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Fake news websites are websites that publish hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation to increase web traffic through sharing on social media. Unlike news satire, where humor is the object, fake news websites seek to increase their traffic by knowingly circulating false stories. Fake news websites have promoted misleading or factually incorrect information concerning the politics of several countries including: Germany, Indonesia and the Philippines, Sweden, China, Myanmar, Italy, France, Brazil, Australia, India, and the United States. Many of the false news sites are hosted in Russia, Macedonia, Romania, and the U.S.

One Pan-European newspaper, The Local, described the proliferation of fake news as a form of psychological warfare. The European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs called attention to the problem in 2016 when it passed a resolution warning that the Russian government was using think tanks, "pseudo-news agencies" and Internet trolls as disinformation propaganda to weaken confidence in Western institutions.

In 2015, the Swedish Security Service, Sweden's national security agency, issued a report concluding Russia was utilizing the tactic to inflame "splits in society" through the proliferation of propaganda. Sweden's Ministry of Defence tasked its Civil Contingencies Agency to combat fake news from Russia. Fraudulent news affected politics in Indonesia and the Philippines, where there was simultaneously widespread usage of social media and limited resources to check the veracity of political claims. German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned of the societal impact of "fake sites, bots, trolls".

Fraudulent articles spread through social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Several officials within the U.S. Intelligence Community said that Russia was engaged in spreading fake news. Computer security company FireEye concluded Russia used social media as cyberwarfare. Google and Facebook banned fake sites from using online advertising. U.S. President Barack Obama said a disregard for facts created a "dust cloud of nonsense". Concern advanced bipartisan legislation in the U.S. Senate to authorize U.S. State Department action against foreign propaganda. U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden said: "There is definitely bipartisan concern about the Russian government engaging in covert influence activities of this nature."

Prominent sources

Prominent among fraudulent news sites include false propaganda created by individuals in the countries of Russia, Macedonia, Romania, and the United States. Several of these websites are often structured to fool visitors that they are actually real publications and mimic the stylistic appearance of ABC News and MSNBC, while other pages are specifically propaganda.

Macedonia

A significant amount of fraudulent news during the 2016 United States election cycle came from adolescent youths in Macedonia profiting from readers believing their fabrications. A BuzzFeed News investigation found over 100 websites spreading fraudulent articles supportive of Donald Trump were created by teenagers in the town of Veles, Macedonia. The Guardian performed its own investigation and reached the same conclusion as BuzzFeed News; tracing over 150 fraudulent sites to the same town.

The teenagers experimented with writing fraudulent news from a left-wing slant about Bernie Sanders; they found fictions about Donald Trump were more popular. One of the teenagers named Alex was interviewed by The Guardian in August 2016 and stated regardless of who won the election, fraudulent news would remain profitable. Alex explained he wrote articles by plagiarism through copy and pasting from other websites.

False stories netted the adolescents a few thousand dollars per day and fake articles aggregate to earn them on average a few thousand per month. Public Radio International reported that after the 2016 election season the teenagers would likely go back to profiting off fraudulent medical advice website, which was where they previously garnered clickbait revenues.

The Associated Press (AP) tracked down an 18-year-old in Veles, Macedonia, and interviewed him about his tactics. The AP and the fake news website operator met together at Gemdidzii Sports Hall in Veles, Macedonia. The teenager used Google Analytics to assess his web traffic and over one week had 650,000 views. He regularly plagiarized stories favorable of Trump from a right-wing site called The Political Insider. He said he did not care about politics, and published fake news as a way to earn money and gain experience in marketing. He said the burden should be on the consumer to check information. The AP used DomainTools to confirm the teenager was behind several fake news websites, and determined there were about 200 websites tracked to Veles, Macedonia that focused on U.S. news. The AP reported the majority of fake news sites were composed of plagiarism. In the locality of Veles with a population of 50,000, the additional income brought in by fake news sites was not objected to by the populace, who said they were happy the youths were working.

Romania

"Ending the Fed", a popular purveyor of fraudulent reports, was run by a 24-year-old named Ovidiu Drobota out of Romania, who boasted to Inc. magazine about being more popular than mainstream media. Established in March 2016, "Ending the Fed" was responsible for a false story in August 2016 that incorrectly stated Fox News had fired journalist Megyn Kelly — the story was briefly prominent on Facebook on its "Trending News" section. "Ending the Fed" held four out of the 10 most popular fake articles on Facebook related to the 2016 U.S. election in the prior three months before the election itself. The Facebook page for the website, called "End the Feed", had 350,000 "likes" in November 2016.

After being contacted by Inc. magazine, Drobota stated he was proud of the impact he had on the 2016 U.S. election in favor of his preferred candidate Donald Trump. According to Alexa Internet, "Ending the Fed" garnered approximately 3.4 million views over a 30-day-period in November 2016. Drobota stated the majority of incoming traffic is from Facebook. He said his normal line of work before starting "Ending the Fed" included web development and search engine optimization.

Russia

Internet Research Agency

Beginning in fall 2014, The New Yorker writer Adrian Chen performed a six-month investigation into Russian propaganda online by a group called the Internet Research Agency. Evgeny Prigozhin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, was behind the operation which hired hundreds of individuals to work in Saint Petersburg.

The group was regarded as a "troll farm", a term used to refer to propaganda efforts controlling many accounts online with the aim of artificially providing a semblance of a grassroots organization. Chen reported that Internet trolling was used by the Russian government as a tactic largely after observing the social media organization of the 2011 protests against Putin. Chen interviewed Russian reporters and activists who said the end goal of fake news by the Russian government was to sew discord and chaos online.

European Union response

In 2015, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe released an analysis critical of disinformation campaigns by Russia employed to appear as news reporting. The propaganda was intended to interfere with Ukraine relations with Europe — after the removal of former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych. According to Deutsche Welle, the propaganda tactics were comparable to those used in the 2016 U.S. elections. The propaganda motivated the European Union to create a taskforce to deal with Russian disinformation.

Foreign Policy reported the taskforce, East StratCom Team, had 11 people including Russian language speakers. They monitored the Internet for fake news and published reports on propaganda tactics used. In November 2016, the EU voted to increase funding for East StratCom Team.

