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Information may well be an asset, but the sheer volume of what we have to navigate makes it challenging to determine those elements which are relevant to us. The credibility of news media outlets as our gatekeepers and first form of resistance to polluted information is increasingly questioned. Scientific research indicates that the quality of news offerings from news media outlets would benefit by triangulating news stories with a more diverse set of offerings and, in the process, build journalists' trust or otherwise in the sources of these offerings. Without the network effects of the Internet, false or incorrect information probably would not be such a successful phenomenon. Public opinion is quick to portray social or mainstream media platforms as guilty parties but tends to ignore the equally detrimental ramifications of their exploitation of social capital. A more reflective approach is required. This essay suggests that it is in our interest to reboot our societal consciousness and explore the underlying cybernetical dimensions, even if these appear to be confrontational for interested stakeholders in our current misinformation crisis.

Media power plays a role in determining which news is told, who is listened to and how subject matter is treated, resulting in some stories being reported in depth while others remain cursory and opaque. This chapter examines how domestic violence and abuse (DVA) is reported in mainstream and social media encompassing newspapers, television and digital platforms. In the United Kingdom, newspapers have freedom to convey particular views on subjects such as DVA as, unlike radio and television broadcasting, they are not required to be impartial (Reeves, 2015).

The gendered way DVA is represented in the UK media has been a long-standing concern. Previous research into newspaper representations of DVA, including our own (Lloyd & Ramon, 2017), found evidence of victim blaming and sexualising violence against women. This current study assesses whether there is continuity with earlier research regarding how victims of DVA, predominantly women, are portrayed as provoking their own abuse and, in cases of femicide, their characters denigrated by some in the media with impunity (Soothill & Walby, 1991). The chapter examines how certain narratives on DVA are constructed and privileged in sections of the media while others are marginalised or silenced. With the rise in digital media, the chapter analyses the changing patterns of news media consumption in the UK and how social media users are responding to DVA cases reported in the news. Through discourse analysis of language and images, the potential messages projected to media consumers are considered, together with consumer dialogue and interaction articulated via online and social media platforms.

This paper aims to unify fragmented definitions of fake news and also present a comprehensive classification of the concept. Additionally, it provides an agenda for future marketing research based on the findings.

A review of 36 articles investigating fake news from 1990 to 2020 was done. In total, 615 papers were found, and the article pool was refined manually in two steps; first, articles were skimmed and scanned for nonrelated articles; second, the pool was refined based on the scope of the research.

The review resulted in a new definition and a collective classification of fake news. Also, the feature of each type of fake news, such as facticity, intention, harm and humor, is examined as well, and a definition for each type is presented.

This extensive study, to the best of the author’s knowledge, for the first time, reviews major definitions and classification on fake news.

Este artículo pretende unificar las definiciones fragmentadas de las noticias falsas y también presentar una clasificación exhaustiva del concepto. Además, ofrece una agenda para futuras investigaciones de marketing basada en los resultados.

Se realizó una revisión de 36 artículos que investigaban las noticias falsas desde 1990 hasta 2020. Se encontraron 615 artículos, y el grupo de artículos se refinó manualmente en dos pasos, primero, se descremaron los artículos y se escanearon los artículos no relacionados, segundo, el grupo se refinó basado en el alcance de la investigación.

La revisión dio como resultado una nueva definición y una clasificación colectiva de las noticias falsas. Además, se examinan las características de cada tipo de noticias falsas, como la facticidad, la intención, el daño y el humor, y se presenta una definición para cada tipo.

este amplio estudio revisa por primera vez las principales definiciones y la clasificación de las noticias falsas.

本文旨在统一假新闻的零散定义, 并对假新闻的概念进行全面的分类。此外, 它还根据本文的研究结果为未来的营销研究提供了一个议程。

对1990年至2020年期间调查假新闻的36篇文章进行了回顾。一共发现了615篇论文, 并分为两步对此文章库进行了人工提炼：首先, 对文章进行略读和扫描以找出非相关文章, 其次, 根据研究范围对文章库进行了提炼。

此次审查导致了对假新闻的新定义和集体分类。此外, 还分析了假新闻的真实性、意图、危害性、幽默性等各种类型的特征, 并给出了各种类型的定义。

此项涉及广泛假新闻内容的研究首次回顾了关于假新闻的主要定义和分类。

The Internet looks set to have a major influence on information seeking behavior, although there is very little hard data around as to what these changes will be or where they will occur. This British Library funded study set out to gather such data from the media using open‐ended interview techniques. Several hundred journalists, editors and media librarians were interviewed. The early findings indicate that the Internet is not impacting in the way forcasted. Change appears to be slow and variable; the issues of information overload and the authority of Web data seem not to worry users; and there is little evidence that other information sources are being significantly displaced because of Internet use. However, it is still too early to determine the full impact of the Internet although it is best judged away from the Information Centre/Library.

