Information Nightmare 9783631812211, 9783631816042, 9783631816059, 9783631816066

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Today, we live in a post-truth era. Creating alternative realities, and making people believe fake realities become easier. Digital platforms tend to promote dramatic, sensational and emotional content that harms democracy. This book examines different aspects of the matter: rise of populist politics, impact of digital social platforms, engagement-oriented algorithms, spread of disinformation and counter-measures like fact-checking mechanism and developing digital media literacy skills. “Journalists, academics and civil society groups are increasingly working together to help people confront the confusion caused by the post-truth realities of digital communications, which is no longer the stuff of propaganda from the state, but comes from all sides of the internet. In this information space every fact is challenged by an alternative fact, and all of these different versions of the truth look the same online.” – Aidan White

Editor Tirs¸e Erbaysal Filibeli is an assistant professor at the Department of New Media at Bahçes¸ehir University. She received her Ph.D. from Galatasaray University with her thesis focusing on ‘new social movements and peace journalism’. Her recent research interests focus on digital and algorithmic manipulation, big data and data privacy, fact-checking, ‘fake news’ about minorities and othering in the post-truth era.

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Tirs¸e Erbaysal Filibeli (ed.)

Information Nightmare: Fake News, Manipulation and Post-Truth Politics in the Digital Age

Tirs¸e Erbaysal Filibeli (ed.)

Information Nightmare: Fake News, Manipulation and Post-Truth Politics in the Digital Age

Information Nightmare: Fake News, Manipulation and Post-Truth Politics in the Digital Age

Tirs¸e Erbaysal Filibeli (ed.)

17-Mar-20 14:58:02

Information Nightmare: Fake News, Manipulation and Post-Truth Politics in the Digital Age

Tirşe Erbaysal Filibeli (ed.)

Information Nightmare: Fake News, Manipulation and PostTruth Politics in the Digital Age

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Cover illustration by Haluk Çobanoğlu This book has funded by Bahçeşehir University Publications. Printed by CPI books GmbH, Leck ISBN 978-3-631-81221-1 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-81604-2 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-81605-9 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-81606-6 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b17038

© Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2020 All rights reserved. Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been double-blind peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

To my husband and my beloved son…

Yasemin Giritli İnceoğlu

Foreword After postmodernism, the concept of post-truth entered into dictionaries in the 2000s, and “post-truth” was even chosen as word of the year by the Oxford Dictionary in 2016. No doubt post-truth is not a concept that suddenly emerged in 2016. The deformation of reality with the media became the mainstay of the first media theorists working in critical theory and Marxist tradition. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw’s agenda-setting model, or Kurt Lewin’s gatekeeping model, claims that the barrier between real information and consumer who has no role in changing reality is the media. Postmodern media critic Jean-Francois Lyotard argues that global communication and media technologies use information as a scientific endeavor or a commodity that is bought and sold in national and international markets. Another postmodern theorist, Jean Baudrillard, argues that the concept of hyperreality is the reconstruction of reality by the media; it suggests real-world simulations in the minds of media consumers. What is new in the post-truth period is that emotions are embedded in the perception of reality rather than rationality. All populist movements such as the triumph of Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit in Great Britain, and the popularity of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in the 2017 election in France can be characterized by pseudofacts. The answer to the question “what is new about the recent rise ‘post-truth’?” perhaps will be that it is the combination of lying and populism. With the acceleration of new media, the change of the news reception by the audience and the uncontrollability of the news producers became noticeable. The spread of the interactive media environment, which is far from centralized control, has distorted and even facilitated the rapid spread of lies and fake news. Since mass refuses to question what is truth, whatever it is willing to believe will be the truth, inconsistencies and contradictions will not disturb them at all. As the rate of social media usage raised, more users started to communicate with similar users. People who come together with group polarization can both express their ideas more sharply for acceptance in the group and sharpen their own views as they acquire new information about their common values. This inevitably leads to the generation and dissemination of post-truth content in the group to consolidate the common values that bring the group together.

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New media provide the perfect conditions for the propagation, manipulation, dissemination of misinformation, and disinformation and fake news, in other words – systematic lie mechanism. Fake news is news, stories, or hoaxes created to deliberately misinform or deceive the media audience.  When it comes to evaluating content online there are various types of fake or misleading news we need to be aware of such as:  clickbait, a new way of propaganda through online data hacking, satire/parody, sloppy journalism, misleading headings, and biased/slanted news. Disinformation involves the dissemination of incomplete, inaccurate, or otherwise misleading information with the objective, goal, or aim of deceiving others about the truth. Sometimes the source is accurately acknowledged (this might be called “overt” disinformation), but sometimes it is concealed by providing no identification or by providing misleading identification (call this “covert”). The quantity and quality of disinformation may be difficult to judge, but it should be viewed more or less on a par with acts of lying, but where the motives that usually bring about lying (to preserve a relationship, to conceal an affair, to secure a loan, and such) are displaced by other, often political, motives, aims, or goals. The algorithms that are prepared on the internet create certain compartments, sections, or filter balloons by sending connections that are easier to access for everyone. Thus, users will enjoy the sharing of information that will support their personal truths, just like those who think like themselves. The flow of information in virtual networks brings us together only with the information we will love, and we become more fanatical by believing that our personal truths are generally accepted because we have not met any counter opinions. The relationship between populism and media is extremely symbiotic. The relationship between populism and media is extremely symbiotic, as it is the case with the coverage of bad news, the news style, the coverage of the breaking news, the use by the media of populist actors. How media use and commercialize populist leaders and populism themes as well as scandals is a key factor to attract the audience. Populism leads to a social transformation, which inevitably changes the media. Populist practices transform the ordinary person into the audience with the disintegration of the public sphere, and as a result, the dominant element of the public sphere man on the street takes its place in the media. In this change, the media, on the one hand, has to be more willing to ensure the charisma and credibility of politicians, particularly those who play a leading role, for the sake of reducing the destructive effect of populism’s anti-elitism strategy; with the exception of a few dissident channels, almost all of them become an ideological apparatus of the state. On the other hand, as a result of the disintegration of the