In November 2016, the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution warning of the use by Russia of tools including: "pseudo-news agencies ... social media and internet trolls" as forms of propaganda and disinformation in an attempt to weaken democratic values. The resolution requested analysts within the EU to investigate, explaining member nations were not keen to the issue and needed to be more wary of disinformation and propaganda. The resolution condemned Russian sources for publicizing "absolutely fake" news reports, and the tally on 23 November 2016 passed by a margin of 304 votes to 179.

Counter-Disinformation Team

The International Business Times reported the United States Department of State planned to use a unit formed with the intention of combating disinformation from the Russian government, and that it was disbanded in September 2015 after department heads did not foresee the peril of the propaganda prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. The U.S. State Department had put 8 months of work into developing the counter-disinformation unit before deciding to scrap it.

Titled Counter-Disinformation Team, the program would have been a reboot of the Active Measures Working Group set up by the Reagan Administration which operated under the auspices of the U.S. State Department and United States Information Agency. The Counter-Disinformation Team was set up under the Bureau of International Information Programs. Work began in the Obama Administration on the Counter-Disinformation Team in 2014. The intention was to combat propaganda from Russian sources such as Russia Today. A beta release website was ready to go live and staff members were hired by the U.S. State Department for the Counter-Disinformation Team prior to its cancellation. United States Intelligence Community officials explained to former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer John R. Schindler, that the Obama Administration decided to cancel the Counter-Disinformation Team because they were afraid of antagonizing the Russian government. A representative for the U.S. State Department explained to the International Business Times in a statement after being contacted regarding the closure of the Counter-Disinformation Team that the U.S. was disturbed by disinformation propaganda from Russia, and said the strongest defense was sincere communication.

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel was the point person for the Counter-Disinformation Team before it was canceled. Stengel had previously written publicly for about disinformation by the Russian government and Russia Today. After United States Secretary of State John Kerry called Russia Today: a "propaganda bullhorn" for Vladimir Putin the president of Russia, Russia Today insisted the State Department give an "official response" to Kerry's statement. In response, Stengel wrote that Russia Today engaged in a "disinformation campaign". Stengel spoke out against the spread of fake news, and explained the difference between reporting and propaganda.

Further role in 2016 U.S. presidential election

Adrian Chen observed a strange pattern in December 2015 where pro-Russian accounts monitored became supportive of 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. Andrew Weisburd and Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow and senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University, Clint Watts, wrote for The Daily Beast in August 2016 that fabricated articles from Russian propaganda sources were popularized by social media accounts. Weisburd and Watts documented how a disinformation campaign spread from Russia Today and Sputnik News, "the two biggest Russian state-controlled media organizations publishing in English", to pro-Russian accounts on Twitter. Prior to the election, U.S. national security officials told BuzzFeed News they were more anxious about Russia tampering with U.S. news than hacking the election itself.

Citing research by Adrian Chen, Weisburd and Watts compared the tactics used by Russia during the 2016 U.S. election to Soviet Union Cold War strategies. They referenced the 1992 United States Information Agency report to the United States Congress, which warned about Russian propaganda campaigns called active measures. Weisburd and Watts concluded social media made active measures easier for intelligence agents. Institute of International Relations Prague senior research fellow and scholar on Russian intelligence, Mark Galeotti, agreed the Kremlin operations were a form of active measures. The Guardian reported in November 2016 that the most strident Internet promoters of Trump were not U.S. citizens but paid Russian propagandists. The paper estimated there were several thousand trolls engaged in the offense, and that their primary topics included promoting Trump and Putin.

Weisburd and Watts collaborated with colleague J. M. Berger and published a follow-up to their Daily Beast article in online magazine War on the Rocks, titled: "Trolling for Trump: How Russia is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy". They researched 7,000 social media accounts that promoted Trump over a two-and-a-half year period. Their research detailed techniques of Internet trolls to degrade the reputation of critics of Russian activities in Syria, and to proliferate falsehoods Hillary Clinton's health. Watts explained his colleagues' analysis in War on the Rocks to CNN, and said the Russian propaganda effort targeted the alt-right movement, the traditional right wing, and fascist groups.

BuzzFeed News reported Kermlin financed Internet trolls were open about their authorship and spread of fake news. After each presidential debate, tens of thousands of Twitter bots proliferated hashtags including #Trumpwon to change perceptions. The Federal Bureau of Investigation released a statement to BuzzFeed News stating they were investigating the propaganda. United States Intelligence Community officials told BuzzFeed News they believed the Russian government was engaged in spreading fake news.

The United States Intelligence Community tasked resources debating why Vladimir Putin chose summer 2016 to escalate active measures influencing domestic U.S. politics. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said that after the 2011–13 Russian protests, Putin's confidence in his long term viability as a politician was damaged, and Putin responded with the propaganda operation. Former CIA case officer Patrick Skinner explained the true goal of the propaganda was to spread uncertainty. Investigative analyst at Bellingcat, Aric Toler, explained that fact-checking drew further attention to the fake news.

U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff, Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, commented on Putin's aims, and said the U.S. intelligence agencies were significantly concerned with Russia propaganda in the U.S. Speaking about disinformation that appeared in Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland, Schiff said there was an increase of the same behavior in the U.S. Schiff concluded Russian propaganda intelligence operations would likely continue against the U.S. after the election.

On 24 November 2016, The Washington Post reported that Foreign Policy Research Institute stated Russian propaganda during the election exacerbated criticism of Clinton and support for Trump. The strategy involved social media users, Internet trolls working for hire, botnets, and organized websites in order to cast Clinton in a negative light. Clint Watts stated the goal of Russia was to decrease trust in the U.S. government. Watts additional research along with colleagues Andrew Weisburd and J.M. Berger was published in November 2016. Their conclusions were confirmed by research from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and by the RAND Corporation.

In the same article, The Washington Post reported that the group PropOrNot came to similar conclusions about involvement by Russia in propagating fake news during the 2016 U.S. election. The Washington Post and PropOrNot received criticism from The Intercept, Fortune, Rolling Stone, AlterNet, Adrian Chen at The New Yorker, and in an opinion piece in the paper itself, written by Katrina vanden Heuvel.

