An Introduction to Fake News in Media

An Introduction to Fake News in Media

By Adam Weisenberger

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Now, Do you swear to tell the facts, all the facts and nothing but the facts?

You're probably asking, didn't I just answer that? Not really… and here's where we find one of the biggest issues with modern media today. Truth and facts are not always the same thing and by using some good old fashioned sleuthing and information from digital data sources, we're going to dive into the world of fictitious story writing and see just how susceptible even a stalwart sceptic can fall prey to the sensationalism of fake news. It's important that the distinction between real journalism and revenue driven opinion based storytelling be made clear, It's important to protect possibly the most important aspect of a free society, a robust and trustworthy press.

Let's start with a few definitions so we can have a solid foundation:

Facts are indisputable pieces of information.  

Truth is the perception or interpretations of factual information.

Fake news is any article that is intentionally written to be false and mislead readers. These are often rooted with facts and loosely, or completely, interpreted to further a particular point of view.

We'll be taking a look at several digital data sources used for facebook, twitter and google to expose how people use the internet, and other online media, to access modern news.

By using methods learned from digital data analysis experts, we'll look at how to interpret the collection of this information so we can better understand how these fairy-tales are made, how they connect to us and how they impact our world. In future articles, we'll focus on a particular instance of this modern adaptation of a not-so-modern phenomenon of sensational or fake "journalism." Come back next week for reasons why over 60% of US adults get their news from Facebook. Also, how social and traditional media are trying to recapture the trust lost from fake news sources.