The phenomenon of “fake news” may have captured the imagination of Americans during the 2016 presidential campaign and the subsequent investigation of Russia’s attempts to sway Donald Trump’s election using fake news on Facebook, among other schemes.

The truth is that fake or fake news has been around as a tool for a while and by many to spread conspiracy theories and propaganda for many years leading up to the 2016 election. Websites including InfoWars and Brietbart among others have been spreading fake news that supports their agendas.

However, it has become a political and social problem since the elections and poor Facebook has become the symbol of the websites that fell into the trap.

Recently, the social networking company has admitted its mistakes and tried to make things right with its subscribers. You are now flagging fake news articles that go to Facebook members through your news feed. You are using AI to accomplish this.

The company is using AI to identify words or phrases that could mean an item is actually fake. The data for this task is based on articles that Facebook members have individually marked as fake stories.

Technology currently uses four methods to detect fake news. They include:

  • Website rating. The first to use this technique was Google. It uses facts to create a score for websites. Obviously, rating websites is an act in progress. However, as Google has been doing, the technology has grown significantly.
  • Weight data. This method uses natural language processing engines to check the topic of the stories. AI using other models finds out if other sites are reporting the same facts.
  • Predict reputation. This technique is based on artificial intelligence that uses predictive analytics and machine learning to forecast the reputation of websites by considering a number of characteristics, including domain name and Alexa web rank.
  • Discover Sensational Words. Fake news advocates have used sensational headlines to capture the interest of a potential audience. This technique discovers and flags fake news headlines using keyword analysis.

The actual detection of these types of items by the AI ​​is a difficult task. Of course, big data analysis is involved, but it also refers to the veracity of the data. Identifying it is actually involved with determining the truth of the data. This can be done using the fact weighting method. What happens if a fake news article appears on hundreds of websites at the same time? Under this circumstance, the use of the technique of weighing the facts can cause AI to determine that the story is legitimate. Perhaps using the method of predicting reputation along with weighting the facts can help, but there could still be problems. For example, websites of trusted news sources that don’t take the time to verify a story might pick it up assuming it’s true.

It is obvious that the use of AI to identify these items needs further development. Several organizations are involved in improving the capacity of AI. One such establishment that is involved is West Virginia University.

The Reed College of Media, in cooperation with the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources at West Virginia University, has created a course that focuses on using AI to identify fake news articles.

Seniors taking a computer science elective are working in teams to develop and implement their own AI programs and are also involved in the project.

Another group known as the Fake News Challenge is also looking for a way for AI to successfully combat fake news. It is a grassroots organization of more than 100 volunteers and 71 teams from academia and industry to tackle the problem of fake news. It is developing tools to help people check facts and identify fake news.

As organizations work to improve the AI ​​to find these stories, there are a variety of tools available to deal a blow to them. These include:

  • Spike, which identifies and predicts breakout and viral stories, and uses big data to predict what will drive engagement.
  • Hoaxy, which is a tool that helps users identify fake news websites.
  • Snoopey, which is a website that helps identify fake news articles.
  • CrowdTangle, which is a tool that helps monitor social content.
  • Meedan, which is a tool that helps check breaking news online.
  • Google Trends, which monitors searches.
  • Le Monde’s Decodes, which is a database of fake news and real news websites.
  • Pheme, which is a tool that verifies the veracity of online and user-generated content.

Related Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *