The Impact of Fake News

Currently, fake news has become one of the biggest challenges of the digital age, although it started several years ago. The rapid placement of false information on social networks or messaging applications can spread quickly and influence opinions, affect elections, or even generate social and economic crises.

 

Fake news is false information published to the public as if it was true. They can be created for various reasons::financial, emotional or political. There are three types of fake news: satirical or humorous, which is fake news created without the intention to deceive or harm; we also have intentional misinformation, which is intentionally created to deceive and harm; and distorted content, in which the information is true but that it is published misleadingly.

   

On the one hand, fake news may have positive points, such as the creation of marketing and propaganda strategies, political influence and social mobilisation, entertainment and satire, protection or concealment of information and encouragement of critical thinking.

On the other hand, fake news has several negative points, such as misinformation and manipulation of public opinion, risks to public health, polarisation and social conflict, economic damage, the loss of credibility of media and institutions, and the impact on personal life.

 

To fight fake news, there are several techniques, such as the verification of the information announced, media education (teaching how to give information), regulation and responsibility of platforms (implementation of fact-checkers and alerts for dubious news), and reporting and awareness (reporting fake news).

 

The European Commission prepared several approaches to help organizations, schools and individual citizens on how to tackle disinformation while reassuring the key value of Freedom of Expression. We will mention two:

• The Action Plan on Disinformation, which can be found here, aims to improve EU capability and cooperation for protecting the Union’s democratic systems and combat disinformation.

• The 2022 strengthened Code of Practice, which followed the 2018 Code of Practice but defined more ambitious goals and measures, all targeting online disinformation (available here).

 

In short, it is possible to conclude that fake news affects several aspects of our society, but it also relies on each European citizen and organization to be actively involved in countering them.