A s Y o u R e a d , T h in k A b o u t : How can we stop the spread of fake news? Y ou’re scrolling through your Twitter feed when all of a sudden, a shocking headline fills your screen: “England BANS VIDEO GAMES!!” Outraged, you text your friends, who in turn text their friends. Could the United States be next, you wonder? Soon, millions of people across the country are sharing the article on Facebook and Twitter. Within hours, the story has gone viral. The only problem? The article is fake—and you fell for it. Made-up stories like that one are designed to look real but are completely or partly untrue. Sometimes it’s easy to tell when an article is false—words might be misspelled or randomly capitalized, or the headline might contain multiple exclamation points. But more often than not, fake-news writers are careful to make their stories seem real by including headlines, details, and data that sound believable. Such articles may seem harmless, but they can have real consequences. For example, experts say that false stories may have influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election. During the campaign, made-up articles about the two main candidates—including current president Donald Trump—were shared on Facebook nearly 38 million times. Many people now worry that deceptive stories could affect the outcome of next year’s presidential election. That would be a major problem, says Alan C. Miller. He’s the founder of the News Literacy Project, an organization that helps students learn how to spot misinformation. Part of being a good citizen means knowing what’s happening in the world around us— and being mindful that not everything we see on the internet and social media is true. “The overwhelming majority of information available online has not been verified,” says Miller. “It has not been approved by an editor or signed off on by a fact-checker. So we all need to have a healthy amount of skepticism about what we see.” History of Lies The act of influencing people with fake stories may seem new, but it’s been around for centuries. During the American Revolution (1775-1783), Benjamin Franklin, C h eck o u t o u r v id e o a t junior.sicholastic.com f o r easy t ip s on h o w t o s p o t m a d e -u p s to rie s , e v a lu a te an a u th o r’ s sou rces, a n d id e n tify a ds o n s o c ia l m e d ia . M a n y e x p e rts w o r r y t h a t fa k e n ew s s to rie s c o u ld in flu e n c e n e x t y e a r ’s p re s id e n tia l e le c tio n . one of the nation’s founders, was VIDEO himself guilty of spreading false stories. He attempted to increase support for the war by writing articles that falsely claimed that the British had teamed up with Native Americans to murder colonial women and children. In the late 1800s, newspapers competed for readers by printing shocking headlines and overdramatizing stories. Sometimes writers made up quotes altogether an.

1. A s Y o u R e a d , T h in k A b o u t : How can we stop the
spread of fake news?
Y
ou’re scrolling through your Twitter feed
when all of a sudden, a shocking headline
fills your screen: “England BANS VIDEO
GAMES!!” Outraged, you text your friends,
who in turn text their friends. Could the
United States be next, you wonder?
Soon, millions of people across the country
are sharing the article on Facebook and Twitter.
Within hours, the story has gone viral. The only
problem? The article is fake—and you fell for it.
Made-up stories like that one are designed to look
real but are completely or partly untrue. Sometimes
it’s easy to tell when an article is false—words might
be misspelled or randomly capitalized, or the headline
might contain multiple exclamation points. But more
often than not, fake-news writers are careful to make
their stories seem real by including headlines, details,
and data that sound believable.
Such articles may seem harmless, but they can have
real consequences. For example, experts say that false
stories may have influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential
election. During the campaign,

2. made-up articles about the two main
candidates—including current president
Donald Trump—were shared on
Facebook nearly 38 million times. Many
people now worry that deceptive stories
could affect the outcome of next year’s
presidential election.
That would be a major problem, says
Alan C. Miller. He’s the founder of the
News Literacy Project, an organization
that helps students learn how to spot
misinformation. Part of being a good citizen means
knowing what’s happening in the world around us—
and being mindful that not everything we see on the
internet and social media is true.
“The overwhelming majority of information available
online has not been verified,” says Miller. “It has
not been approved by an editor or signed off on by a
fact-checker. So we all need to have a healthy amount
of skepticism about what we see.”
History of Lies
The act of influencing people with fake stories may
seem new, but it’s been around for centuries. During the
American Revolution (1775-1783), Benjamin Franklin,
C h eck o u t o u r v id e o a t
junior.sicholastic.com
f o r easy t ip s on
h o w t o s p o t m a d e -u p
s to rie s , e v a lu a te an
a u th o r’ s sou rces,

3. a n d id e n tify a ds o n
s o c ia l m e d ia .
M a n y e x p e rts
w o r r y t h a t
fa k e n ew s
s to rie s c o u ld
in flu e n c e
n e x t y e a r ’s
p re s id e n tia l
e le c tio n .
one of the nation’s founders, was VIDEO
himself guilty of spreading false
stories. He attempted to increase
support for the war by writing
articles that falsely claimed that
the British had teamed up with
Native Americans to murder
colonial women and children.
In the late 1800s, newspapers competed
for readers by printing shocking headlines and
overdramatizing stories. Sometimes writers made up
quotes altogether and cited experts who didn’t exist.
The practice of creating scandalous news came to be
known as yellow journalism.
False Stories Spread Online
But fake news really took off with the rise of the internet
and social media. When your parents and grandparents
were kids, most people learned about current events

4. from a few respected newspapers or national news
shows on major TV networks. For the most part, that
news came straight from professional
journalists, who had been trained to
conduct thorough research, fact-check
their stories, and report the facts.
Today, however, almost anyone can
write and post articles online—and
potentially reach a large audience. Many
fake news sites currently exist, including
ones with official-sounding names, such
as The Political Insider.
Of course, plenty of trustworthy
websites report news, including The New
York Times (nytimes.com), The Wall Street Journal
(wsj.com), and Junior Scholastic (junior.scholastic.com).
In addition, many politicians have begun using the
term fake news to refer to factual stories they simply
disagree with or don’t like. That’s making it even harder
for Americans to distinguish fact from fiction—and
discouraging people from believing stories that are real.
Fake News Means Big Money
Why might someone want to post a fake story in the
first place? During presidential campaigns, people may
be trying to influence Americans’ beliefs and, in turn,
how they vote in the election. In other cases, the
answer is simple: to make money. — ►
G O T O JUNIOR.SCHOLASTIC.COM FOR: ill L e v e le d T
e x t ► V id e o i S k ill B u ild e rs

5. JUN IO R.SCH O LASTIC .C O M IS
Many companies pay to place ads online—and
websites that get a lot of visitors can charge high fees
to run those ads. That’s because the more visitors a
site has, the more views the ads get.
Fake news websites often attract a lot of readers—
and thus, a lot of money from ads—by posting stories
with outrageous headlines that people are likely to click
on and share. “I make like $10,000 a m onth,” fake-news
writer Paul Horner told The Washington Post in 2016.
In fact, one recent study from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) found that, on Twitter,
false stories spread she times as fast as factual ones—
and reach far more readers. MIT researchers discovered
that, on average, a false story can spread to 1,500
Twitter users in just 10 hours. By comparison, a factual
story can take 60 hours to reach that many people.
Don’t Be Fooled
The good news is that a lot is being done to stop the
spread of fake news. In recent years, for example,
Google and Facebook have banned fake news sites
from advertising on their pages. Facebook is also
working with fact-checking organizations around the
world, including PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org,
to help identify and flag made-up articles that are
posted on its platform so they can be deleted.
In addition, lawmakers in several states, including
Connecticut, New Mexico, and Washington, have
recently passed or introduced bills requiring public

6. schools to teach media literacy. Such lessons would show
students how to analyze information from websites,
TV, and other forms of media, and how to detect bias.
In the end, however, it’s up to each of us to be
skeptical of what we see online. For starters, if a story
doesn’t seem quite right or appears too good to be true,
investigate it. Spend a few minutes researching the
headline, the author, the sources, and the website it
came from. And if you suspect a story might be false,
don’t share it on social media.
“It’s our responsibility to stop the spread of fake
news,” says Jonathan Anzalone, the assistant director
of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook
University in New York. “We need to be committed
to seeking out the truth.” ♦
W r i t e A b o u t It ! Why is fake news a major problem?
What can people do about it? Make sure to cite evidence
from the text in your response.
H o w t o S p o t a F a ls e S t o r y
R e s e a r c h s h o w s t h a t m a n y m i d d l e s c h o o le
r s c a n ’t t e l l t h e d i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n a f a c t
u a l s t o r y
a n d a f a k e o n e . B u t d o n ’t w o r r y —w e ’ ll s h o w
y o u h o w ! J u s t a s k y o u r s e l f t h e s e q u e s t io n s
.
W HO ’S BEHIND
THE ARTICLE?
S t a r t b y r e s e a r c h in g t h e a u th o r

