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What Do We Know About False News? | Harvard Business Review

Denise-Marie Ordway offers a brief review of academic literature and recent analyses on misinformation (or false news) as a phenomenon. She says that there is much more to learn about false news despite the influx of scholarship in this area, noting that much of this research so far has been focused primarily on United States politics and elections.

As false news has become a global phenomenon, scholars have responded. They’ve ramped up their efforts to understand how and why bad information spreads online — and how to stop it. In the past 18 months, they’ve flooded academic journals with new research and have raised the level of urgency. In a March 2018 article, titled “The Science of Fake News,” in the prestigious journal Science, 16 high-profile academics came together to issue a call to action, urging internet and social media platforms to work with scholars to evaluate the problem and find solutions.

Much of what researchers have learned in this short time helps to answer three important questions — about how much misinformation people consume, why they believe it, and the best ways to fight it.

Source: What Do We Know About False News? | Harvard Business Review