Fake News – Welcome

by Carina Steindl - May 2, 2021

Comparative Analysis of fake and proper Fact-Checking Sites #P5

This post will be another comparison of fake fact-checking sites with real fact-checking sites and how there are differences in their design language (Typography, Images, etc.), the content (Expertise, Rigour, Transparency, Reliability) and the overall usability. It’s hard to find similarities that apply to the various pages, but this post will try to show the most common ones. Therefore I decided to compare InfoWars with ProPublica in the previous post and in this one Global Research with Fact Check.

Global Research vs. Fact Check.

Globalresearch is an “anti-Western” website that has troubles distinguishing between serious analysis and discreditable junk and so just publishes both. While some of GlobalResearch’s articles discuss legitimate humanitarian concerns, its view of science, economics, and geopolitics is conspiracist. The website under the domain names globalresearch.ca, globalresearch.org, globalresearch.com etc., is run by the non-profit The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), which was founded by Michel Chossudovsky (1946–), a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/

Fact Check is a nonpartisan, nonprofit project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by U.S. political players, including politicians, TV ads, debates, interviews and news releases. Their goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

https://www.factcheck.org/

As you can clearly see common rules of distinguishing if a site is a false information spreading site or not, do not apply to these pages. Some governments already started to implement laws or similar actions against misinformation. Also other scientist and artist startet to visualize this problem.

So last but not least the comparison. Both pages use he SSL certificate which means they should be “safe to use”. While FactCheck.org always has their sources on the end of each article, GlobalResearch.ca only has sources to some articles and also these are called footnotes. Overall both sites do what they are supposed to do, but design related there are some differences. Global Research is really jam-full with articles. There is almost no space in-between the preview blocks and also the font is pretty small. Whereas Fact Check uses a lot more white space and also fonts and images are bigger. So in points of accessibility and readability Fact Check is the clear winner. The website of Global Research just feels like they need to give you all the information in one screen. To describe this phenomenon visually, it feels like some stranger is screaming to your face, but you actually do not understand a thing. The overall usability of both sites is good, but the Fact Check page has a clearer visual structure and a better design language. In terms of functionality everything works fine. Both websites more or less follow the common design principles, even though both sites could be better. During my research I experienced a lot of stuffed content websites and this mainly occurs on fake-news or hoax spreading sites, but unfortunately also some proper fact-checking sites have a really bad visual appearance. So that fact does not tear them apart.

by Carina Steindl - April 25, 2021April 25, 2021

Comparative Analysis of fake and proper Fact-Checking Sites #P4

This post will be a comparison of fake news pages with real fact-checking sites and how there are differences in their design language (Typography, Images, etc.), the content (Expertise, Rigour, Transparency, Reliability) and the overall usability. It’s hard to find similarities that apply to all the various fake news pages, but this post will try to show the most common ones. Therefore I decided to compare InfoWars with ProPublica and in the next post Global Research with Fact Check.

InfoWars vs. ProPublica

I chose those two pages because both of them are or seem to be news based, journalistic websites. The fist thing most of the users check is the domain. It could be weirdly long, maybe not include s SSL certificate or just plainly weird. In this case both websites seem to have normal looking domains ending with .org (ProPublica) and .com (InfoWars). When taking a closer look you will certainly notice a difference in the web design, advertisment placement and how the content is presented.

First of I want to talk about the adds. ProPublica is almost third party add free, but they ask for donations a lot, while InfoWars has gun industry related or other free-speech newsletter adds. Also, they try selling dietary supplements through Amazon despite being banned from other platforms. They also created their own online shop to sell their products and merchandise.

This might seem just to be because of audience they are clearly approaching: the right wing conservatives (InfoWars), whilst ProPublica tries do debunk hoaxes through thorough research.

Screen recording of InfoWars Landingpage

The design language of pages is clear and straight. InfoWars uses a sans-serif bold black font for their headlines and. In comparison to ProPublica, which use a serif bold black font for headlines, which is more likely to be associated with news papers and sans-serif for text, because of the readability.

Screen recording of ProPublica Landingpage

The overall usability of both sites is pretty good and clear. Everything works fine. Both websites follow the common design principles, except that the article design of ProPublica is much clearer and less busy than the one of InfoWars. In the following videos you can see the difference.