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public sphere, and in order to increase its profitability, it engages in bidirectional communication with ordinary people by appearing as audience-friendly. … It is a great honor to be asked to write the Foreword to such an important book edited by Tirşe Erbaysal Filibeli of whom I was the Ph.D. thesis supervisor, who then became my colleague. The book is filled with contributions from leading and emerging national and international scholars. First three chapters of this book mainly focus on information disorder, factchecking, and fake news debates. Hossein Derakhshan and Orhan Şener make an analysis of the latest academic efforts to identify the mechanism behind disinformation warfare in the post-truth era. Tirşe Erbaysal Filibeli discusses the state of (dis)information sphere by exemplifying the very current incidents within the digital threats and searches for reasons for the rise of fact-checkers all around the world with a comparative analysis of 223 fact-checking initiatives. Sarphan Uzunoğlu and Ahmet Alphan Sabancı in their chapter provide the critique of contemporary uses of the term “fake news,” and focus on how fake news debate is politically manipulated by taking Slavoj Žižek’s and Raph Keyes’ arguments into consideration. Following chapters of Can Ertuna and Emre Kızılkaya critically discuss media outlets’ role on disinformation. In Can Ertuna’s chapter, the role of news websites in the spread of false news and their motivation and/or incompetence in this process are analyzed with the data on the unverified new reports during the 2018 presidential campaign in Turkey. Emre Kızılkaya’s chapter criticizes Turkey’s polarized mobile news notifications by presenting his research analysis of the notifications sent by the 26 news applications in Turkey throughout the week before the local elections of March 31, 2019. In two different chapters “fake news” is examined within the populist rhetoric. Giovanni Bracato and Melissa Stolfi’s chapter analyzes how “Pagella Politica” successfully made a system of checking news spread through the media in the context of post-truth politics and populism. Burak Özçetin and Ayşegül Akaydın Aydın discuss how the contemporary media system in Turkey laid the grounds for populist politics by identifying four aspects of populism-media tandem as:  creation of a pro-government, partisan media bloc; forging a new cultural hegemony; suppressing critical voices in the media; and using fake news and political trolling. In the last five chapters, researches, analyses, and debates on media literacy have been presented in diverse perspectives. Sushmita Pandit’s chapter focuses on exploring the nuanced and multidimensional relationship between truth, media, and the socioeconomic background for understanding  how suburban

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college students negotiate with fake news. Sinan Aşçı’s chapter focuses on the dark social and online deception among children by providing a general view on how to spread and fabricate social media lies and rumors. Eylem Yanardağoğlu and Dilara Eldaş Baş aim to reflect on notions of media literacy and digital literacy with a research based on an empirical study that analyzes the users’ media literacy skills. Orhan Şener presents the historical background of audio and video technologies and discusses the image-video and sound manipulation within the current deep learning and deepfake era. Lastly, Vasyl V.  Kucherenko’s chapter particularly discusses media trust and sources’ trustworthiness, within the context of manipulated information within the experiments that he conducted with 914 university students in three European countries. In the afterword, Aidan White defines and discusses digital disorder in the post-truth era in the context of the challenges of taming big tech and building trust in journalism; and he says that “the future of democracy will depend on the choices we make now to end the abuse of public information.” The need for accurate news and information is essential for our democracy more than ever – especially in this era of post-truth and fake news. This comprehensive deep research is a successful collection of critical commentary about post-truth. It also assembles a foundation of useful ideas that may help lift journalism, and our society, into a better future.

References Burkhardt, J. M. (2017). Combating fake news in the digital age. Chicago: ALA TechSource. İnceoğlu, Y., & Akıner, N. (2012) Continuity in disinformation: With the examples of war on Iraq. Istanbul University Faculty of Communication Journal, 21. Retrieved from http://dergipark.org.tr/iuifd/issue/22868/244237 İnceoğlu, Y., & Çoban, S. (Eds.). (2015). İnternet ve Sokak; Sosyal Medya, Dijital Aktivizm ve Eylem. İstanbul: Ayrıntı. Müller, J.-W. (2016). What is populism? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Yetkin, B. (2016). Popülizmin Gölgesinde Siyaseti ve Siyasal İletişimi Anlamak. Erciyes İletişim Dergisi “academia”, 4(3), 68–82. doi:10.17680/ akademia.18231.

Acknowledgments The completion of this book would not be possible without the great contributions of the authors. I’m extremely thankful to my PhD thesis supervisor Prof. Yasemin Giritli İnceoğlu for her encouragement and precious critics that make my works better. Many thanks to Beyza Becerikli for her assistance and help to prepare the manuscript. Special thanks to my colleague Orhan Şener for his support and suggestions. I would like to express my deepest appreciation and gratitude to Haluk Çobanoğlu for being so kind and taking the cover photograph of this book.

Contents

Foreword ....................................................................................................................  9 Yasemin Giritli İnceoğlu Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................  13 Contributors ............................................................................................................  15 1. Disinformation Warfare in the Post-Truth Era: An Attempt for Classification ......................................................................................................  21 Orhan Şener and Hossein Derakhshan 2. The State of (Dis)information Sphere: The Rise of Fact-Checking Initiatives ............................................................................................................  33 Tirşe Erbaysal Filibeli 3. From Useful Idiots to Useful Facts: What Is Behind the Fake News Debate? ...............................................................................................................  49 Sarphan Uzunoğlu and Ahmet Alphan Sabancı 4. The Accuracy Crisis of (Online) Journalism in Turkey: Unverified News Reports During the 2018 Presidential Campaign ..............................  63 Can Ertuna 5. Breaking News: A Look into Turkey’s Polarized Mobile News Notifications ......................................................................................................  77 Emre Kızılkaya 6.  Fake News and Politics in Italy ..........................................................................  93 Giovanni Brancato and Melissa Stolfi 7.  Populism and Media in Turkey: Partners in Crime .....................................  107 Burak Özçetin and Ayşegül Akaydın Aydın

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8. Mapping the Mechanics of Truth: Fake News and Suburban Young Adult News Consumers in India .....................................................................  125 Sushmita Pandit 9. Understanding the Dark Social and Shedding Light on Online Deception among Children .............................................................................  139 Sinan Aşçı 10. Survival in the New Communicative Sphere: Is Media Literacy the Remedy? ...........................................................................................................  155 Eylem Yanardağoğlu and Dilara Eldaş Baş 11. New Literacies for Disinformation and Manipulation Through Digital Sound and Video ................................................................................  169 Orhan Şener 12. Online Foreign News: Are We Capable of Recognizing Manipulation?: The Role of Political Competence and Media Literacy Context ..............................................................................................  181 Vasyl V. Kucherenko Afterword. Digital Disorder: The Challenges of Taming Big Tec ....................  197 Aidan White List of Figures ..........................................................................................................  207 List of Tables ...........................................................................................................  209

Contributors Yasemin İnceoğlu, professor of journalism, member of the UNESCO International Clearinghouse on Children and Violence on the Screen and of the American Biography Institute, was a visiting scholar at Columbia University (1994)  at the Salzburg Seminar (2003), New Delhi University Media Studies Center (2014) and EUI -European University Institute (2017). She has published several books: The Persuasion Process in Communications: With Some Examples of the Political Campaigns (1997); Media and Society, Women in the Media and Women Journalists (2002);  International Media (2004); A Guide to Media and Children (2008); Text Analysis (2009); Women and Their Body in the Spiral of Femininity, Sexuality and Violence (2010); Hate Speech and Hate Crimes (2012); Minorities, The Other and Media (2014); Internet and Street (2015); News Readings (2016); LGBTI’s and the Media (2019) with Dr.  Savaş Çoban and co-edited Journalism “a Peacekeeping Agent” at the Time of Conflict with Dr.Tirşe Erbaysal Filibeli (2018). Hossein Derakhshan is a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center and a research associate at the MIT Media Lab. He recently co-authored the report Information Disorder for the Council of Europe on the theory and practice of what is known as ‘fake news’ with Claire Wardle. He spent six years in prison in Iran from 2008, which inspired an essay on the demise of blogs and “The Web We Have to Save” (Matter, 2015). His current research is focused on the future of journalism and also on the theory and sociopolitical implications of digital and social media. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Wired, Libération, Die Zeit, and Corriere Della Sera. Orhan Şener obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Business-Economics, and has started his Master’s Degree in Information, Communication and Society at City University London. He has graduated from the program with his dissertation titled ‘Online Political Participation of University Students in Istanbul’. Since 2014, he has been enrolled to the PhD Program in Media and Communication Studies at Galatasaray University. The title of the PhD dissertation is ‘Informational Access and Filtering Practices: A Study on Turkish Journalists’. He is the director of Journalism Academy of the Journalists’ Union of Turkey and editor at Journo. com.tr which is a bipartisan media organization aiming to enhance quality of journalism practices in Turkey. He gives lectures on communication studies, new media and digital transformation and innovation at Bahçeşehir University.

