RESEARCH

How to combat fake news and disinformation

Darrell M. West

December 18, 2017

Executive summary

Journalism is in a state of considerable flux. New digital platforms have unleashed

innovative journalistic practices that enable novel forms of communication and greater
global reach than at any point in human history. But on the other hand, disinformation
and hoaxes that are popularly referred to as “fake news” are accelerating and
affecting the way individuals interpret daily developments. Driven by foreign actors,
citizen journalism, and the proliferation of talk radio and cable news, many information
systems have become more polarized and contentious, and there has been a
precipitous decline in public trust in traditional journalism.

Fake news and sophisticated disinformation campaigns are especially problematic in

democratic systems, and there is growing debate on how to address these issues
without undermining the benefits of digital media. In order to maintain an open,
democratic system, it is important that government, business, and consumers work
together to solve these problems. Governments should promote news literacy and
strong professional journalism in their societies. The news industry must provide high-
quality journalism in order to build public trust and correct fake news and
disinformation without legitimizing them. Technology companies should invest in tools
that identify fake news, reduce financial incentives for those who profit from
disinformation, and improve online accountability. Educational institutions should make
informing people about news literacy a high priority. Finally, individuals should follow
a diversity of news sources, and be skeptical of what they read and watch.
The state of the news media

The news media landscape has changed dramatically over the past decades. Through
digital sources, there has been a tremendous increase in the reach of journalism,
social media, and public engagement. Checking for news online—whether through
Google, Twitter, Facebook, major newspapers, or local media websites—has become
ubiquitous, and smartphone alerts and mobile applications bring the latest
developments to people instantaneously around the world. As of 2017, 93 percent of
Americans say they receive news online. 1 When asked where they got online news in
the last two hours, 36 percent named a news organization website or app; 35 percent
said social media (which typically means a post from a news organization, but can be
a friend’s commentary); 20 percent recalled a search engine; 15 percent indicated a
news organization email, text, or alert; 9 percent said it was another source; and 7
percent named a family member email or text (see Figure 1). 2

Figure 1: Where people get online news in the

US, 2017

3,000

2,000

1,000

Family Other Email Search Social media

In general, young people are most likely to get their news through online sources,
relying heavily on mobile devices for their communications. According to the Pew
Research Center, 55 percent of smartphone users receive news alerts on their devices.
And about 47 percent of those receiving alerts click through to read the story.
3
(#_edn3) 3 Increasingly, people can customize information delivery to their personal
preferences. For example, it is possible to sign up for news alerts from many
organizations so that people hear news relevant to their particular interests.

There have been changes overtime in sources of news overall. Figure 2 shows the
results for 2012 to 2017. It demonstrates that the biggest gain has been in reliance
upon social media. In 2012-2013, 27 percent relied upon social media sites, compared
to 51 percent who did so in 2017. 4 In contrast, the percentage of Americans relying
upon print news has dropped from 38 to 22 percent.

Figure 2: Change in overall news sources, 2012-

2017
TV Print Online (incl. social) Social

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

A number of research organizations have found significant improvements in digital

access around the world. For example, the Pew Research Center has documented
through surveys in 21 emerging nations that internet usage has risen from 45 percent
in 2013 to 54 percent in 2015. That number still trails the 87 percent usage figure seen
in 11 developed countries, but there clearly have been major gains in many places
around the world. (#_edn5) 5
Social media sites are very popular in the developing world. As shown in Figure 3, 86
percent of Middle Eastern internet users rely upon social networks, compared to 82
percent in Latin America, 76 percent in Africa, 71 percent in the United States, 66
percent in Asia and the Pacific, and 65 percent in Europe.

