Fake News & Misinformation

In this book, readers will learn about fake news: how it gets made, how it affects the public, how governments and special interest groups use fake news to push specific agendas, and how fake news, alongside social media, is re-shaping politics and society.

This title explores journalistic and fact-checking standards, Constitutional protections, and real-world case studies, helping readers identify the mechanics, perpetrators, motives, and psychology of fake news.

Too often discussions of fake news take place in isolated spheres at conferences devoted specifically to media literacy, computer science, or journalism. Considerations of the ways in which these areas interact, overlap, and contradict each other we will be useful for thinking through the past influences, present challenges, and future solutions to different kinds of mis/disinformation.

Identifying Fake News examines why fake information spreads, the dangers it can cause, and how readers can recognize fake news and avoid having their opinions shaped by it.

With a combination of field experience and criminological research, this book gives insight to the news and drama programming that shapes the way viewers perceive crime and the formation of policy.

Dealing with misinformation requires explanation of how information is generated and spread, and how it breaks down but can be mended. This book offers a deep account of information and misinformation that provides concrete advice on how improved thinking and communication can benefit individuals and societies.

In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what's essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.

Looking at such issues as Russian election interference, the increasing polarization of media consumption, hacktivism, and the future role AI could play in making fake news more difficult to detect, this volume explores the pollution of our information environment and what we can do about it.