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Tirşe Erbaysal Filibeli is an assistant professor and the chair of the Department of New Media at Bahçeşehir University. She received her PhD from Galatasaray University, Doctoral Program in Media and Communication Studies with her thesis focusing on ‘new social movements and peace journalism’. She works as a researcher in the country team of Turkey of the Media Pluralism Monitor Project that is supported by Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF). She is the co-editor of Journalism a ‘Peacekeeping Agent’ at the Time of Conflict that came out in December 2018 from Brill Publication. She has many publications on contemporary issues in journalism and new media studies. Her recent research interests focus on digital and algorithmic manipulation, big data and data privacy, fact-checking, ‘fake news’ about minorities and othering in the post-truth era. Sarphan Uzunoğlu is an assistant professor of Multimedia Journalism at the Department of Communication Arts and Online Security Director for Institute of Media Research and Training in Lebanese American University. Before, he worked as an associate professor in UiT Arctic University of Norway Language and Culture Department and as a senior lecturer at Kadir Has University (Istanbul) in New Media, and Public Relations and Information Departments. Dr. Uzunoğlu is also a founder and editor-in-chief of NewsLabTurkey, as well as a regular contributor to Punto 24 and other independent media organizations. Before his academic career, Uzunoğlu worked in Turkish Grand National Assembly as a political communication advisor; and in Agora Publishing as an editor. Ahmet Alphan Sabancı is a writer, journalist and researcher. He has BA in Philosophy. He is mainly working on philosophy, human rights, technology, information security, future studies and science fiction. As a writer and journalist, he has contributed to outlets The Guardian, Journo.com.tr, Globalvoices.org, Daily Dot, Susma 24, Inside Turkey and more. He’s one of the co-founders and Newsletter Editor of the NewsLabTurkey. His work on future studies and philosophy is mostly published at Tuhaf Gelecek and his personal website. Can Ertuna studied Sociology (BS) and Urban Policy Planning (MS) in the Middle East Technical University. He got his PhD from Media and Communication Studies programme of Galatasaray University. He has been working as an assistant professor at Bahçeşehir University, New Media department since 2019. His areas of interest are political economy of mass media, broadcast journalism and new media tools in storytelling. He has also been working in the Turkish media for more than 20 years fulfilling different roles as writer, editor and correspondent. He has written a book in Turkish called Arab Uprisings Diary (2014).

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Emre Kızılkaya worked at Hürriyet Daily, one of the largest news organizations in Europe, for more than 15  years. Throughout his career, he served as the Turkish newspaper’s chief editor of foreign news and head of digital, and also as the managing editor of its English language edition. In 2019, he resigned from Hürriyet and studied media sustainability at Harvard University as a Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow. He is a PhD researcher at Istanbul’s Galatasaray University, probing the question of how public trust is built through digital user experience. He also teaches International Journalism at Bahcesehir University as a part-time lecturer. Beside his academic work, Kizilkaya continues journalism as the managing editor of journo.com.tr, an independent website for nextgeneration reporters, supported by the European Union and the Journalists’ Union of Turkey. He is also the vice president of the Vienna-based International Press Institute’s (IPI) national committee in Turkey. Giovanni Brancato is a Post-Doc Research Fellow at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. He carries out research activities in the field of public communication of science and technology and health communication in collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. He is a PhD in ‘Communication, Research, Innovation – Curriculum in Communication Science’ and an expert in the subject of broadcast journalism. Other areas of interest are the media representation of migration phenomena, sociology of journalism and political communication. Currently, he collaborates in the research activities of the ‘Mediamonitor Politica Observatory’ and the ‘Observatory Tg Eurispes’. He is also a member of the ‘Interfaculty Medical Education Commission’ (CMEI) at Sapienza University of Rome. Among his most recent publications is:  S. Vaccaro, F.  Rizzuto, G.  Brancato eds. (2019), La Comunicazione alla sfida della (dis)informazione, Roma: Aracne. Melissa Stolfi is a PhD in ‘Communication, Research, Innovation – Curriculum in Communication Science’ at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. She is a member of the Italian research group within the project ‘Platform Europe’ funded by the European Parliament and the Jean Monnet ‘Vote for Europe’ funded by the European Commission both about the 2019 European Elections and led by Roma Tre University. Currently, she is involved in the research activities of the ‘Mediamonitor Politica Observatory’ and the ‘Observatory Tg Eurispes’ about the media coverage of the Italian politics, and she collaborates at the ‘Bejour - Becoming a Journalist in Europe’ program. Her areas of interest are political communication, journalism, media representation of migration, electoral and European studies. Among her

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publications: Stolfi, M. (2017), “Per una memoria europea: il caso della House of European History”, in Comunicazionepuntodoc, 17, pp. 243–267. Burak Özçetin  is an associate professor of communication at Istanbul Bilgi University, Faculty of Communication. Graduated from Middle East Technical University (METU) Department of International Relations in 2001, Özçetin received his master’s degree from Department of Political Science (METU) in 2005. As a Fulbright Scholar, he visited The New School for Social Research Political Science Department between 2006 and 2007. Özçetin received his PhD degree in political science from METU in 2011. He worked at METU, Akdeniz University and Kadir Has University respectively. Özçetin took part in several national and international research projects. Most recently, he supervised a nationwide audience study titled Television Viewing Among Conservatives:  Identity, Popular Taste, and Boundaries (funded by TUBITAK). Currently he is working on a book on the history of populism in Turkey, with a specific focus on the media and popular culture. His book Mass Communication Theories: Concepts, Schools, Models (Turkish) was published in 2018. Ayşegül Akaydın Aydın studied Television Journalism (BA) in İstanbul Bilgi University and Media Management (MA) in Marmara University. She got her PhD degree from Radio-TV Cinema department in İstanbul University. She worked as research assistant in İstanbul Bilgi University between 2009 and 2017. She has been working as assistant professor at Nisantasi University, Journalism department, Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Science. Her interests include communication theories, new television technologies and television culture. Sushmita Pandit is an assistant professor of Media Studies at Future Media School, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, India. She also works as a radio presenter at All India Radio, Kolkata, and as a program manager at an international digital radio channel. She has published her research in journals such as Journalism Practice, The Journal of Digital Media & Policy, Media Asia  and  Global Media Journal  among others. Her research interests include television studies, digital humanities and media policy. Sinan Aşçı is an assistant professor in the Department of New Media at Bahçeşehir University, and he is working as a PDRA and adjunct professor for SDI München. He completed his B.A.  in English Language Teaching at Anadolu University (2010) and was an exchange student in British and American Studies at the University of Pardubice in Czechia (2008). He received his MA degree in General Journalism at Marmara University (2013) with a thesis on the representation of

