Prevalence of Fake News in Relation to the Responsible Netizenship of University of Luzon Criminology Students

Abstract

Fake News is used to deceive people. It is an act of spreading misinformation or wrong information intentionally to misguide others to gain financial returns or political gains. For them to become law enforcers in the future, the researcher was interested in how responsible criminology students are as netizens in today’s cyberspace in terms of their capacity to spot fake news and strategies to stop it from spreading. The researcher applied the Media Dependency Theory introduced by the American communication researcher Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin Defleur, it is a systematic approach to the study of the effects of mass media on audiences and of the interaction between media, audiences, and social systems. For the data collection instrument, the researcher used a dichotomous formula or simply the percentage scale to interpret the results of the answers to the given questionnaire by 288 respondents who are all criminology students. The study is premised on the conjecture of the following: 1. Fake news is prevalent online; 2. The responsibility and awareness of UL criminology students in terms of netiquettes, political manipulation, and bias in story selection; 3. Internet etiquettes (netiquettes) of UL criminology students; 4. The significant relationship between responsible citizenship and the prevalence of fake news. 5. Measures to lessen the spread of fake news