Recognising and understanding fake news

According to Duden, fake news is ‘false information spread in the media and on the internet, especially on social networks, with manipulative intent’. This false information comes in various forms, including text, images, audio and video.

The key element of fake news is the intention to deceive. In order to distinguish true reports from false ones, it is necessary to approach information critically. As a result, forming opinions based on facts has become significantly more difficult.

Ethan Zuckerman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) divides fake news into three types:

Today, millions of people can be easily deceived online at the same time. Unfortunately, good lies are often only exposed far too late – if at all.

In our daily use of media, we therefore urgently need to take a critical view and develop strategies for assessing media content. Technological advances make this task even more difficult, as fake images, audio or video material is often not immediately recognisable.

Who actually decides what you see on the internet? Why are you shown precisely these news items and search results? Who determines what is relevant to you? Algorithms take on this task. These small analysis programmes decide which information is currently exciting, important or interesting based on your surfing behaviour and the behaviour of all other internet users.

As a result, the computer programme spits out content and recommendations that might interest you. Handy, right? This filter function becomes controversial when it comes to sensitive topics such as forming personal opinions: algorithms favour radicalised opinions and a one-sided perception of a particular topic.

Fake news has an advantage thanks to algorithms. Social media is all about generating as many interactions (likes, shares, comments) as possible. And the more provocative a news item or post is, the more reactions it triggers. So algorithms favour fake news all the more, which in turn increases its reach – a vicious circle.

How to outsmart the algorithm and form your own opinion:

• Use different sources of information.
• Use alternative search engines that search anonymously (duckduckgo.com(opens in new tab) or swisscows.ch(opens in new tab)).
• Regularly delete your browser history and cookies.
• Like and subscribe to people, websites or parties whose opinions you do not share.
• Log out of Facebook when using a search engine.
• Use add-ons such as Ghostery (ghostery.com(opens in new tab)) to prevent background tracking.

More on this in the media guide enter: ‘Fake News and Deepfake’

Lying is a highly complex mental process that a child's brain is usually capable of performing from the age of five onwards. For children's development, it is necessary for them to learn how to lie and how to recognise lies. However, this learning process must also include an examination of whether lying is necessary, when and why.

As soon as children and young people start using online media, parents and teachers should also teach them to recognise lies on the internet, i.e. fake news, according to Dr Edda Humprecht. She is a researcher at the Institute for Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich.

Dr Edda Humprecht gives five tips for parents and guardians on promoting media literacy among children and young people:

• Media literacy must begin with media use.
• It is important that children and young people are aware that misinformation and manipulation exist and know how to recognise them.
• Talk to children and young people about media content. As soon as social media becomes an issue, it is particularly important to support children and young people.
• Tell children and young people that there are no taboo or embarrassing questions. Anyone who is unsure whether content is true or false should feel confident enough to ask a trusted adult.
• SRF Kinder-News is a good example of how news works. Take a look together at srf.ch.