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LGBT individuals in newspapers in Turkey and the USA. Then, he earned his PhD in Media and Communication Studies from Galatasaray University (2018) with a thesis work focusing on ‘cyberbullying and youth in Turkey’. He has been teaching media courses both in Turkey and Germany, providing services as an editor and manuscript reviewer of peer-reviewed journals, and doing research on social media, social media and kids, cyberculture, digitization, digital journalism and digital literacy. Eylem Yanardağoğlu is an associate professor and head of the New Media department at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. She received her PhD at City, University of London, Sociology Department  in London in 2008 where she studied  the relationship between Europeanization, citizenship and media in Turkey.  She has taught courses on introduction to new media, new media theories, social media, sociology of news, international communication, alternative media and online journalism at various undergraduate levels. Having published extensively on the state of Turkish media and journalism, she continues to research on issues of citizenship, digital transformation of news consumption and production. She also continues to be interested in the transational expansion of Turkish TV series. Dilara Eldaş Baş has a Bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Political Sciences, the Department of International Relations at Istanbul University and a Master’s degree from The Institute of Communication Sciences, New Media Program at Kadir Has University. She worked as associate Editor at CNNTürk and New Media Editor at NTV news channels. She produced and presented radio programs for NTVRadio. She has moderated Conventional New Media Conferences at Kadir Has University since 2014. She has carried Board Membership of Digital Transformation Association of Turkey. She has worked as the Head of Digital Content Marketing at of an e-commerce company, Turna.com. She is working as a digital PR consultant. Vasyl V. Kucherenko, PhD, is a lecturer in Journalism and Communication at the School of Journalism and Communication of Shanghai International Studies University. He is a former professional journalist, political and media analyst, and applied communication researcher having more than 20  years of professional experience. He graduated in Journalism from Kiev Shevchenko National University, Ukraine; holds MS in Technical Communication from Colorado State University, USA; and PhD in Political and Social Sciences from European University Institute, EU/Italy. After getting his PhD, he worked in European University Institute; Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, and was a

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Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Media and Communication Studies at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. He is one of the authors of the study commissioned by the European Parliament on the perspectives of Internet voting in the European Union (“Alexander H.  Trechsel, Vasyl Kucherenko, Frederico Silva (May 2016). ‘Potential and challenges of e-voting in the European Union’. Final report commissioned by Policy Department C: Citizen’s Rights and Constitutional Affairs, European Parliament.”). His research interests include media effects, information manipulation, media trust, critical media literacy, new media, political competence and public opinion. Aidan White is a journalist and international media consultant. He was born in Northern Ireland and educated in the United Kingdom. He was General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists for 23 years. Previously he worked for 20  years as a reporter and editor in the UK including for The Guardian and the Financial Times. He is founder of the Ethical Journalism Network (2013) and the International News Safety Institute (2003). He has advised the United Nations and European human rights groups on media standards and has helped developed international standards for reporting on children, migration and combating hate speech. He is the author of To Tell YOU The Truth (2008) on ethical journalism. He is a member of the International Commission on Information and Democracy which in 2018 launched a groundbreaking initiative to establish a global forum to define the future of information in the digital age. This initiative was endorsed by the United Nations and G7 countries in 2019.

1.  Disinformation Warfare in the Post-Truth Era: An Attempt for Classification Orhan Şener and Hossein Derakhshan Abstract: The buzzword of the current era, namely post-truth, has invaded academic discussions, particularly after the election of Donald Trump as the US President in 2016. However, the identification of the backstage clashes among state-of-the-art propaganda machines, ahead of concealing on conspiracy stories, has lagged behind. In this chapter, the latest views on the academic efforts to identify the mechanisms running behind the veils of disinformation warfare and ideas on how to deal with these mechanisms in question will be discussed. Keywords: Disinformation, disinformation warfare, post-truth

Introduction Since 2016, concerns have grown over states’ efforts to manipulate public opinion on the Web, particularly during high-stake elections/referendums. Currently, states do not fight their conflicts with their armies but via disinformation wars. The word of “trolls” have entered into lives of people just a short while after the rise of social media (McIntyre, 2018). Social media currently stays in the graveyard of techno-utopian hopes together with the Internet since states were faster to take social media under control thanks to their experience in burying the Internet hopes. Despite concerns over disinformation that is systematically spread by these accounts, there is little academic research on how they work, what they do, and how effective they are (Zannettou et al., 2019). Golovchenko, Hartmann, and Adler-Nissen (2018), on the contrary, suggest that a certain amount of top-down regime tactics and strategies are known; but it is much less known to actually who spreads digital disinformation and who counters it. The roots of the current disinformation era are seen in the evolvement of Russian strategic thinking following the end of the Cold War (1947–1991), particularly changing role of information operations. Following the collapse of the USSR, or, in other words, the victory of the Western neoliberal system, the West enjoyed an era of absolute dominancy to spread its interests via using soft power tools such as the Internet, social media, and NGOs. The initial nationalist reactions from the Russian bureaucracy dates back to the end of the 1990s, and the Russian state followed a path of systematically consolidating its power across

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the following decade. However, the Western dominancy in disinformation wars also crystallized in The New  York Times reports to legitimize the destruction of Iraq in 2003 during this period. The 2008 global financial crisis sets a significant breakpoint in almost two decades–long Western dominancy as Russia launches its military expansion strategies with Georgia War in the same year (Inkster, 2016). Khaldarova and Pantti (2016) propose that Russian invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2016 was the significant turning point in the current disinformation wars. Golovchenko, Hartmann, and Adler-Nissen (2018) suggest that particularly in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine that erupted in 2013–2014, the Kremlin has been accused of orchestrating disinformation campaigns against the Ukrainian government and Western countries by using online trolls and state-controlled online outlets such as RT (formerly known as Russia Today), Sputnik, and Life News. Also, according to Golovchenko, Hartmann, and Adler-Nissen (2018), this has led to a wave of counter-disinformation measures in the West to combat what is seen as a threat to democracy, international security, and stability. The victory of Russian interventions in the Brexit referendum and US Presidential elections in 2016 suggests the official end of the Western dominancy in post-Cold War information warfare across the Internet era. Particularly after 2016, post-truth has emerged as an unavoidable global phenomenon, suggesting that truth along with anything else, including the terminology, has been scrapped. It is correct that eroding realities with such terminologies of “terrorism” is not new (Keyes, 2004) but currently the world is a place where Donald Trump fights against “fake news”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fights against “­jihadism”, the UK PM Boris Johnson fights to save British workers’ jobs, Brazilian President Bolsanaro fights to defend Amazon forests, and so on. For several decades, the Western establishment has feared cybersecurity and cyberwars that would destroy energy infrastructures, etc. However, disinformation is currently the most dangerous cyber weapon; and it is absolutely asymmetric, as a result, complex to encounter. Unlike fears over conventional cyberwars that would supposedly target digital infrastructure, disinformation wars target social, economic, and cultural vulnerabilities (Wheeler, 2018). This approach is not only good at properly identifying the targets of disinformation campaigns but it also hints where to seek the possible solutions. The current establishments would never voluntarily accept to renounce their privileges; however, the current economic system is collapsing, and sidelining with disadvantaged masses would not just help eliminate the vulnerabilities but it would also prevent them to show their reactions with massively voting for populists.