Bloomberg News reported computer security company FireEye concluded the Russian government utilized social media as a weapon to influence perspectives regarding the U.S. election. FireEye Chairman David DeWalt told Bloomberg News the intelligence operation by the Russian government in 2016 was a new development in cyberwarfare by Russia. FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia stated the tactics of Russian propaganda cyberwarfare changed significantly after fall 2014, from covert computer hacking to suddenly more overt tactics with decreased concerns for operational security or being revealed to the public as an intelligence operation.

United States

Marco Chacon created fake news site RealTrueNews to show his alt-right friends "how ridiculous" their gullibility was for such websites. Chacon wrote a fake transcript for Clinton's leaked speeches in which Clinton explains bronies to Goldman Sachs bankers. Chacon was shocked when his fake article was reported as factual by Fox News and he heard his fiction on The Kelly File hosted by Megyn Kelly. Trace Gallagher repeated Chacon's fiction when Gallagher falsely reported Clinton had called Bernie Sanders supporters a "bucket of losers" — a phrase made-up by Chacon. Megyn Kelly said she was sorry, in the form of a public retraction, after denials from representatives for Clinton.

After fake stories he wrote were believed and viewed tens of thousands of times, Chacon told Brent Bambury of CBC Radio One program Day 6 that he was so shocked at Internet consumers' ignorance he felt it was like an episode from The Twilight Zone. In an interview with ABC News, Chacon defended his site, saying his was an over-the-top parody of fake news sites to teach them how ridiculous they were. The Daily Beast reported on the popularity of Chacon's fiction being reported as if it were factual and noted pro-Trump message boards and YouTube videos routinely believed his fabrications. In a follow-up piece Chacon wrote as a contributor for The Daily Beast after the 2016 U.S. election, he concluded those most susceptible to fake news were consumers who limited themselves to partisan media outlets.

Jestin Coler from Los Angeles is the founder and CEO of Disinfomedia, a company which owns many fake news websites. He gave interviews to under a pseudonym, Allen Montgomery, in order to evade personal scrutiny. With the help of tech-company engineer John Jansen, journalists from NPR found Coler's identity. Coler explained how his original intent for his project backfired; he wanted to penetrate and expose alt-right echo chambers, and point out their gullibility. He stated his company wrote fraudulent reports for the left-wing; those articles were not shared as much as those from a right-wing point-of-view. Coler told NPR that consumers of information must be more skeptical of content in order to combat fake news.

Paul Horner, a creator of fraudulent news stories, stated in an interview with The Washington Post that he was making approximately US$10,000 a month through advertisements linked to the fraudulent news. He said he posted a fraudulent advertisement to Craigslist offering thousands of dollars in payment to protesters, and wrote a story based on this which was shared online by Trump's campaign manager. Horner believed that when the stories were shown to be false, this would reflect badly on Trump's supporters who had shared them. In retrospect after the election, he said he felt badly his efforts helped the Trump campaign. In a follow-up interview with Rolling Stone, Horner revealed that The Washington Post profile piece on him spurred greatly increased interest with over 60 interview requests from media including ABC News, CBS News, and CBS's Inside Edition. Horner explained his writing style was such that articles appeared legitimate at the top and became increasingly couched in absurdity as the reader progressed. Horner told Rolling Stone he always placed his name as a fictional character in his fake articles. He said he supported efforts to decrease fake news websites.

Impacts by country

Fake news has influenced political discourse in multiple countries, including Germany, Indonesia and the Philippines, Sweden, China, Myanmar, and the United States.

Australia

Australia was plagued with fake stories being shared as if they were truth on Facebook, especially regarding false news about Muslim religious practices in the country. A group prominent on Facebook in the country was focused on getting rid of Halal, the Muslim laws regarding religious dietary restrictions. "Boycott Halal in Australia group" had about 100,000 members on its page on Facebook in 2016. The group publicized a satirical newspaper report in November 2014 and passed it off as truth. Another page, for proponents of Q Society, which refers to itself as "Australia's leading Islam-critical movement", frequently posts baseless fake statements.

Brazil

Brazil faced increasing influence from fake news after the 2014 re-election of President Dilma Rousseff and Rousseff's subsequent impeachment in August 2016. BBC Brazil reported in April 2016 that sixty percent of the most-shared articles on Facebook about the impeachment proceedings against Rousseff were fake. In 2015, reporter Tai Nalon resigned from her position at Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo in order to start the first fact-checking website in Brazil, called Aos Fatos (To The Facts). Nalon told The Guardian there was a great deal of fake news, and hesitated to compare the problem to that experienced in the U.S.

China

Fake news during the 2016 U.S. election spread to China. Articles popularized within the United States were translated into Chinese and spread within China. The government of China used the growing problem of fake news as a rationale for increasing Internet censorship in China in November 2016. China took the opportunity to publish an editorial in its Communist Party newspaper The Global Times called: "Western Media's Crusade Against Facebook", and criticized "unpredictable" political problems posed by freedoms enjoyed by users of Twitter, Google, and Facebook. China government leaders meeting in Wuzhen at the third World Internet Conference in November 2016 said fake news in the U.S. election justified adding more curbs to free and open use of the Internet. China Deputy Minister Ren Xianliang, official at the Cyberspace Administration of China, said increasing online participation led to "harmful information" and fraud. Kam Chow Wong, a former Hong Kong law enforcement official and criminal justice professor at Xavier University, praised attempts in the U.S. to patrol social media. The Wall Street Journal noted China's themes of Internet censorship became more relevant at the World Internet Conference due to the outgrowth of fake news.

France

France saw an uptick in amounts of disinformation and propaganda, primarily in the midst of election cycles. Le Monde fact-checking division "Les décodeurs" was headed by Samuel Laurent, who told The Guardian in December 2016 the upcoming French presidential election campaign in spring 2017 would face problems from fake news. The country faced controversy regarding fake websites providing false information about abortion. The government's lower parliamentary body moved forward with intentions to ban such fake sites. Laurence Rossignol, women's minister for France, informed parliament though the fake sites look neutral, in actuality their intentions were specifically targeted to give women fake information.