Figure 3: Use of social media in various regions,

2016

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

Europe Asia United States Africa Latin America

In addition, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has demonstrated
important trends in news consumption. It has shown major gains in reliance upon
mobile news notifications. The percentage of people in the United States making use
of this source has risen by 8 percentage points, while there have been gains of 7
percentage points in South Korea and 4 percentage points in Australia. There also
have been increases in the use of news aggregators, digital news sources, and voice-
activated digital assistants. (#_edn6) 6

Declining trust in the news media

In the United States, there is a declining public trust in traditional journalism. The
Gallup Poll asked a number of Americans over the past two decades how much trust
and confidence they have in mass media reporting the news fully, accurately, and
fairly. As shown in Figure 4, the percentage saying they had a great deal or fair
amount of trust dropped from 53 percent in 1997 to 32 percent in 2016. 7

Figure 4: Public trust in traditional news media,

1997-2016
Percent

55

50

45

40

35

1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012

Between news coverage they don’t like and fake news that is manipulative in nature,
many Americans question the accuracy of their news. A recent Gallup poll found that
only 37 percent believe “news organizations generally get the facts straight.” This is
down from about half of the country who felt that way in 1998. There is also a startling
partisan divide in public assessments. Only 14 percent of Republicans believe the
media report the news accurately, compared to 62 percent for Democrats. Even more
disturbingly, “a solid majority of the country believes major news organizations
routinely produce false information.” (#_edn8) 8

This decline in public trust in media is dangerous for democracies. With the current
political situation in a state of great flux in the U.S. and around the world, there are
questions concerning the quality of the information available to the general public and
the impact of marginal media organizations on voter assessments. These
developments have complicated the manner in which people hold leaders accountable
and the way in which our political system operates.
Challenges facing the digital media landscape

As the overall media landscape has changed, there have been several ominous
developments. Rather than using digital tools to inform people and elevate civic
discussion, some individuals have taken advantage of social and digital platforms to
deceive, mislead, or harm others through creating or disseminating fake news and
disinformation.

Fake news is generated by outlets that masquerade as actual media sites but
promulgate false or misleading accounts designed to deceive the public. When these
activities move from sporadic and haphazard to organized and systematic efforts, they
become disinformation campaigns with the potential to disrupt campaigns and
governance in entire countries. (#_edn9) 9

As an illustration, the United States saw apparently organized efforts to disseminate

false material in the 2016 presidential election. A Buzzfeed analysis found that the
most widely shared fake news stories in 2016 were about “Pope Francis endorsing
Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS, Hillary Clinton being
disqualified from holding federal office, and the FBI director receiving millions from
the Clinton Foundation.” (#_edn10) 10 Using a social media assessment, it claimed that
the 20 largest fake stories generated 8.7 million shares, reactions, and comments,
compared to 7.4 million generated by the top 20 stories from 19 major news sites.

When [fake news] activities move from sporadic and haphazard to

organized and systematic efforts, they become disinformation campaigns
with the potential to disrupt campaigns and governance in entire countries.

Fake content was widespread during the presidential campaign. Facebook has
estimated that 126 million of its platform users saw articles and posts promulgated by
Russian sources. Twitter has found 2,752 accounts established by Russian groups that
tweeted 1.4 million times in 2016. 11 The widespread nature of these disinformation
efforts led Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu to ask: “Did Twitter kill the First
Amendment?” 12
A specific example of disinformation was the so-called “Pizzagate” conspiracy, which
started on Twitter. The story falsely alleged that sexually abused children were hidden
at Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor, and that Hillary Clinton knew
about the sex ring. It seemed so realistic to some that a North Carolina man named
Edgar Welch drove to the capital city with an assault weapon to personally search for
the abused kids. After being arrested by the police, Welch said “that he had read
online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves and that he wanted to
see for himself if they were there. [Welch] stated that he was armed.” 13

A post-election survey of 3,015 American adults suggested that it is difficult for news
consumers to distinguish fake from real news. Chris Jackson of Ipsos Public Affairs
undertook a survey that found “fake news headlines fool American adults about 75
percent of the time” and “‘fake news’ was remembered by a significant portion of the
electorate and those stories were seen as credible.” 14 Another online survey of 1,200
individuals after the election by Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow found that half of
those who saw these fake stories believed their content. (#_edn15) 15

