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.

El periodismo siempre ha necesitado de la verificación de información para poder contar y desarrollar las historias que informa. Ahora, con el acceso a las redes sociales y la facilidad con la que la información viaja y es compartida, la necesidad de comprobar lo que sucede, se ha vuelto esencial en las redacciones para no dejarse llevar por los fake news. Esta investigación pretende contribuir a los estudios sobre el empleo del fact checking como estrategia de verificación de información. Además, busca proporcionar información teórica para analizar y explicar la manera en la que el fact checking y su escala de verificación han permitido que este pase a ser una estrategia de verificación de datos utilizada por distintos medios. Mis preguntas de investigación son: ¿Cuáles son las estrategias utilizadas por el fact checking para combatir los fake news? ¿Por qué es importante el fact checking durante las elecciones presidenciales?  y la hipótesis que manejo es la siguiente: En elecciones presidenciales, el volumen de información y la rapidez con la que esta viaja hace difícil su verificación. Es por eso que el fact checking es una estrategia válida para verificar la información durante elecciones presidenciales. Finalmente, he decidido utilizar como caso de estudio las elecciones presidenciales de Perú del año 2016 y México de 2018 porque ambos fueron objeto de verificación en sus respectivos países por los medios Ojo Público en Perú y Animal Político en México. / Journalism has always needed to verify the information it gets to write the histories it reports. Nowadays, the free access to social media and the way information without verification is being shared has made journalists to fact check what they write to stop the spread of fake news. This research aims to contribute to studies on the use of fact checking as an information verification strategy. In addition, it seeks to provide theoretical information to analyze and explain the way fact checking and its verification scale have allowed it to become a information verification strategy used by different media. My research questions are: What are the strategies used by fact checking to stop the spread of fake news? Why is fact checking important during presidential elections? The hypothesis is: in presidential elections, the volume of information and the speed with which it travels makes it difficult to verify. That is why fact checking is a good information verification strategy during presidential elections. Finally, I have decided to use the presidential elections of Peru in 2016 and Mexico in 2018 as a case study because both were verified in their respective countries by the news site: Ojo Publico in Peru and Animal Politico in Mexico. / Trabajo de investigación

In recent years, disinformation circulating the internet and especially social media has become a widespread concern. The urgency of the fake news problem lies in the fact that decisions that are taken on false or misleading information risk impacting democratic processes negatively. This is especially true during a global health crisis when the misinformation in question concerns scientific facts and informs the way people act in society. Focusing on the relational aspect of fake news, new insight and hypothesis generation can be explored with a relatively novel method, social network analysis. This research provides with an example of the method applied to political problems by analysing the misinformation and fact-checking diffusion network on the Italian Twitterverse during the second wave of COVID19. The network shows a tight core of misinformation and a peripheral fact-checking region approximating a spanning tree. Although some levels of polarization are observed, the resulting network shows no evidence of echo chambers that hinder interaction between the misinformation and the fact-checking clusters. Actor-level analysis revealed that the majority of the users interacting in the network are humans and that influential and active users share misinformation only. The findings of this work are presented to show how network analysis can contribute both mitigation strategies in particular and to social and political sciences research in general.

