**2. Background**

This section provides an overview of prior work in several areas that provide a foundation for the work presented herein. In Section 2.1, the evolving and varied definitions of the term "fake news" over the last two decades are discussed. In Section 2.2, prior work on fake news and deceptive online content is presented. In Section 2.3, methods for identifying and classifying fake news are discussed. Finally, in Section 2.4, the problem created by fake news is reviewed.

#### *2.1. Defining Fake News from 1475 to 2022*

According to Higdon [19], fake news traces its lineage back at least as far as 1475 when "the Christian city of Trent was so outraged by the false story of a Jewish man killing a two-year-old boy that they imprisoned and tortured the local Jewish population as punishment". However, the term fake news has not always meant factually inaccurate content. At least as early as 2005, the term "fake news" was used to describe satirical works such as "The Daily Show" and "The Onion" which are designed to inform the public on current events while providing a humorous slant [20]. This definition of the term continued to be in popular use as late as 2014, with work in this decade devoted to comparison of the value of real news versus its satirical counterparts with regards to keeping up with current events [20,21]. During this era, from approximately 2005–2014, "fake news" referred almost exclusively to "satirical news." That is, media designed to inform the public through a humorous or satirical take. The viewer was always intended to be in on the joke in this form of entertainment news. Some media such as Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" would go so far as to describe themselves directly as "fake" in the introduction of the material, opening with the phrase "and now for the fake news" [22]. Other media such as "The Onion," self-described as "America's Finest News Source," would instead present themselves with the conceit of being real news [23]. This phenomenon is similar to kayfabe in professional wrestling, where the actors, writers and audience are aware that what is happening is fake but continue to treat it seriously to better appreciate the presentation [24]. Yet, in all these cases, there is an understanding that the audience does know that what is being presented is satirical and now to be read as fact.

By 2014, a new form of usage of the term "fake news" was appearing in research works [25]. In this form, users of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook would intentionally share images and memes describing fake, often politically charged information, to win political debates using misinformation. While "satirical news" such as the Daily Show would attempt to ensure that the audience was in on the joke, this new variant of "fake news meme" was designed to be believable enough to be accepted as fact while also being difficult to either verify or debunk. The humorous or outrageous design of the fake news meme helped it to spread more rapidly than it could be fact-checked. It could be spread intentionally by users who knew the information was false but wanted to use this misinformation to shift political opinions. It could also be spread unintentionally by users who were not "in on the joke" and truly believed the misinformation to be legitimate. There was little means by which to distinguish between these two behaviors, given that the distinction seemed only to be the spreader's intention.

By 2015, the term "fake news" had extended to include entire "fake news articles" written to appear even more legitimate than the "fake news memes" [26]. By 2016, the meaning of the term began to blur as it entered the public vernacular. It became necessary to describe works as "so-called fake news" in cases where there were differences of opinion as to whether a particular source was fake or legitimate. This led to what was described as a "narrative battle" between competing organizations attempting to selectively provide legitimate news while "spinning" its meaning and how the public ought to react to the facts [27]. This form of "opinion-based news" draws a line by not presenting false information but instead providing a non-objective viewpoint meant to elicit a certain type of reaction.

With this blurring definition, by 2016 the term "fake news" began to find use as a pejorative to be directed at any news media which the speaker simply disliked [28]. This misuse of the term created an even greater level of disinformation, where even speaking about the concept of "fake news" could be misconstrued as speaking about "news I do not like." Higdon [19] suggests that the term "became an omnipresent idiom in American discourse" due to an exchange between U.S. president Donald Trump and CNN reporter Jim Acosta in January 2017. During this exchange Trump stated, in response to a request from Acosta, "I'm not going to give you a question. You are fake news" [19].

Even as recently as 2022, it is not uncommon for the term "fake news" to be written with caveats, quotations and question marks or described as "potential 'fake' news" [29]. It remains a politically charged term which, nonetheless, is used to have a shared discourse on the topic.

In response to this division over the definition of "fake news", Tanocc, Lim, and Ling [30] conducted a review of 34 prior academic articles that used the term "fake news" between 2003 and 2017. Categories included news satire and parody, advertising and public relations works (made to appear as though they were neutral news reports on a product, person, company or service, news fabrication containing no factual basis—also called disinformation) and photo and video manipulations ranging from simple (modification of color saturation on the image) to complex (making a politician appear to be at an event when that was not the case). The authors proposed a four-quadrant model for the typology of fake news categories based upon the level of "facticity" (how accurate the article is) and the "intention to deceive." For example, advertisement of a product may have high facticity but also a high intention to deceive. This is a form of mal-information which is based upon fact but used in a manner to manipulate the consumer (convincing them to purchase a

product). While both news satire and news parody share a low intention to deceive, news satire is distinct in having a high level of facticity (making humorous reports about the facts) while news parody's facticity is low (reporting humorous invented "facts").

