Vogiatzis, Antonios

2020-06-16T00:00:51Z

https://repository.ihu.edu.gr//xmlui/handle/11544/29623

Misinformation

masterThesis

free

School of Science and Technology, MSc in e-Business and Digital Marketing

In this thesis study we tried to to prepare an analysis for one of the most important issues that our society faces during the last years, misinformation and democracy. Misinformation is not a totally new concept, yet, in the recent past, it has become a major topic for discussion and gained the attention of the research community since it is spreading in global society through the internet. A literature review was conducted in order to deeply understand the concept of misinformation, comprising key approaches to tackle the disinformation, including fake news and elections. Subsequently, we conducted an experiment analysis of news cases and/or post of EU political parties during the pre-election period of June 2018 to May 2019, to identify the portion of fake news, using open source free fact-checking tools, to gather and check for the fake news piece. In our methodology approach, we categorized each case based on three different fake news characteristics classifications, “Truth Information Ratio”, “Time and/or Place Authenticity and Perceived Authenticity”, and we analysed 25 different news cases regarding EU political parties and 2019 elections. Overall, we concluded in that fake news and misinformation, especially in EU, is all over the web and the social media, in various forms, and it can directly affect democracy. Totally and partially fake news, in our analysis, totaled for the 64% of the total news/posts factchecked. Action needs to be taken to eliminate spread of fake news, improve factchecking and thus, diminish misinformation in democracy.

Baltatzis, Dimitrios

Peristeras, Vasilios

ihu