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Desinformation, eller fake news som det kallas i vissa sammanhang, är ett problem som i samband med internet blivit allt större. Vare sig det gäller politiska val, falska påståenden om Covid-19 eller krigspropaganda så lever vi idag i vad vissa kallar för en infodemi. Begreppet syftar på det hav av både sann och falsk information som finns inom den digitala världen idag som det är väldigt lätt att drunkna i (World Health Organisation, 2020). Det ökade hotet har inte bara gjort det mer relevant att forska om desinformation som problem men även för forskning som ämnar att lösa problemet. Det finns flera olika typer av lösningar men maskininlärningsalgoritmer är en av de vanligaste samt det som detta arbete har undersökt (Gradon et al., 2021). Den frågeställning som arbetet har haft som mål att besvara är följande:“Vad är det som gör maskininlärning till ett effektivt skydd när det används för att identifiera desinformation?” Genom en kvalitativ fallstudie har semistrukturerade intervjuer genomförts med målet att besvara frågan mer på djupet och i detalj. Med metoden genererades ett resultat som förhoppningsvis underlättar att avgöra vad som gör maskininlärningsalgoritmer effektiva på att identifiera desinformation. I resultatet framkom det totalt 11 olika delområden där flera kategoriseras som argument till varför det är en effektiv lösning, samt argument som talar för att de inte är det. Det gjordes även fynd i form av förbättringsförslag som skulle kunna öka effektiviteten. Positiva argument som hittades är följande: 1) Maskininlärning är automatiserat, 2) Maskininlärningsalgoritmer arbetar snabbare än människor, 3) Maskininlärning kan agera snabbt mot nya hot, 4) Maskininlärning hittar mönster enklare än vad människor gör, 5) Maskininlärningsalgoritmer blir bättre ju mer de används. Negativa arguments som hittades är: 6) Maskininlärningsalgoritmer kan manipuleras, 7) Maskininlärningsalgoritmer kan missbrukas, 8) Hur processen går till med maskininlärning kan vara otydlig. Förbättringsförslag som hittades är: 9) Manuellövervakning av maskininlärningsalgoritmer, 10) Nya tekniker inom maskininlärning, 11) Att kombinera maskininlärningsalgoritmer med filter.

Fake news has great potential to cause damage to brand reputations and finances. Given the technical challenges of detecting fake news in time, it is inevitable that social media platforms will end up hosting fake news. The competition for attention and advertising revenue is intense. Many consumers read only the headlines. Fake news stories that mention brands in headlines can help news publishers garner social media engagement but can also hurt brands, raising concerns about brand protection. In this research, I focus on the first two stages of the information processing model – attending to information and encoding information (Berk 2018; Miller 1988).In Chapter 2, I investigate whether mentions of human and product brands are associated with news consumption and news retransmission (how brand mentions attract attention; the first stage of information processing). Using data from a news platform that generated both traditional and satirical (fake) news stories, I quantify the effects of brand mentions on social media engagement for both traditional and fake news. The analysis encompasses mentions of popular product brands, such as Apple, and mentions of human brands, such as famous politicians and actors. A framework based on uses and gratifications theory (UGT) aids in variable selection and the interpretation of results. My results imply that human brand mentions generally have a positive effect on news consumption and retransmission for both news formats, and product brand mentions affect engagement of satirical news via an interaction with news categories. Results provide further insights on the roles of sentiment, narrative style, and writing quality of news stories. The high potential of human and product brands in the headlines, especially human brands in satirical news, may be indicative of their potential to be misused by unscrupulous news media publishers. This reminds social media platforms of their responsibility to protect brands and consumers from fake news. Next, in Chapter 3, I examine the effectiveness of before-warnings (BWs) and after-warnings (AWs) in alerting consumers and reducing the persuasive influence of fake news on brand attitudes (how warning timing affects encoding; the second stage of information processing). Results reveal that for both negative and positive fake news, BWs are sometimes no more effective than no-warnings. Although BWs do encourage more critical processing of misinformation, this can distract consumers from the warning message. More importantly, Chapter 3 demonstrates a robust after-warning effect (AWE). Warning consumers after they have read fake news with AWs consistently leads to a higher reduction of persuasive influence (negative or positive) than BWs. AWs are more salient and arouse greater reactance to the false information than BWs. The resulting loss in control over how the news influenced attitudes and increased anger lead to the observed after-warning effect. News valence also matters since positive news is perceived to be more credible and processed less critically than negative news. AWs relative to BWs thus arouse feelings of being tricked when fake news is positive but not when it is negative, also leading to the after-warning effect. The findings have several theoretical and managerial implications. / Business Administration/Marketing