The objective of this study was to investigate the impacts of personality traits and the ability to detect fake news on information avoidance behavior. It also examined the effect of personality traits on the ability to detect fake news.

The sample population included Shiraz University students who were studying in the second semester of academic year 2021 in different academic levels. It consisted of 242 students of Shiraz University. The Big Five theory was used as the theoretical background of the study. Moreover, the research instrument was an electronic questionnaire consisting of the three questionnaires of the ability to detect fake news (Esmaeili et al., 2019, inspired by IFLA, 2017), the Big Five personality traits (Goldberg, 1999) and information avoidance (Howell and Shepperd, 2016). The statistical methods used to analyze the data were Pearson correlation and stepwise regression, which were performed through SPSS software (version 26).

The results showed that from among the five main personality factors, only neuroticism had a positive and significant effect on information avoidance. In addition, the ability to detect fake news had a significant negative effect on information avoidance behavior. Further analyses also showed positive and significant effects of openness to experience and extraversion on the ability to detect fake news. In fact, the former had more predictive power.

Following the Big Five theory considering COVID-19 information avoidance and the ability to detect COVID-19 fake news, this study shifted the focus from environmental factors to personality factors and personality traits. Furthermore, this study introduced the ability to detect fake news as an influential factor in health information avoidance behaviors, which can be a prelude for new research studies.

The present study applied the five main personality factors theory in the context of information avoidance behavior and the ability to detect fake news, and supported the effect of personality traits on these variables.

As Africa’s internet penetration rates increase, and a significant portion of the continent’s population turns to social media as a source of news, platforms like Facebook are increasingly becoming crucial for political, public health, and risk communication. Thus, it is useful to gain insights into how state authorities are using these platforms to communicate with citizens especially in times of crisis. This study sought to examine how state authorities in Ethiopia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe framed public crisis communication on Facebook during the COVID-19 lockdowns in the respective countries. Qualitative content analysis of Facebook posts by the state authorities in the four countries over a six-week period before and after the COVID-19 lockdowns yielded several frames or strategies employed by authorities in the case countries. These included; education, caution, cooperation, government measures, hope, nationalism, and scaremongering. Other frames included impact, militarisation, politicisation, and religion. The analysis establishes, as in several other countries, Facebook as a current and strategic choice in state-spearheaded crisis communication. Whereas the main frames were globally and regionally driven, other frames encapsulated national contexts drawing on national histories, patriotism, hopes and fears that sometimes seemed contradictory and capricious.

In the current post-human society, artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms are rapidly being deployed in newsrooms around the world to enhance processes of news idea conception, newsgathering, writing, packaging and dissemination. Although AI adaptation has been ongoing especially in Western Newsrooms over the last decade, this process is only budding in sub-Saharan newsroom contexts. This study explores perceptions, use, prospects and challenges in the adaptation of AI and algorithms in newsrooms. This qualitative survey draws insights from 33 respondents from newspapers, radio stations, online media and community media in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia. The study found varied levels of AI adoption in several newsrooms with some newsrooms not yet using AI while others were fully experimenting with a variety of tools, functionalities – even producing their own AI tools and also in change employment patterns to accommodate the skills needed within this new field. In some of the ‘inactive AI newsrooms’ individual journalists took the onus on themselves to learn and use the disruptive technologies and while the general attitudes towards AI were positive among journalists, the attitudes among management was generally considered poor. The study concludes for the benefits to be maximally leveraged, several of the bottlenecks in application must be addressed. These include the integration of ‘humans-in the loop’, journalistic principles, decolonial and local contextual perspectives in AI development and use. Such perspectives and synergies would need to be drawn from media ecosystems – including journalism education, research, policy, industry and developers.

The chapter deals with a service-learning course based in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa. It provides a backdrop for the case study, describing the context in which the course is based and kind of intervention that it aims to make into this context. It then maps out the theoretical framework that informs the course, explaining how this is informed by the available spectrum of approaches to service-learning. It demonstrates how the course draws on the concept of a ‘communicative ecology’, to provide itself with a language in which to reflect on the social significance of communication. The chapter then reviews the first cycle of the course which took place in 2019, drawing on insights from participants (teachers, students and community partners). It deals, firstly, with the participants’ engagement with the concept of service-learning. Secondly, it describes their experience of service-learning as a communicative process. Finally, it describes their evaluation of this process as an intervention into the local communicative ecology. It is demonstrated that service-learning enables the school to respond strategically to the need for innovative communicative practices both in their immediate environment and within the broader South African context.