False news stories are not just a problem in the United States, but afflict other
countries around the world. For example, India has been plagued by fake news
concerning cyclones, public health, and child abuse. When intertwined with religious
or caste issues, the combination can be explosive and lead to violence. People have
been killed when false rumors have spread through digital media about child
abductions. 16

Sometimes, fake news stories are amplified and disseminated quickly through false
accounts, or automated “bots.” Most bots are benign in nature, and some major sites
like Facebook ban bots and seek to remove them, but there are social bots that are
“malicious entities designed specifically with the purpose to harm. These bots mislead,
exploit, and manipulate social media discourse with rumors, spam, malware,
misinformation, slander, or even just noise.” 17

This information can distort election campaigns, affect public perceptions, or shape
human emotions. Recent research has found that “elusive bots could easily infiltrate a
population of unaware humans and manipulate them to affect their perception of
reality, with unpredictable results.” (#_edn18) 18 In some cases, they can “engage in
more complex types of interactions, such as entertaining conversations with other
people, commenting on their posts, and answering their questions.” Through
designated keywords and interactions with influential posters, they can magnify their
influence and affect national or global conversations, especially resonating with like-
minded clusters of people. (#_edn19) 19

An analysis after the 2016 election found that automated bots played a major role in
disseminating false information on Twitter. According to Jonathan Albright, an
assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University, “what bots are doing is really
getting this thing trending on Twitter. These bots are providing the online crowds that
are providing legitimacy.” (#_edn20) 20 With digital content, the more posts that are
shared or liked, the more traffic they generate. Through these means, it becomes
relatively easy to spread fake information over the internet. For example, as graphic
content spreads, often with inflammatory comments attached, it can go viral and be
seen as credible information by people far from the original post.

Everyone has a responsibility to combat the scourge of fake news. This ranges from
supporting investigative journalism, reducing financial incentives for fake news, and
improving digital literacy among the general public.

False information is dangerous because of its ability to affect public opinion and
electoral discourse. According to David Lazer, “such situations can enable
discriminatory and inflammatory ideas to enter public discourse and be treated as
fact. Once embedded, such ideas can in turn be used to create scapegoats, to
normalize prejudices, to harden us-versus-them mentalities and even, in extreme
cases, to catalyze and justify violence.” 21 As he points out, factors such as source
credibility, repetition, and social pressure affect information flows and the extent to
which misinformation is taken seriously. When viewers see trusted sources repeat
certain points, they are more likely to be influenced by that material.

Recent polling data demonstrate how harmful these practices have become to the
reputations of reputable platforms. According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of
Journalism, only 24 percent of Americans today believe social media sites “do a good
job separating fact from fiction, compared to 40 percent for the news media.”
(#_edn22) 22 That demonstrates how much these developments have hurt public
discourse.
The risks of regulation

Government harassment of journalists is a serious problem in many parts of the world.

United Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur David Kaye notes that “all
too many leaders see journalism as the enemy, reporters as rogue actors, tweeps as
terrorists, and bloggers as blasphemers.” 23 In Freedom House’s most recent report on
global press freedoms, researchers found that media freedom was at its lowest point
in 13 years and there were “unprecedented threats to journalists and media outlets in
major democracies and new moves by authoritarian states to control the media,
including beyond their borders.” (#_edn24) 24

Journalists can often be accused of generating fake news and there have been
numerous cases of legitimate journalists being arrested or their work being subject to
official scrutiny. In Egypt, an Al-Jazeera producer was arrested on charges of
“incitement against state institutions and broadcasting fake news with the aim of
spreading chaos.” (#_edn25) 25 This was after the network broadcast a documentary
criticizing Egyptian military conscription.