The purpose of the current study was to examine how the media's positive and negative portrayals related to racism impact the viewer's attitudes regarding African Americans. Previous research has shown how misinformation in the media can implicitly affect one's level of racism. Previous research has also shown that gender and one's sociodemographic status can affect the way individuals perceive misinformation. This study aimed to address the relationship between misinformation depicting racist views directed toward African Americans and consumer's attitudes toward African Americans. It was hypothesized that exposure to misinformation will have a significant impact on participants' level of racism. A Series of linear regression analyses were conducted to determine how race, sex, social class, right-wing authoritarianism, religious involvement, political preference, and exposure to real and fake news combined predict the pro-black and anti-black views of participants. Results indicated that exposure to fake news did have a significant negative impact on a pro-black viewpoint. However, the results of the study indicated that real or fake news did not significantly impact anti-black views.

This study examined the relationship between exposure to COVID-19 fake news, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), sociodemographic factors (i.e., race, biological sex), and xenophobia along with anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic. Participants included 133 female and male college students. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) exposed to COVID-19 fake news, (2) exposed to real news related to COVID-19 news, and (3) no news exposure. All participants from three groups were then asked to complete a series of measures regarding their attitudes toward Asian Americans and xenophobia. Participants levels of RWA and sociodemographic variables of race and biological sex were also examined. There was no significant difference in participants' attitudes toward Asian Americans based on which experimental group they were in. Participant's level of RWA and xenophobia significantly predicted participants attitudes toward Asian Americans. Participants race marginally predicted levels of comfort and kinship with, as well as enthusiasm for Asian Americans. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The scarce internet access in Ethiopia puts heavy weight on traditional media and people to spread news and information. By testing if the marketing strategy Word of Mouth is applicable on informative content, rather than just brands and products, this thesis explore the motivation to spread news as well as how it is received by a non-internet using group. As with brands, a common trigger for WOM was the subject being brought up in a discussion, both offline and online. Conditions that increased WOM in marketing such as being sociable and feeling a responsibility also increased WOM for more political content. The study also found that there is a low trust for internet as a source, but a high trust for the word of many. If the message was heard multiple times it was more believable, even though a primary source was lacking. In general both internet users and non-internet users were actively spreading information with the reason that it needed to be spread, something that was concluded as a collectivist action where information is spread quickly through social ties. Non-internet users were considered to be extra fragile and exposed to fake news due to the unequal distribution of information and technology. Since trust was based on the message of many, echo chambers and confirmation bias is discussed, as well as how Ethiopia might tackle the segregation of technology in the country in order to decrease inequality in the future. / Den svaga tillgången till internetuppkoppling i Etiopien lägger ett stort ansvar på traditionell media, och människor, för att sprida nyheter och information till landets stora befolkning. Genom att testa om marknadsföringsstrategin Word of Mouth också är applicerbar på informativa budskap undersöker denna uppsats motivationen bakom att sprida nyheter, samt hur denna mottas av en grupp som inte använder internet. Liksom med varumärken var en vanlig trigger för WOM med informativ kontext att ämnet nämndes i en pågående diskussion, både online och offline. Förutsättningar som stärkte WOM vid marknadsföring, såsom att vara social och känna ett samhällsansvar ökade också WOM för nyheter. Studien fann också att det var låg tillit för internet som källa, men att det fanns stor tilltro till information som upprepades av olika personer. Ett budskap som hördes från flera olika var mer trovärdigt, oavsett vilken den primära källan var eller om den saknades helt. Generellt spred både internetanvändare och icke-användarna information av anledningen att det behövdes spridas och höras av alla invånare, vilket tolkades som en kollektivistisk handling där nyheter snabbt spreds i sociala nätverk. De som inte använder internet ansågs vara extra exponerade för fake news på grund av den ojämställda distributionen av information och tillgången till teknologi. Då tillit var baserat på upprepning från många diskuterar uppsatsen även echo chambers och confirmation bias, samt hur Etiopien i framtiden kan tackla den tekniska segregationen.