Disinformation Warfare in The Post-Truth Era

FALSENESS

Misinformation Unintentional mistakes such as innaccurate photo captions, dates, statistics, translations, or when satire is taken seriously.

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INTENT TO HARM

Disinformation Fabricated or deliberately manipulated audio/visual content. Intentionally created conspiracy theories or rumours.

Malinformation Deliberate publication of private information for personal or corporate rather than public interest, such as revenge porn. Deliberate change of context, date or time of genuine content.

Fig. 1.1:  Types of information disorder. Source: Wardle and Derakhshan (2018)

Disinformation wars, on the other hand, have some similarities with conventional wars as they are also are fought for power and economic benefits, and, at the end, vulnerable masses suffer the most (D’Ancona, 2017). The plotters of systematic information disorders vary from states to companies and include politicians, officials, journalists, and so on; while the goals of information disorder plotters also vary from gaining political power to earning money (Felice, 2008). In the Information Disorder Report for Council of Europe, Wardle and Derakhshan (2018) identify three types of distorted information, namely misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Furthermore, it introduces three stages in production and recreation of distorted information, namely creation, (re)production, and distribution. Finally, three agents of information disorder were proposed as the agent, the message, and the interpreter. Misinformation occurs from unintentional mistakes while malinformation is deliberately produced with using private information or manipulating real information. Disinformation, on the other hand, is deliberately fabricated (Fig. 1.1). Inaccurate photo captions, false dates, statistics, wrong translations, or even satiric information are examples of misinformation; while intentionally leaked

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private information that do not carry public interest such as porn videos along with intentional manipulation of the context or date are some common types of malinformation. Disinformation, meanwhile, stands as a common area between misinformation and malinformation with such examples of intentionally manipulated video or audio recordings as well as conspiracy theories or rumors. There are also some other attempts to propose a categorization for disinformation warfare. According to Fetzer (2004), the use of disinformation is distinct from misinformation in being not only false but false as part of a “purposeful effort to mislead, deceive, or confuse”. In this chapter, the categorization proposed by Wardle and Derakshan (2018) will be discussed and possible solutions to confront disinformation will be attempted to be developed.

Categorizing Disinformation Warfare From the perspective of political science along with propaganda and security studies, disinformation campaigns are often described as “information warfare”, sponsored more or less directly by governments (Ball, 2017). The term refers to the strategic use of information and disinformation to achieve political and military goals. While this concept highlights the importance of ordinary citizens, it implies that information is used as a weapon and the minds of citizens are the “battlefield” (Cavelty & Mauer, 2008). While many Western scholars use the term “information warfare” to describe the spread of pro-Kremlin information to Western audiences, Russian public officials and academics argue that Western countries are also waging information warfare against Russia. According to these Russian observers, the West seeks to destabilize Russia’s current political regime, weaken the country’s position in the international arena, and spread “Russophobia”. This is the typical example of a disinformation war between states. Same applies to the Western mainstream media’s critics against Erdoğan’s Turkey and Erdoğan’s counters with blaming them for “Islamophobia”. Both the Western and the Russia-favoured conceptions of information warfare share the assumption that waves of “weaponized” information are generated by the state or state-sponsored agents. From this perspective, civilian support for or mistrust towards governments is acknowledged, but citizens are mainly seen as targets for manipulation in large-scale online information operations. Few scholars and security practitioners have systematically explored the active role citizens actually play, as social media “users who are not professionally active in politics but express political opinions or comment on events” (Ausserhofer & Maireder, 2013, p. 298).

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Non-State

Public

State

? (British gov targets Polish gov re Iraq WMD)

Conspiracy (Bush targets NYTimes re Iraq WMD)

Propaganda (Russia Today targeting Americans, etc.)

Non-State

? (Pro-Assad rights group targets French gov)

Competition

Acitivsm (NRA targets people about gun control)

? (Eye witness targeting State Dept.)

? (Fake eye witnesses sent to BBC, HRW, etc.)

Libel, harassment, etc.

Agent

Se lf

State

Public

X

O

th

er

Target

Tab. 1.1:  Information warfare model. Source: Derakhshan (2019)

Changes in technological and information accessibility have allowed states who have been traditionally disadvantaged in terms of warfare capabilities to overcome these asymmetries (Fuller, 2018). Recent interferences in elections in Western democracies by Russia and China provide an overview of each state’s motivations for engaging in non-linear warfare, namely historical grievances against the Liberal International Order, changing tactics in modern warfare, and interference strategies in foreign elections. Western democracies are viewed as a target from the perspectives of both Russia and China. Western democracies, on the other hand, have to defend against attacks to its democratic institutions. Western democracies are likely to face disinformation attacks during the pre-election and election period in the near future (Devin, 2019). Derakshan (2019) attempts to apply the model developed by Wardle and Derakhshan (2018) into information warfare, and it proposes a categorization of information warfare based on agents and targets. It categorizes the agents and the targets in disinformation warfare as state, non-state, and public agents/ targets. Agents, who produce disinformation, could be states, non-state organizations, or civil groups/individuals; and they target states, non-states, or public. Consequently, nine categories occur, suggesting that states may target to manipulate states; states may target to manipulate non-state organizations; states may target to manipulate public while non-state organizations may, similarly, target to manipulate states/non-state organizations/public; and, finally, civil groups may target to manipulate states/non-state organizations/public (Tab. 1.1).

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State vs. State category suggests the situations when a state or a group of states manipulate another state or a group of states. This typical example is the argument of Iraq’s mass destruction weapons produced by the USA and the UK to destroy the country in 2003. During the invasion of Iraq, Poland contributed to the invasion with the second largest military presence among European countries following the UK. According to Derakshan (2019), the UK convinced Poland with manipulated proofs on the presence of mass destruction weapons in Iraq. This actually sounds as a naive perspective towards states based on the assumption that states decide to join wars over the publicized arguments such as confronting against mass destruction weapons or terrorism. Then Polish Foreign Minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz frankly states in 2003 that his government has never hidden its desire for Polish oil companies to access Iraq’s oil reserves at the end of the war. A free visa scheme with the USA and also financial support were also among the goals of the Polish state for participating in the war. Although Polish society was also against the war, pacifists were not as strong as in other European countries, making the Polish state an easier target to be convinced with some arguments. As a proper example of State vs. Non-state case, the USA and the UK have also manipulated intergovernmental bodies along with NGOs and media to justify the Iraq War. The US government led by the then President George W. Bush has set some conspiracy theories on Iraq’s ability to pose security threats against the USA, and Bush personally targeted The New  York Times to create public manipulations. State vs. Public category is named propaganda, which is the main activity of any kind of state to survive. Although propaganda is systematically associated to autocracies, any form of states cannot survive without manufacturing consent (Herman & Chomsky, 2002). The production of consent in the USA and the UK societies for the Iraq War remains as an appropriate example for the State vs. Public category too. Non-state organizations and civil groups may similarly manipulate each of states, non-state organizations, and public. However, in the categories suggesting that NGOs or public manipulate the other three categories, it may be questioned whether some state bodies may be behind such public manipulators. During the Syria War, pro-regime NGOs targeted the French government as an example of non-state vs. state category. When NGOs target to manipulate other NGOs, Derakshan (2019) defines it as competition. When NGOs target to manipulate public, Derakshan (2019) defines it as activism. Such an example of non-state vs. public category is the NGOs that are manipulating public against gun control. For public vs. state category, eyewitnesses who manipulated the US foreign

