Although news outlets are meant to be impartial, they have never been perfectly unbiased. Another layer was added to the ongoing debate over the role of news media after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when allegations of fake news surfaced. How can people know which news sources to trust? This volume explores the fake news phenomenon and offers readers tips on how to be critical of what they see reported. Full-color photographs, engaging sidebars, and discussion questions enhance the compelling text as it explores this crucial aspect of a democratic society.

Fake news is an important topic of current social concern. This book is the first sustained inquiry into the epistemology of fake news. The chapters examine the meaning of the term 'fake news', discuss practices that generate or promote fake news, and investigate potential therapies for the problems it presents.

This book explores the place of Media Studies in the age of ‘fake news’, analysing the calls for a curriculum of critical news literacy as part of a cyclical policy debate. With the need for young people in democracies to understand mainstream news agendas and take a critical perspective on social media news, including so-called ‘fake news’, this book argues for Media Studies as a mandatory subject. However, ‘fake news’ is not presented in the book as a stable, neutral term with a clear definition, but is instead defined as an idea that risks obscuring the key critical and political premise of Media Studies. All media representation requires critical deconstruction: therefore, any distinction between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ media is a false binary. The author draws together two narrative strands: one analysing contemporary news and journalism, featuring interviews with journalists and news commentators, and the other re-appraising the discipline of Media Studies itself. This bold and innovative book will appeal to all those interested in the nebulous and often confusing media landscape, as well as students and practitioners of Media Studies.

In an era where information is power, controlling the narrative means controlling the truth. Narrative Control: Media Bias, Censorship, and Elections 2024 takes you deep into the labyrinth of modern media, uncovering how narratives are crafted, manipulated, and weaponized to influence one of the most pivotal elections in U.S. history. From carefully curated headlines to social media algorithms that create echo chambers, the 2024 election stands at the crossroads of truth and deception. This eye-opening book delves into how media bias, misinformation, and censorship are shaping voter behavior and political discourse in the United States. With an intricate blend of historical insights and cutting-edge analysis, it reveals the tactics used by both traditional and digital media to sway public opinion, obscure the truth, and amplify election propaganda. You'll gain an understanding of how powerful institutions manipulate information to fit their agendas and what this means for the integrity of democratic processes. While the primary focus of Narrative Control is on the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the themes and dynamics discussed are relevant to all elections being held in 2024, including congressional and state races. Moreover, the insights provided are applicable to elections in general, offering a broader understanding of how media narratives shape the political landscape beyond just one election cycle. Narrative Control is a must-read for those who care about the future of democracy and seek to understand the battle between truth and narrative. It urges readers to question what they see, seek out diverse perspectives, and become critical consumers of media in an age of widespread disinformation. As the 2024 U.S. elections approach, this book offers a timely and crucial exploration of the forces at play behind the scenes, empowering readers to navigate the murky waters of political propaganda and media influence. Are you ready to uncover the truth behind the headlines? Step into the fight for narrative control and discover what it means for the future of democracy.

This open access book presents an interdisciplinary approach to reveal biases in English news articles reporting on a given political event. The approach named person-oriented framing analysis identifies the coverage’s different perspectives on the event by assessing how articles portray the persons involved in the event. In contrast to prior automated approaches, the identified frames are more meaningful and substantially present in person-oriented news coverage. The book is structured in seven chapters: Chapter 1 presents a few of the severe problems caused by slanted news coverage and identifies the research gap that motivated the research described in this thesis. Chapter 2 discusses manual analysis concepts and exemplary studies from the social sciences and automated approaches, mostly from computer science and computational linguistics, to analyze and reveal media bias. This way, it identifies the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches for identifying and revealing media bias. Chapter 3 discusses the solution design space to address the identified research gap and introduces person-oriented framing analysis (PFA), a new approach to identify substantial frames and to reveal slanted news coverage. Chapters 4 and 5 detail target concept analysis and frame identification, the first and second component of PFA. Chapter 5 also introduces the first large-scale dataset and a novel model for target-dependent sentiment classification (TSC) in the news domain. Eventually, Chapter 6 introduces Newsalyze, a prototype system to reveal biases to non-expert news consumers by using the PFA approach. In the end, Chapter 7 summarizes the thesis and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the thesis to derive ideas for future research on media bias. This book mainly targets researchers and graduate students from computer science, computational linguistics, political science, and further social sciences who want to get an overview of the relevant state of the art in the other related disciplines and understand and tackle the issue of bias from a more effective, interdisciplinary viewpoint.