Germany

German Chancellor Angela Merkel lamented the problem of fraudulent news reports in a November 2016 speech, days after announcing her campaign for a fourth term as leader of her country. In a speech to the German parliament, Merkel was critical of such fake sites, saying they harmed political discussion. Merkel called attention to the need of government to deal with Internet trolls, bots, and fake news websites. She warned that such fraudulent news websites were a force increasing the power of populist extremism. Merkel called fraudulent news a growing phenomenon that might need to be regulated in the future. Germany's foreign intelligence agency Federal Intelligence Service Chief, Bruno Kahl, warned of the potential for cyberattacks by Russia in the 2017 German election. He said the cyberattacks would take the form of the intentional spread of misinformation. Kahl said the goal is to increase chaos in political debates. Germany's domestic intelligence agency Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution Chief, Hans-Georg Maassen, said sabotage by Russian intelligence was a present threat to German information security.

India

India had over 50 million accounts on the smartphone instant messenger Whatsapp in 2016. The country's prime minister declared in November 2016 there would be a 2,000-rupee currency bill established, and fake news went viral over Whatsapp that the note came equipped with spying technology which tracked bills 120 meters below the earth. India's reserve bank refuted the falsities, but not before they had spread to the country's mainstream news outlets. Prabhakar Kumar of the Indian media research agency CMS, told The Guardian India was harder hit by fake news because the country lacked media policy for verification. Law enforcement officers in India arrested individuals with charges of creating fictitious articles, predominantly if there is was likelihood it inflamed societal conflict. The country warned supervisors of Whatsapp groups may be liable for proliferation of fake news.

Indonesia and Philippines

Fraudulent news has been particularly problematic in Indonesia and the Philippines, where social media has an outsized political influence. According to media analysts, developing countries with new access to social media and democracy felt the fake news problem to a larger extent. In some developing countries, Facebook gives away smartphone data free of charge for Facebook and media sources, but at the same time does not provide the user with Internet access to fact-checking websites.

Italy

Between October 1 and November 30, 2016, ahead of the Italian constitutional referendum, five out of the ten referendum-related stories with most engagements on social media (shares, likes, and comments on Facebook, plus shares on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+) were hoaxes or contained a misleading title. Of the three stories with the most social media engagements, two were fake. Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Renzi met with U.S. President Barack Obama and with leaders of European nations at a meeting in Berlin, Germany in November 2016, and privately spoke with them about the pervasive problem of fake news. Renzi attempted to deal with fake news in advance of the referendum by hosting discussions on Facebook Live in an effort to rebut falsities popularized online.

Pervasiveness of propaganda grew in advance of the constitutional referendum scheduled for 4 December 2016. The influence became so problematic that a senior adviser to Renzi began a defamation complaint on an anonymous Twitter user who had used the screenname "Beatrice di Maio". Cyberwarfare propaganda against Renzi increased before the referendum date, and Italian newspaper La Stampa brought attention to false stories by Russia Today which wrongly asserted that a pro-Renzi rally in Rome was actually an anti-Renzi rally.

The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times reported on the Five Star Movement (M5S), an Italian political party founded by Beppe Grillo, and how the party was said to manage a consortium of fake news websites amplifying support for Russian news sources, propaganda, and inflamed conspiracy theories. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Five Star Movement's site TzeTze had 1.2 million fans on Facebook and it regularly shared fake news articles and pieces supportive of Vladimir Putin primarily cited to Russian government owned news sources including Sputnik News. TzeTze often plagiarized the Russian source, and copied article titles and content directly from Sputnik News for its articles and re-posted them on its site.

BuzzFeed News investigative journalists tracked TzeTze, another site critical of Renzi called La Cosa, and a blog by Beppe Grillo — all to the same technology company called Casaleggio Associati which was started by Five Star Movement co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio. These Five Star Movement controlled sources all cross-posted to each other when they published articles and amplified their reach. Casaleggio's son Davide Casaleggio owns and manages TzeTze and La Cosa, and medical advice website La Fucina which markets anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and medical cure-all methods. BuzzFeed News reporting discovered the Grillo blog, Five Star Movement sites, and the all the fake news sites operated by the party use the same IP adresses, Google Analytics and Google Adsense accounts. A former Google Adsense staff member analyzed the investigation by BuzzFeed News and compared the network of fake news sites run by the Five Star Movement party to the Donald Trump supportive fake news sites BuzzFeed News had previously investigated and found to be run out of one town in Macedonia. The official stated the top members of the Five Star Movement party profited from fake news sites, and said it would be as if Trump himself managed the fake news originating from Veles, Macedonia.

In October 2016, the Five Star Movement disseminated a video from Kremlin-aligned Russia Today which falsely reported displaying thousands of individuals protesting the 4 December 2016 scheduled referendum in Italy — when in fact the video that went on to 1.5 million views was actually showing people who supported the referendum itself and were not opposed to it. According to BuzzFeed News, the fake news sites run by Five Star Movement profit financially from the spread of such disinformation. President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, stated: "Fake news is a critical issue and we can’t ignore it. We have to act now." Boldrini met on 30 November 2016 with vice president of public policy in Europe for Facebook Richard Allan to voice her concerns about the spread of fake news. She said Facebook needed to admit they functioned for all intents and purposes as a media company.

Myanmar

Fake news negatively affected individuals in Myanmar, leading to a rise in violence against Muslims in the country. Online participation within the country surged from a value of one percent to 20 percent of Myanmar's total populace from the period of time of 2014 to 2016. Fake stories from Facebook were reprinted in paper periodicals called Facebook and The Internet that regurgitated the website's newsfeed text without oversight. False reporting related to practitioners of Islam in the country was directly correlated with increased attacks on people of the religion in Myanmar, and protests against Muslims. BuzzFeed News journalist Sheera Frenkel reported fake news fictitiously stated believers in Islam acted out in violence at Buddhist locations. She documented a direct relationship between the fake news and violence against Muslim people. Frenkel noted countries that were relatively newer to Internet exposure were more susceptible to the problem, writing people in those countries were especially vulnerable to fake news, computer hacking, and fraud.

