30 News Articles with Over 3B Impressions. Here’s What we Found.
FightHoax’s algorithm analysed 30 news articles that people requested on the Facebook Group of the Fact-Checking Website, Snopes, during the weekend of February 24th and 25th. We offer an in-depth look at the case.
These articles have been shared more than 2,651,529 on social networks and generated an approximate number of 3,446,987,700 impressions.
— As of February 26th.
The results, overall, are a bit alarming.
Before we dive into the data and its meaning, it is important to understand a crucial point of the FightHoax algorithm.
FightHoax takes the various elements that make up a story, such as who is behind the news piece, the history of the publication, the language used and the different perspectives of the topic into consideration, in order to create a consistent overall view, as a result. The algorithm follows a similar pattern to what would you do as a person, as in, cross-and-fact-check what you’re reading, in the most objective manner possible.
Out of the 30 articles analysed, FightHoax’s algorithm discovered 10 potential fake news pieces and 6 articles that the readers need to proceed with caution.
Here’s a quick list of these pieces:
Potential Fake News
- Pfizer Vice President Blows Whistle On Gardasil: “The Vaccine Is Deadly”
- Proposed Law Will Jail Passengers for 4 Months for Riding in a Car Without an ID
- Facebook, YouTube Removing Any And All Posts About Witness David Hogg And Emma Gonzalez
- Elon Musk on verge of new AI rifle modification
- PARENTS CATCH FBI IN PLOT TO FORCE MENTALLY ILL SON TO BE A RIGHT WING TERRORIST
- The noodles that are linked to chronic inflammation, weight gain, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
- Donald Trump Ends School Shootings By Banning Schools
- Antifa Disrupts LGBT Parade; Claims Gay People Are Offensive To Muslims
- Black Lives Matter Leader Kept ‘Virtually All’ Donations
- Sweden has legalized child marriages For Muslim refugees who come from countries where Sharia was the law of the land
Proceed With Caution
- ROTC Student Reveals Who At CNN Allegedly Censored Him For Town Hall Event
- The NRA donated $10,000 to help train the Parkland shooting suspect to use a rifle
- The far-right smear campaign against students who survived the Parkland massacre
- Trump’s Older Sister Worries About Him: ‘Donnie’s Acting Like A Nutjob’
- Trump supporter, 76, blames ‘fake news’ CNN for threats following reporter ambush
- CNN Says Cruz Dodged Interview, Then He Posts Damning Picture that Shuts Them Up
In this analysis, we attempt to break down 6 major aspects of our findings. These key points represent the backbone of any news piece or article of public information, as they offer a key insight into what makes a story, a story.
Let’s take a look at these aspects, point by point:
1) The Author
Understanding who wrote the piece you are reading is a crucial first step towards creating an overall objective view of the information. Authors with a more consistent digital footprint are generally more reliable due to their expertise and extensive coverage of specific subjects, whereas authors with no digital information create a “hole” in our objective analysis.
FightHoax’s algorithm matches available digital data in a matrix correlated with the topic covered and its content.
Thus, it is noted that the majority of our 30 articles, have unknown authors. Τhis is a result of either a lack of a digital footprint or the publication copied the article without sharing the original author.
Absence of author information, more often than not, creates a vacuum effect on the correlation matrix due to the content being directly affected by the person composing it and, thus, being unable to consider the human-effect.
In plain terms, 7 out of 10 authors, you just don’t know who they are.
2) The Bias
The next aspect to consider is the bias of both the publication and the author who wrote the news piece you are consuming. This is closely attributed to the human nature and its group or individual perspectives that make up a group view, rather than focusing on the subjective side of the bias.
“Perception falls under the scope of opinion.”
Journalism is hitherto an objective study and application of knowledge. It is necessary however to consider the psychological aspect of how people and organisations composed of people, perceive and understand news, as perception falls under the scope of individual and/or group opinions.
FightHoax categorises publications on the classic political spectrum established since the French revolution by correlating data with the topic you are exploring and its overall history, ultimately assigning either “Left”, “Center Left”, “Center”, “Center Right” or “Right”.
It is rather important to emphasise that the application of the political spectrum to the article’s publication is based on a perception bias rather than the political and practical aspect of the axis, as observed in political groups.
Almost half of the sources of our 30 articles have an unclear or altogether missing perception bias from their digital information. This could be attributed to either the publication website being new or it offering a mixed perception bias on the content it produces.
Simply put, you can’t tell the perception bias of 5 out of 10 of the sources.