Higdon [19] notes that scholars have had difficulty arriving at a consensus on the meaning of the term "fake news" with some basing the classification on form and intent to deceive others, while others sugges<sup>t</sup> that the term implies propaganda content. Both of these definitions, though, have gaps, such as ignoring oral news transmission, legitimate errors, fabrications for career advancements and prank news [19]. A commonly accepted definition of fake news, which will be used herein, is "fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent" [17]. There is observed overlap of this classification with "misinformation" which is either false or misleading and "disinformation" which is purposely spread to deceive people. "Fake news memes" would fall into these later two categories, while "fake news" would require that the source actively mimic the appearance of a legitimate news source while acting to the purpose of misinforming or disinforming the public.

#### *2.2. Fake News and Deceptive Online Content*

The Pew Research Center has tracked Americans' news usage on social media since 2013 [31–34]. As of 2020, approximately 71% of adults in the USA ge<sup>t</sup> at least some of their news (a term which the study didn't define for respondents) from social media platforms, with 23% reporting they do so "often." This percentage is up from 68% in 2018 and 62% in 2016. Of adults in the USA who ge<sup>t</sup> news on social media, most use only a single source (65% in 2013 and 64% in 2016) and relatively few use more than two sources (9% in 2013 and 10% in 2016). The percentage of each social networking site's users who ge<sup>t</sup> their news on the site has increased across multiple platforms from 2013 to 2018, as shown in Figure 1. This shows that most users of Reddit, Twitter and Facebook, since at least 2016, sometimes ge<sup>t</sup> their news from their social media site of choice. In a related survey question from the 2020 study, 59% of Twitter users, 54% of Facebook users, and 42% of Reddit users stated that they "regularly" ge<sup>t</sup> their news from their respective social media platform rather than simply "sometimes."

**Figure 1.** Percentage of each social networking sites' users who ge<sup>t</sup> news on the site in 2013, 2016, and 2018 (data from [31–33]).

Despite these trends, a majority of social media news consumers (57% in 2018 and 59% in 2020) say they expect the news they see on social media to be "largely inaccurate." Almost half of respondents (48% in 2018 and 47% in 2020) state that social media has "not made much of a difference" in their understanding of current events, with an increasing number of users (15% in 2018 up to 23% in 2020) stating that social media has instead

made them more confused about current events. Yet, increasingly, adults in the USA use social media—and usually only a single social media site—as a news source. The lack of perceived accuracy does not appear to be a sufficient deterrent from using these sources, with 21% of 2018 respondents citing "the convenience" as the thing they like most about using social media as a news source.

#### *2.3. Identification and Classification of Fake News*

Identifying fake news can be key to combatting it. This section discusses prior work on this topic.

Zhang, et al. [35] described three key characteristics of fake news which increase its negative impact. The first is its volume, as fake news is easily written, revised, and circulated by anyone interested in producing such content [35]. Second, the variety of formats which fake news can take (such as fake news articles versus fake news memes) makes it difficult to identify with a precise and predictable definition [35]. The third is the "velocity" of fake news, as fake news sites may be created, distributed, consumed, affect change in a population's beliefs, and subsequently be deleted entirely before detection is performed [5]. Fake news frequently targets current events, meaning that real-time detection and removal must occur in parallel with real-time creation, consumption, and distribution. With such a vast supply, the numerous moving targets can have a grea<sup>t</sup> impact on public perception. By the time fact-checkers have time to respond, the fake news cycle may have moved on to a new interaction, either promoting a different story or even calling into question the fact-checkers themselves.

Four major components to consider were identified by Zhang, et al. [35] when classifying content as "fake news." These were the creator/spreader, the target victims, the news content, and the social context. Creators can be human or non-human agents, either working independently or through a centralized network. The intent of the creator can vary from either producing intentional misinformation to simply doing a poor job of investigating the facts before creating the content. Victims may be targeted based upon their purchasing habits, voting habits, age, nationality, or other socio-economic or demographic factors which could make them either particularly vulnerable or necessary to the underlying agenda of the creator. The news content is broken down between its "physical" and "non-physical" aspects. Physical aspects of news content include the title, the body of text, images, videos, audio clips and other physical media. Non-physical aspects include its emotional content, opinions, sentiments of the author and artistic choices in formatting of the media. Social context is determined based upon the social system within which distribution takes place. Fake news spread via Facebook will mostly be shared with and communicated about amongs<sup>t</sup> friends and family members, while fake news spread via Twitter is more likely to reach an audience extending to followers-of-followers. As such, the type of communication of content will vary. A creator may selectively develop fake news of differing constructions to target at different social spaces.