Sweden

The Swedish Security Service issued a report in 2015 identifying propaganda from Russia infiltrating Sweden with the objective to amplify pro-Russian propaganda and inflame societal conflicts. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), part of the Ministry of Defence of Sweden, identified fake news reports targeting Sweden in 2016 which originated from Russia. Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency official Mikael Tofvesson stated a pattern emerged where views critical of Sweden were constantly repeated. The Local identified these tactics as a form of psychological warfare. The newspaper reported the MSB identified Russia Today and Sputnik News as significant fake news purveyors. As a result of growth in this propaganda in Sweden, the MSB planned to hire six additional security officials to fight back against the campaign of fraudulent information.

United States

2016 election cycle

Fraudulent stories during the 2016 U.S. presidential election popularized on Facebook included a viral post that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump, and another that actor Denzel Washington "backs Trump in the most epic way possible". Donald Trump's son and campaign surrogate Eric Trump, top national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, and then-campaign managers Kellyanne Conway and Corey Lewandowski shared fake news stories during the campaign.

One prominent fraudulent news story released after the election—that protesters at anti-Trump rallies in Austin, Texas, were "bused in"—started as a tweet by one individual with 40 Twitter followers. Over the next three days, the tweet was shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and 350,000 times on Facebook, and promoted in the conservative blogosphere, before the individual stated that he had fabricated his assertions.

U.S. President Barack Obama commented on the significant problem of fraudulent information on social networks impacting elections, in a speech the day before Election Day in 2016, saying lies repeated on social media created a "dust cloud of nonsense." Shortly after the election, Obama again commented on the problem, saying in an appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel: "if we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems."

Motivation for legislation

Worries that fake news spread by the Russian government swayed the outcome of the election grew, and representatives in the U.S. Congress took action to safeguard the National security of the United States by advancing legislation to monitor incoming propaganda from external threats. On 30 November 2016, legislators approved a measure within the National Defense Authorization Act to ask the U.S. State Department to take action against foreign propaganda through an interagency panel. The legislation authorized funding of $160 million over a two-year-period. The initiative was developed through a bipartisan bill, the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, written in March 2016 by U.S. Senators Chris Murphy and Rob Portman. Portman urged more U.S. government action to counter disinformation and propaganda. Murphy said that after the election it was apparent the U.S. needed additional tactics to fight Russian disinformation. United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence member Senator Ron Wyden told The Washington Post: "There is definitely bipartisan concern about the Russian government engaging in covert influence activities of this nature."

Members of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence traveled to Ukraine and Poland in March 2016 and heard from officials in both countries on Russian operations to influence their affairs. U.S. Senator Angus King told the Portland Press Herald that tactics used by Russia during the 2016 U.S. election cycle were analogous to those used against other countries as well. King recalled the legislators were informed by officials from both Ukraine and Poland about the Russian tactics of "planting fake news stories" during elections. On 30 November 2016, King joined a letter in which seven members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked President Obama to publicize more information from the intelligence community on Russia's role in the U.S. election. In an interview with CNN, Senator King warned against ignoring the problem, saying it was a bipartisan issue of concern.

False conspiracy theories and 2016 attack

In early November 2016, several fake news websites and online forums falsely implicated the restaurant Comet Ping Pong and various Democratic Party figures as part of a supposed child trafficking ring, which was dubbed "Pizzagate" on Internet forums. The rumor was debunked by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, fact-checking website Snopes.com and The New York Times, among others. However, the restaurant's owners and staff were harassed, threatened on social media websites, and given negative Yelp reviews. After continued threats, Comet Ping Pong increased the security for concerts held inside its premises.

On 4 December 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina, walked into the restaurant with a semi-automatic rifle, and fired one or more shots inside the building before being arrested; no one was injured. In addition to the AR-15 style rifle, police seized a Colt .38 caliber handgun, a shotgun, and a folding knife from Welch's car and person. Welch told police that he planned to "self-investigate" the conspiracy theory, and was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, carrying a pistol without a license, unlawful discharge of a firearm, and carrying a rifle or shotgun outside the home or business. After the incident, future National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn and his son were criticized by many reporters for spreading the rumors.

Response

Google CEO comment and actions

In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Google and Facebook, faced scrutiny regarding the impact of fake news websites. The top result on Google for results of the race was to a fraudulent news site. "70 News" had fraudulently written an incorrect headline and article that Trump won the popular vote against Clinton. With regards to the false results posted on "70 News", Google later stated that its prominence in search results was a mistake. By Monday, November 14, the "70 News" result was the second link that people saw when searching for results of the race.

When asked shortly after the election whether fraudulent news sites could have changed the election's results, Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded: "Sure" and went on to emphasize the importance of stopping the spread of fraudulent news sites. On 14 November 2016, Google responded to the growing problem of fraudulent news sites by banning such companies from profiting on advertising from traffic to false articles through its marketing program AdSense. The company already had a policy for denying ads for dieting ripoffs and counterfeit merchandise. Google stated upon the announcement they would work to ban advertisements from sources that lie about their purpose, content, or publisher. This built upon an existing policy, wherein misleading advertising was already banned from Google AdSense. The ban is not expected to apply to news satire sites like The Onion; some satirical sites may be inadvertently blocked under this new system.

Facebook deliberations

Blocking fraudulent advertisers

One day after Google first took action, Facebook made the decision to take a similar move to Google, and blocked fake news sites from advertising on its website. Facebook explained its new policy, saying they would ban advertisements from sites with deceptive content including fake news, and review publishers for compliance. The steps by both Google and Facebook intended to deny ad revenue to fraudulent news sites; neither company took actions to prevent dissemination of false stories in search engine results pages or web feeds.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, in a post to his website on the issue, that the notion that fraudulent news sites impacted the 2016 election was a "crazy idea". Zuckerberg rejected that his website played any role in the outcome of the election, describing the idea that it might have done so as "pretty crazy". In a blog post, he stated that more than 99% of content on Facebook was authentic (i.e. neither fake news nor a hoax). In the same blog post, he stated that Facebook was not a news media company as that was not the site's primary purpose. Separately, Zuckerberg advised Facebook users to check the fact-checking website Snopes.com whenever they encounter fake news on Facebook.

Top staff members at Facebook did not feel that simply blocking ad revenue from these fraudulent sites was a strong enough response to the problem, and together they made an executive decision and created a secret group to deal with the issue themselves. In response to Zuckerberg's first statement that fraudulent news did not impact the 2016 election, the secret Facebook response group disputed this notion, saying fake news was rampant on their website during the election cycle. BuzzFeed reported that the secret task force included dozens of Facebook employees.