Some governments have also moved to create government regulations to control

information flows and censor content on social media platforms. Indonesia has
established a government agency to “monitor news circulating online” and “tackle fake
news.” 26 In the Philippines, Senator Joel Villanueva has introduced a bill that would
impose up to a five-year prison term for those who publish or distribute “fake news,”
which the legislation defined as activities that “cause panic, division, chaos, violence,
and hate, or those which exhibit a propaganda to blacken or discredit one’s
reputation.” (#_edn27) 27

Critics have condemned the bill’s definition of social networks, misinformation, hate
speech, and illegal speech as too broad, and believe that it risks criminalizing
investigative journalism and limiting freedom of expression. Newspaper columnist
Jarius Bondoc noted “the bill is prone to abuse. A bigot administration can apply it to
suppress the opposition. By prosecuting critics as news fakers, the government can
stifle legitimate dissent. Whistleblowers, not the grafters, would be imprisoned and
fined for daring to talk. Investigative journalists would cram the jails.” 28
In a situation of false information, it is tempting for legal authorities to deal with
offensive content and false news by forbidding or regulating it. For example, in
Germany, legislation was passed in June 2017 that forces digital platforms to delete
hate speech and misinformation. It requires large social media companies to “delete
illegal, racist or slanderous comments and posts within 24 hours.” Companies can be
fined up to $57 million for content that is not deleted from the platform, such as Nazi
symbols, Holocaust denials, or language classified as hate speech. (#_edn29) 29

The German legislation’s critics have complained that its definition of “obviously”
illegal speech risks censorship and a loss of freedom of speech. As an illustration, the
law applies the rules to social media platforms in the country with more than 2 million
users. Commentators have noted that is not a reasonable way to define relevant social
networks. There could be much smaller networks that inflict greater social damage.

Overly restrictive regulation of internet platforms in open societies sets a

dangerous precedent and can encourage authoritarian regimes to continue
and/or expand censorship.

In addition, it is not always clear how to identify objectionable content. (#_edn30) 30

While it is pretty clear how to define speech advocating violence or harm to other
people, it is less apparent when talking about hate speech or “defamation of the state.”
What is considered “hateful” to one individual may not be to someone else. There is
some ambiguity regarding what constitutes hate speech in a digital context. Does it
include mistakes in reporting, opinion piece commentary, political satire, leader
misstatements, or outright fabrications? Watchdog organizations complained that
“overly broad language could affect a range of platforms and services and put
decisions about what is illegal content into the hands of private companies that may
be inclined to over-censor in order to avoid potential fines.” (#_edn31) 31

Overly restrictive regulation of internet platforms in open societies sets a dangerous

precedent and can encourage authoritarian regimes to continue and/or expand
censorship. This will restrict global freedom of expression and generate hostility to
democratic governance. Democracies that place undue limits on speech risk
legitimizing authoritarian leaders and their efforts to crackdown basic human rights. It
is crucial that efforts to improve news quality not weaken journalistic content or the
investigative landscape facing reporters.
Other approaches

There are several alternatives to deal with falsehoods and disinformation that can be
undertaken by various organizations. Many of these ideas represent solutions that
combat fake news and disinformation without endangering freedom of expression and
investigative journalism.

Government responsibilities

1) One of the most important thing governments around the world can do is to
encourage independent, professional journalism. The general public needs reporters
who help them make sense of complicated developments and deal with the ever-
changing nature of social, economic, and political events. Many areas are going
through transformation that I elsewhere have called “megachanges,” and these shifts
have created enormous anger, anxiety, and confusion. (#_edn32) 32 In a time of
considerable turmoil, it is vital to have a healthy Fourth Estate that is independent of
public authorities.

2) Governments should avoid crackdowns on the news media’s ability to cover the
news. Those activities limit freedom of expression and hamper the ability of journalists
to cover political developments. The United States should set a good example with
other countries. If American leaders censor or restrict the news media, it encourages
other countries to do the same thing.

3) Governments should avoid censoring content and making online platforms liable for
misinformation. This could curb free expression, making people hesitant to share their
political opinions for fear it could be censored as fake news. Such overly restrictive
regulation could set a dangerous precedent and inadvertently encourage authoritarian
regimes to weaken freedom of expression.

