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The broader analytical framing of systematically distorted communication (SDC) helps extract value out of the enormous amount of scholarship on fake news.

The massive literature on fake news has been the subject of handbook overviews, systematic literature reviews, summaries, taxonomies, citation studies and so on. Deploying these tools, the approaches that the literature takes can be characterized, Habermas' concept of systematically distorted communication (SDC) will then be presented in its context, reviewed and put to work to frame fake news research to tell us new things that individual pieces of specific analysis and research do not. Conclusions will be offered from this analysis.

Fake news research has become repetitive, revolving around themes such as the fate of journalism, the role of technology, remediating its effects and deep dives into definitional components (disinformation, misinformation, lies and so on). A broader framing of systematically distorted communication allows us to arrive at some conclusions about contemporary fake news: that it is a power strategy with a particular right-wing slant and it creates a sociology – that is, its own interpretive environment – hostile to democratic functioning. It answers the question: what is fake news for?

A perspective on fake news research is much needed and Habermas' concept is a useful framing mechanism for the large corpus of research. Systematically distorted communication asks – and answers – different questions of the research. Meanwhile, SDC itself is modified by its application to fake news research and contemporary conditions.

This paper aims to conduct an interdisciplinary systematic literature review (SLR) of fake news research and to advance the socio-technical understanding of digital information practices and platforms in business and management studies.

The paper applies a focused, SLR method to analyze articles on fake news in business and management journals from 2010 to 2020.

The paper analyzes the definition, theoretical frameworks, methods and research gaps of fake news in the business and management domains. It also identifies some promising research opportunities for future scholars.

The paper offers practical implications for various stakeholders who are affected by or involved in fake news dissemination, such as brands, consumers and policymakers. It provides recommendations to cope with the challenges and risks of fake news.

The paper discusses the social consequences and future threats of fake news, especially in relation to social networking and social media. It calls for more awareness and responsibility from online communities to prevent and combat fake news.

The paper contributes to the literature on information management by showing the importance and consequences of fake news sharing for societies. It is among the frontier systematic reviews in the field that covers studies from different disciplines and focuses on business and management studies.

This study aims to illustrate how bribery and fake news in Eastern European countries can affect businesses across Europe. Countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Hungary represent sizeable and potential markets. Thanks to their European Union membership and low labor costs, these markets could offer many investment opportunities to international managers. Consequently, this study focuses on the challenge of corruption encountered by international managers and the necessary precautions before committing financial resources to these countries.

For this study, 10 informal interviews with presumed providers of illegal services were used to investigate the previously unexplored innovative research question. Informal interviews were conducted with individuals who can be assumed to have experience or knowledge in the field of corruption in multinational corporations.

The results show the potential impact of corruption on international managers in Eastern Europe.

This study contributes to the literature by examining two forms of corruption: bribing journalists to publish fake news to harm commercial rivals and bribing public officials to manufacture legal proceedings against business competitors. The following will also highlight how a corrupt judicial system can have implications abroad and what problems this may raise for mutual legal assistance.

This research aims to explores consumers' motives and attitudes toward misinformation (fake reviews), its characteristics and its impact on individuals, brands and firms.

A thematic analysis was undertaken to meet the research objectives by analyzing qualitative data from in-depth interviews with a diverse sample (N = 48).

The findings indicate that altruism, impression management, matching ideologies, message appeal and perceived source power are the critical motivations for individuals to share misinformation. Misinformation leads to conflicts and avoidance among individuals and harms brand's reputation.

This study utilizes thematic analysis to extend and contribute to the literature on misinformation. The current research provides an overarching framework to decode the misinformation phenomenon for researchers and practitioners.

This study offers valuable insights to marketers to develop strategies to tackle the menace of false information to safeguard brand reputation.

This paper aims to investigate the mechanisms through which social media news consumption across different platforms leads to opinion polarization in society. To this end, the authors draw from cultivation theory to examine whether social media news consumption imparts a mainstreaming or resonance effect. Media consumption imparts a mainstreaming effect if frequent users, regardless of their social identity, develop homogenous attitudes about issues, whereas resonance is at play if there is a differing cultivation effect on various social groups depending on their relatability of life experiences.

The authors conduct the study in the developing context of India, using a population survey dataset from 2019. Regression-based mediation and moderation analyses were carried out to test the hypotheses.

The findings reveal that resonance is the most prominent mechanism through which social media news consumption cultivates opinion polarization, contrary to the mainstreaming effect imparted by television. Further, WhatsApp use was found to strengthen the polarizing effect of overall social media news consumption, while YouTube use weakened the cultivation of polarization.

The paper unearths how social media news consumption influences the opinion polarization of various social groups differently. The authors also find the differential effect of specific platform use. These findings have the potential to inform policymakers and developers about how to mitigate the detrimental effects of platform-based political persuasion.

