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The Science of Fake News News Outlets, Simultaneously Benefiting from on March 8, 2018 and Undermining Their Credibility

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The Science of Fake News News Outlets, Simultaneously Benefiting from on March 8, 2018 and Undermining Their Credibility INSIGHTS Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ POLICY FORUM SOCIAL S CIENCE gated about topics such as vaccination, nu- trition, and stock values. It is particularly pernicious in that it is parasitic on standard The science of fake news news outlets, simultaneously benefiting from on March 8, 2018 and undermining their credibility. Addressing fake news requires a multidisciplinary effort Some—notably First Draft and Facebook— favor the term “false news” because of the use of fake news as a political weapon (1). By David M. J. Lazer, Matthew A. Baum, and the mechanisms by which it spreads. We have retained it because of its value as a Yochai Benkler, Adam J. Berinsky, Kelly Fake news has a long history, but we focus scientific construct, and because its politi- M. Greenhill, Filippo Menczer, Miriam on unanswered scientific questions raised by cal salience draws attention to an impor- J. Metzger, Brendan Nyhan, Gordon the proliferation of its most recent, politically tant subject. Pennycook, David Rothschild, Michael oriented incarnation. Beyond selected refer- Schudson, Steven A. Sloman, Cass R. ences in the text, suggested further reading THE HISTORICAL SETTING Sunstein, Emily A. Thorson, Duncan J. can be found in the supplementary materials. Journalistic norms of objectivity and bal- Watts, Jonathan L. Zittrain ance arose as a backlash among journalists WHAT IS FAKE NEWS? against the widespread use of propaganda he rise of fake news highlights the We define “fake news” to be fabricated in- in World War I (particularly their own role erosion of long-standing institutional formation that mimics news media content in propagating it) and the rise of corporate bulwarks against misinformation in in form but not in organizational process or public relations in the 1920s. Local and na- the internet age. Concern over the intent. Fake-news outlets, in turn, lack the tional oligopolies created by the dominant problem is global. However, much news media’s editorial norms and processes 20th century technologies of information remains unknown regarding the vul- for ensuring the accuracy and credibility of distribution (print and broadcast) sustained Tnerabilities of individuals, institutions, and information. Fake news overlaps with other these norms. The internet has lowered the society to manipulations by malicious actors. information disorders, such as misinforma- cost of entry to new competitors—many of A new system of safeguards is needed. Below, tion (false or misleading information) and which have rejected those norms—and un- we discuss extant social and computer sci- disinformation (false information that is pur- dermined the business models of traditional ence research regarding belief in fake news posely spread to deceive people). news sources that had enjoyed high levels of Fake news has primarily drawn recent at- public trust and credibility. General trust in The list of author affiliations is provided in the supplementary tention in a political context but it also has the mass media collapsed to historic lows in materials. Email: [email protected] been documented in information promul- 2016, especially on the political right, with THIBAULT SÉBASTIEN ILLUSTRATION: 1094 9 MARCH 2018 • VOL 359 ISSUE 6380 sciencemag.org SCIENCE Published by AAAS DA_0309PolicyForum.indd 1094 3/7/18 12:16 PM 51% of Democrats and 14% of Republicans (8). Bots are also deployed to manipulate al- structural changes in our society. Individuals expressing “a fair amount” or “a great deal” gorithms used to predict potential engage- tend not to question the credibility of infor- of trust in mass media as a news source (2). ment with content by a wider population. mation unless it violates their preconceptions The United States has undergone a par- Indeed, a Facebook white paper reports wide- or they are incentivized to do so. Otherwise, allel geo- and sociopolitical evolution. Geo- spread efforts to carry out this sort of manip- they may accept information uncritically. graphic polarization of partisan preferences ulation during the 2016 U.S. election (5). People also tend to align their beliefs with the has dramatically increased over the past However, in the absence of methods to values of their community. 