Contents of Fake News on Social Media: Confrontation Means and Methods of Verification; A Field/Analytic Study

Abstract

paper studies the contents of the fake news shared by the social media users. Fake pieces of news are not the creation of this time. They have existed since the appearance of the communication media like journalism, television and radio. Those traditional media, however, sought not to circulate any false news that might affect their credibility, and hence their relationship to the masses. After the technological development that took place in the fields of information and communication, and then the emergence of the Internet, false pieces of news have started to spread more rapidly and widely than before due to the modern technological development in communicating and sharing information. The receiver has started to play the role of the journalist in communicating the events and what takes place around him. He has started to share and circulate the news on the social media for personal objectives or due to being backed by a specific body to affect the public opinion. The paper is a descriptive study. A survey is used in the field and analytical studies. In the two studies, the researcher tries to identify the most important contents formed in the fake news that are shared on the social media and identify the characteristics of these pieces of news for the users. The researcher also attempts to find the means to face the fake news and how to verify its credibility. She has arrived at several conclusions, the most important of which is that most of the contents shared by the users of the social media, which have been revealed in both the analysed sites, are political, security, and then varied contents, such as natural disasters, modern technologies, historical events, entertainment and satire..As for the sites that contribute in sharing and circulating the news, Facebook, in spite of being the most important source of news for the sample, was the most prominent social medium where fake pieces of news were shared and circulated.