Screen recording of ProPublica Article

Screen recording of InfoWars Article

After spending some time on InfoWars it becomes clear that their main resource is social media (Screenshots of postings) or other false- and misinformation spreading websites or media channels. Most of the time there is no research behind the claimed statements, it is just plainly personal opinion sold as researched facts. There are no credible sources or the only source given is a book or a podcast of the site owner Alex Jones or some other far-right conspiracy theorists.

by Carina Steindl - April 9, 2021

Comparative Analysis of fake and proper Fact-Checking Sites #P3

In the third blog entry of this series fake-news websites will be shown to be compared later on. After doing some research, I found a list of websites, who spread fake or misleading news on wikipedia. Most of them were already taken down by the authorities, but some of them still exist and others are just there to redirect you to another weird news or advertisement website. Here is an overview of some of those pages:

70 News.

The first thing I want to mention about these websites is that there is not only false or misleading information on there. Most of the stories published are true to some extent, but every once in a while you will find misleading content on there. 70 News, for example, published a false news story, stating that Donald Trump had won the popular vote in the 2016 United States presidential election; the fake story rose to the top in searches for “final election results” on Google News.

Before It’s News.

This site claims to be a people-powered news site, which published news way before the mainstream media does, but a lot of the content is misleading or completely bogus information. Before It’s News and InfoWars were described as “unabashedly unhinged ‘news’ sites” in 2014 by The Washington Post following its promotion of conspiracy theories relating to Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

InfoWars.

So it does not take long to figure out what this site tries to achieve with the way they present their content. InfoWars is an American far-right, conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones. It was founded in 1999, and operates under Free Speech Systems LLC.

Fake Bild.de

https://www.news-bitcoin.club/news/index-code.php?lpkey=16ac17bf975b08a028&uclick=x9ejhqkt&uclickhash=x9ejhqkt-x9ejhqkt-gxfe-0-3z0-u3kt-hoa9-ef5864

The picture shown above is also a real common way of hoax and false news spreaders (this time in germany). It is really hard to distinguish between the real and the fake news site. This is called mimicing, where they take a real trustworthy website and just recreate the design under another domain. Most of the time you will not get this site in a google result. To get there you enter another seemingly normal news site and get redirected to a certain domain. Here is a picture of the real Bild.de website to make it more clear:

Daily Buzz Live.

This website is dedicated to bringing bizarre stories for the sole purpose of getting traffic to its website. They work with PopUps, as you can see in the picture and these kind of sites create mostly bogus stories and claims. To be fair, if you have some experience with the world wide wed, you will not take this website seriously.

Global Research.

Last but not least, this is the most dangerous form of false information websites, because it mimics other fact-checking sites and creates a common disbelieve in every website there is. Wikipedia states: “Principal website of the Centre for Research on Globalization, which The Economist in April 2017 called “a hub for conspiracy theories and fake stories,” and NATO information warfare specialists in November 2017 linked to a concerted effort to undermine the credibility of mainstream Western media.” Despite this information the website is still online and still spreading misleading content through the world wide web.

So these are just a few examples of what is actually out there and everyday I find something new. This is not a new phenomenon, as I already explained in a prior post, but it is a massively growing industry and it is just there to manipulate people. Next up is a comparison of these pages with real fact-checking sites and how there are differences in their design language, usability and so on.

If you want to know more false information spreading sites, here is a link to a list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fake_news_websites

by Carina Steindl - March 20, 2021March 20, 2021

Comparative Analysis of fake and proper Fact-Checking Sites #P1

This is an introduction to fact-checking sites and a clear definition of false information streams.

From politicians to marketers, from advocacy groups to brands — everyone who seeks to convince others has an incentive to distort, exaggerate or obfuscate the facts. This is why fact-checking has grown in relevance and has spread around the world in the recent decade.

According to a paper by Alexios Mantzarlis “MODULE 5 – Fact-checking 101” the type of fact-checking happens not before something is published but after a claim becomes of public relevance. This form of “ex post” fact-checking seeks to make politicians and other public figures accountable for the truthfulness of their statements. Fact-checkers in this line of work seek primary and reputable sources that can confirm or negate claims made to the public.

Alexios Mantzarlis also wrote about two moments, which were particularly significant to the growth of this journalistic practice. A first wave was kick-started by the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, assigned to PolitiFact, a fact-checking project launched just over a year earlier by the St Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) in Florida. PolitiFact’s innovation was to rate claims on a “Truth-O-Meter”, adding a layer of structure and clarity to the fact checks.

The second wave of fact-checking projects emerged following the global surge in so-called ‘fake news’. The term, now co-opted and misused, describes entirely fabricated sensationalist stories that reach enormous audiences by using social media algorithms to their advantage.

