‘Fake news’ – the perfect storm: historical perspectives*

Abstract

What is ‘fake news’? Undoubtedly, the phenomenon has become one of the defining characteristics of our recent past – in 2016 Oxford Dictionaries defined ‘post-truth’ to be its ‘word of the year’. But what might its significance be 100 years from now, and how ‘new’ is ‘fake news’? This article reflects on propaganda in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to argue that we now face the ‘perfect storm’: the speed, scope and scale of modern communications, complicated by the uncertain status of social media as neither platform nor publisher and the hidden algorithms used to control the information we see; the building frustration of those who feel disempowered by elites; the desire of some to destabilize the entire social and political system through psychological warfare campaigns and by creating a situation where all views are of equal value regardless of the evidential base; where psychological warriors can operate under the radar in the largely unregulated ‘wild west’ of the internet. But what is genuinely new about this situation, and how might history help us to find appropriate solutions to ‘fake news’ within a liberal democracy?

Characterizing Fake News Targeting Corporations

“…Misinformation, evident historically like propaganda in WWII (Fox 2020), thrives now, termed a 'perfect storm' (Starbird 2021;Fox 2020; Edge 2021). Influenced by: (i) easy content production via online platforms; (ii) social media's virality, especially for fake news (Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral 2018); and (iii) advancements in deep learning, enabling deepfakes (Westerlund 2019).…”

“…Similarly, concerns about misinformation effects on public health are increasing (Naeem, Bhatti, and Khan 2021;Melchior and Oliveira 2022). Yet another sphere experiencing threat due to misinformation is corporations and capital markets (Adriani 2019;Fox 2020; Jahng 2021). There are various types of corporate fake news depending on whether the news content has the intention to deceive and harm (Park et al 2020).…”

A Comprehensive Review on Countering Rumours in the Age of Online Social Media Platforms

“…From the institutional perspective, social media platforms allow their users to participate in information dissemination while leveraging anonymity. It specifically gives a safety margin to the initiators or moderators of inorganic rumours (Fox 2020; McGonagle 2017) since they can "say whatever they want, whenever they want, and yet be shielded by anonymity" (Christopherson 2007). The platforms also enable the democratisation of the content by allowing individuals to consume, create, and distribute their content without governmental control (Tufekci 2017) and with minimal supervision (Lazer et al 2018).…”