The science of fake news

Where it appeared

Published inScience
PublisherAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Volume359
Issue6380
Pages1094--1096

Identifiers

arXiv2307.07903 from its oa_pdf_url
DOI10.1126/science.aao2998

Abstract

Fake news emerged as an apparent global problem during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Addressing it requires a multidisciplinary effort to define the nature and extent of the problem, detect fake news in real time, and mitigate its potentially harmful effects. This will require a better understanding of how the Internet spreads content, how people process news, and how the two interact. We review the state of knowledge in these areas and discuss two broad potential mitigation strategies: better enabling individuals to identify fake news, and intervention within the platforms to reduce the attention given to fake news. The cooperation of Internet platforms (especially Facebook, Google, and Twitter) with researchers will be critical to understanding the scale of the issue and the effectiveness of possible interventions.

A copy is held

pdf, 154.7 kB. Not published — it may be under copyright. The facts and links here are.

How it got here

How it got hereagent via crossref
Added2026-08-27 00:00 UTC
Approved bya person 2026-08-27 17:58 UTC

Cite it as

@article{lazer2018science,
  title        = {The science of fake news},
  author       = {David M. J. Lazer and Matthew A. Baum and Yochai Benkler and Adam J. Berinsky and Kelly M. Greenhill and Filippo Menczer and Miriam J. Metzger and Brendan Nyhan and Gordon Pennycook and David Rothschild and Michael Schudson and Steven A. Sloman and Cass R. Sunstein and Emily A. Thorson and Duncan J. Watts and Jonathan L. Zittrain},
  year         = {2018},
  journal      = {Science},
  volume       = {359},
  number       = {6380},
  pages        = {1094--1096},
  publisher    = {American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)},
  doi          = {10.1126/science.aao2998},
}

This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/lazer2018science/ and will keep doing so.