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Trends and Patterns of Fake News on Social Media and Online News: Text Mining Approach

Namrita Varier, Dr. Akhilesh K.S. Yadav, Dr. Gururaj S. Hadagali

Abstract


The study focuses on understanding the popularity of the Fake News term in social media and its associated terms. This study also exploresthe role of social media in producing fake news and the rise of fact-checking websites as an alternative to fake news. Various research methods were used to understand the trends and patterns of Fake News. Tweets that used #fakenews were collected from Twitter using Twitter API. Google Trends was used to understand the popularity of several keywords related to Fake News. Google Trends was used to find the trending keywords in the last five years. News Headlines were collected from Google News along with its publisher. Text analysis and data visualization software were used to derive insightful information from unstructured text data. The keywords that trended or were popular during these years are fake news, false news, credible news, misinformation, disinformation, fake news sites, fake news stories, deep-fake, fact-checking, inflation, paid news, paid editorial, post-truth and post-truth era. The news headlines collected from Google News reveal that news outlets publish fact-checking reports worldwide. The Star Online to be the publisher with the highest publications publishing on fake news around the world.This research study has some important practical implications of fake news discussion on social media. Social media platforms should develop some system to identify and flag fake news. Public organizations and institutions should develop a framework for the information literacy program on fake news to orient the public.Data were collected from Twitter’s social media using the term #fakenews from 10th January-1st April 2021. A total of 4,34,600 tweets were collected during the period. So this research study used only small datasets from Twitter and News headlines to gain insightful information about public views and posts on fake news.This research study contributes to the ongoing discussion on fake news and misinformation. Research finds that the public has a broad spectrum of knowledge about fake news on social media, but identification of fake news is challenging and complicated.


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