Response

Facebook faced mounting criticism in the days after its decision to solely revoke advertising revenues from fraudulent news providers, and not take any further actions on the matter. After one week of negative media coverage including assertions that the proliferation of fraudulent news on Facebook gave the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Trump, Zuckerberg posted a second time on the issue on 18 November 2016. The post was a reversal of his earlier comments on the matter where he had discounted the impact of fraudulent news.

Zuckerberg said there was an inherent difficult nature in attempting to filter out fraudulent news because he wanted to keep open communication on his site. The New York Times reported some measures being considered and not yet implemented by Facebook included ability for users to tag questionable material, automated checking tools, and third-party confirmation of news content. The 18 November post did not announce any concrete actions the company would definitively take, or when such measures would formally be put into usage on the website.

Many people commented positively under Zuckerberg's second post on fraudulent news. National Public Radio observed the changes being considered by Facebook to identify fraud constituted progress for the company into a new media entity. On 19 November 2016, BuzzFeed advised Facebook users they could report posts from fraudulent news websites. Users could do so by choosing the report option: "I think it shouldn't be on Facebook", followed by: "It's a false news story." In November 2016, Facebook began assessing use of warning labels on fake news. The rollout was at first only available to a few users in a testing phase. A sample warning read: "This website is not a reliable news source. Reason: Classification Pending". TechCrunch analyzed the new feature during the testing phase and surmised it may have a tendency towards false positives.

Impact

Fake news proliferation on Facebook had a negative financial impact for the company. The Economist reported revenues could decrease by two percentage points due to the concern over fake news and loss of advertising dollars.

The New York Times reported shortly after Mark Zuckerberg's second statement on fake news proliferation on his website, that Facebook would engage in assisting the government of China with a version of its software in the country to allow increased censorship by the government. Barron's newspaper contributor William Pesek was highly critical of this move, writing by porting its fake news conundrum to China, Facebook would become a tool in that country's president Xi Jinping's efforts to increase censorship.

Fact-checking websites and journalists

Fact-checking websites play a role as debunkers to fraudulent news reports. Such sites saw large increases in readership and web traffic during the 2016 U.S. election cycle. FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, Snopes.com, and "The Fact Checker" section of The Washington Post, are prominent fact-checking websites that played an important role in debunking fraud. The New Yorker writer Nicholas Lemann wrote on how to address fake news, and called for increasing the roles of FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and Snopes.com, in the age of post-truth politics. CNN media analyst Brian Stelter wrote: "In journalism circles, 2016 is the year of the fact-checker."

By the close of the 2016 U.S. election season, fact-checking websites FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and Snopes.com, had each authored guides on how to respond to fraudulent news. FactCheck.org advised readers to check the source, author, date, and headline of publications. They recommended their colleagues Snopes.com, The Washington Post Fact Checker, and PolitiFact.com as important resources to rely upon before re-sharing a fraudulent story. FactCheck.org admonished consumers to be wary of their own biases when viewing media they agree with. PolitiFact.com announced they would tag stories as "Fake news" so that readers could view all fraudulent stories they had debunked. Snopes.com warned readers social media could be used as a harmful tool for people to profit from fraud.

The Washington Post's "The Fact Checker" section, greatly increased in popularity during the 2016 election cycle. Glenn Kessler, who runs the Post's "Fact Checker", wrote that all fact-checking sites garnered increased visitors during the 2016 election cycle. Unique visitors to The Fact Checker increased from the 2012 election by a factor of five. Kessler cited research showing that fact-checks are effective at reducing falsely held views. Will Moy, director of the London-based Full Fact, a UK fact-checking website, said that debunking must take place over a sustained period of time to truly be effective. Full Fact began work to develop multiple products in a partnership with Google to help automate fact-checking.

FactCheck.org former director Brooks Jackson remarked that larger media companies had devoted increased focus to the importance of debunking fraud during the 2016 election. FactCheck.org began a new partnership with CNN journalist Jake Tapper in 2016 to examine the veracity of reported claims by candidates. Angie Drobnic Holan, editor of PolitiFact.com, noted the circumstances warranted support for the practice among major news media sources. Holan was heartened that fact-checking garnered increased viewership for those engaged in the practice. Holan cautioned that heads of media companies must strongly support the practice of debunking, as it often provokes hate mail and extreme responses from zealots.

Society of Professional Journalists president Lynn Walsh said in November 2016 that the society would reach out to Facebook in order to provide assistance with weeding out fake news. Walsh said Facebook should evolve and admit that it functioned as a large media company. On 17 November 2016, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) published an open letter on the website of the Poynter Institute to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, imploring him to utilize fact-checkers in order to help identify fraud on Facebook. Created in September 2015, the IFCN is housed within the St. Petersburg, Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies and aims to support the work of 64 member fact-checking organizations around the world. Alexios Mantzarlis, co-founder of FactCheckEU.org and former managing editor of Italian fact-checking site Pagella Politica, was named director and editor of IFCN in September 2015. Signatories to the 2016 letter to Zuckerberg featured a global representation of fact-checking groups, including: Africa Check, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and The Washington Post Fact Checker. The groups wrote they were eager to assist Facebook root out fraudulent news sources on the website.

In his second post on the matter on 18 November 2016, Zuckerberg responded to the fraudulent news problem by suggesting usage of fact-checking websites. He specifically identified fact-checking website Snopes.com, and pointed out that Facebook monitors links to such debunking websites in reply comments as a method to determine which original posts were fraudulent. Zuckerberg explained Facebook gathers data from users who report fake content, and from individuals who post links to Snopes.com in order to debunk fraud.

Proposed technology tools

New York magazine contributor Brian Feldman responded to an article by media communications professor Melissa Zimdars, and used her list to create a Google Chrome extension that would warn users about fraudulent news sites. He invited others to use his code and improve upon it.