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department on Iraq’s mass destruction weapons are an example. Same eyewitnesses also manipulated such NGOs of BBC or HRW as an example for public vs. NGOs category, while public vs. public category includes harassments, etc. Derakshan (2019) believes targeting non-state organizations is the most effective method for manipulators to reach their goals. However, his belief was unfortunately built on his another belief suggesting that there were some independent and, at the same time, professional media outlets. He particularly suggests that The New York Times was such an example of those independent and, at the same time, professional media outlets; and the poor The New York Times was duped by the USA and the UK state organizations into selling the Iraq War to public. According to Derakshan (2019), tackling the most effective method for manipulators, namely targeting non-state organizations, is, at the same time, the most effective and less costly method because Derakshan (2019) believes non-state organizations are primarily rational structures and predominantly smaller in scale. Turkish President Erdoğan obviously believes in parallel with Derakshan (2019) as he is one of the regular op-ed authors for The New York Times (Erdoğan, 2019). It is unknown whether the fees to publish an op-ed on The New York Times fall into the “less costly” territory believed by Derakshan (2019) as it is a subjective criterion. However, the real problem here, of which Derakshan (2019) is not aware, is that people do not read mainstream media outlets anymore; and the audience of the mainstream media outlets consists of the establishments who are globally subject to liquidation since the 2008 global crisis. Erdoğan (2019), on the other hand, bribes The New York Times with a better vision since its main goal is to manipulate the US establishment with the aim of convincing them not to make noise against his dark deals with Trump. Erdoğan, himself, has gained his autocratic power with presenting himself as fighting against putrid mainstream media and establishment in Turkey while Trump is following a similar path in the USA. Therefore, banking on mainstream media to deal with manipulations does not sound smart if it is not aiming to fawn over them. Another problem with beliefs proposed by Derakshan (2019) stands on defining non-state organizations as “rational structures” and further building a belief that “rational structures” would help tackle manipulations. Rationality from a philosophical perspective belongs to the 17th–18th centuries, while from an economic perspective, it simply suggests that rational structures should focus only on profit growth. In the 21st century, when humanity is dealing with global warming and collapse of the world order on humanity, seeking remedy in the century of the Industrial Revolution does not sound promising. According to Derakshan (2019), “states are difficult targets because of their intrinsic rational structure, administrative rules, and verification mechanisms,

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the public is easy to target but very hard (and expensive) to protect  – mainly because of their vast numbers, their affective tendencies, and the uncertainty about the kind and degree of the impact of bad information on their minds”. He, thus, suggests to concentrate funds and efforts on non-state organizations to help them resist information warfare. Offering in an article methods to deal with the mass manipulations in the current era and ending with pouring some “funds” into useless mainstream media would definitely fit if the establishments are the target. The establishments could read some articles sponsored by themselves along with Erdoğan’s op-eds, and they could keep thinking that people insist on Trump because they are ignorant while Trump is burying them as Erdoğan has buried the former Turkish establishment. Horowitz (2019) also attempts to categorize disinformation wars based on targets, although he also believes that information disorder campaigns are successful thanks to “big money and inflammatory politics”. It is notable that almost all available, albeit few, academic proposals on how to deal with the disinformation mechanisms tie the issue with milking the Western establishment, who are frightened to death. According to Horowitz (2019), there are three categories that are subject to disinformation campaigns, namely political structures, media organizations, and media audiences. In 2018, United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner recognized information disorder in the Internet as a problem. However, UN Commissioner (2018) is worried whether the companies protect the online rights of their users or that states give companies legal incentives to do so. The perspective of the UN Commissioner (2018), a representative of governments, suggests that some evils, who have no connection with neither governments nor companies, are responsible for spreading misinformation; and state incentives would work to encourage companies to stop these evils. There are some other reports from the UN bodies but Horowitz (2019) believes the European Union (EU) has taken the most proactive stance with another report released in 2018 (European Commission, 2018). Although taking proactive stance in some reports sounds like a fallacy, it fits to the EU, which is gorgeously collapsing due to foetidness. Unlike hopeless reports by hopeless governmental bodies, the proposal by Rosenwald (2017), namely “Making media literacy great again”, sounds closer to the real solution, namely going to people with a sexy rhetoric, although “again” brings a question whether media literacy has ever been great. Feeling as a member of some high circles makes the feeler to have a bias suggesting that people are not aware media have always been consent manufacturing tools under control of the power holders, namely states and/or mafia and/or governments and/or capital holders/companies and/or so on. Therefore, if some digital-illiterates lecture

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digital native kids at training camps called schools that they should believe in mainstream media while they are also lecturing them that their nation state is the best one with the most magnificent history, kids would tend to find someone like Trump, who would end those lectures, to vote for when they are grown since establishments are unfortunately not aware that Trump, whom they see as an absolute fool, is good at social media. Mainstream efforts, namely legislations, censorship, formal education, and so on, to deal with disinformation schemes are unfortunately far away from realities since they have a certain bias towards believing in people are fools and treating them as fools who are open to any kind of manipulations/treats. Accepting the reality suggesting that people are aware that everything on any kind of media, particularly on mainstream media, is manipulated and they just support those who oppose the established bodies within media although they are certainly aware that opponents are also pure liars like everyone on media would cause a magnificent liquidation of the current media and academic establishment. Therefore, humanity shall not feed hopes from academy or other established bodies. Horowitz (2019), as a final proposal, takes the usual way of transferring the responsibility to regular people. Politicians also do the same. This perspective is a far cry from the realities since it overlooks that people are absolutely busy with surviving while fulfilling the social necessities imposed by media. Meanwhile, politicians, academics, etc., earn their lives to tackle social problems. To make these proposals real solutions, masses should initially be provided with basic needs, proper job opportunities, etc., or, in the current context, efforts by the narrow audience of such articles with not lashing out, not commenting, and not sharing disinformation would only prove as personal masturbation. Cartwright, Weir, and Frank (2019), on the other hand, propose to fight disinformation attacks in cloud-based social media platforms with artificial intelligence. However, the main orientation is to create a solution for “law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, cybersecurity personnel and business ownersoperators” in their efforts “to monitor and efficiently respond to dynamic and emerging cybersecurity threats”. Golovchenko, Hartmann, and Adler-Nissen (2018) propose that describing the online debate as largely orchestrated by the Kremlin and pro-Western authorities to win over local and global public opinion reduces civil society to a mere target for manipulation. They demonstrate how individual citizens are more than purveyors of government messages; they are the most active drivers of both disinformation and attempts to counter such information. Their findings challenge conceptualizations of a state-orchestrated information war over Ukraine.

