The science of fake news
Abstract
Fake news emerged as an apparent global problem during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Addressing it requires a multidisciplinary effort to define the nature and extent of the problem, detect fake news in real time, and mitigate its potentially harmful effects. This will require a better understanding of how the Internet spreads content, how people process news, and how the two interact. We review the state of knowledge in these areas and discuss two broad potential mitigation strategies: better enabling individuals to identify fake news, and intervention within the platforms to reduce the attention given to fake news. The cooperation of Internet platforms (especially Facebook, Google, and Twitter) with researchers will be critical to understanding the scale of the issue and the effectiveness of possible interventions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2307.07903,
title = {The science of fake news},
author = {David M. J. Lazer and Matthew A. Baum and Yochai Benkler and Adam J. Berinsky and Kelly M. Greenhill and Filippo Menczer and Miriam J. Metzger and Brendan Nyhan and Gordon Pennycook and David Rothschild and Michael Schudson and Steven A. Sloman and Cass R. Sunstein and Emily A. Thorson and Duncan J. Watts and Jonathan L. Zittrain},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.07903},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
This is the accepted version of the article, posted to comply with public access mandates. The final published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao2998