The battle to end fake news: A qualitative content analysis of Facebook announcements on how it combats disinformation

Abstract

The recent spread of online disinformation has been profound and has played a central role in the growth of populist sentiments around the world. Facilitating its progression has been politically and economically motivated culprits who have ostensibly taken advantage of the digital freedoms available to them. At the heart of these freedoms lie social media organisations that only a few years earlier techno-optimists were identifying as catalysts of an enhanced digital democracy. In order to curtail the erosion of information, policy reform will no doubt be essential. The UK's Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Disinformation and ‘fake news’ Report and Cairncross Review, and the European Commission's Report on Disinformation are three recent examples seeking to investigate how precisely such reform policy might be implemented. Just as important is how social media organisations take on more responsibility and apply self-regulating mechanisms that stifle disinformation across their platforms (something the aforementioned reports identify). Doing so will go a long way in restoring legitimacy in these significant institutions. Facebook (which includes Instagram and Whatsapp), is the largest social media organisation in the world and must primarily bear the burden of this responsibility. The purpose of this article is to offer a descriptive account of Facebook's public announcements regarding how it tackles disinformation and fake news. Based on a qualitative content analysis covering the period November 16th 2016–March 4th 2019, this article will set out some groundwork on how to hold social media platforms more accountable for how they handle disinformation.

An Analysis of the Partnership between Retailers and Low-credibility News Publishers

“…Next, we show that low-credibility news sites are becoming less dependent on high-profile retailers over time. This aligns with observations from related work (Berthon and Pitt, 2018;Iosifidis and Nicoli, 2020), which show that certain corporations and popular retailers had already taken actions to disassociate with low-credibility news publishers. If this trend continues, we may see a continued decline of low-credibility news sites reliance' on high-profile retailers.…”

“…First, legal scholars (Butler, 2018;El-Khoury, 2020;Feingold, 2017;Kraski, 2017) argue that policy-makers can and should pass laws that criminalize hoaxes and misinformation that have a direct negative effect on individuals or the general public. Alternatively, online platforms can choose to implement various models to detect low-credibility news (Rubin et al, 2016;Shao et al, 2016;Wang, 2017;Boididou et al, 2018;Monti et al, 2019;Nguyen et al, 2020) and then provide flags or indicators to assist users in discerning reputable news from misleading content (Iosifidis and Nicoli, 2020;Geeng et al, 2020;Yaqub et al, 2020). Third, social and community norms are another powerful force that regulates behavior in online communities (Mele et al, 2017;Chandrasekharan et al, 2018).…”

“…Though, the level of reliance is significantly less than their reliance on top credible ad servers . Further, with retailers and platforms increasingly taking action against such harmful publishers (Wingfield et al, 2016;Iosifidis and Nicoli, 2020;Berthon and Pitt, 2018), we also examine how this reliance has changed over time. We observe a sizable reduction in low-credibility news publishers' reliance on top retailers.…”

Reluctant to Share: How Third Person Perceptions of Fake News Discourage News Readers From Sharing “Real News” on Social Media

“…However, researchers have long been exploring concepts related to fake news. The scholarship has separated fake news into news which is intended to deceive (misinformation) and news which may be inaccurate but was not necessarily intended to be inaccurate (misinformation) (Bode & Vraga, 2015; Ecker et al, 2014; Iosifidis & Nicoli, 2020; Tudjman & Mikelic, 2003). Several studies have provided some insight into the factors that lead people to accept fake news (Flynn et al, 2017).…”

Envisioning PR research without taking organizations as collective actors for granted: A rejoinder and extension to Hou

“…For instance, in the recent debates on the responsibility of social media firms for the content that is shared on their platforms, these firms initially tried to position themselves primarily as tech infrastructure providers (and not so much as players in the media market), thus “lowering” their exposure for social evaluation (Carlson, 2018). However, in the meantime, they have more and more resumed actor-like responsibilities to filter certain kinds of content (e.g., hate speech or fake news; see Iosifidis and Nicoli, 2020).…”