Is Fake News Still an Issue?

It almost seems like yesterday, however it's been a full two years since President Trump Kindly thrust the term 'Fake News' into our lives, and it's been ever present since. Fake News has since then had a major influence on news publishers and their credibility, and ultimately in a strange twist of fate enabled them to essentially capitalise on it and monetise their content due to the sheer amount of fake news. So two years on from President Trump, we've decided to take a recap and look back on how news publishers have battled fake news, and whether it's still causing publishers (and governments) major headaches.

UK Government

Now you may think you've misread that title, however unfortunately that's not the case. Yes, believe it or not, the UK government has been roped into launching a fake news unit in order to help manage the sheer influx of fake news online. Announced in January of this year by Prime Minister Theresa may, the officially named 'National Security Communications Unit', will be tasked with deterring adversaries and combatting misinformation. With that being said however, the work done by the "fake news unit" as it's been dubbed the media, has been kept under wraps. Now however, some of this work has been revealed to us and we can finally help share the details that this unit have been undertaking.

Communications service director Alex Aiken stated that "“We do this to better understand the news environment, to let departments know about emerging stories, and to assess the effectiveness of our public information,”

Faktisk

Faktisk is a non-profit fact-checking organization formed by Norwegian tabloids Verdens Gang and Dagbladet, public broadcaster NRK and commercial TV broadcaster TV 2, which launched on July 4^th. The main reasoning being the creation of this group is because of the sudden increase in fake news that overcame Norway. Fake news in Norway mostly comes from online outlets that don’t have editors and which then gather up steam on social media.

The way that Faktisk will work is that it will automatically check Norway’s media and social media debates and politicians comments. It will then rank articles in truthfulness on a scale of 1-5, which it will share in text article or short video on its own site. It will do this through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, snapchat and on TV. The software that’s being used is open source, so other media companies can embed and publish it on their own channels, too. In time, Faktisk hopes to make the fact checking more automated.

Faktisk have a very similar concept to Speigel Group, and we feel that this concept is the better of the two case studies on show here. The fact that Faktisk combs social media and the whole Internet as opposed to just the content that it produces. At Evolok, fake news is a blessing for us in a very specific way.

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