Fact checking attempts to combat misinformation with correct information. Multiple online fact-checking resources exist, including Factcheck.org, Factmata.com, PolitFact.com and Snopes.com. Additionally, Wikipedia maintains a database (https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable\_sources/Perennial\_sources) of news sources rated by their reliability, with some earning a "generally unreliable" or even "blacklisted" rating. This listing includes summary details for why the given rating exists. It is managed by volunteer contributors. Research-based approaches to fake news detection include user analysis (identification of creators, spreaders and likely victims) [36,37], content and sentiment analysis (identification of physical and non-physical aspects of fake news content) [35] and social context analysis (identification of anomalous social behavior surrounding fake news) [35,38]. Once analysis is conducted, a second question is how to best preset it to users.

#### *2.4. The Fake News Problem*

Even with an understanding of what it is and how to potentially combat it, fake news is a problem. Monsees [39] characterizes the fake news problem as "a war against truth" and notes that it has expanded from being "a very specific concern regarding the spread of information via social media" to a broader "security concern". Its impacts are pronounced, ranging from election impact [6,7] to reducing trust in traditional media [40]—especially among the young [41]—to physical violence, such as the Pizzagate incident in the United States [42] and an assault based on a fake kidnapping incident in Mexico [43].

Fake news has been shown to have a disproportionate impact on a small group of individuals and to be associated with "confirmation bias, selective exposure, and lack of analytical thinking" [43]. Youth have also been shown to have difficulty identifying fake news. A US-based study found that only 11% of children could correctly identify a hoax website and a similar study in the Netherlands found that only 7% could correctly identify a hoax website [44]. College students evidenced another related issue: the indicated that they expected news content on social media to be inaccurate [33]. Despite this, though, those in the 18 to 29 age group were shown to use social media with greater frequency and trust those sources more than other age groups [33,45].

Other studies sugges<sup>t</sup> that the media literacy of youth may be somewhat higher. While early work identified young people as having a low level of media literacy, potentially leaving them susceptible to fake news (see for example [46] and [47]), empirical evidence suggests that young people may be less likely to click on fake news links [48].

In some cases, fact checking—presenting those influenced by fake news with accurate information—has even been shown to be ineffective [43]. For the general public, in the United States, the exposure to fake news content is limited. Allen, et al. sugges<sup>t</sup> that it comprises only 0.15% of Americans' daily media consumption, based on the proportion of time spent on visits to websites that have been identified as providing "fake, deceptive, low-quality, or hyperpartisan news" [49]. Notably, all news, a term broadly defined by Nielsen to include traditional news programming, entertainment news and even "late-night comedy shows", is approximately 14.2% American's media consumption [49].

While this article focuses on online intentionally deceptive content, fake news is not just an online phenomena. The term has been widely applied to traditional media sources, as well; however, this labeling is problematic as it includes content classified as "fake" by those that seek to discredit content that they do not like. Richardson notes that the term fake news is an "existential challenge to journalists dealing with an audience losing its faith" [50]. Those that seek to discredit traditional media purport that "'truth' and 'accuracy' are pliable concepts in the hands of the mainstream media" [50]. Lees goes even further, contending that the term is used to "plant mistrust in the media, stop stories being published, and even imprison journalists" [51]. However, traditional media is not without its inaccurate and, in some cases, deceptive news. A 1972 study showed that while 7.2% of television time (including both news and non-news content, including advertising) was devoted to "health-related content", 70% of the content "was inaccurate or misleading or both" [52]. Benkler, Faris and Roberts [53] explain how another traditional news venue, radio, has led to news consumer confusion through "talk radio" programs, which are still ongoing. Faris, et al. [54] also demonstrate traditional media's role in the dissemination of misinformation in a study specifically surrounding COVID-19. Beyond potential bias and other issues of traditional media sources, themselves, traditional media also can spread online misinformation via reporting on social media trends and embedding [55] social media within an article. Zucker [56] explains how problematic false news information is—applying equally to traditional and online media—as "even after individuals learn that a piece of information is false, they still tend to believe it, at least to some extent, because of the difficulty of removing information once it has been encoded in memory."

In considering the scope of the fake news problem, it is important to note that most news content is consumed from television—not online (approximately five times as much) [49]. There is a notable exception: while the younges<sup>t</sup> age groups assessed (18 to 24 and 25 to 34) consume the least amount of news, more of their consumption occurs online. Individuals who are 18 to 24 consume slightly under 10 min of television news per day and approximately 5 min of online news per day.

Both categories of consumption go up by approximately 50% for the 25 to 34 age group. Those in the 45 to 54 age group, alternately, consume approximately 50 min of television news and just over 10 min of online news each day and those in the 55+ group consume over 80 min of television news each day and approximately 13 min of online news. The percentage of online news that is 'fake', based on coming from sites that have been identified to be "sources of fake, deceptive, low-quality, or hyperpartisan news", is small: less than 10% across all age groups.