7. o f t h e s to r y a n d t h e w e b s it e it
c a m e f r o m . D o e s t h e w r it e r o r
s ite o f t e n p u b lis h s to r ie s m a k in g
o u tla n d is h c la im s ? A ls o , lo o k a t
t h e U R L its e lf. S ite s e n d in g in
.c o m .c o o f t e n c a n ’t b e t r u s te d .
WHAT’S THE
EVIDENCE?
E v a lu a te w h e t h e r t h e w r it e r has
b a c k e d u p his o r h e r c la im s w ith
v a lid re a s o n s a n d fa c ts . W h a t
s o u rc e s d o e s t h e a u t h o r c i t e —
a n d a r e t h e y trustworthy? Does
th e w r it e r q u o te e x p e r ts q u a lifie d
t o c o m m e n t o n t h e t o p ic ?
WHAT DO OTHER
SOURCES SAY?
C o n d u c t r e s e a r c h t o f in d o u t
w h e t h e r r e s p e c te d n e w s o u tle ts
h a v e p u b lis h e d t h e s a m e

8. in f o r m a t io n . O r t r y t o v e r if y
the story on a fact-checking
w e b s it e , such as P o lit iF a c t .c o m
o r F a c tC h e c k .o r g .
16 SEPTEMBER 23, 2019
Copyright of Junior Scholastic is the property of Scholastic Inc.
and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv
without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print,
download, or email articles for
individual use.
DOI: 10.2501/JAR-2019-007 March 2019 JOURNAL OF
ADVERTISING RESEARCH 3
INTRODUCTION
We all likely have heard at least a few of these
“stories.” Hillary Clinton ran an underground
child-trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C.,
pizza restaurant. Bottles of Corona beer were tain-
ted with urine. Pope Francis endorsed Donald
Trump as a presidential candidate. Tommy Hilfiger
told Oprah that he didn’t want African Americans
or Asians wearing his clothes. Parkland shooting
survivor Emma Gonzalez tore in half the Constitu-

9. tion of the United States.
Conspiracy theories, hoaxes, urban myths, and
deceptive stories are certainly nothing new. What
has changed, however, is the ability to disguise
these theories and stories as “news,” which then
spreads virally across social and digital media with
unparalleled ease and speed. Digitization allows
such “fake news” to propagate more rapidly than it
ever has before, first from publishers to consumers
and subsequently from consumers to each other.
Commenting on a recent wave of press in the
United Kingdom that misinterpreted genetic
research on the red hair allele by observing that
redheads would become extinct because of global
warming, geneticist Adam Rutherford summar-
ized the rapid diffusion of false-news stories in
our modern times: “A fiction can fly around the
world before the truth has managed to pick the
sleep from its eyes in the morning” (Rutherford,
2017, p. 184).
Scholars increasingly are paying attention to the
fake-news phenomenon to define it and assess its
explosion across traditional and digital channels.
They have discovered a complex web connecting
fake news with advertising, motivated by financial
interests (i.e., advertising dollars) and propelled by
the programmatic-advertising process.
The Fake-News Explosion
Researchers have defined fake news as fabricated
information that mimics news media content in
form but not in organizational process or intent

10. (Lazer, Baum, Benkler, Berinsky, et al., 2018). Fake
news is false news, and as an object of study should
The Relationship between Fake News
And Advertising
Brand Management in the Era
Of Programmatic Advertising and Prolific Falsehood
ADAM J. MILLS
loyola University new
Orleans
[email protected]
CHRISTINE PITT
Royal Institute of
technology (Kth),
Sweden
[email protected]
SARAH LORD FERGUSON
Simon Fraser University,
Canada
[email protected]
Speaker’s Box
Editor’s Note
“Speaker’s Box” invites academics and practitioners to identify
significant areas of research affecting
advertising and marketing. The goal is to bridge the gap
between the length of time it takes to produce
rigorous work and the acceleration of change within practice.
This edition addresses the relatively new

11. phenomenon of “fake news” and its complicated relationship
with advertising. The authors highlight
that advertising and fake news appear to be locked in a growth
cycle driven by financial incentives.
Most concerning for brands is that, because online
programmatic advertising has required advertisers
to cede control over where their advertisements are displayed,
many brands inevitably will find their
advertisements on fake-news websites alongside controversial
and inflammatory content. Beyond the
ethical dilemma for brands is the potential loss of credibility.
For established brands, the situation is less
dire, however, and, there may be room for a higher service
option that gives advertisers tighter control
over the display of their advertisements.
Douglas C. West
Professor of Marketing, King’s College London
Contributing Editor, Journal of Advertising Research
4 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH March 2019
thE RElAtIOnShIP BEtWEEn FAKE nEWS AnD ADVERtISIng
not be confused with the political use of
the term as a partisan, rejectionist label
for press coverage that does not support a
particular political interest (Vosoughi, Roy,
and Aral, 2018).
Two factors are key to understanding
the explosion of fake news: diffusion
and generation. Researchers from the

12. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
examined the diffusion of 126,000 news
stories through 4.5 million shares by 3 mil-
lion Twitter users over an 11-year period
(Vosoughi et al., 2018). The researchers
found that false-news stories diffused
significantly further, faster, deeper, and
more broadly than truthful new stories.
This is because, overall, fake news is more
novel and more affectively engaging than
truthful news.
Fake-news stories simply are more
interesting to read, share, and talk about
than truthful news stories (Vosoughi et
al., 2018) Novelty is a strong attractor of
human attention (Itti and Baldi, 2009). It
is not difficult to imagine, for example,
that the sexual indiscretions of a politi-
cian or celebrity would be more interest-
ing and attractive to the average reader
than a report on employment statistics or
advances in health-care technology.
Fake news, generally speaking, trig-
gers more affectively charged emo-
tional responses (cf. Ekman, 1992) than
truthful news stories. Fake news elicits
high-arousal emotional responses, such as
fear, disgust, and surprise, whereas truth-
ful news stories lead to lower arousal emo-
tional responses, such as sadness, joy, and
anticipation (Vosoughi et al., 2018). Because
both novelty and emotional arousal drive
interest, which drives clicks, it follows that
the more outrageous the story is, the better

13. that piece of news performs as a market-
place artifact.
With respect to the generation of fake
news, there are three possible drivers for
the creation of disinformation:
• Inadvertent disinformation is when
“citizen journalism” leads to the creation
of newslike content that is accidentally
false or misleading because of a lack of
rigor in reporting. The Internet effect-
ively has removed barriers to entry for
content creation and publishing and,
consequently, the traditional safeguards
of journalistic integrity (Tandoc, Lim,
and Ling, 2018).
• Ideological disinformation, what we
might refer to as propaganda, is when
fake news is created by individuals and
organizations to promote particular
ideas, advance certain agendas, stoke
conspiracy, or discredit others (Allcott
and Gentzkow, 2017).
• Exploitative disinformation, in contrast,
is motivated solely financially. The cre-
ation and distribution of false news for
mercenary purposes is worthy of deeper
discussion here given its relationship to
advertising.
How Advertising Supports Fake News
Fake news supports and is supported by
advertising dollars. Opportunistic indi-

14. viduals and organizations are able to cre-
ate professional-looking websites easily
and cheaply. They populate those websites
with novel, albeit bogus, news stories and
then fill their pages with advertisements.
Because online advertising is a numbers
game, the more traffic these individuals
can drive to their website, the more poten-
tial clicks they receive.
Fake-news stories are the perfect “click-
bait” to drive website traffic, because the
emotional responses inspired by their
headlines (surprise, fear, anger, anxi-
ety, etc.) are exactly those that we find
irresistible as information consumers
(Gardiner, 2015). The more clickbait these
owners can create, therefore, the more
revenue they can earn from advertise-
ment placement (Timberg, Dwoskin, and
Ba Tran, 2018).
Consider the small town of Veles, Mace-
donia, home to dozens of individuals
operating more than 100 fake-news web-
sites in the period leading up to the 2016
U.S. presidential election (Soares and
Davey-Attlee, 2017; Subramanian, 2017).
Most of these fake-news websites looked
and sounded unassuming: PoliticsPaper.
com, NewYorkTimesPolitics.com, USA-
Politics.com, and PoliticsHall.com, to name
a few. Each of these fake-news websites
generated up to $2,500 per day in advert-
ising revenue—impressive by any means,
particularly when one considers that the