3) The Emotions
A natural continuation of the human and psychological aspect of both the publication and author’s biases are the emotions circulating either the topic, the words highlighted and / or the source. This adjoining aspect of the analysis concerns the overall sentiment observed in the digital sphere, which might include parts, the whole or none of the affecting pillars.
We need to regard the marketing side of a story, as journalism is widely formed as a for-profit activity, either for the individual and / or the organisation. This is where click-baiting originates, as it adheres directly to your emotions as a reader — the stronger the emotion, the higher the impression. As a result, emotions add weight to the perception bias.
FightHoax’s algorithm tactically considers the content of the news article or piece of public information by contrasting the data with itself and observing its behaviour in various parts of the digital sphere, all through the scope of the sentiment.
We can note that the majority of the 30 articles pertain to a strong emotional pulse, by attesting to a hot or controversial topic and / or by expressing it with corresponding language and content.
Potentially damaging false or cautious content tends to exploit this aspect to a greater degree, directing the public sentiment away from the factual side of the news piece, most commonly observed, to generate more impressions.
The stronger you feel about something, the more you consume time and content on it and the easier you click and believe.
4) The Facts
When it comes to the facts, there are two correlating aspects that we need to consider: the source itself and the content we’re reading. It is important to decipher the facts presented to us by understanding more about where we are reading and what we are reading.
FightHoax performs a rather elaborate and complex process, producing an overall factual reporting by weighing both the source’s history and the actual content of the news piece with factual data available online.
Much like the perception bias, factual history of the majority of the sources of the 30 articles appears to be incoherent or missing entirely.
The same pattern is observed on the topic coverage, as either the content is not satisfactory in length or does not offer the necessary data and facts when compared with the topic covered and the correlation matrix.
It is important to consider that the factual aspect of the analysis is a rather dynamic one. Human error and response are also key parts of the overall view. Simply put, even a source with the most reliable track record can adhere to factual mistakes and, thus, understanding how it responds to them is of crucial importance to our factual reporting.
You just can’t objectively ascertain the facts on 7 out of 10 articles.
5) The Title
A common phenomenon, which originates on the ability to use your emotions as a reader, is click-baiting. This is a rather simple concept to analyse, albeit an important one for our general understanding. Titles tend to easily capture the reader’s curiosity and emotional pulse, therefore offering a valuable aspect to understanding what kind of content we are reading.
Sometimes, by effect of the title, impressions and title interactions — such as a post on a social network — are higher than actual link clicks.
FightHoax’s algorithm compares the title with the article’s content, the sentiment schematic and the overall factual coverage.
By extension of our emotional pulse, we can observe a higher frequency of click-bait titles on the 30 articles. Click-baiting is a definitive indication of an outwards inclination from the factual side of the content. Titles of this nature are usually charged with even more sentiment and tend to obfuscate the contents of the news piece in both interest and length, so as to lead the user to interact more easily and therefore increase the chances of generating impressions by first-glance.
8 out of the 10 titles you saw, fooled you in some way about the content.
6) The Language
By combining the content, its length and its factual level with the quality of the language written and used, we can verify — to a certain degree — the status of the news piece we are reading. Quality content usually signals that, time and care have been capitalised to craft the article.
Naturally, however, we need to regard human error and its correlation with both publishing time and deadlines and, of course, the real impact of proof-reading which is, more often than not, based on human abilities. Simply put, lack of total perfection is usually a verification of genuine content.
FightHoax performs a thorough scan of the content based on established scientific methods.
A pattern observed by potentially false or cautious content is that it appears to be perfect and as legitimate as possible, by extension and use of technical jargon if necessary, with almost perfect grammar and “colourful” phrases.
It is also easier to proof-read a news piece that is short when composing it, which leads directly to a clash with our analysis of factual coverage.
21 out of 30 articles you read are linguistically perfect.
Coming to An Understanding
Fact-checking relies on a multitude of different elements coming together, just as much as factual analysis relies on perception. Components that directly, on one level or another, correlate with each other in order to create the most objective overview that we can muster as information receivers.
With a frighteningly high number of news content produced daily, it appears to be counter-productive to adhere to a factual and objective fact-checking process when the world around us revolves in seconds. Such a process is lengthy and a costly one, if it is to be done correctly.
It is therefore crucial to explore possibilities that can help information creators effectively, by combining knowledge and technology, rather than relying on the latter solely, to tell us what is true and what is not.
This analysis was co-authored by George Kary and Valentinos Tzekas from the team at FightHoax. For any inquiries, please e-mail us at info@fighthoax.com.