This volume summarizes the evolution of news and information in the United States as it has been shaped by technology (penny press, radio, TV, cable, the internet) and form development (investigative journalism, tabloid TV, talk radio, social media). Media, Journalism, and "Fake News": A Reference Handbook provides readers with an overview of news and media in the United States. Additionally, the book discusses, additionally discussing the economic state of the news industry, partisan news, misinformation and disinformation, issues of representation, and the impact of social media. The volume starts with a background of the development of news and information in the United States. It then goes on to discuss significant problems, controversies, and solutions related to the topic. Readers also will be able to develop their understanding of the topic by reading profiles of key figures and organizations that contributed to the current news climate. A comprehensive list of resources will help readers decide where to go next should they want to learn more about a particular area of interest.

Chapters “Identifying Political Sentiments on YouTube: A Systematic Comparison regarding the Accuracy of Recurrent Neural Network and Machine Learning Models”, “Do Online Trolling Strategies Differ in Political and Interest Forums: Early Results” and “Students Assessing Digital News and Misinformation” are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

A global perspective on AI The rise of AI and super-intelligent AI raises ethical issues. AI is the power behind Google’s search engine, enables social media sites to serve up targeted advertising, gives Alexa and Siri their voices, and enables OpenAI’s ChatGPT to produce written responses from just a few prompts by the user. It is also the technology enabling self-driving vehicles, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without direct human intervention. All of these bring up complex ethical issues that are still unresolved and will continue to be the subject of ongoing debate. This book: Explores the complex topic of AI ethics in a cross-functional way; Enables understanding of the associated ethical challenges of AI technologies; Provides an up-to-date overview of the potential positive and negative outcomes of AI implementations; and Has been updated to reflect the ethical challenges of AI in 2024 and beyond, and the moral imperative of navigating this new terrain. This book presents a concrete approach to identifying appropriate ethical principles in AI solutions AI is much more than just a simple tool powering our smartphones or allowing us to ask Alexa about the latest cinema times. It is a technology that is, in very subtle but unmistakable ways, exerting an ever-increasing influence over our lives – and the more we use it, the more AI is altering our existence. This book presents a concrete approach to identifying appropriate ethical principles in AI solutions. There are untold how-to books on AI technology, replete with methods to improve and advance the statistics and algorithms of AI; however, the social, ethical and security impacts are often a secondary consideration – if they are discussed at all. This book explores the complex topic of AI ethics in a cross-functional way, alternating between theory and practice. Practical and recent events, and their associated challenges, are presented, such as the collateral effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the application of AI technologies. The book also gives an up-to-date overview of the potential positive and negative outcomes of AI implementations together with an analysis of AI from an ethical perspective. Before you dive into a world populated with AI, read this book to understand the associated ethical challenges of AI technologies.

What is media bias? Are all media outlets inherently biased? What does it mean for the news we receive? Media bias is a hot topic in the twenty-first century, when everyone and anyone can start a media organization and present content as news, but is all news created equal? Through critical essays and input from media insiders and watchdogs, students will explore what media bias is, how it affects the news they read and watch, and what they can do to make sure that they're not swayed by media bias when they ingest news.

In a democratic society, the role of the press is usually characterized by neutrality and the necessity of an informed electorate. The journalist's ethic is to present facts with minimal interpretation. Over the decades, however, this strict code has evolved and opened up, and thanks to the internet, an alternative media has risen. This has led to accusations of media bias and condemnation of certain media outlets by powerful elected leaders. The viewpoints in this volume explore the obligations of the media, the rise of satirical news outlets, and how to interpret news in a post-fact era.