40 years, reducing opportunities for cross- derive representative samples of bots and Research also further demonstrates that cutting political interaction. Homogeneous humans on a given platform, any point esti- people prefer information that confirms social networks, in turn, reduce tolerance mates of bot prevalence must be interpreted their preexisting attitudes (selective expo- for alternative views, amplify attitudinal po- cautiously. Bot detection will always be a sure), view information consistent with larization, boost the likelihood of accepting cat-and-mouse game in which a large, but their preexisting beliefs as more persuasive ideologically compatible news, and increase unknown, number of humanlike bots may go than dissonant information (confirmation closure to new information. Dislike of the undetected. Any success at detection, in turn, bias), and are inclined to accept informa- “other side” (affective polarization) has also will inspire future countermeasures by bot tion that pleases them (desirability bias). risen. These trends have created a context in producers. Identification of bots will there- Prior partisan and ideological beliefs might which fake news can attract a mass audience. fore be a major ongoing research challenge. prevent acceptance of fact checking of a We do know that, as with legitimate news, given fake news story. PREVALENCE AND IMPACT fake news stories have gone viral on social Fact checking might even be counterpro- How common is fake news, and what is media. However, knowing how many indi- ductive under certain circumstances. Re- its impact on individuals? There are sur- viduals encountered or shared a piece of fake search on fluency—the ease of information Downloaded from prisingly few scientific answers to these ba- news is not the same as knowing how many recall—and familiarity bias in politics shows sic questions. people read or were affected by it. Evalua- that people tend to remember information, In evaluating the prevalence of fake tions of the medium-to-long–run impact on or how they feel about it, while forgetting the news, we advocate focusing on the original political behavior of exposure to fake news context within which they encountered it. sources—the publishers—rather than indi- (for example, whether and how to vote) are Moreover, they are more likely to accept fa- vidual stories, because we view the defining essentially nonexistent in the literature. The miliar information as true (10). There is thus http://science.sciencemag.org/ element of fake news to be the intent and impact might be small—evidence suggests a risk that repeating false information, even processes of the publisher. A focus on pub- that efforts by political campaigns to per- in a fact-checking context, may increase an lishers also allows us to avoid the morass of suade individuals may have limited effects individual’s likelihood of accepting it as true. trying to evaluate the accuracy of every single (9). However, mediation of much fake news The evidence on the effectiveness of claim news story. via social media might accentuate its effect repetition in fact checking is mixed (11). One study evaluating the dissemination of because of the implicit endorsement that Although experimental and survey re- prominent fake news stories estimated that comes with sharing. Beyond electoral im- search have confirmed that the perception of the average American encountered between pacts, what we know about the effects of me- truth increases when misinformation is re- one and three stories from known publish- dia more generally suggests many potential peated, this may not occur if the misinforma- ers of fake news during the month before pathways of influence, from increasing cyni- tion is paired with a valid retraction. Some on March 8, 2018 the 2016 election (3). This likely is a conser- cism and apathy to encouraging extremism. research suggests that repetition of the mis- vative estimate because the study tracked There exists little evaluation of the impacts of information before its correction may even only 156 fake news stories. Another study fake news in these regards. be beneficial. Further research is needed to reported that false information on Twitter reconcile these contradictions and determine is typically retweeted by many more people, POTENTIAL INTERVENTIONS the conditions under which fact-checking and far more rapidly, than true informa- What interventions might be effective at interventions are most effective. tion, especially when the topic is politics (4). stemming the flow and influence of fake Another, longer-run, approach seeks to Facebook has estimated that manipulations news? We identify two categories of inter- improve individual evaluation of the quality by malicious actors accounted for less than ventions: (i) those aimed at empowering of information sources through education. one-tenth of 1% of civic content shared on the individuals to evaluate the fake news they There has been a proliferation of efforts to platform (5), although it has not presented encounter, and (ii) structural changes aimed inject training of critical-information skills details of its analysis. at preventing exposure of individuals to fake into primary and secondary schools (12). By liking, sharing, and searching for infor-
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