News industry actions

1) The news industry should continue to focus on high-quality journalism that builds
trust and attracts greater audiences. An encouraging development is that many news
organizations have experienced major gains in readership and viewership over the last
couple of years, and this helps to put major news outlets on a better financial footing.
But there have been precipitous drops in public confidence in the news media in recent
years, and this has damaged the ability of journalists to report the news and hold
leaders accountable. During a time of considerable chaos and disorder, the world
needs a strong and viable news media that informs citizens about current events and
long-term trends.

2) It is important for news organizations to call out fake news and disinformation
without legitimizing them. They can do this by relying upon their in-house
professionals and well-respected fact-checkers. In order to educate users about news
sites that are created to mislead, nonprofit organizations such as Politifact,
Factcheck.org, and Snopes judge the accuracy of leader claims and write stories
detailing the truth or lack thereof of particular developments. These sources have
become a visible part of election campaigns and candidate assessment in the United
States and elsewhere. Research by Dartmouth College Professor Brendan Nyhan has
found that labeling a Facebook post as “disputed” reduces the percentage of readers
believing the false news by 10 percentage points. 33 In addition, Melissa Zimdars, a
communication and media professor at Merrimack College, has created a list of 140
websites that use “distorted headlines and decontextualized or dubious
information.” 34 This helps people track promulgators of false news.

It is important for news organizations to call out fake news and

disinformation without legitimizing them.

Similar efforts are underway in other countries. In Ukraine, an organization known as

StopFake relies upon “peer-to-peer counter propaganda” to dispel false stories. Its
researchers assess “news stories for signs of falsified evidence, such as manipulated
or misrepresented images and quotes” as well as looking for evidence of systematic
misinformation campaigns. Over the past few years, it has found Russian social media
posts alleging that Ukrainian military forces were engaging in atrocities against Russian
nationalists living in eastern Ukraine or that they had swastikas painted on their
vehicles. (#_edn35) 35 In a related vein, the French news outlet Le Monde has a
“database of more than 600 news sites that have been identified and tagged as ‘satire,’
‘real,’ [or] ‘fake.’” 36
Crowdsourcing draws on the expertise of large numbers of readers or viewers to
discern possible problems in news coverage, and it can be an effective way to deal
with fake news. One example is The Guardian’s effort to draw on the wisdom of the
crowd to assess 450,000 documents about Parliament member expenses in the United
Kingdom. It received the documents but lacked the personnel quickly to analyze their
newsworthiness. To deal with this situation, the newspaper created a public website
that allowed ordinary people to read each document and designate it into one of four
news categories: 1) “not interesting,” 2) “interesting but known,” 3) “interesting,” or 4)
“investigate this.” 37 Digital platforms allow news organizations to engage large
numbers of readers this way. The Guardian, for example, was able “to attract 20,000
readers to review 170,000 documents in the first 80 hours.”[38] (#_edn38) These
individuals helped the newspaper to assess which documents were most problematic
and therefore worthy of further investigation and ultimately news coverage.

Technology company responsibilities

1) Technology firms should invest in technology to find fake news and identify it for
users through algorithms and crowdsourcing. There are innovations in fake news and
hoax detection that are useful to media platforms. For example, fake news detection
can be automated, and social media companies should invest in their ability to do so.
Former FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler argues that “public interest algorithms” can
aid in identifying and publicizing fake news posts and therefore be a valuable tool to
protect consumers. (#_edn39) 38

In this vein, computer scientist William Yang Wang, relying upon PolitiFact.com,
created a public database of 12,836 statements labeled for accuracy and developed
an algorithm that compared “surface-level linguistic patterns” from false assertions to
wording contained in digital news stories. This allowed him to integrate text and
analysis, and identify stories that rely on false information. His conclusion is that
“when combining meta-data with text, significant improvements can be achieved for
fine-grained fake news detection.” (#_edn40) 39 In a similar approach, Eugenio
Tacchini and colleagues say it is possible to identify hoaxes with a high degree of
accuracy. Testing this proposition with a database of 15,500 Facebook posts and over
909,000 users, they find an accuracy rate of over 99 percent and say outside
organizations can use their automatic tool to pinpoint sites engaging in fake news. 40
They use this result to advocate the development of automatic hoax detection
systems.

