomfördes genom en omfattande enkätundersökning. Slutsats -Allt fler väljer bort traditionella medier och därför bör det ske en förändring i hur kunskapsgenerering sker. Det finns en tydlig relation mellan kunskapsgenerering och kommunikationskanaler. Resultatet påvisar att det är de digitala medierna som ligger till grund för den förändring som har skett vid kunskapsgenerering snarare än vilken generation man tillhör. Slutligen menar vi att en avgörande faktor för kunskapsgenerering är viljan att aktivt söka upp kunskap och att inte vänta på att nyheter hittar mig.

Misinformation, oder „Fake News“, ist in der Online-Kommunikation weit verbreitet und beeinflusst Diskurs und Zusammenleben. Es ist jedoch wenig darüber bekannt, wie wir auf individueller Ebene beeinflusst werden, wenn wir Meinungen bilden und Urteile ableiten. Diese Dissertation untersucht die kognitiven und Gehirn Mechanismen, die der Verarbeitung sozialer, personenbezogener Misinformation zugrunde liegen. Proband*innen wurden mit negativen, positiven oder relativ neutralen personenbezogenen Nachrichten konfrontiert, die entweder verbal als unglaubwürdig gekennzeichnet waren, z.B. "angeblich", oder aus bekannten Medienquellen stammten, die als glaubwürdig oder unglaubwürdig wahrgenommen wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass soziale Urteile stark vom emotionalen Gehalt beeinflusst waren, unabhängig von der Glaubwürdigkeit. Elektrophysiologische Korrelate früher emotionaler und erregungsbezogener Prozesse sowie Korrelate späterer evaluierender Verarbeitung waren verstärkt für Personen, die mit emotionalen Inhalten assoziiert wurden—unabhängig von der Glaubwürdigkeit der Information. Emotionale Inhalte wirken also nicht nur auf die unwillkürliche und früher Reaktion auf Nachrichten, sondern sogar auf Prozesse, für die erwartet wurde, dass sie die Information aufgrund ihrer Glaubwürdigkeit evaluieren würden. Um zu intervenieren, bewerteten die Proband*innen vor der Konfrontation mit Schlagzeilen explizit die Glaubwürdigkeit der Quelle. Dies half teilweise, die Glaubwürdigkeit positiver Nachrichteninhalte zu verarbeiten. Die Einsicht in die fehlende Glaubwürdigkeit hatte jedoch keinen Einfluss auf die Effekte negativer Nachrichteninhalte. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, wie der emotionale Gehalt sozialer Misinformation das Gehirn und das Urteilsvermögen beeinflussen kann, selbst wider besseres Wissen über die fehlende Glaubwürdigkeit. Perspektivisch helfen diese Erkenntnisse, uns den Herausforderungen von Misinformation aus Sicht der individuellen Kognition zu stellen. / Misinformation, also called “fake news”, is highly prevalent in online communication affecting public discourse and social coexistence. However, little is known about how we are affected by it on the individual level when we derive opinions and judgments. This dissertation investigates the cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying the processing of social, person-related misinformation. Participants were exposed to negative, positive, or relatively neutral news about other persons that was either verbally marked as untrustworthy by adding e.g., “allegedly”, or stemmed from well-known media sources perceived as trusted or distrusted. We found that social person judgments strongly relied on the emotional content independent of the credibility, showing how social misinformation affects person evaluation although it is perceived as untrustworthy. Electrophysiological indexes of early emotional and arousal-related processes, as well as correlates of later evaluative processing were enhanced for persons associated with emotional contents regardless of the credibility of the information. This shows the pronounced influence of emotional contents not only on the initial and early response to news, but even on processes that were expected to evaluate the information on merit of its credibility. In a first attempt to intervene, participants explicitly evaluated the credibility of the source before reading the headlines. This helped to overcome the bias for positive news and process its credibility to some degree. However, the insight into the lack of credibility had no influence on the effects of negative news on brain responses and social judgments. Our results demonstrate how emotional content in social misinformation can affect mind, brain, and judgments even against better knowledge of its lacking credibility. In perspective, these insights help to face the challenges of misinformation from the perspective of the individual’s cognition.

The supposed diploma thesis is mapping the network of so-called pro-Russian media in the Czech Republic on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook and subsequent analysis of their audience. The purpose of this analysis is to process socio-demographic and other informations for specific media or their clusters. In the theoretical part of the thesis will be read into the issue and acquainted with the current state of knowledge in this area. In the practical part of the work will be demonstrated own research using methods of social network analysis (SNA). That is, tools that include objective changes, measuring and tracking relationships and information flows between entities.

Aging represents the most significant prerequisite to be influenced by disinformation or fraudulent media messages on the internet. The elderly are a group that consumes these messages and also spreads them most often. With the gradual aging of the population and enlargement of the elderly group, the society-wide problem further escalates. The topic of the diploma thesis is focused on the issues of fake news and the spread of disinformation online within the elderly group aged 65 and more years. The thesis aims to describe in detail the aspects on which the elderly evaluate the credibility of news and which signs of fake news they are able to identify. The theoretical section defines the fundamental terms relevant to fake news and describes the state of media literacy of the Czech elderly in the context of current research. In the practical section, a qualitative study is conducted in the form of semi structured interviews with the elderly to answer the research questions.

Unter den Anglizismen des Jahres 2016 schaffte es „Fake News“ noch vor den zweit- und drittplatzierten Wörtern „Dark Net“ und „Hate Speech“ zum Publikumsliebling und wurde auch von der Jury der „Aktion Anglizismen des Jahres“ 2016 auf den ersten Platz gewählt (http://www.anglizismusdesjahres.de). In seiner Laudatio weist Anatol Stefanowitsch darauf hin, dass das Wort Fake News schon im 19. Jahrhundert in ähnlicher Bedeutung wie heute verwendet wurde im Sinne einer frei erfundenen Nachricht, die politische Gegner ungünstig darstellt und von den Lesern – ist hier noch nicht die Rede – positiv aufgenommen wird, weil sie deren Weltbild bestätigt. Die früheste Verwendung datiert er auf 1894 in der Zeitschrift American Historical Register [... aus dem Editorial]