articleProceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social MediaMay 3, 2017DIAMOND OA

This Just In: Fake News Packs A Lot In Title, Uses Simpler, Repetitive Content in Text Body, More Similar To Satire Than Real News

BDBenjamin D. HorneSASibel Adalı

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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Abstract

The problem of fake news has gained a lot of attention as it is claimed to have had a significant impact on 2016 US Presidential Elections. Fake news is not a new problem and its spread in social networks is well-studied. Often an underlying assumption in fake news discussion is that it is written to look like real news, fooling the reader who does not check for reliability of the sources or the arguments in its content. Through a unique study of three data sets and features that capture the style and the language of articles, we show that this assumption is not true. Fake news in most cases is more similar to satire than to real news, leading us to conclude that persuasion in fake news is achieved through…

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Topics & keywords

Topics
Keywords
  • Fake news
  • Persuasion
  • Heuristics
  • Content (measure theory)
  • Advertising
  • Computer science
  • Style (visual arts)
  • Presidential system
UN Sustainable Development Goals
  • Peace, Justice and strong institutions
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