Upworthy co-founder and The Filter Bubble author Eli Pariser launched an open-source model initiative on 17 November 2016 to address false news. Pariser began a Google Document to collaborate with others online on how to lessen the phenomenon of fraudulent news. Pariser called his initiative: "Design Solutions for Fake News". Pariser's document included recommendations for a ratings organization analogous to the Better Business Bureau, and a database on media producers in a format like Misplaced Pages. Writing for Fortune, Matthew Ingram agreed with the idea that Misplaced Pages could serve as a helpful model to improve Facebook's analysis of potentially fake news. Ingram concluded Facebook could benefit from a social network form of fact-checking similar to Misplaced Pages's methods while incorporating debunking websites such as PolitiFact.com.

Academic analysis

Writing for MIT Technology Review, Jamie Condliffe said that merely banning ad revenue from the fraudulent news sites was not enough action by Facebook to effectively deal with the problem. He wrote the banning of advertisements did not affect fraud appearing in Facebook news feeds. Condliffe concluded Facebook needed to do more to address the issue on top of its advertising ban on fraudsters. Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan has criticized Facebook for not doing enough to reduce amplification of fake news.

Indiana University informatics and computer science professor Filippo Menczer commented on the steps by Google and Facebook to deny fraudulent news sites advertising revenue, saying it was a good step to reduce motivation for fraudsters. Menczer's research team engaged in developing an online tool titled: Hoaxy — to see the pervasiveness of unconfirmed assertions as well as related debunking on the Internet.

Zeynep Tufekci wrote critically about Facebook's stance on fraudulent news sites in a piece for The New York Times, pointing out fraudulent websites in Macedonia profited handsomely off false stories about the 2016 U.S. election. Tufecki wrote that Facebook's algorithms, and structure exacerbated the impact of echo chambers and increased fake news blight.

Merrimack College assistant professor of media studies Melissa Zimdars wrote an article "False, Misleading, Clickbait-y and Satirical 'News' Sources" in which she advised how to determine if a fraudulent source was a fake news site. Zimdars identified strange domain names, lack of author attribution, poor website layout, the use of all caps, and URLs ending in "lo" or "com.co" as red flags of a fake news site. In evaluating whether a website contains fake news, Zimdars recommends that readers check the "About Us" page of the website, and consider whether reputable news outlets are reporting on the story.

Education and history professor Sam Wineburg of the Stanford Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and colleague Sarah McGrew authored a 2016 study which analyzed students' ability to discern fraudulent news from factual reporting. The study took place over a year-long period of time, and involved a sample size of over 7,800 responses from university, secondary and middle school students in 12 states within the United States. The researchers were surprised at the disappointing constancy with which students thought fraudulent news reports were factual in nature. The study found that 82 percent of students in middle school were unable to differentiate between an advertisement denoted as sponsored content from an actual online news article. The authors concluded the solution was to educate consumers of media on the Internet to themselves behave like fact-checkers — and actively question the veracity of all sources they encounter online.

Scientist Emily Willingham proposed applying the scientific method towards fake news analysis. She had previously written on the topic of differentiating science from pseudoscience, and applied that logic to fake news. Her recommended steps included: Observe, Question, Hypothesize, Analyze data, Draw conclusion, and Act on results. Willingham suggested a hypothesis of "This is real news", and then forming a strong set of questions to attempt to disprove the hypothesis. These tests included: check the URL, date of the article, evaluate reader bias and writer bias, double-check the evidence, and verify the sources cited.

Media commentary

Full Frontal

Full Frontal television host Samantha Bee traveled to Russia and met with Kremlin-financed Internet trolls paid to manipulate the 2016 U.S. election in order to subvert democracy. The man and woman interviewed by Bee said they influenced the election by commenting on websites for New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Twitter, and Facebook. They kept their names covert, and maintained cover identities, with the woman claiming to be a housewife residing in Nebraska. They blamed consumers for believing all they read online.

Executive producers said they relied on writer Adrian Chen, who had previously reported on Russian trolls for The New York Times Magazine in 2015, as a resource to contact Russians agreeable to be interviewed. The Russian trolls wore masks and asked Full Frontal to maintain the confidentiality of their fake accounts so they would not be identified. In order to verify they could manipuate content online, Full Frontal producers paid the Russian trolls to utilize the Twitter hashtag #SleazySam to troll the show itself. After research in Russia for a second segment, the production staff concluded Vladimir Putin supported Trump for U.S. President in order to introduce chaos into the U.S. democratic system. Producer Razan Ghalayini explained that as an authoritarian country Russia did not benefit from democracy being held up as the highest form of government. Staffer Miles Kahn concurred with this analysis, adding Putin likely supported Trump, but over and above that his long term goal was to induce disruption.

Last Week Tonight

John Oliver commented on his comedy program Last Week Tonight, in one of his segments about Donald Trump, that the problem of fraudulent news sites fed into a wider issue of echo chambers in the media. Oliver lamented fraudulently created information was shared online to a fearful level. He pointed out such sites often only exist to draw in profit from web traffic, and called fake news a cottage industry devoted to clickbait.

Other media

Gleb Pavlovsky, who assisted in creating a propaganda program for the Russian government prior to 2008, told The New York Times in August 2016 that the Kremlin saw international relations as special operations. Pavlovsky said he was certain there were many groups tied to the Russian government active in fabricating fake news. Peter Kreko of the Hungary-based Political Capital Institute spoke to International Business Times about his work studying the disinformation initiatives by the Russian government, and said the Obama Administration did not devote enough efforts to combating the propaganda campaign against the U.S. He said U.S. government officials were frustrated at the lack of action against Russian government information warfare.

Anders Lindberg, a Swedish attorney and reporter, explained a common pattern of fake news distribution. He said "The dynamic is always the same: It originates somewhere in Russia, on Russia state media sites, or different websites or somewhere in that kind of context." After this, Lindberg observed the fake news becomes fodder for reporting by far-right or far-left websites, and are shared from there. He pointed out the danger is that such fabricated news becomes prominent issues in actual security policy choices by governments. Deutsche Welle noted fake news was a significant threat to democratic societies in the U.S., Europe, and nations worldwide. U.S. News & World Report warned readers to be wary of popular fraudulent news sites composed of either outright hoaxes or propaganda, and recommended the website Fake News Watch for a listing of such problematic sources.