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Conclusion The main power of disinformation remains as the power of labelling any attempts to identify the beneficiaries of it as conspiracy theories. Mystery, meanwhile, is systematically pumped up in the form of some certain keywords such as Russians, lobbies, or some families to discredit any efforts to clarify disinformation schemes since a proper identification of such schemes would make it easier to develop, or at least to think/discuss, potential tools to tackle with disinformation campaigns. However, currently there is not many well-studied academic works on the new age disinformation warfare mechanisms since the academy is also under control of the same manipulators. Any real attempt to shed light on such mechanisms shall not overlook the reality suggesting that Russians do not play disinformation war games by their own, albeit they have been dominantly winning since 2016, but they have playmates who are not against disinformation schemes from an ethical perspective but they just aim to have a more powerful one than the Russians have.

References Ausserhofer, J., & Maireder, A. (2013). National politics on Twitter. Information, Communication and Society, 16(3), 291–314. doi:10.1080/13691 18X.2012.756050. Ball, J. (2017). Post-truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World. London: Biteback Publishing. Cartwright, B., Weir, G. R. S., & Frank, R. (2019). Fighting disinformation warfare with artificial intelligence. In B. Duncan, Y. W. Lee, M. Westerlund, &A. Aßmuth (Eds.), CLOUD COMPUTING 2019: The Tenth International Conference on Cloud Computing, GRIDs, and Virtualization (pp. 73–77), Venice: IARIA. Cavelty, M. D., & Mauer, V. (2008). Power and security in the information age: Investigating the role of the state in cyberspace. London: Routledge. D’Ancona, M. (2017). Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back. London: Ebury Press. Derakhshan, H. (2019, May 9). Disinfo wars. Retrieved from https://medium. com/@h0d3r/disinfo-wars-7f1cf2685e13 Devin, T. (2019). Campaigns of disinformation: Modern warfare, electoral interference, and Canada’s security environment. Unpublished master’s thesis. Calgary: University of Calgary. Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/ abstract=3437117.

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Erdoğan, R. T. (2019, January 7). Erdogan: Trump is right on Syria. Turkey can get the job done. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes. com/2019/01/07/opinion/erdogan-turkey-syria.html Ericksson, I., & Aslama, M. (2010). Making, breaking promises? Civic spheres and virtual engagements. New Media & Society, 12(4), 677–682. European Commission. (2018). A multidimensional approach to disinformation (Report of the Independent High-Level Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation). Brussels, Belgium: European Union. Felice, W. (2008). Moral responsibility in a time of war. Social Justice, 35(3:113), 28–48. Fetzer, J. (2004). Disinformation: the use of false information. Minds and Machines, 14(2), 231–40. Fuller, S. (2018). Post-truth: Knowledge as a power game. London: Anthem Press. Golovchenko, Y., Hartmann, M., & Adler-Nissen, R. (2018). State, media and civil society in the information warfare over Ukraine: Citizen curators of digital disinformation. International Affairs, 94(5), 975–994. Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (2002). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media (Updated edition). New York: Pantheon Books. Horowitz, M. A. (2019). Disinformation as warfare in the digital age: Dimensions, dilemmas and solutions. Journal of Vincentian Social Action, 4(2), Article 5. Inkster, N. (2016). Information warfare and the US presidential election. Survival, 58(5), 23–32. doi:10.1080/00396338.2016.1231527 Keyes, K. (2004). The post-truth Era: Dishonesty and deception in contemporary life. New York: St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Khaldarova, I., & Pantti, M. (2016). Fake news. The narrative battle over the Ukrainian conflict. Journalism Practice, 10(7), 891–901. McIntyre, L. (2018). Post-truth. Cambridge: MIT Press. Rosenwald, M. (2017). Making media literacy great again. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved from https://www.cjr.org/special_report/media-literacytrump-fake-news.php Wardle, C., & Derakshan, H. (2017). Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Report. Retrieved from https://rm.coe.int/ information-disorder-report-version-august-2018/16808c9c77 Wheeler, T. (2018, September 12). In cyberwar, there are no rules. Foreign Policy. Retrieved from https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/12/ in-cyberwar-there-are-no-rules-cybersecurity-war-defense/

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Zannettou, S., Caulfield, T., Cristofaro, E., Sirivianos, M., Stringhini, G., & Blackburn, J. (2019). Disinformation warfare: Understanding state-sponsored trolls on Twitter and their influence on the Web. In Companion Proceedings of the 2019 World Wide Web Conference (WWW ‘19 Companion), May 13–17, 2019, San Francisco, CA, USA. doi:10.1145/3308560.3316495.

2.  The State of (Dis)information Sphere: The Rise of Fact-Checking Initiatives Tirşe Erbaysal Filibeli Abstract: The number of fact-checking initiatives has increased especially after 2016 with the effects of post-truth politics, and the emergence of fact-checkers all around the world become more spectacular day by day. In this study, to understand and define the reasons for the rise of fact-checkers all around the world, at first, we described the (dis)information sphere in the context of digital threats within the very recent examples that harmed democracy and caused the violation of human rights. After, to answer the question: ‘Can fact-checking initiatives play a prominent role to sustain democracy?’ we did research and examined 222 fact-checking initiatives/organizations according to where, when, and for which purpose they had been founded, and what kind of topic they mostly focus on. Besides, by referring Global Press Freedom Index of Freedom House (2019) and World Democracy Index (2018) compiled by Economist Intelligence Unit, we made a comparative analysis on the relationship between media freedom, democracy, and the rise of fact-checking initiatives. Keywords: (Dis)information sphere, digital threats, democracy, media freedom, fact-checking

Introduction The need for ‘fact-checking’ initiatives has increased in recent years. Underlying reasons for the rise of fact-checking initiatives, especially after 2016, are changing from country to country; however, the most visible reason might be defined as contending with the problems that are caused by the ease of production of digital content and the fast circulation of (dis)information. In this study, the information sphere or the (dis)information sphere in the digital age had been described within some digital threats to democracy by referring post-truth discussions; and after doing a descriptive analysis of fact-checking initiatives all around the world, we opened a discussion on the function of fact-checking initiatives on media freedom and democracy. To better understand how and why fact-checking initiatives had been founded, what kind of information they have been fact-checking, and eventually how seeking the truth is related to a well-functioning democracy; we compare and contrast the structure of factchecking organizations all around the world within their business models (newsroom model, civil initiatives, and for-profit organizations) and areas of expertise

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(political initiatives, social media hoaxes, and rumors). In this context, 222 factchecking initiatives/organizations had been examined according to where, when, and for which purpose they had been founded, and on what kind of topic they mostly focus. Besides, by referring Global Press Freedom Index of Freedom House (2019) and World Democracy Index (2018) compiled by Economist Intelligence Unit, we analyze the relationship between media freedom, democracy, and the rise of fact-checking initiatives.

