New Tools To Fight Fake News

Many sites that generate fake news, or DisInfo-disinformation masquerading as truth, share characteristics that distinguish them from journalistic outlets, according to researchers from MIT and the Qatar Computing Research Institute, who incorporated several of those characteristics into a dataset and then trained an algorithm to identify them. 

Their work could help fight a growing problem that many government experts forecast will only get worse.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets are building teams of fact checkers and supporting nonprofit organisations like First Draft to spot disinformation. But fact checking and verification takes a lot more time than pushing out disinformation. 

Also, fake news doesn’t always match an expected pattern. Russia DisInfo watchers have long observed that a key Kremlin tactic is to validate conspiratorial ideas on both sides of a given political debate (with the exception of gun control, to which they catered exclusively to pro-gun perspectives.)

That’s why fighting DisInfo piece-by-piece is like bailing a boat that’s filling up faster than buckets can handle. What’s worse, research has shown that news readers of all political persuasions become defensive and resistant to the idea that news they’ve accepted is fake, especially if the act of accepting—and then sharing—that news item furthered their standing within a selected social group.

All of this is why fake news spreads faster than accurately sourced articles, including ones that debunk conspiracy theories and disinformation.

“Automatic fact-checking lags behind in terms of accuracy, and it is generally not trusted by human users. In fact, even when done by reputable fact-checking organisations, debunking does little to convince those who already believe in false information,” the researchers write.

Their study, “Predicting Factuality of Reporting and Bias of News Media Sources,” forthcoming in the Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language, reveals key features of false news web sites that might be less visible to human fact checkers but can tab a bad news source.

Among the features: specific patterns of so-called “function words” that give a more spoken feel to a news article, as opposed to the far more common “content words.” 

Mainstream news editors clamp down fast and hard on too many function words, but fake news sites may not be edited at all. The number and pattern of words that seem to express some sort of sentiment is another easy giveaway, as is the amount of user engagement and shares; linguistic indicators of bias around specific topics, (or bias generally), also work.

If a news site pumps out a lot of articles with a variety and high degree of these linguistic characteristics, you can safely infer that they’re more likely to be publishing “news” that, well, isn’t.

The researchers found that their algorithm, called the Support Vector Machine, could correctly deduce a high, low, or medium level of “factuality” about 65 percent of the time. It could predict right- or left-leaning bias about 70 percent of the time. While not perfect, it’s a big improvement over a raw guess (50 percent). The authors caution that the algorithm would work best with human fact checkers.

The next step, they write, is “characterising the factuality of reporting for media in other languages. Finally, we want to go beyond left vs. right bias that is typical of the Western world and to model other kinds of biases that are more relevant for other regions, e.g., Islamist vs. secular is one such example for the Muslim World.”

Defense One:                Image: Nick Youngson

You Might Also Read:

Google Is Building A Search Engine For Fact Checks

« Canada Says It Was Targeted By Russian Cyber Attacks
#PresidentialAlert: A US National Alert Test »

CyberSecurity Jobsite
Perimeter 81

Directory of Suppliers

CYRIN

CYRIN

CYRIN® Cyber Range. Real Tools, Real Attacks, Real Scenarios. See why leading educational institutions and companies in the U.S. have begun to adopt the CYRIN® system.

Authentic8

Authentic8

Authentic8 transforms how organizations secure and control the use of the web with Silo, its patented cloud browser.

Syxsense

Syxsense

Syxsense brings together endpoint management and security for greater efficiency and collaboration between IT management and security teams.

Perimeter 81 / How to Select the Right ZTNA Solution

Perimeter 81 / How to Select the Right ZTNA Solution

Gartner insights into How to Select the Right ZTNA offering. Download this FREE report for a limited time only.

North Infosec Testing (North IT)

North Infosec Testing (North IT)

North IT (North Infosec Testing) are an award-winning provider of web, software, and application penetration testing.

Arcitura Education

Arcitura Education

Arcitura is a leading global provider of progressive, vendor-neutral IT training and certification programs.

Venable

Venable

Venable is an American Lawyer 100 law firm with nine offices across the USA, Practice areas include Cybersecurity.

Zivver

Zivver

Zivver is the effortless, secure email platform, powering the next generation of secure communications.

Focal Point Data Risk

Focal Point Data Risk

Focal Point is a pure-play data risk management provider capable of offering end-to-end consulting, implementation, and training services.

National Security Authority (NBU) - Slovakia

National Security Authority (NBU) - Slovakia

The National Security Authority (NBU) is the central government body in Slovakia for the Protection of Classified Information, Cryptographic Services, Trust Services and Cyber Security.

Steganos

Steganos

Steganos offers highly secure and easy to use software tools that protect and secure on and offline data.

Emsisoft

Emsisoft

Emsisoft protects your devices against all types of malware, ransomware and other threats with no-bloat anti-malware & antivirus solutions.

Symantec

Symantec

Symantec delivers data-centric hybrid security for the largest, most complex organizations in the world – on devices, in private data centers, and in the cloud.

CyGlass

CyGlass

CyGlass simply and effectively identifies, detects, and responds to threats to your network without requiring any additional hardware, software, or people.

Switchfast Technologies

Switchfast Technologies

Switchfast Technologies is an IT consulting and managed services provider, offering IT support and consulting to Chicagoland small businesses.

The PenTesting Company

The PenTesting Company

The PenTesting Company is owned and operated by offensive security professionals. Penetration Testing is essentially all we do.

HADESS

HADESS

We are "Hadess", a group of cyber security experts and white hat hackers.

Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL)

Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL)

The mission of CNIL is to protect personal data, support innovation, and preserve individual liberties.

Protecto

Protecto

Make privacy and governance effortless. Brakes allow you to drive faster. Stronger data privacy and security enable companies to unlock the full potential of the data.

Haiku

Haiku

Haiku stands at the forefront of cybersecurity upskilling, leveraging video games to immerse you in a flow state for accelerated, enduring learning.

MIND

MIND

MIND is the first-ever data security platform that puts data loss prevention and insider risk management programs on autopilot, so you can automatically identify, detect and prevent data leaks.