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In July, the website Snopes published a piece fact-checking a story posted on The Babylon Bee, a popular satirical news site with a conservative bent. Conservative columnist David French criticized Snopes for debunking what was, in his view, “obvious satire. Obvious.” A few days later, Fox News ran a segment featuring The Bee’s incredulous CEO. But does everyone recognize satire as readily as French seems to? Our team of communication researchers has spent years studying misinformation, satire and social media. Over the last several months, we’ve surveyed Americans’ beliefs about dozens of

“Fake news” stories targeting corporations may be obnoxious, but a new study finds that they likely pose little threat to well-established brands. “There’s been a lot of work done on how the public processes and responds to fake news on social media in the context of politics, but very little research has been done on how fake news may affect brand trust,” says Yang Cheng, co-author of the new study and an assistant professor of communication at North Carolina State University. “We wanted to see what kind of impact fake news could have for companies.” To explore the issue, researchers drew on

You may have read about – or already seen, depending on where you are – the latest tweak to Facebook’s interface: the disappearance of the likes counter. Like Instagram (which it owns), Facebook is experimenting with hiding the number of likes that posts receive for users in some areas ( Australia for Facebook, and Canada for Instagram). In the new design, the number of likes is no longer shown. But with a simple click you can see who liked the post and even count them. It seems like Facebook is going to a lot of trouble to hide a seemingly innocuous signal, especially when it is relatively

The information we encounter online everyday can be misleading, incomplete or fabricated. Being exposed to “fake news” on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can influence our thoughts and decisions. We’ve already seen misinformation interfere with elections in the United States. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly proposed artificial intelligence (AI) as the solution to the fake news dilemma. However, the issue likely requires high levels of human involvement, as many experts agree that AI technologies need further advancement. I and two colleagues have received

Call it lies, fake news, or just plain old bullshit - misinformation seems to flutter wilfully around the modern world. The truth, meanwhile, can take tedious decades to establish. It seems that every day, new “alternative facts” are peddled in the public realm. YouTube’s algorithm reportedly promotes fake cancer cures, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “troll factory” floods the internet with toxic propaganda, and a fake health booklet in the US advocating against vaccines recently fuelled a major measles outbreak. In Australia in recent days, a pro-coal Facebook group claimed Sydney’s Hyde