Algorithms are powerful vehicles in the digital era and help shape people’s quest for
information and how they find online material. They can also help with automatic hoax
detection, and there are ways to identify fake news to educate readers without
censoring it. According to Kelly Born of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,
digital platforms should down rank or flag dubious stories, and find a way to better
identify and rank authentic content to improve information-gathering and presentation.
(#_edn42) 41 As an example, several media platforms have instituted “disputed news”
tags that warn readers and viewers about contentious content. This could be anything
from information that is outright false to material where major parties disagree about
its factualness. It is a way to warn readers about possible inaccuracies in online
information. Wikipedia is another platform that does this. Since it publishes
crowdsourced material, it is subject to competing claims regarding factual accuracy. It
deals with this problem by adding tags to material identifying it as “disputed news.”

Yet this cannot be relied on by itself. A survey of 7,500 individuals undertaken by

David Rand and Gordon Pennycook of Yale University argue that alerting readers
about inaccurate information doesn’t help much. They explored the impact of
independent fact-checkers and claim that “the existence of ‘disputed’ tags made
participants just 3.7 percentage points more likely to correctly judge headlines as
false.” 42 The authors worry that the outpouring of false news overwhelms fact-
checkers and makes it impossible to evaluate disinformation.

Algorithms are powerful vehicles in the digital era, and they can help
establish automatic hoax detection systems.

2) These companies shouldn’t make money from fake news manufacturers and should
make it hard to monetize hoaxes. It is important to weaken financial incentives for bad
content, especially false news and disinformation, as the manufacturing of fake news
is often financially motivated. Like all clickbait, false information can be profitable due
to ad revenues or general brand-building. Indeed, during the 2016 presidential
campaign, trolls in countries such as Macedonia reported making a lot of money
through their dissemination of erroneous material. While social media platforms like
Facebook have made it harder for users to profit from fake news, 43 ad networks can
do much more to stop the monetization of fake news, and publishers can stop
carrying the ad networks that refuse to do so.

3) Strengthen online accountability through stronger real-name policies and

enforcement against fake accounts. Firms can do this through “real-name registration,”
which is the requirement that internet users have to provide the hosting platform with
their true identity. This makes it easier to hold individuals accountable for what they
post or disseminate online and also stops people from hiding behind fake names when
they make offensive comments or engage in prohibited activities. (#_edn45) 44 This is
relevant to fake news and misinformation because of the likelihood that people will
engage in worse behavior if they believe their actions are anonymous and not likely to
be made public. As famed Justice Louis Brandeis long ago observed, “sunshine is said
to be the best of disinfectants.” (#_edn46) 45 It helps to keep people honest and
accountable for their public activities.

Educational institutions

1) Funding efforts to enhance news literacy should be a high priority for governments.
This is especially the case with people who are going online for the first time. For
those individuals, it is hard to distinguish false from real news, and they need to learn
how to evaluate news sources, not accept at face value everything they see on social
media or digital news sites. Helping people become better consumers of online
information is crucial as the world moves towards digital immersion. There should be
money to support partnerships between journalists, businesses, educational
institutions, and nonprofit organizations to encourage news literacy.

2) Education is especially important for young people. Research by Joseph Kahne and
Benjamin Bowyer found that third-party assessments matter to young readers.
However, their effects are limited. Those statements judged to be inaccurate reduced
reader persuasion, although to a lower extent than alignment with the individual’s prior
policy beliefs. 46 If the person already agreed with the statement, it was more difficult
for fact-checking to sway them against the information.

How the public can protect itself

1) Individuals can protect themselves from false news and disinformation by following
a diversity of people and perspectives. Relying upon a small number of like-minded
news sources limits the range of material available to people and increases the odds
they may fall victim to hoaxes or false rumors. This method is not entirely fool-proof,
but it increases the odds of hearing well-balanced and diverse viewpoints.