This second wave often concentrated as much on fact-checking public claims as debunking these viral hoaxes. Debunking is a subset of fact-checking and requires a specific set of skills that are in common with verification.

The difference between Fact-checking and Verification

In part two an analysis and comparison of cloaked websites, which are sites published by individuals or groups who conceal authorship in order to
disguise deliberately a hidden political agenda, and fact-checking sites will be done. Therefore the websites will be compared on the basis of the following factors:

User Experience (Survey about fact checking websites credibility)
Design Differences (Typography, Images, etc.)
Content (Expertise, Rigour, Transparency, Reliability)
Overall Usability

by Carina Steindl - January 4, 2021January 17, 2021

Labeled Content – A “State of the art” Analysis

Analyzing the state of the art of content labels.

State of the art refers to the highest level of general development at a particular time. In this case we will take a look at currently used design method and interaction process when interacting with misleading information. Some of the examples have already been shown in prior postings in a different context.

Since there are a lot of social platforms around, only the most popular ones will be analyzed. In this statistic you can clearly see which platforms have the most active users.

Find more statistics at Statista

Clearly the market leader is Facebook, which is why it is the first social media platform in this analysis.

Facebook

Facebook is not only the market leader, it is also the biggest platform for misleading content in any forms. As most people already know, Facebook was a part of a major election scandal in the presidential election 2016, but this was not at all unpredictable. Some studies from 2012 showed that Facebook was a powerful, non-neutral force in electoral politics. Back then the “I Voted” button had driven a small but measurable increase in turnout, primarily among young people.

The research showed that a small design change by Facebook could have electoral repercussions, especially with America’s electoral-college format in which a few hotly contested states have a disproportionate impact on the national outcome.

With this knowledge it is even more important to be really careful about design changes on this platform, because the priorly described effect does not only happen on Facebook. It is happening all over the social platforms.

Facebook Content Labeled as False Information

This is an example of an as false information labeled content. Facebook uses a dark or greyish overlay or a blur effect to let you see the picture and also puts some information onto it. This information includes an icon, a clear bold headline with a subtitle and a link, which leads you to an independent fact-checker site or some other article.

The research questionnaire should help understand how people interact with this kind of content, if they really click the link and how it makes them feel. Furthermore it should show how and if the design of information makes a difference on how trustworthy it is and also which key factors need to be in place to make information believable.

Instagram

Instagram uses the same technique as Facebook for labelling content. This may come from the fact that Instagram belongs to Facebook, which is also why I am not going to analyze this any further.

Youtube

What about Youtube? Youtube is the not only one of the largest social media platforms, it is also often used as a search engine. Most people love it because it offers so much, like tutorials or short explanations and you can even watch some movies for free. However, this might not be as great as at it was because of all the commercials. Just remember the “Good old Days”.

Despite the fact that Youtube is a big player, it is often overlooked when it comes to misleading information, but this statistic shows that a great share of the potentially false information which is flowing around about the corona virus actually has its roots on Youtube.

Data analysis: users find questionable information on the coronavirus especially on Youtube and disseminate it via Whatsapp

Not only does this mean that that by far the most frequent source of potentially false information reported to correctiv.org by readers are Youtube videos. It also means that most of them share exactly this false information through other apps like WhatsApp.

So how does Youtube label their content?

YouTube expands its fact checking feature to the UK | Daily Mail Online — Youtube – Labeled Content about Covid-19

Today, Jan 4th 2021, the dailymail.co.uk wrote that YouTube has started displaying fact-check information panels to users in the UK, in an attempt to stop the spread of misinformation on the video platform.

UK users will start seeing the independent, fact-checked information from third-party organisations on the Google-owned platform from Thursday.

Panels will appear above search results, offering ‘more context’ and links to reputable sources of information relating to whatever users are searching for.

Facit

Most platforms use more or less the same technique or process for misleading or false content. Even the design looks similar on all of these platforms. The strategy most of them use looks like this:

Hard Questions: What's Facebook's Strategy for Stopping False News? - About Facebook — Facebook’s Strategy for Stopping False News

Links

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

https://correctiv.org/en/latest-stories/fact-checking/2020/05/18/data-analysis-users-find-questionable-information-on-the-coronavirus-especially-on-youtube-and-disseminate-it-via-whatsapp/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8764835/YouTube-expands-fact-checking-feature-UK.html