15. average monthly income in Macedonia is
$426 (Soares and Davey-Attlee, 2017).
FAKE NEWS, BRANDS,
AND PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING
Although fake news may or may not ori-
ginate with ideology, the primary driver
behind the recent explosion of fake news
online is advertising income. Taken
together with the effects digitalization has
had on the news industry, this has created
the perfect storm for brands and advert-
ising. What kinds of problems might this
create for brands and advertising?
Fake News and Advertising
Encourage Each Other
The first problem we must consider in
the relationship between fake news and
advertising is that they encourage each
other. Fake news and advertising follow
a cyclical pattern (cf. Berthon and Pitt,
2018) that snowballs as programmatic
algorithms take hold.
The pattern begins with the ease with
which fake news is created. Just about
anyone with an Internet connection can
create and publish “news,” given the ease
of publishing through microsites and low
barriers to entry for citizen journalism.
Brands need to advertise on the web.
Manual targeting does not work online
as it does offline, so advertisers rely on

16. March 2019 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 5
thE RElAtIOnShIP BEtWEEn FAKE nEWS AnD ADVERtISIng
thEARF.ORg
intermediaries and affiliate networks (e.g.,
Google Ads) for automated advertising
distribution and placement, called “pro-
grammatic advertising.” Programmatic
algorithms encourage chasing of traffic
between online advertisements and web-
sites, including fake-news sites. Here’s
how the pattern evolves:
• These intermediaries rely on algorithms
that place advertisements on web pages
in real time. Programmatic-advertising
placement can work in one or both of
two ways: prospecting and retargeting
(Busch, 2015):
��With prospecting, the advertisements
follow the clicks; intermediaries place
advertisements on screen on the basis
of text and keywords on the web-
sites with the hope of generating new
interest.
��With retargeting, the advertisements
follow the users; intermediaries place
advertisements on screen on the basis
of the particular website viewer,
essentially following a specific user
from site to site.
• Programmatic advertising means that

17. ultimately the advertisements chase the
traffic. It thus is financially rewarding
for website owners to drive as much
traffic as possible to as many pages
as possible. Fake-news websites are
incentivized by this model to create
greater volumes of more novel content,
which drives more traffic.
Exclusive of the influence of social
media, this brings us back to the beginning
of the cycle. That said, however, there are
several additional factors to consider:
• Fake-news website owners seed con-
tent links through social platforms
such as Facebook and Twitter to drive
traffic back to their own sites. Content
is seeded either into existing groups or
through promoted or sponsored place-
ment to ensure visibility.
• Social-media websites become a qua-
ternary agent in the financial-incentive
mix, because these platforms gener-
ate revenue directly off promoted or
sponsored content. In the wake of the
2016 U.S. presidential election, many
social-media websites faced such wide-
spread public criticism over their com-
plicity in spreading and profiting from
fake news that they introduced policies
to ban fake news by vetting prospect-
ive publishers more closely (Wingfield,
Isaac, and Benner, 2016).

18. • Even with policies in place banning fake
news from their websites, social-media
platforms continue to profit indir-
ectly from the spread of fake news
organically through their ecosystem.
Because fake news is interesting and
eye-catching, it keeps users on social
platforms for longer periods of time,
which subsequently increases exposure
and attractiveness to other advertisers.
Advertisers Have Ceded Control
Of Media Placement
A second problem is that advertisers, to
a large extent, have relinquished certain
elements of brand management with
respect to online advertising channels.
The trade-off comes with advertisers
being able to control precisely either
where their advertisement is displayed
or to whom it is displayed, but not both.
With traditional media channels, advert-
isers manage where and how their brands
are exposed to consumers. The higher
the stakes are and the more critical the
placement is, the greater is the price of
the advertising. A 30-second television
advertisement during the 2018 Super
Bowl, for example, cost roughly $5 million
(Michaels, 2018).
Even with such high stakes and tightly
controlled media buys, however, the recip-
ient audience is largely incidental and only

19. can be approximated. Advertisers do their
best to find out where and when their tar-
get customers will be, place the advertise-
ment, and hope for the best.
Digital advertising, conversely, works
very much in the opposite manner. It
allows brands to target their viewership
with extraordinary precision, quite literally
down to the individual unique user. Never
before have advertisers had such remark-
able ability to reach consumers so mean-
ingfully, but what must be exchanged is
the ability to tightly control where and
how the advertisements are seen.
As a result, marketers rely on interme-
diates and affiliate networks that match
advertisers with pages on which to display
their advertisements, using extraordinar-
ily efficient real-time software algorithms.
Programmatic advertising is highly effi-
cient, extremely cost-effective, virtually
immediate, and designed almost com-
pletely around reaching the individual
target consumer. To target in this manner,
however, prioritizing consumers over con-
text, advertisers must cede almost all con-
trol over advertisement placement to the
intermediaries.
Never before have advertisers had such remarkable
ability to reach consumers so meaningfully, but what
must be exchanged is the ability to tightly control

20. where and how the advertisements are seen.
6 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH March 2019
thE RElAtIOnShIP BEtWEEn FAKE nEWS AnD ADVERtISIng
Fake News Jeopardizes Brand Integrity
The ultimate problem for brands, from a
reputational-capital and brand-equity per-
spective, is that fake news easily can cross
the ethical line between entertainment and
insidiousness. Fake-news stories and web-
sites regularly contain content that most
would consider inflammatory, sensational,
or controversial, because these things draw
traffic. The predicament for brands is that
their advertisements can and will end up
on pages containing controversial content.
This is what critically distinguishes fake
news from traditional journalism: Conven-
tional news publishers report on negative
stories, but their intentions in doing so—
informing and educating—should not be
ethically ambiguous.
For advertisers, being associated with
contentious content that is at odds with
brand values therefore is problematic,
and this is where the highly efficient
programmatic-advertising system seems
callous in its rationality. Fake news can
become a threat to reputational capital and
brand equity when brands are associated

21. with and seen as financially subsidizing
these types of unethical websites.
A recent investigation by The Washing-
ton Post found advertisements for many
large brands, including Oracle, eBay,
Mercedes-Benz, Jeep, Samsung, UNICEF,
and Harvard Business School, on fake-
news websites. Girl Scouts advertisements
were embedded in articles about jihadi sex
crimes, advertisements for the American
Red Cross were displayed alongside a
comparison of school-shooting victims
with Nazi symbolism, and advertisements
for Hertz rental cars appeared next to an
article titled “Are Liberal Pervs Sexu-
ally Obsessed with Refugees?” (Timberg
et al., 2018).
Social-media platforms and advertising
intermediaries have joined forces in recent
years to ban from the ecosystem websites
that contain such extreme content as hate
speech, bullying, harassment, or any-
thing objectively dangerous or derogatory
(Seetharaman, 2016; Timberg et al., 2018;
Wingfield et al., 2016). As the above exam-
ples highlight, however, trying to avoid
these types of websites is easier said than
done, because an overwhelming majority
of fake news lies in the proverbial gray
area just below these obvious extremes.
Brands should care about exposure
on fake-news websites for a host of ethi-

22. cal reasons, but the problem is more than
just a moral one. “Advertismement–con-
text congruity” is the degree to which an
advertisement is thematically similar to the
informational focus or editorial content of
the website on which that advertisement
is displayed (Moore, Stammerjohan, and
Coulter, 2005; Zanjani, Diamond, and
Chan, 2011). Incongruity between an
advertisement and its context draws atten-
tion and creates novelty (Belanche, Fla-
vián, and Pérez-Rueda, 2017). This can be
problematic when it comes to fake-news
websites because advertisements that are
seen as contextually incongruent generate
less-favorable responses and are evaluated
less favorably than contextually relevant
advertisements (Jeong and King, 2010;
Moore et al., 2005; Segev, Wang, and Fer-
nandes, 2014).
Because most brands prefer to occupy
relatively noncontroversial and posi-
tive positions, the more controversial the
fake-news website is, the less favorably
the brand’s advertising on that site will
be received. This effect is magnified when
viewers have high levels of involvement
with the website content (Segev et al.,
2014), as is the case with most fake news.
Even more unfortunate for brands is that
incongruent advertisements are more
memorable than those that are contextu-
ally congruent (Jeong and King, 2010;
Moore et al., 2005).