2) In the online world, readers and viewers should be skeptical about news sources. In
the rush to encourage clicks, many online outlets resort to misleading or
sensationalized headlines. They emphasize the provocative or the attention-grabbing,
even if that news hook is deceptive. News consumers have to keep their guard up and
understand that not everything they read is accurate and many digital sites specialize
in false news. Learning how to judge news sites and protect oneself from inaccurate
information is a high priority in the digital age.

Conclusion

From this analysis, it is clear there are a number of ways to promote timely, accurate,
and civil discourse in the face of false news and disinformation. 47 In today’s world,
there is considerable experimentation taking place with online news platforms. News
organizations are testing products and services that help them identify hate speech
and language that incites violence. There is a major flowering of new models and
approaches that bodes well for the future of online journalism and media
consumption.

At the same time, everyone has a responsibility to combat the scourge of fake news
and disinformation. This ranges from the promotion of strong norms on professional
journalism, supporting investigative journalism, reducing financial incentives for fake
news, and improving digital literacy among the general public. Taken together, these
steps would further quality discourse and weaken the environment that has propelled
disinformation around the globe.

Note: I wish to thank Hillary Schaub and Quinn Bornstein for their valuable research
assistance. They were very helpful in finding useful materials for this project.
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AUTHOR

Darrell M. West Senior Fellow - Governance Studies, Center for

Technology Innovation, Center for Effective Public Management, Douglas
Dillon Chair in Governmental Studies

Footnotes
1. Pew Research Center, “Digital News Fact Sheet,” August 7, 2017.
2. Pew Research Center, “How Americans Encounter, Recall, and Act Upon Digital
News,” February 9, 2017.
3. Pew Research Center, “More Than Half of Smartphone Users Get News Alerts, But
Few Get Them Often,” September 8, 2016.
4. Nic Newman, “Digital News Sources,” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism,
2017.
5. Jacob Poushter, “Smartphone Ownership and Internet Usage Continues to Climb in
Emerging Economies,” Pew Research Center, February 22, 2016.
6. Nic Newman, “Digital News Sources,” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism,
2017.
7. Gallup Poll, “Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low,” September 14, 2016.
8. Gallup Poll, “Republicans’, Democrats’ Views of Media Accuracy Diverge,” August 25,
2017.
9. Jen Weedon, William Nuland, and Alex Stamos, “Information Operations,” Facebook,
April 27, 2017.
10. Craig Silverman, “This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories
Outperformed Real News on Facebook,” BuzzFeedNews, November 16, 2016.
11. Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin, “Russian Content on Facebook, Google and
Twitter Reached Far More Users Than Companies First Disclosed, Congressional
Testimony Says,” Washington Post, October 30, 2017.
12. Tim Wu, “Did Twitter Kill the First Amendment?”, New York Times, October 28, 2017, p.
!a9.
13. Marc Fisher, John Cox, and Peter Hermann, “Pizzagate: From Rumor, to Hashtag, to
Gunfire in D.C.,” Washington Post, December 6, 2016.
14. Craig Silverman and Jeremy Singer-Vine, “Most Americans Who See Fake News
Believe It, New Survey Says,” BuzzFeed News, December 6, 2016.
15. Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow, “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016
Election,” NBER Working Paper, April, 2017, p. 4.
16. Vidhi Doshi, “India’s Millions of New Internet Users are Falling for Fake News –
Sometimes with Deadly Consequences,” Washington Post, October 1, 2017.
17. Emilio Ferrara, Onur Varol, Clayton Davis, Filippo Menczer, and Alessandro Flammini,
“The Rise of Social Bots,” Communications of the ACM, July, 2016.
18. Emilio Ferrara, Onur Varol, Clayton Davis, Filippo Menczer, and Alessandro Flammini,
“The Rise of Social Bots,” Communications of the ACM, July, 2016.
19. Michela Del Vicario, Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zollo, Fabio Petroni, Antonio Scala,
Guido Caldarelli, Eugene Stanley, and Walter Quattrociocchi, “The Spreading of
Misinformation Online,” PNAS, January 19, 2016.
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34. Kelly Born, “The Future of Truth: Can Philanthropy Help Mitigate Misinformation?”,
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