Dr Fadi's scientific contributions

This chapter looks at the variables involved in the spread of fake news to better understand factors that contribute to the success of fake news. This is issue remains open-ended as the solution has not been developed, and several researchers have been unsuccessful in reaching a clear approach because academics and industry are failing to consider the larger environment in which news on social media thrives. The variables involved in the dissemination of misinformation can be categorised into four categories: Human factors, Interaction factors, Platform factors, and Content factors. The human factors include attraction to rumours and thus tend to seek information that resonates with and affirms one's beliefs. Interaction factors include different ways to engage social media posts, verification of the information, and the likelihood of taking any number of actions that either promote or demote news online. Platform factors include platform algorithms and platform-tools employed online. Finally, the content factor relates to the research that shows fake news posts tend to have a distinctive linguistic style, multimedia content, and sourcing pattern that could help identify it early on. These factors rarely operate in isolation but rather the combination of all these factors may explain the complexity of understanding how fake news posts get a life of their own. Following this review, this chapter presents a step by step process of verifying news posted online by looking at the features identified above. This chapter will provide examples and a practical element for readers to cross-reference fake news. The human factor: The study of rumours The human factor can vary, as demonstrated in chapter 4 when we looked at the psychology of fake news. The key variables that one would need to take into account when considering human factors include the attraction to rumours, information that confirms one's belief, likelihood to take any number of actions, and tendency to invest time and effort to verify the information. Some of these factors have been extensively studied and modelled while others remain new fields of study. For long, the study of rumours was linked to the study of Epidemiological modelling. Epidemiology is the study of how disease spreads in a given community providing perhapsOne of the most extensively studied topics that can be applied to fake news. More than 50 years ago, Daley and Kendall (1964) explained the analogy between the spreading of infectious disease and the dissemination of rumours. They examined the spreading of a rumour from mathematical epidemiology. Researchers highlighted that a mathematical model for the spreading of rumours could be created in several different ways which depend on growth and decay of the spreading process. However, the environment in which rumours operate in brick and mortar spaces do not necessary match that of the virtual world of social media. Still, these models, the methods derived ffrom mathematical epidemiology can provide valuable insights.