23. The net result is that consumers more
likely will evaluate brand advertising on
fake-news websites negatively and more
likely will have those negative evalua-
tions stay in memory. In a confluence of
unfortunate effects, what is additionally
troubling is that website credibility does
not appear to have a significant influence
on consumers’ attitude toward the brands
being advertised (Choi and Rifon, 2002).
In other words, consumers do not give
brands a “pass” for being found on less-
than-credible fake-news websites.
FAKE NEWS AND THE FUTURE
FOR BRANDS
One of the silver linings is that our current
programmatic-advertising system is both
effective and incredibly efficient. Most
websites are well intentioned, and the out-
liers are relatively few in number, despite
the hype. We spend more time talking
about fake-news sites for the same reasons
we click on fake-news headlines: They are
novel, interesting, and perplexing, and we
want to know more.
What’s more, customers are custom-
ers, regardless of what they read or click.
We cannot fault the algorithms for being
efficient, nor can we fault individual cus-
tomers or website viewers for having par-
ticular worldviews or interests in certain
types of content. Whether or not someone
believes that vaccines work, that person

24. still needs clothing and groceries. Whether
Advertisements that are seen as contextually incongruent
generate less-favorable responses and are evaluated
less favorably than contextually relevant advertisements.
March 2019 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 7
thE RElAtIOnShIP BEtWEEn FAKE nEWS AnD ADVERtISIng
thEARF.ORg
or not someone is worried that redheads
will become extinct, he or she still needs
car insurance and a vacation. The discus-
sion of fake news, however, highlights
that brand advertisers have a need for
subjectivity in online advertising place-
ment and distribution that our current pro-
grammatic system does not accommodate
sufficiently.
There may be room, in fact, for a new
category of “intelligent” intermedi-
ary to enter into the digital advertising
space. In the online advertising business,
there appears to be an unmet need for a
higher service option for advertisers to
have a tighter control over when, where,
how, and to whom their advertisements
are displayed.
In the meantime, encouraging for larger

25. organizations is that the more established
the brand is, the less the advertiser needs to
worry about critical reputational damage
due to advertisement–context incongru-
ity. Research suggests that the credibility
of the brand being advertised can override,
to some extent, the lack of credibility of the
website on which it is displayed (Choi and
Rifon, 2002). For smaller, newer brands
still building equity, however, it is even
more critical that the websites on which
they advertise be seen as credible.
Although it likely is impossible to bring
brand control back to the levels of tradi-
tional media advertising, more bespoke
digital-campaign management very well
could move in this direction. JPMorgan
Chase in 2017 overhauled its online advert-
ising approach in response to fake-news
brand risk by shifting its strategy to
whitelist only. The company manually
preapproved 5,000 on-brand websites,
down from a previous 400,000 (Mahesh-
wari, 2017). Similar efforts going forward
will involve more manual placement and
human endeavor, but the returns would
be worthwhile to brands concerned about
reputational capital.
ABOUt thE AUthORS:
Adam J. Mills is an assistant professor of marketing
at Loyola university New Orleans. His research focuses

26. on brand-experience engineering and brand storytelling.
Mills’s research has appeared in Marketing Theory,
Journal of Business Research, Business Horizons,
Service Industries Journal, Journal of Marketing
Education, and other publications. prior to entering
academia, Mills worked in corporate marketing and
brand and operations management for the hospitality
industry.
Christine Pitt is a doctoral candidate at Sweden’s
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). Her research
specialization is in automated text analysis. Her work
can be found in Psychology & Marketing, Journal of
Business Research, and Journal of Public Affairs.
Sarah lord Ferguson is a doctoral student at
Canada’s Simon Fraser university specialized in
research on health care marketing. Her research is
published in Academy of Marketing Science Review,
Business Horizons, and Journal of Business-to-Business

27. Marketing.
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Abstract
In a continually changing global political environment, fake
news has become a widely debated top-
ic by both researchers and ordinary people. Despite the
relevance and the diversity of approaches, few
studies have focused on the typology of fake news in
specialised scientific literature, while proper as-
sessment methods and detection techniques are not well-
established yet. This paper addresses the com-
plex concept of fake news, presenting its significance and
highlighting its different types, from
propaganda to news satire; the moderators of the fake news
effects and the ways to counter disinfor-
mation. This exploratory study reveals that solutions to combat
the phenomenon exist, but they focus

34. more on effects rather than on causes, leaving space open for
further research.
Keywords: fake news, disinformation, moderators of fake news
effects, media trust, public trust
Introduction
In a world of constant change, information plays a crucial role.
Information explosion is
a recent phenomenon determined by increased information
production and by improved ac-
cess and exposure to it (Abbott, 1999). As more and more of the
world’s information moves
online and becomes digitised, information becomes accessible
to anyone, anywhere with lit-
tle restrictions related to time, costs, language or geography.
In a digital society, people from different parts of the worlds
can communicate in seconds.
Moreover, using social media platforms, anyone can transmit
and promote different kinds of
data to a specific audience.
All the facts mentioned above, along with the continuous
evolution of technology (artifi-
cial intelligence taking over different types of communication)
led to permanent worldwide
information exchange, to which people are addicted. Whether
talking about information on
friends, family or directly on the news and what is happening
‘out there’, people always feel
the urge to refresh the flow of data. The news is that part of
communication that keeps peo-
Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations

35. vol. 21, no 2 (47) / July 2019, 41-57
ISSN: 1454-8100/ E-ISSN: 2344-5440
Alexandru-Cristian DUMITRACHE*
Shades of Fake News: Manifestation,
Effects and Ways to Combat False Information
* National University of Political Studies and Public
Administration (Romania),
[email protected]
Revista_comunicare_47.qxd 9/30/2019 10:02 AM Page 41
ple informed of the changing events, issues, and characters in
the world outside (Dean, 2013).
The news media also functions as an indirect source of
knowledge about one’s epistemic
community (Gelfert, 2018).
Many people follow daily news and the main problem addressed
is related to the news con-
sumers ability to distinguish between the real and potentially
false information provided as
“the selection of topics must have sufficiently broad appeal”
(Gelfert, 2018, p. 89). In this re-
spect, it is difficult to recognize if information delivered by
news media is accurate and the
actual potential effect of the spread of false information on
people are yet to be discussed.
Despite many attempts to define and characterize the fake news
phenomenon by journal-
ists, commentators or scholars, a clear distinction between

36. multiple forms or types of public
disinformation has not been achieved to date. Additionally, the
academic literature on the ‘fake
news’ topic lacks in presenting a concrete typology of the
concept (for exceptions see Tandoc
et al. (2018), Wardle (2017)). Therefore, this paper tries to
explain the phenomenon of ‘fake
news’ presenting its shades and sides as well as the ways it can
manifest, while discussing its
possible effects on specific audiences and ways through which
it can be combated.
The roots of a globally spread phenomenon
False news is written and published with the intention of
misleading people, for different
purposes: from doubting or tarnishing the reputation of
institutions or individuals to divert-
ing attention from an event or getting advertising revenue.
Although the spread of false information or rumours seems to
date back to ancient times,
serving mainly political interests, these practices have expanded
at various scales after the
emergence of newspapers and journalism.
In the 19th century in the USA, Erwin Wardman, the editor of
New York Press, used for the
first time the term ‘yellow journalism’, describing a model of
journalism that presents not very
well documented news and relies on attractive titles to sell more
newspapers (Vivian, 2002).
The consequences of this type of sensational journalism
practised in the USA have been long
time subject of debate for American historians, newspaper
propaganda on the Cuban crisis be-

37. ing considered a triggering factor for the Spanish-American
war, 1895-1898 (Auxier, 1940).
While the yellow journalism of the 1890s and tabloid journalism
of 1920-1930 have led
to many criticisms and even to the stigmatisation of the press,
the need for establishing norms
and adopting a code of ethics becomes increasingly obvious
(Gajda, 2009). The ‘Code of
ethics for the Newspapers’, adopted by the Kansas Editorial
Association in 1910 have estab-
lished for the first time standards, regulations and
responsibilities for journalists (Hill, 1922).
The changed attitude of public and court towards the press has
contributed in a way to the
rise of real news, generally increasing the accuracy and
responsibility of the written media
and particularly increasing the credibility of notable
newspapers.
Although diffusion of false news is not new, the proliferation of
this phenomenon is close-
ly associated with the Internet, and the development of high-
tech platforms followed by the
migration of media business almost entirely to the online world.
These changes brought back
again the issue of false or exaggerated news, produced and
distributed this time ‘on-clicking’.
The term ‘fake news’ has been around since the 19th century,
but its popularity started to
grow in 2016, along with two key events in the near history: the
Leave vote for Brexit and
the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States
of America (Bârgãoanu, 2018).

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These events highlighted the increasing power of new
communication channels while tradi-
tional media continues to lose both influence and money
(Newman, 2017).
Presently, despite the existing precedents and similarities in
mass-media history, these
new challenges related to fake news are becoming much more
difficult to overcome. Social
media users are assaulted by fake news; however, few studies
are focussing on the structure
of social media networks and how the presence of fake news
might affect the degree of mis-
information and polarisation in a society (Azzimonti &
Fernandes, 2018).
The Internet has changed the global framework in such a way
that ordinary people now
understand terminologies such as fake news, echo chambers,
like factories, social bots, troll
diplomacy or filter bubbles (Bârgãoanu & Radu, 2018).
The misinformation diffusion network and its foremost
purveyors are challenging to con-
trol: massive amounts of fake news have spread over social
media before and after the 2016
US Presidential Elections, despite intense fact-checking efforts
(Shao et al., 2018). Individ-
uals, with different social characteristics, much more frequently
mention the term ‘fakes news’

39. public debates about their effects taking place everywhere. Even
news agencies themselves
started discussing the concept of ‘fake news’ and its
consequences, often even arguing and
pointing the finger at each other with accusations of false
information production. As an ex-
ample, articles concerning the topic of fake news are often
published in the international edi-
tion of the ‘New York Times’ newspaper or in issues of the
‘TIME’ magazine.
The so-called ‘consequences’ of fake news are starting to
appear all over the world and
different kinds of measures are taken to combat the situation: in
Germany, for example, An-
gela Merkel’s cabinet voted a law proposal that would fine
social networks with up to 50 mil-
lion euros for failing to remove what could be defined as ‘fake
news’ (Cuthbertson, 2017);
in Indonesia, the communications minister wants to hold weekly
news briefings, with the
goal of countering fake news (Meixler, 2018). In France,
President Emmanuel Macron also
tried to find legal solutions against fake news, even though
trying to separate truth from fic-
tion from a legislative point of view was seen as a way to
strengthen censorship (Alouane,
2018). ‘BuzzFeed News’ even made an analysis which showed
that, during the presidential
campaign in the United States in 2016, news categorized as fake
generated more engagement,
in the last three months prior to the election, than so-called
‘trustworthy’ news publications
such as ‘Washington Post’ or ‘NBC News’ (Silverman, 2016).
According to 2018’s Reuters Institute Digital News Report,

40. ordinary people started raising
questions about fake news in a different way than the previous
year, as politicians and press
representatives use the term much more often. However, even
though people are worried about
fake news, they encounter difficulties when it comes to pointing
out a proper example of what
is fake news (Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos, Levy, & Kleis
Nielsen, 2018).
Many studies claim that ‘fake news’ has been around since
forever, but the question is how
this concept changed in nature during the last years. Press
agencies (and especially partisan
press) have frequently published and distributed articles that
contain incomplete or false in-
formation. On the other hand, ‘fake news’ can no longer be
analysed as something that only
regards the press, since the social context is one where the
media continually change and new
ecosystems of news appear, with the help of the Internet
(McGonagle, 2017).
However, ‘fake news’ managed to become a wide debated
concept during what many re-
searchers use to call the ‘post-truth’ era (Keyes, 2004). This era
could be a consequence of a
few powerful trends, among the global population, that can be
developed or that could be
Shades of Fake News: Manifestation, Effects and Ways to
Combat False Information 43
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41. linked to different extremist or radical political movements,
which can better rely on ideolo-
gy, instead of concrete evidence (Lewandowsky, Ecker, &
Cook, 2017).
‘Fake news’ became a powerful concept because the topic itself
has roots in this post-truth
era, which has been built on strong pillars. Firstly, one of the
main reasons for the develop-
ment of this era is the decrease of social capital. Studies have
shown that, since 1970, espe-
cially in the United States of America, factors like goodwill,
trust in public institutions, empathy
and even the willingness of someone to share a secret with
anyone else, have decreased con-
siderably. Another strong pillar on which the post-truth era is
based refers to increasing in-
equalities between people, which has driven the masses to have
different strong attitudes
according to their living standard. Also, another factor can be
the constantly increasing polit-
ical polarisation, some studies describe how people tend to
relocate themselves in communi-
ties that share, more or less, the same ideologies. Likewise,
other causes for this era to develop
can also be the declining trust in science and the politically
asymmetric credulity, which refers
to the fact that someone’s susceptibility to misinformation can
be related to that person’s po-
litical orientation. Without any doubt, the strongest pillar of the
post-truth era is the evolution
of the media landscape. This factor changed significantly during
the last years, which could
be explained in various ways: first of all, social media created
the ‘echo chambers’, where the

42. information is distributed according to the user’s opinions and
beliefs. Second, the develop-
ment of new media also favoured a wider range of choices
regarding the information that can
be consumed, which provided a safe environment for the spread
of biased opinions. More-
over, people can now talk over the Internet even though there
are vast distances between them.
This factor contributes to impoliteness which, afterwards,
favours a stronger division between
those with different opinions. Lastly, the fact that the media are
fractioned allows strategic ex-
tremism to be engaged by different personalities (Lewandowsky
et al., 2017).
Therefore, it seems that one of the means that permitted the
development of fake news
can undoubtedly be the evolution of the social media platforms,
within which anyone can
create shareable content and transmit it to huge audiences
(Tarran, 2017). As an example,
with the help of a website, of social media platforms and with
many fake written reviews, some-
one managed to get a restaurant to be ‘number one’ on the
TripAdvisor rankings in London,
even though that restaurant does not exist, and no one visited it.
The hoax was strongly me-
diatised on the internet afterwards, being an example of how
people can be influenced by
good public relations (Butler & Clifton, 2017).
In other words, some of the changes that made people perceive
fake news in a stronger
way were based on the fact that fake news can be produced in a
very sophisticated manner,
at a large scale and with incredible rapidity and effectiveness.

43. Technology made it possible
for almost anyone to create and distribute such content in many
possible forms, such as texts,
photos, videos, memes, etc. (McGonagle, 2017).
The new technologies are not only contributing to the
development of fake news, but they
can also help with their propagation. The spread of false news
was frequently compared to
the transmission of infectious diseases. An interesting fact to
notice is that viruses, exactly
like rumours, need a host and dense population to spread and
that opinions, like certain dis-
eases, form on social contacts. In this regard, it seems that
studying the ways that this trans-
mission of infectious illnesses takes place can provide data on
how misinformation is
distributed among the population (Kucharski, 2016).
However, mass-media are the most affected by the phenomenon
of fake news. Whether
the media is accused of creating it or it has to suffer from the
concept itself, people’s trust in
44 Revista românã de comunicare ºi relaþii publice
Revista_comunicare_47.qxd 9/30/2019 10:02 AM Page 44
mass-media has certainly decreased over the last years. A raft of
initiatives over so called
‘fake news’ from both publishers and platforms fail to restore
public trust (Newman, 2017).
As an example, the Edelman PR Agency investigates

44. population’s level of trust in differ-
ent institutions around the world. This agency has set up the
Edelman Trust Barometer, a sur-
vey aiming to asses the level of confidence that the population
of a country has on various
topics or institutions such as the Government, the business
environment, the NGOs or the
mass-media and how this level changed over time. According to
this research, which ad-
dressed over 33,000 respondents, the level of trust in mass
media decreased worldwide, with-
in almost all the analysed countries, the latest values dropping
below 50% (Table 1). As well,
results highlighted the divergence in trust between the informed
public and mass population,
while both parties share an urgent desire for change. (Edelman,
2018)
Shades of Fake News: Manifestation, Effects and Ways to
Combat False Information 45
Revista_comunicare_47.qxd 9/30/2019 10:02 AM Page 45
Table 1. Countries’ level of trust in mass-media.
Source: 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer.
These findings are consistent with other studies which point out
that people are starting
to wonder what is fake and real in the news. This aspect is more
visible in countries such as
the United States or Brazil, where the use of social media is
mixed with political polarised
situations, rather than in countries like the Netherlands or

45. Germany (Newman et al., 2018).
46 Revista românã de comunicare ºi relaþii publice
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Argentina 47% 50% 49% 45% 53% 40% 39%
Australia 33% 32% 36% 34% 42% 32% 31%
Brazil 52% 55% 50% 51% 54% 48% 43%
Canada 50% 53% 57% 52% 55% 45% 49%
China 73% 71% 68% 64% 73% 65% 71%
Columbia 55% 45% 43%
France 37% 40% 37% 39% 38% 33% 33%
Germany 39% 51% 51% 45% 44% 42% 42%
Hong Kong 54% 55% 55% 50% 47% 42% 43%
India 60% 70% 64% 70% 63% 66% 61%
Indonesia 68% 73% 69% 68% 63% 67% 68%
Ireland 35% 34% 36% 31% 39% 29% 33%
Italy 50% 45% 43% 41% 50% 48% 45%
Japan 33% 34% 38% 30% 38% 32% 32%
Malaysia 46% 58% 51% 46% 45% 42% 47%

46. Mexico 56% 57% 53% 48% 58% 47% 48%
Netherland 53% 52% 55% 54% 55% 54% 55%
Poland 40% 38% 35% 38% 34% 31% 34%
Russia 32% 33% 33% 42% 38% 31% 35%
Singapore 61% 62% 60% 55% 60% 54% 52%
South Africa 45% 41% 45% 39% 35%
South Korea 42% 47% 44% 41% 43% 40% 40%
Spain 43% 43% 42% 42% 49% 44% 44%
Sweden 30% 36% 34% 28% 31% 33% 32%
Turkey 28% 19% 18% 23% 25% 30%
U.A.E. 51% 58% 59% 62% 59% 44% 56%
United Kingdom 32% 36% 37% 33% 36% 32% 32%
S.U.A. 37% 38% 35% 39% 47% 47% 42%
Revista_comunicare_47.qxd 9/30/2019 10:02 AM Page 46
Defining fake news and its shades
Recent studies which are focussing on this topic attempt to
define and clarify the concept
(Gelfert, 2018). However, there is no consensus yet on a
generally accepted definition of

