Fake News & Misinformation: Home

What is Fake News?

There seems to be no generally agreed upon definition of fake news. These are some definitions found on the Internet.

 “Newspaper articles, television news shows, or other information disseminated through broadcast or social media that are intentionally based on falsehoods or that intentionally use misleading framing to offer a distorted narrative”.  Kavanagh, Jennifer, and Rich, Michael D. Truth Decay : An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. Santa Monica, California: RAND, 2018. 

Others include various types of mis- and disinformation under the umbrella of fake news. Clare Wardle in "Fake news. It's complicated." provides a helpful typology of 7 different types of misinformation, along with a graphic of the motivations behind each type.

Courtesy of University of Oregon LIbraries