Is It Really Fake? - Towards an Understanding of Fake News in Social Media Communication

This paper outlines the development of Fake News and seeks to clarify different perspectives regarding the term within Social Media communication. Current information systems, such as Social Media platforms, allow real-time communication, enabling people to produce and spread false information and rumors within a few seconds, potentially reaching a wide audience. This, in turn, could have negative impacts on politics, society, and business. To demystify Fake News and create a common understanding, we analyzed the literature on Fake News and summarized existing articles as well as strategies tested to detect Fake News. We conclude that detection methods mostly perform binary classifications based on linguistic features without providing explanations or further information to the user.