47. ‘fake news’. Many researchers used this term in their papers
outlining the differences be-
tween fake news and false news or disinformation, but the
conclusion that comes out is that
the concept has many shades and could be defined from several
perspectives. An analysis of
the articles that investigate the fake news (Figure 1) concluded
that the phenomenon is cir-
cumscribed to six different forms of manifestation, more
precisely: propaganda, news satire,
news parody, news fabrication, photo manipulation and
advertising, and public relations (Tan-
doc, Lim, & Ling, 2018).
Figure 1. Typology of fake news, according to Tandoc et al.
(2018).
Despite some similarities, most of the authors agree that fake
news is different from prop-
aganda. Fake news refers to different kinds of information
presented as authentic but, in re-
ality, they are only partially real or are exaggerated to the point
that they become false.
Furthermore, the purpose of fake news is to mislead or to
deceive a particular public, and its
structure is fluid and adaptative. Thus, it can consist of
information that is real but is present-
ed in such a way that the overall information is fake, or the text
can be accompanied by pic-
tures that have no actual relationship with the narrative
presented. Propaganda, on the other
hand, can be described in two different ways: one type of
propaganda is the transparent one,
where both its intentions and its source are made public and its
purpose connects to influence
a target audience in a positive manner. The other kind of

48. propaganda refers the one that hides
its source and motives, and that is targeted to an audience which
is not aware of the fact that
it is manipulated (Reilly, 2018).
Up until this point, propaganda could seem similar to ‘fake
news’. The difference is that
the latter became so strong because its transmission is not
necessarily facilitated by state-
controlled media agencies or by governments or by certain
media organisations, they can be
redistributed by simple individuals using the Internet and social
media, even without them
realising it (Reilly, 2018). However, the substantial similarity
between propaganda and fake
Shades of Fake News: Manifestation, Effects and Ways to
Combat False Information 47
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news is that both are based on facts which are promoted as
objective but are presented only
from one side or perspective, with the purpose of persuading the
targeted audience, rather than
informing it (Tandoc et al., 2018).
On the other hand, the ‘News’ format of television programs is
widely used at an interna-
tional level, making it also one of the most parodied types of
content. This phenomenon is
globally enlarging, but little is still known about the causes of
its occurrence in various coun-
tries with different cultures, traditions or political systems

49. (Baym & Jones, 2012). However,
even if some researchers consider the term can be an umbrella
that can cover many aspects,
the concept of news satire is different from news parodies.
News satire represents a widespread
form of fake news, because it uses types of humour and many
exaggerations to present actu-
al news. A good example of TV shows that use this form of
content is the Comedy Central
show or The Daily Show. News satire programs and tv-shows
are based on the presentation
of current information displayed in a way that generates
laughter among its audiences. These
shows are embodied in the context of an actual news bulletin,
with a frontman sitting behind
a desk; the difference is that the anchor is not presented as a
journalist or as an investigator
but as an entertainer or a comedian (Tandoc et al., 2018). The
key element involved in the
production and distribution of news satires is its influences on
the targeted audience. Some
studies have shown that the opinions and beliefs of particularly
younger publics can be in-
fluenced and even changed by this kind of shows. It seems that
college students that watch
news satire TV shows are more likely to have negative attitudes
towards specific political
personalities. Also, studies have shown that individuals without
an active interest in politics
or news information developed a specific curiosity on different
subjects debated on the pub-
lic agenda after viewing those particular topics presented on
news satire TV shows. This kind
of shows is considered by certain audiences to have the role of
simplifying the news from the
public agenda and reformulate them in such a way that they

50. become understandable to every-
one (Brewer, Young, & Morreale, 2013).
However, Balmas (2014) considers satirical content as one of
the forerunners of fake news,
describing it as a way to emphasize the negative aspects of the
political events of the day, in
a humorous way, portraying political figures as egotistical,
phoneys or incompetents. Note-
worthy is that his study shows how the exposure to such content
can potentially influence its
viewers attitude towards the political agenda or various party
men.
Similar to the news satires, news parodies represent another
form of fake news. The lat-
ter can take many different forms: “from faux news anchors who
posture authoritatively at
pretend news desks, to puppet shows, sketch comedies, and
panel discussions” (Baym &
Jones, 2012, p. 4).
However, news parodies hold a strong likeliness to the news
satires because the informa-
tion presented in it has the same use of humour and
exaggeration. Also, when providing spe-
cific data to an audience, the shows make use of the same type
of format as the actual TV
news bulletins, with a frontman that sits behind a desk while
presenting what is new.
A key element that makes news parodies different from news
satires is the fact that paro-
dies use facts and information that is already false, when trying
to induce humour to its au-
diences. News satires have their starting point on something

51. that is true, only for the data to
be changed afterwards into something that is only partially
correct, with the help of humour
and exaggerations (Tandoc et al., 2018). An interesting example
of a news parodies website
can be The Onion which, with the use of a nicely built web
architecture and a carefully writ-
ten content, has sometimes passed in the minds of specific
publics as an actual truthful news
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website. This kind of fake news detains a particular type of
strength due to their capacity to
be seen as presented by a variety of journalists that can hold
accountable other common jour-
nalists. They come on top in the process of news sharing, since
regular media agencies trans-
mit particular information and news parodies websites take that
information and turn it into
something different in a humorous way, while denigrating the
image of specific journalist
and media organisations (Berkowitz & Schwartz, 2016).
Furthermore, news parodies and news satires are around for a
longer while than the emerg-
ing of Saturday Night Live type of TV shows. This content
dates back to the occurrence of
comic commentary on the radio. On television, however, this
genre became popular around
1960’, when shows like That Was The Week That Was or This
Hour Has Seven Days aired,

52. with content having an interesting blend between satirical
content and actual news reportages
(Day & Thompson, 2012). Nonetheless, this type of humorous
content is appealing especial-
ly to younger audiences, half of the target group that fancy this
programming genre being un-
der 30 years old. Thus, some researchers have come to the
conclusion that such content can
strongly influence young adults into having lower levels of trust
in Government (Hoffman &
Young, 2011).
Another way through which fake news can be operationalized is
the process of news fab-
rication. Fabricated news is different from news satires and
news parodies due to its method
of presenting false information as a truthful press agency does.
However, the substantial dif-
ference between fabricated news and news parodies is that
between the latter and its audi-
ence there is, frequently, a silent agreement upon the fact that
the presented information is
fake, and its only purpose is fun. Fabricated news, on the other
hand, has only one goal which
is to misinform its publics (Tandoc et al., 2018). For a stronger
outcome, fabricated news
websites often use web domains which sound similar to the ones
owned by certain real me-
dia agencies and present fake news as it would be documented
and real information posted
by that particular media organisation. However, it seems that
this kind of websites have a
short lifespan. As an example, more than a hundred sites for
fabricating news which were ex-
tremely active during the United States of America 2016
Elections no longer exist (Allcott &

53. Gentzkow, 2017). The US 2016’s Elections sparked a global
conversation among researchers
on the topic of news fabrication and its impact on the electoral
action plans. However, stud-
ies have shown that fabricated content does not resonate well
with audiences and it is not ad-
dressed to everyone. Even though it is used for various political
reasons, its purpose is not to
convert people of a certain political orientation to another or to
influence undecided individ-
uals to choosing a side, but to strengthen the passions of already
partisan audience groups
(Mourão & Robertson, 2019).
Fake news can also manifest through the false narratives created
by the manipulation of
specific visuals and videos. Controversy around this topic is not
new and photography ma-
nipulations containing text additions or modifications are
something relatively easy to make,
in a way that looks authentic. That is one of the reasons many
researchers leaned over this
situation and studied the ways in which a photo can be
determined to be fake or not, by
analysing if newly added content to a picture violates the
precise rules of perspective projec-
tion (Conotter, Boato, & Farid, 2010).
The techniques and methods used in the process, on the other
hand, widely vary, starting
from simple modifications like the tone or the saturation and
colours of a picture to editing
it to the point where certain individuals appear or disappear
from the photo. This type of fake
news scattered quickly since the software for creating such
visual modifications is available

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to almost anyone (Tandoc et al., 2018). This technique,
however, can also be used different-
ly: a photo or a video that is indeed authentic can be
accompanied by a narrative text that al-
so consists of accurate information, but has no actual
relationship with the visual support that
is used. This method is not only used by media agencies, but it
can also be accessed by non-
journalists that have access to different audiences through
social media. With the nowadays
social media network’s algorithms, a text accompanied by a
photo is better rated on the publics’
news feeds than a simple news article. However, even though
computer generated visuals are
highly popular and widely used in advertising, cinema or in the
gaming or TV shows indus-
try, when it comes to journalism, photographers and photo-
reporters have to obey a set of
strict rules that forbid the alteration of the visual content. On
the other hand, technology in
this field evolved at such a rapid pace, that even experts in this
domain find it hard to distin-
guish between authentic photos and computer-generated visuals
(Lehmuskallio, Häkkinen, &
Seppänen, 2018).
The last form of fake news in Tandoc et al. (2018) typology can
be described using the

55. advertising and public relation domains. This method consists
of a public relations or adver-
tising agency writing a specific article about a particular
product or, if the need arises, of a
political personality or a specific concept which is published,
afterwards, by a news agency
as an article written by journalists, without necessarily
specifying the source of the narrative
to the audience. However, this method of advertising is
considered as fake news especially
for the fact that “without disclosing the source of the message,
the marketers are violating prin-
ciples of transparency and the consumers’ right to be informed
by whom they are persuad-
ed” (Nelson & Park, 2015, p. 337). In the Russian Federation,
researchers write about a clear
distinction between the black and the white public relations.
While, according to the code of
ethics used, white PR represents the transparent way of
communication, the techniques pre-
viously described can be associated with the black PR, which
consists of manipulative tech-
niques used during electoral campaigns (Tsetsura, 2009). Other
studies show that these methods
can not be classified as public relations at all, because they
have all the means of being prop-
aganda (Tulupov, 1996).
However, other authors use a different typology of fake news.
In Wardle’s (2017) opin-
ion, fake news does not exist on its own, the term being widely
used for concepts that have
different meanings and origins. Therefore, in elaborating
another typology of fake news, three
pillars were used (mostly based on the content that is shared to
an audience): the first crite-

56. rion relates to the types of content used in the process of
information sharing, the second one
is based on the creation motives of the content creators
(intention to deceive) while the third
pillar consists of how this content is further distributed
(Wardle, 2017).
Thus, Wardle (2017) distinguishes seven types of fake news and
orders them using a scale
based on the intention of the content creator to deceive (figure
2). Similar to Tandoc et al.
(2018) typology of fake news, satirical (parodied) content and
fabricated content are on the
list with a key difference: satirical or parodied content is
situated on the lowest point of the
intention to deceive scale, while fabricated content is placed on
the highest spot. The other
elements on the intention to deceive scale (rated from the
lowest to the highest) are, as it fol-
lows, false connection (commonly known as clickbait, or when
there is a discordance be-
tween the image or the headline used for a news article and its
content), misleading content
(when information is used in a misleading way with the purpose
of framing an issue), false
context (when genuine information is used in an unrelated
context with the purpose of mis-
leading the audience), imposter content (when phoneys make
use of or pose as veridical
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57. sources of information) and manipulated content (when genuine
information or visuals are
manipulated to serve for a different purpose).
Figure 2. Typology of fake news, according to Wardle (2017).
Effects and moderators of fake news effects
The concept of fake news can have many sides and shades,
having a lighter or a stronger
presence in a certain visual or written narrative. However, an
essential aspect of this domain
consists of the effects that it can have on its audiences and the
variables which moderate these
effects. Fake news can influence people in various ways,
affecting individuals’ attitudes to-
wards politics through political inefficacy, political alienation
or cynicism towards political
candidates (Balmas, 2014).
Political efficacy refers to an individual’s conviction that he/she
can understand the cur-
rent political landscape and can actively participate in it
(Niemi, Craig, & Franco, 1991).
However, political efficacy consists of two sides: one of them
refers to the perceived compe-
tence, which represents the ability of an individual to
understand the political agenda, while
the other refers to the perceived effectiveness, which is the
individuals’ belief that their ac-
tions can change the shapes of politics (Balmas, 2014).
Political alienation, on the other hand, is a consequence of the
political inefficacy feel-
ing and it mainly represents someone’s beliefs that its actions
cannot change in any way the

58. political agenda. However, the feelings of political alienation
can take four different shapes,
each one having different potential influences on an electoral
campaign or on the views to-
wards a political personality: political powerlessness, which
refers to one’s conviction that
he/she cannot change the political doings, political
meaninglessness, which refers to the un-
predictability of the political actions, perceived political
normlessness, related to one’s be-
liefs that the states laws are inefficient and political isolation,
referring to the denial of the
current state laws widely accepted (Finifter, 1970).
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On the other hand, political cynicism is related to individuals’
loss of trust in politicians
or in their actions. Thus, this cynicism is associated with a
general restraint towards the po-
litical landscape, often related to the perceived incompetence or
immorality of political per-
sonalities (Šram, 2016).
According to Balmas (2014), the dangerous effects of
misinformation lie in fake news’
very ability to strongly influence these three elements, which
can be vital to the outcome of
an electoral campaign. Thus, it seems that changes in
individuals’ attitudes towards politics
via political inefficacy, political alienation or cynicism towards

59. political candidates can par-
ticularly be discovered within individuals who perceive fake
news as real. However, notewor-
thy is that Balmas (2014) only considers satirical and parodied
news content as fake news,
partially because his study was published before the political
events leading to the vivid ac-
ademic and public debate about “fake news”.
However, studies have shown (Alonso-Muñoz & Casero-
Ripolles, 2018) that the content
of a message can also determine its capacity to become viral. In
other words, viralisation is
another fake news effect. A proper example is the intensive use
of Twitter by Donald Trump
during his 2016 electoral campaign: his popularity grew
significantly not because of the enor-
mous amounts of tweets posted, but because of their content,
which was widely distributed
by both citizens of the United States and the press (Pérez-Curiel
& Naharro, 2019).
In this regard, it seems that the public itself plays a significant
role. Very often, people who
have been exposed to fake news can play a bridge role between
the false information and an
even wider public, by sharing and distributing what they
witnessed in the media. A strong mod-
erator of fake news effects is, therefore, the very audience that
is exposed to false informa-
tion and the cognitive ability of the individuals that form it. An
audience is created by many
individuals and every person can react differently when exposed
to fake news. Some re-
searchers have shown that according to someone’s level of
cognitive ability, certain false in-

60. formation can have a stronger influence. In this regard, it seems
that people with a lower level
of cognitive ability are influenced by fake news to the point that
even if they see proper ev-
idence that the information was fake, they still find it hard to
believe that the previous report
was not accurate. In other words, the influence of fake news on
such individuals can have un-
treatable consequences (De keersmaecker & Roets, 2017).
Timing can also be a moderator of fake news effects: For
instance, studies have shown
that, in a group, if the audience is exposed to false information
before they have the chance
to witness the accurate news or, at least, discuss it with each
other, the impact can be stronger
than if the public firstly sees the truthful information (Spinney,
2017). People are more like-
ly to believe fake news if the first information that they are
exposed to on a particular topic
is fake than if false information comes after the distribution of
accurate information.
Moreover, the effects of fake news can also relate to the Third
Person Perception: some
researchers have pointed out how a group of partisan citizen can
believe that a group of a dif-
ferent political orientation is more exposed to the dangers of
fake news and find it more dif-
ficult to protect themselves from disinformation (Jang & Kim,
2018). Similarly, in Romania,
studies have shown that the theory of the Third Person Effect
can apply to this context as
well. Thus, people have a tendency to believe that distant others
are more influenced by fake
news than themselves (ªtefãniþã, Corbu, & Buturoiu, 2018).