This study offers significant contributions. First, the authors explain social media-induced polarization using the novel theoretical lens of cultivation. Second, the authors find that social media and television news consumption differ in their polarizing effects. Third, the authors find that while WhatsApp use amplifies the polarizing effect of social media news consumption, YouTube use weakens it.

This paper aims to unveil the general nature of virtual chat groups in multi-ethnic societies like Nigeria towards knowing whether and how diversity inclusiveness codes of conduct are encouraged and managed among virtual chat group participants.

Data in this research was collected via five virtual focus groups of five to eight discussants each and was complemented by virtual field surveys. Responses were validated through verification of registered personal mobile phone numbers. Each design was implemented to cover Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones. The research was broadly framed – according to the uses and gratification theory, social inclusion hypothesis and utilitarian theory of ethics.

The research shows how virtual chat groups can enhance understanding of diversities. However, virtual chat-group outcomes are better managed if anticipated gratifications are predictable and based on the utilization of stated conduct codes.

Given Nigeria’s vast population, the sample size for this study is not adequate nor systematic enough towards generalizations. However, the diverse background of focus group discussants enhances the vista for understanding inclusive virtual chats in diverse societies. Moreover, the instruments of research data collection were validated.

This research points out that virtual chat groups’ codes of conduct are most effective when participants can anticipate collective gratifications. However, firmness and fairness in the implementation of code of conduct principles are essential for long-term virtual group chat sustenance.

Code of conduct principles are essential for the long-term virtual chat group sustenance. When this is achieved, some of the social problems of Nigeria may be solved, and the social, ethnic and religious differences may not hinder the proper development of the country.

The research exposes the nature and role of virtual chat group communication inclusivity codes of conduct amidst participants’ demographic diversity.

Propaganda is a prevalent technique used in social media to intentionally express opinions or actions with the aim of manipulating or deceiving users. Existing methods for propaganda detection primarily focus on capturing language features within its content. However, these methods tend to overlook the information presented within the external news environment from which propaganda news originated and spread. This news environment reflects recent mainstream media opinions and public attention and contains language characteristics of non-propaganda news. Therefore, the authors have proposed a graph-based multi-information integration network with an external news environment (abbreviated as G-MINE) for propaganda detection.

G-MINE is proposed to comprise four parts: textual information extraction module, external news environment perception module, multi-information integration module and classifier. Specifically, the external news environment perception module and multi-information integration module extract and integrate the popularity and novelty into the textual information and capture the high-order complementary information between them.

G-MINE achieves state-of-the-art performance on both the TSHP-17, Qprop and the PTC data sets, with an accuracy of 98.24%, 90.59% and 97.44%, respectively.

An external news environment perception module is proposed to capture the popularity and novelty information, and a multi-information integration module is proposed to effectively fuse them with the textual information.

Most new media research focuses on behavior as a measure of engagement, while the psychological state of being occupied with its content has received little attention. This study examined news engagement beyond pure action observation by exploring young people’s psychological experiences with the news.

The study carried out a digital native’s survey on 212 people (18–28 years). The focus of the survey was on understanding individuals’ engagement with online news using affective and cognitive components. The authors compared the influence of each type of engagement on youth consumption of and attitudes toward online news.

The results of the hierarchical regression analysis showed that affective engagement can be a stronger predictor of online news consumption than cognitive engagement. While affective engagement significantly predicts positive attitudes toward online news, cognitive engagement had no significant effect.

These findings suggest that “engaging the heart” is more influential than “engaging the mind” in drawing young people to the news in today’s information environment. The study thus contributes to the understanding of the cognitive and emotional focus on news content and their importance in shaping young people’s expectations of online news. The findings from this study could have broader implications for future trends in online news consumption.

Misinformation surrounding the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has contributed to the formation of misbeliefs among the public. The purpose of this paper is to investigate public sentiment and misbeliefs about the SDGs on the YouTube platform.

The authors extracted 8,016 comments from YouTube videos associated with SDGs. The authors used a pre-trained Python library NRC lexicon for sentiment and emotion analysis, and to extract latent topics, the authors used BERTopic for topic modeling.

The authors found eight emotions, with negativity outweighing positivity, in the comment section. In addition, the authors identified the top 20 topics discussing various SDGs and SDG-related misbeliefs.

The authors reported topics related to public misbeliefs about SDGs and associated keywords. These keywords can be used to formulate social media content moderation strategies to screen out content that creates these misbeliefs. The result of hierarchical clustering can be used to devise and optimize response strategies by governments and policymakers to counter public misbeliefs.

This study represents an initial endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of the public’s misbeliefs regarding SDGs. The authors identified novel misbeliefs about SDGs that previous literature has not studied. Furthermore, the authors introduce an algorithm BERTopic for topic modeling that leverages transformer architecture for context-aware topic modeling.