Dentith [57] contends that the fake news problem is a symptom of a "polite society" where topics are "ignored or glossed over", suggesting that allegations of content inaccuracy and deception must be taken more seriously even if it causes individuals to be upset. Greg [58] contends, somewhat conversely, that it is a "symptom of a deeper problem"—namely of a current "negative cycle in politics" caused by an ideological conflict. Savino [59] notes that the lack of liability for the content is also problematic, as it removes incentive to reign in content by those posting or publishing it.

A variety of solutions for fake news have been proposed including filtering content [13], content removal [14], limiting internet access [15], and content labeling [16]. Higdon [19] suggests that none of these will necessarily be effective and that media literacy education is lacking and severely needed in the United States. A study by Guo [60] furthers this conclusion by suggesting that most of the non-educational solutions may be ineffective by demonstrating the spread of 'fake news' on China's governmen<sup>t</sup> news media sites. Bernal [61] proffers that while social media is used "there is little that can be done to reduce the impact of fake news and misinformation" and questions whether "the benefits to freedom of expression that social media brings mean that this is a price worth paying".

Informed by the considerable challenges presented by fake news and deceptive online content, this paper seeks to understand how individuals make news consumption decisions. This knowledge will be key to understanding which techniques may be effective at combatting the negative impacts of fake news while seeking to maintain individuals' rights to speak freely and read the content of their choosing.

#### **3. Survey, Data Collection Process, Respondents and Methodology**

To understand individuals' news consumption decision-making, a survey was conducted. This section discusses the survey instrument and data collection process that was used to collect the data presented herein. First, the survey instrument is discussed. Then, the data collection process is reviewed. Finally, analysis of the respondents' demographic characteristics is presented.

## *3.1. Survey Instrument*

The survey instrument that was used for this data collection was based on and modified from the survey utilized in [62]. It was edited for brevity (to meet a target response time of 15 min or less) and combined content from the three surveys that were administered independently to collect the data analyzed in [62]. While most editing focused on the removal of questions (those that were redundant between the combined surveys or selected for removal to meet response time goals), the surveys were reviewed again by the authors and Qualtrics survey staff before use. A limited pilot study phase was also used to validate the instrument before the large study commenced. As no issues were detected with the pilot study, these responses were applied to relevant demographic quotas and included in the dataset, in line with Qualtrics' standard survey administration practices.

Questions on the survey instrument related to multiple perceptual filters. They asked respondents about their own perceptions, their perceptions of others, and their perceptions of the ideal. This was performed via asking questions in the following forms (the example of article title is used):


For each question of this type, respondents were given a choice of five responses on a Likert-like scale:

• A grea<sup>t</sup> deal • A lot • A moderate amount • A little • None at all

By asking respondents about these three perceptual filters, analysis is able to compare respondents' perceptions of their own actions and beliefs as well as what they perceive others as doing and what they believe they and others should be doing. Comparing respondents to others is indicative of how they perceive their own actions and beliefs as fitting in with those that they regularly interact with. The comparison of self and others' actions and beliefs to ideal ones is particularly interesting as it may aid in the understanding of areas where respondents may be readily open to changing their behaviors, as they already believe that they should be different than they are. All of these comparisons can be helpful in assessing the likelihood of label use adoption and identifying barriers and pathways to label use adoption.

### *3.2. Data Collection*

The data that is analyzed in this paper was collected using a quota-based stratified sampling technique. It was collected by Qualtrics International Inc. using the survey instrument described in the previous section. Respondents were recruited based on seeking population proportionate representation of gender, age, income level and political affiliation. Approximately 550 responses to the survey were collected in October of 2021, of which 500 were part of the population representative sample. Respondents were given an incentive based on the submission of a complete survey, so most responses were complete. This paper analyzes all responses which include an answer to the relevant demographic and response questions being analyzed.

## *3.3. Respondent Demographics*

Respondents are well distributed across numerous demographic groups. Approximately 49% were male and 51% were female. Non-binary gender respondents made up less than 1% of responses and, thus, couldn't be further analyzed due to the small sample size.

Respondents' ages are presented in Table 1. Approximately 11% of respondents were 18–24, 25–29 and 30–34 (each). Respondents aged 35-39 comprised 10% of the responses. There were 9% of respondents who were aged 40–44, 7% who were aged 45–49, 6% who were aged 50–54 and 14% who were aged 55–59. Those aged 60–64 made up 12% of respondents and 11% of respondents were 65 and older.

**Table 1.** Respondents' age distribution [63].


Most respondents fell into three groups, with regards to educational attainment. Respondent educational attainment levels are presented in Table 2. Approximately a quarter have only graduated high school and another quarter had completed some college but not a degree. An additional 22% had completed a bachelor's degree. Only 3% of respondents had a Ph.D., 5% had not completed high school, 10% had a master's degree and 12% had completed an associate's degree.


**Table 2.** Respondents' education distribution [63].