61. Another moderator of fake news effects is age. Many
adolescents, for example, started tak-
ing their information from places different than the actual
source. The evolution of technol-
ogy made them access social media for getting the news, rather
than reading the newspaper
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or watching the news bulletin on TV (Marchi, 2012). According
to the Reuters Institute Dig-
ital News Report of 2018, for the last 7 years, the use of social
media for news was constant-
ly growing. However, due to recent changes in algorithms,
Facebook is not the only social
media channel relevant in this matter: the use of WhatsApp for
news almost tripled for the
last 5 years, while managing to overtake Twitter in importance
in some countries (Newman
et al., 2018). Another source of information for adolescents is
what their friends share on the
social networks and the comments section of different posts,
where people randomly argue
on specific news. Moreover, news parodies and satires represent
a leading source of infor-
mation for this age category. In the presented context, studies
show that adolescents already
have a preference for opinionated news, rather than dull and
accurate information (Marchi,
2012). In other words, age can moderate the individual’s
capacity to perceive fake news as

62. accurate, according to its will to believe and further distribute
already opinionated content with-
out checking its source.
The format in which fake news is embodied can also be a
moderator of its effects. Stud-
ies have shown that viewers of satirical or parodied content
have a more comprehensive
knowledge of the news agenda than those who watch televised
news only, as the blend of se-
riousness and humour is a reliable source of information,
satisfying two types of gratifica-
tions: the need of entertainment and the need of information
(Browning & Sweetser, 2014).
The problem is that fake news can infiltrate much easier within
a transmitted opinion about
a piece of information that within the information itself. Not
least, news literacy could play
an essential role. The Digital News Report of 2018 which
measured for the first time the lev-
el of news literacy show that people with higher level of news
literacy tend to prefer news-
papers brands over TV and use social media for news very
differently from the wider
population (Newman et al., 2018). In this respect, elevating the
degree of information litera-
cy of the audience should be one of the education goals. Thus,
public ability to judge the
quality and veracity of news content will improve (Anderson &
Rainie, 2017).
Fighting fake news
The audience plays, therefore, a significant role on the
distribution and the effects of false
news. That is certainly a reason why many researchers

63. interested in the field design further
studies to focus more on the role of the public and on its
behaviour.
This could explain why a proper method of fighting fake news
does not target the way they
are created or distributed, but instead focuses on the way that
the audience reacts to it. Un-
derstanding the way that people respond to fake news can hold
the key to diminish the phe-
nomenon properly (Spinney, 2017).
In January 2018, a High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) with the
sole purpose of advising
the European Commission on matters such as fake news and
online disinformation was set
up. Furthermore, while hinting to the dangers of fake news that
can reach all parts of socie-
ty, the phenomenon poses a threat to democracies themselves,
by altering election processes
and public policies. Thus, the HLEG came up with a set of
possible solutions to the matter
which, nonetheless, need further testing. The solutions consist
more of an action plan, based
on five connected pillars. The first one refers to enhancing the
transparency of online news,
while the second one is based on promoting media literacy. The
third one relates to creating
tools to enable journalists and media users to counter
disinformation and the fourth refers to
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64. supporting an environment where the diversity and
sustainability of the European news me-
dia can further develop. The last pillar relies on promoting
continuous academic research on
the subject (High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online
Disinformation, 2018).
Other solutions are rather small and refer to concrete and
precise methods of fighting parts
of the problem, or effects of the problem, but not fake news
itself. One such way can be on
the sides of the public institutions, who would have an
obligation to communicate and dis-
tribute accurate information very often (Spinney, 2017), in such
a way that fake news would
become a reactive phenomenon and not remain a proactive one.
Another possible solution lays in the hands of technology: fake
news also makes its way
to the public by using ‘social bots’, which are different
algorithms used in social media to
make a specific account look like a real one, used by a real
person, but is, in fact, just a bot
programmed to act according to a specific interest. In this
regards, platforms for checking the
accuracy of social media profiles started to appear (Davis,
Varol, Ferrara, Flammini, & Mencz-
er, 2016).
A third possible way to fight fake news refers to how media
agencies and state officials
respond to the phenomenon. A proper answer could consist in
the way that precise informa-
tion is wrapped. An effective way to combat false information

65. could be to distribute truthful
details in such a way that people will want to believe it and will
be willing to discard the fake
news, by using emotions or a call to feelings (Tarran, 2017).
Nonetheless, social media platforms came up with new
techniques, adapted to the con-
temporary misinformation spread status, to counter fake news:
Facebook, for example, invest-
ed in updated technology and human resources to better handle
the fake accounts situation.
Up to this day, Facebook is continuously working with fact-
checkers to ensure that problem-
atic content is taken down (Newman, 2019), while in France,
during the last three years, the
malicious and suspicious content on the network was cut down
to a half (Senecat, 2018).
Another social platform that has taken measures against fake
news is WhatsApp. In order
to counter the dissemination of false information, the
application has reduced the number of
times individuals can forward a message from 250 to 20
(Newman, 2019). Even though it is
not widely used, in countries such as India, WhatsApp became a
tool of mass disinformation:
forwarded messages containing various fake news have been the
starting point of many vio-
lent incidents. Upon an enquiry made by the Indian
Government, WhatsApp created, for the
first time, a televised campaign on ‘how to protect yourself’
from spam and fake news dis-
seminated in the forwarded messages on the application
(Thaker, 2018).
YouTube and Twitter are also working on the matter. While the

66. video-sharing platform is
implementing measures to prioritise trustworthy news sources
rather than breaking news or
conspiracy videos, Twitter has managed to introduce new ways
of identifying bots, verifying
approximately nine million accounts a week (Newman, 2019).
Conclusions
Fake news became a critical concern worldwide, which may
have severe consequences at
many levels. The topic is debated on many platforms and almost
all the news agencies, which
are firstly accused of fake news, discuss and share opinions on
the diffusion mechanism as
well as on the consequences of misinformation.
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Fake news spread in many shapes and sizes and methods of
detecting and combating this
phenomenon are challenging. Also, the concept is difficult to
define, since shades of fake
news can be found in news parodies, news satires, propaganda,
news fabrications, photo ma-
nipulations, advertising and public relations, etc.
Beyond academic or public debates, research studies focusing
on the effects of fake news
aim at assessing the impact of the phenomenon or discovering
tools to detect, control and
combat fabrication or diffusion of false information. While the

67. role of social media in spread-
ing false information should not be underestimated, a better
understanding of human behav-
ior and improving audience literacy level could represent
essential steps to reducing impact
or effects. As studies focus mostly on the effects of
disinformation and not on its causes, fur-
ther research targeting this dimension needs to be conducted.
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Running Head: Fake News
1
FAKE NEWS
4
Fake News
Stephanie Williams
ENG/200: Rhetoric and Research
05/09/2020

81. My topic is fake news. My research question is, how can we
protect ourselves from fake news? What are the three ways to
solve this problem?
In the article, YouTube's fake news problems are not going
away by Shephard, 2018. It is a peer-reviewed article as
databases allow to limit searches for items to peer-reviewed
journals only. It addresses the issue of YouTube not being able
to have a solution for false news circulation on its website.
Sources- this is a reliable website; it has cited the source of
information presented. The article talks about the Stoneman
High school in Florida shooting being either a staged acting or
was reality. The article talks about David Hogg, who was a
survivor and an activist for gun control, but a video suggests he
was an actor. The article asks the questions of what YouTube
officials, despite its announcement that it is working to curb the
problem of fake news. My stand in the research question is that
it is true that YouTube spreads fake news, but some of the
information in there is true. It cannot all be blamed on YouTube
officials but also the advancement of technology along with the
invention of new applications that make it easy to Photoshop
and filter items on a video or photo hence the distribution of

82. fake news
Fake News, Case Study from Social Media to Television of the
Romanian Presidential Selections 2019. Authors: Sutu, Radica,
2019. This article is peer-reviewed. An expert and another
expert write it before. The politicians all over the globe
assumed the notion to label news administrations when their
reporting is not advantageous and to validate their activities to,
sanction, undermine, restrict and scare the media. (Sutu, 2019)
There are also news individuals and organizations that
substituted reporting with propaganda, destined to manipulate
the political choices of the listeners by creating stories to effect
public insights for the advantage of a government or politician.
The Romanian 2019 Presidential elections case study, evaluated
in this piece, shows an extensive range of typologies and
attributes of fake news, displaying how together social and
mainstream media contribute to the dissemination and
production of counterfeit stories.
Fake News on Social Media: People Believe What They Want to
Believe When it Makes no Sense at all. Article Authors:
Moravec et al., 2019. The article is peer-reviewed. The material
is scientifically valid, reach reasonable conclusions. It talks
about how fake news of social media is increasing in the past
few years. They conducted performance research with EEG data
from 83 social media workers to comprehend whether they
could spot false news on social media and whether the existence

83. of a fake news flag impacted their judgment and cognition.
They found that the presence of a false news flag triggered more
prominent cognitive activity, and users consumed more time
because of the frontpage. Though, the flag did not impact
decisions about the fact; flagging headings as untrue did not
affect users' opinions. A post hoc study displays that approval
bias is persistent, with users expected to trust news headlines
that line up with their political views. Headlines that test their
views take little cognitive attention, and users are less likely to
trust them. (Moravec, 2019)
References
Shephard, A. (2020). YouTube's Fake News Problem Isn't Going
Away. In Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection
Sutu, Rodica Melinda1 [email protected] 2019 Fake News, from
Social Media to Television Case Study of the Romanian
Presidential Elections
Moravec, Minas, Dennis 2019, FAKE NEWS ON SOCIAL
MEDIA: PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANT TO
BELIEVE WHEN IT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.