Fake News as We Feel It: Perception and Conceptualization of the Term “Fake News” in the Media

Abstract

In this article, we quantitatively analyze how the term "fake news" is being shaped in news media in recent years. We study the perception and the conceptualization of this term in the traditional media using eight years of data collected from news outlets based in 20 countries. Our results not only corroborate previous indications of a high increase in the usage of the expression "fake news", but also show contextual changes around this expression after the United States presidential election of 2016. Among other results, we found changes in the related vocabulary, in the mentioned entities, in the surrounding topics and in the contextual polarity around the term "fake news", suggesting that this expression underwent a change in perception and conceptualization after 2016. These outcomes expand the understandings on the usage of the term "fake news", helping to comprehend and more accurately characterize this relevant social phenomenon linked to misinformation and manipulation.

Team Ned Leeds at SemEval-2019 Task 4: Exploring Language Indicators of Hyperpartisan Reporting

“…Psycho-linguistic features: Motivated by previous studies in the field of deceptive text analysis, including fake news examination (Cunha et al, 2018), exploring fraudulent hotel reviews (Fast et al, 2016), characterizing and detecting hateful Twitter users (Ribeiro et al, 2018), we explore the effect of all 194 types of features from the Empath (Fast et al, 2016) lexicon on the task of hyperpartisan news detection.…”

How the Media Uses the Phrase “Identity Politics”

“…Lewis and Reese (2009) examined how the media proliferated and framed the phrase “war on terror.” Levendusky and Malhotra (2016) tracked the uptick in the term “polarization” and how it was used in US newspapers from 2000 to 2012. Cunha et al (2018) examined how media in 20 countries shaped the phrase “fake news.” Although these studies were excellent at tracking emerging political language, few connected the phenomenon to political communication theories (for an exception, see Lewis and Reese 2009).…”

Desinformación y Salud en la era PRECOVID: Una revisión sistemática

“…Sin embargo, es frecuente la utilización del término fake news para hacer referencia al fenómeno. Esto se puede deber a la confusión dentro de la terminología de este campo y a la popularización del término desde 2016 (Cunha et al, 2018). Las fake news han sido definidas como "artículos de noticias que son intencionalmente y verificablemente falsos, y que podrían confundir a los lectores" (Allcott y Gentzkow, 2017, p. 213).…”