Once on the fringe, fake news has become mainstream. From bogus social media accounts to Russian troll factories, phony news muddies the social and political discourse, and is a threat to our democracy. This high-interest book defines fake news and reveals the people behind the spread of disinformation. This text directly correlates with state journalism standards about developing media literacy. Readers will also glimpse the future of fake news and the alarming technologies used to make it, such as face-morphing technology. This book will help readers navigate the messy world of fake news.

The news is a public good and needs to be handled with care and integrity. Even though lies and misinformation campaigns have been around for years—maybe since the dawn of journalism—the rate at which fake news is being spread these days is both alarming and preposterous. Almost every institution—public or private—uses fake news to further its own agenda. Governments and corporate houses spread fake news either through their own agencies or by influencing the popular media. In the business sector, fake news manifests itself in the form of exaggerated company returns and false data. This book analyses the impact of fake news both on products and personalities. Foregrounded in rigorous research, it examines how fake news is used by companies, political parties, and leaders to create, amplify, and even tarnish a brand’s image and equity. It emphasizes how the customers' perception of a brand impacts and influences its reputation, and acts as a decisive force in them gaining or losing competitive advantages. Elucidating how brands can interact both directly and indirectly with fake news, it brings to the readers' notice how sometimes brands are the victims of fake news and other times, the purveyors.

The growing amount of false and misleading information on the internet has generated new concerns and quests for research regarding the study of deception and deception detection. Innovative methods that involve catching these fraudulent scams are constantly being perfected, but more material addressing these concerns is needed. The Handbook of Research on Deception, Fake News, and Misinformation Online provides broad perspectives, practices, and case studies on online deception. It also offers deception-detection methods on how to address the challenges of the various aspects of deceptive online communication and cyber fraud. While highlighting topics such as behavior analysis, cyber terrorism, and network security, this publication explores various aspects of deceptive behavior and deceptive communication on social media, as well as new methods examining the concepts of fake news and misinformation, character assassination, and political deception. This book is ideally designed for academicians, students, researchers, media specialists, and professionals involved in media and communications, cyber security, psychology, forensic linguistics, and information technology.

'Political technology' is a Russian term for the professional engineering of politics. It has turned Russian politics into theatre and propaganda, and metastasised to take over foreign policy and weaponise history. The war against Ukraine is one outcome. In the West, spin doctors and political consultants do more than influence media or run campaigns: they have also helped build parallel universes of alternative political reality. Hungary has used political technology to dismantle democracy. The BJP in India has used it to consolidate unprecedented power. Different countries learn from each other. Some types of political technology have become notorious, like troll farms or data mining; but there is now a global wholesale industry selling a range of manipulation techniques, from astroturfing to fake parties to propaganda apps. This book shows that 'political technology' is about much more than online disinformation: it is about whole new industries of political engineering.

A landmark insider’s tour of how social media affects our decision-making and shapes our world in ways both useful and dangerous, with critical insights into the social media trends of the 2020 election and beyond “The book might be described as prophetic. . . . At least two of Aral’s three predictions have come to fruition.”—New York NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY WIRED • LONGLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD Social media connected the world—and gave rise to fake news and increasing polarization. It is paramount, MIT professor Sinan Aral says, that we recognize the outsize effect social media has on us—on our politics, our economy, and even our personal health—in order to steer today’s social technology toward its great promise while avoiding the ways it can pull us apart. Drawing on decades of his own research and business experience, Aral goes under the hood of the most powerful social networks to tackle the critical question of just how much social media actually shapes our choices, for better or worse. He shows how the tech behind social media offers the same set of behavior influencing levers to everyone who hopes to change the way we think and act—from Russian hackers to brand marketers—which is why its consequences affect everything from elections to business, dating to health. Along the way, he covers a wide array of topics, including how network effects fuel Twitter’s and Facebook’s massive growth, the neuroscience of how social media affects our brains, the real consequences of fake news, the power of social ratings, and the impact of social media on our kids. In mapping out strategies for being more thoughtful consumers of social media, The Hype Machine offers the definitive guide to understanding and harnessing for good the technology that has redefined our world overnight.

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.

This book provides a comprehensive and impartial overview of the state of American journalism and news-gathering in the 21st century, with a special focus on the rise-and meaning-of "fake news." A part of ABC-CLIO's Examining the Facts series, which uses evidence-based documentation to examine the veracity of claims and beliefs about high-profile issues in American culture and politics, this volume examines beliefs, claims, and myths about American journalism and news media. It offers a comprehensive overview of the field of American journalism, including contemporary issues and historical foundations, and places modern problems such as "fake news" and misinformation in the context of larger technological and economic forces. The book illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of journalistic practices so readers can feel empowered to navigate the complex information environment in which we live and to understand the level to which various news sources can (or can't) be trusted to provide accurate and timely coverage of issues and events of import to the public and the nation. These skills and knowledge structures are necessary for any citizen who wishes to be an informed participant in a self-governing democratic society.

Fake News in Digital Cultures presents a new approach to understanding disinformation and misinformation in contemporary digital communication, arguing that fake news is not an alien phenomenon undertaken by bad actors, but a logical outcome of contemporary digital and popular culture.

Connected customers, using a wide range of devices such as smart phones, tablets, and laptops have ushered in a new era of consumerism. Now more than ever, this change has prodded marketing departments to work with their various IT departments and technologists to expand consumers’ access to content. In order to remain competitive, marketers must integrate marketing campaigns across these different devices and become proficient in using technology. The Handbook of Research on Innovations in Technology and Marketing for the Connected Consumer is a pivotal reference source that develops new insights into applications of technology in marketing and explores effective ways to reach consumers through a wide range of devices. While highlighting topics such as cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, this publication explores practices of technology-empowered digital marketing as well as the methods of applying practices to less developed countries. This book is ideally designed for marketers, managers, advertisers, branding teams, application developers, IT specialists, academicians, researchers, and students.

This book provides a review of current research in fake news and presents six new empirical research studies examining its impact. Fake news has garnered immense public attention following the 2016 Brexit referendum, three US elections, the 2019 Indian lynchings, and so on. Fake news undermines public life across the globe, especially in countries where journalistic practices and institutions are weak. Some fake news is created to spread ideological messages or to create mischief, whereas other fake news is created for profit. Research shows that fake news spreads farther, faster, and more broadly than true news and has had major societal impacts. All signs indicate that it will get worse as political activists, scammers, alternative news media, and hostile governments become more sophisticated in their production and targeting of fake news. This book features leading scholars who provide a review of the current research and presents six new empirical research studies examining its impact. Some of this research shows how inventions designed to reduce fake news can actually have the opposite effect, and instead act to increase the spread of fake news. Other research takes a longer-term perspective, by measuring or inserting emotions into headlines, allowing us to examine some of the roots of fake news behaviors for future study. This shows how challenging the fake news phenomenon is to solve. Fake News on the Internet will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Media Studies, Research Methods, Information Systems, Communication Studies, Management, Cultural Studies and Sociology. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Management Information Systems.