Critics contended that fraudulent news on Facebook may have been responsible for Donald Trump winning the 2016 U.S. presidential election, because most of the fake news stories Facebook allowed to spread portrayed him in a positive light. Facebook is not liable for posting or publicizing fake content because, under the Communications Decency Act, interactive computer services cannot be held responsible for information provided by another Internet entity. Some legal scholars, like Keith Altman, think that Facebook's huge scale creates such a large potential for fake news to spread that this law may need to be changed. Writing for The Washington Post, Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe co-director Eric Chenoweth wrote that evidence suggested a great deal of fake news articles were fabricated by Russian intelligence agents.

BuzzFeed News called the problem an epidemic. According to BuzzFeed's analysis, during the 2016 U.S. elections the 20 top-performing election news stories from fraudulent sites generated more shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook than the 20 top-performing stories from 19 major news outlets. Fox News host of the journalism meta analysis television program Media Buzz, Howard Kurtz, acknowledged fraudulent news was a serious problem. Kurtz relied heavily upon BuzzFeed News research for his reporting on the controversy. Kurtz wrote that Facebook contaminated the news with junk sources. Citing the BuzzFeed investigation, Kurtz pointed out factual news reporting drew less comments, reactions, and shares, than fabricated falsehoods. Kurtz concluded Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg must admit the website is a media company, and get rid of charlatans, or face harm to the company's reputation.

Slate magazine senior technology editor Will Oremus wrote that fraudulent news sites were controversial; and their prevalence was obscuring a wider discussion about the negative impact on society from those who only consume media from one particular tailored viewpoint — and therefore perpetuate filter bubbles. British BBC News interviewed a fraudulent news site writer who went by the pseudonym "Chief Reporter (CR)", who defended his actions and possible influence on elections. CR said increased gullibility of an electorate to believe anything they read online yields itself to increased power of fake news. He said consumers should be ready to face the impact of such gullibility.

Ari Shapiro on the National Public Radio program All Things Considered interviewed Washington Post journalist Craig Timberg, who explained there was a massive amount of botnets and financed Internet trolls to increase the spread of fake news online. Timberg said thousands of Russian social media accounts functioned as a "massive online chorus". Timberg stated Russia had a vested interest in the 2016 U.S. election due to a dislike for Hillary Clinton over the 2011–13 Russian protests.

See also

• 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak
• Post-truth politics
• Clickbait
• Confirmation bias
• Cyberwarfare by Russia
• Democratic National Committee cyber attacks
• Disinformation
• Echo chamber (media)
• Fancy Bear
• Filter bubble
• Guccifer 2.0
• Hybrid warfare
• List of satirical news websites
• Russian espionage in the United States
• Russian propaganda
• Selective exposure theory
• Spiral of silence
• State-sponsored Internet propaganda
• Tribe (Internet)
• Trolls from Olgino
• Web brigades

Footnotes

1. Fortune magazine described the Foreign Policy Research Institute as: "a conservative think tank known for its generally hawkish stance on relations between the U.S. and Russia"
2. The Washington Post and the Associated Press described PropOrNot as a nonpartisan foreign policy analysis group composed of persons with prior experience in international relations, warfare, and information technology sectors. Their spokeman, interviewed by Adrian Chen of the The New Yorker said they were composed of government officials and tech company employees who were against Russian propaganda towards the U.S.
3. FactCheck.org, a nonprofit organization and a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, won a 2010 Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
4. PolitiFact.com, run by the Tampa Bay Times, received a 2009 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for its fact-checking efforts the previous year.
5. Snopes.com, privately run by Barbara and David Mikkelson, was given "high praise" by FactCheck.org, another fact-checking website; in addition, Network World gave Snopes.com a grade of "A" in a meta-analysis of fact-checking websites.
6. "The Fact Checker" is a project by The Washington Post to analyze political claims. Their colleagues and competitors at FactCheck.org recommended The Fact Checker as a resource to use before assuming a story is factual.

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Further reading

• Jamie Condliffe (15 November 2016), "Facebook's Fake-News Ad Ban Is Not Enough", MIT Technology Review, retrieved 16 November 2016
• Cassandra Jaramillo (15 November 2016), "How to break it to your friends and family that they're sharing fake news", The Dallas Morning News, retrieved 16 November 2016
• Craig Silverman and Lawrence Alexander (3 November 2016), "How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News", BuzzFeed, retrieved 16 November 2016
• Ishmael N. Daro and Craig Silverman (15 November 2016), "Fake News Sites Are Not Terribly Worried About Google Kicking Them Off AdSense", BuzzFeed, retrieved 16 November 2016
• Craig Silverman (16 November 2016), "Viral Fake Election News Outperformed Real News On Facebook In Final Months Of The US Election", BuzzFeed, retrieved 16 November 2016
• Taylor, Adam (26 November 2016), "Before 'fake news,' there was Soviet 'disinformation'", The Washington Post, retrieved 3 December 2016

External links

• Kim LaCapria (2 November 2016), "Snopes' Field Guide to Fake News Sites and Hoax Purveyors", Snopes.com, snopes.com, retrieved 16 November 2016
• Rachel Dicker (14 November 2016), "Avoid These Fake News Sites at All Costs", U.S. News & World Report, retrieved 16 November 2016
• Lori Robertson and Eugene Kiely (18 November 2016), "How to Spot Fake News", FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, retrieved 19 November 2016
• Jared Keller (19 November 2016), "This Critique of Fake Election News Is a Must-Read for All Democracy Lovers", Mother Jones, retrieved 19 November 2016
• Lance Ulanoff (18 November 2016), "7 signs the news you're sharing is fake", Mashable, retrieved 19 November 2016
• Laura Hautala (19 November 2016), "How to avoid getting conned by fake news sites - Here's how you can identify and avoid sites that just want to serve up ads next to outright falsehoods.", CNET, retrieved 19 November 2016
• Sreenivasan, Hari (17 November 2016), "How online hoaxes and fake news played a role in the election", PBS NewsHour (video), retrieved 29 November 2016

• Consumer fraud
• Criticism of journalism
• Deception
• Disinformation operations
• Fake news
• Internet fraud
• Internet hoaxes
• Internet manipulation and propaganda
• Journalistic hoaxes
• News media manipulation
• Propaganda in Russia
• Propaganda techniques
• Propaganda in the United States
• Propaganda websites