The State of (Dis)information Sphere What do ‘fake news’ cause? Death? Violence? Violation of human rights? Discrimination? Antidemocratic elections? Or all of them? Since 2017, more than 40 people were lynched and brutally murdered in India because of the false rumors about child kidnappers spread through WhatsApp (Roy, 2019). Same as India, in 2018 two men were burned to death in Mexico outside the police station by an angry mob, just because of the false rumors on child abduction (Martinez, 2018). In 2019, Syrian refugees’ shops were attacked after rumors spread online that a Syrian had sexually assaulted a Turkish girl (Yurdakul, 2019). Those are some examples of how ‘false information’ harms people, causing terrible incidents that end up with violence and deaths. What about discussions on how the circulations of fake content and algorithmic manipulation of masses harm democracy? Even the use of (dis)information for ideological purposes is not new; all around the world, recently digital media manipulation of masses is discussed within the post-truth politics. The term ‘post-truth’ was utilized for the first time by the Serbian-American playwriter Steve Tesich in 1992. However, 24 years after, the term became very popular across the world with the effects of rising populism and the post-truth politics that had run especially during the Brexit Referendum campaign in United Kingdom (UK) (to leave the European Union) and the presidential election campaign in the United States (USA). In 2016, it was named the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries, and it is defined as ‘objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief ’ (Flood, 2016). Before the term became very popular, Ralph Keyes (2004) used it to explain how lies started not to be defined as lies anymore. According to Keyes, in the post-truth era, if lies are believable, they will not be considered as lies, they become truth. Today with the emergence of new digital technologies, it is easier to create believable lies, since it became very simple to produce manipulated content for influencing people and shaping public opinion. In this digital age,

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there are so many tools and technics to produce such altered digital content. In addition to photo and voice manipulation, some new digital technics have been developed. Today it is easy to create fake videos of real people with the ‘generative adversarial network’ (GANs) which is the artificial intelligence technology behind the deepfake videos. Plus by using real videos of real people it is possible to create doctored/distorted/altered ones which are basically based upon voice and image manipulation. The digitally created and/or recreated videos are sometimes used just for fun like the deepfake videos of Mona Lisa or Salvador Dalí. Since Mona Lisa is not a real person and Salvador Dalí passed away 30 years ago, those videos are not harmful. However, real people’s deepfake and/or distorted videos, especially politicians’ videos, construct an emerging threat to democracy in this post-truth era. The White House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s video that shows her like a drunk who is slurring her words has spread across social media. Former President of the USA Barrack Obama’s deepfake video generated by comedian Jordan Peele shows him like he was swearing to Trump. The digitally altered video of Mark Zuckerberg is another example. In this video, the CEO of Facebook is declaring, ‘whoever controls the data controls the future.’ The utilization of these technologies poses a growing threat to democracy as it is recently being discussed in the USA (Chivers, 2019; Parkin, 2019; Warner, 2019; George, 2019; Mervosh, 2019). The utilization of digital tools to create more persuasive content becomes more dangerous day by day for the stability and the quality of the information sphere. Most importantly when people fall in the false information loop, for the people who do not have good media literacy skills, it becomes impossible to get out of this loop. For this reason, in this information sphere malicious use of big data and algorithmic manipulation of masses create a threat to the breakdown of democracy. Very recent discussions on YouTube algorithms that recommend the conspiracy videos to make people spend much more time on YouTube is an example of algorithmic manipulation. Former YouTube engineer Guillaume Chaslot says that the algorithms are not there to optimize what is truthful or honest but to optimize watch time; for this reason, YouTube’s recommendation system is engineered to maximize watch time (Nicas, 2018; Silva 2019). As Zeynep Tufekci (2018) tested by herself during the 2016 presidential election of the USA, YouTube algorithms play a role as great radicalizer. Tufekci (2018) says that ‘…if you are never “hardcore” enough for YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. It promotes, recommends and disseminates videos in a manner that appears to constantly up the stakes.’ So in this sense if those algorithms are utilized during the political campaigns, they may affect voters’ choices and the election results. According to some very recent discussions, YouTube algorithms

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have radicalized Brazil, and this is how far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro was elected as the president of Brazil in October 2018 (Fisher & Taub, 2019). As a result, social platforms’ algorithms, which are working as they meant to do, have been criticized for promoting misleading videos, isolating people in ‘filter bubbles,’ and harming the information sphere (Nicas, 2018; Silva, 2019; Tufekci, 2018; Bartlett, 2018).

Filtering the Lies: Algorithmic Manipulation and (Un)breakable Bubbles What is filter bubble, and how does it damage the information sphere? As Eli Pariser (2011, p. 6) explains on December 4, 2009, Google introduced the ‘personalized search engine’ and with this technology, the company started to use users’ behavioral data to foresee who we were and what kind of content, product, site, etc., we would like. As Cass Sunstein (2009) claimed, technology has greatly increased people’s ability to ‘filter’ what they want to see, read, and hear. So those new generation Internet filters basically look at the things we like and work like ‘prediction engine’; in the end, filter bubbles fundamentally alter the way we get information as Pariser said (2011). In brief, we are creating our echo chambers by being friends and/or following people who think like us, we create our information cocoons, which are feeding us with the same kind of information; and with the likes and dislikes, we create our filter bubbles (Burns, 2017). As a result, with our willingly made choices we create ‘filter bubbles,’ our searches and/or decisions on what to watch, what to like, what to buy, and with who becoming friends have made us (un)willing victims of this very damaged information sphere. Unfortunately, as Sunstein (2009) said a well-functioning democracy does not benefit from echo chambers or information cocoons. Not only YouTube but all social media platforms also work with similar algorithms and those algorithms harm the information sphere. As digital media users, we are not only consumers but also producers. As prosumers, when we use our social media accounts we determine our priorities, and thanks to algorithms we get biased information according to our user behavior. So users who have far-right ideology will never see news on left-wing politics or in the adverse way people who have left ideology will never see news on right-wing politics. If we could not find a way to escape from these filters, algorithms will continue to harm the diversity of ideas, media pluralism, and in that way the democracy (Pariser, 2011; Bauman & Lyon, 2013; Haim, Graefe & Brosius, 2018; Bartlett, 2018). Filter bubbles have been fed with (dis)information created and circulated by Internet trolls, and software robot accounts may cause a major information

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disorder. According to Bartlett (2014), trolling may be defined as any nasty or threatening behavior online. Here, we are interested in their role in this damaged information sphere. Internet trolls are real people, but bots are robotic accounts created with machine-learning algorithms. So trolls have their own agenda; on the other hand bots are accounts which are created with codes that learn from human interactions and simulate human behaviors (Tandoc, Lim & Ling, 2018; Erbaysal Filibeli & Şener, 2019; CITS, n.d.). If bots had been coded with biased information, they will produce biased information, or if humans (prosumers) shared too much biased information, those accounts will start to generate texts according to the information that they fed on, like Microsoft’s chatbot Tay which turned into a ‘Hitler loving sex robot’ and shut down 16 hours after its launch (Hunt, 2016). Social bots are mostly utilized to get more likes, shares, and comments and in this way to make certain sharings more visible. Therefore Internet trolls and the use of bots for political manipulation construct a threat for democracy. If they feed news flows (newsfeeds) of people with false/fabricated information and if people share or like it, those fake information spread more. Eventually, trolls and the use of bots harm democracy. As Binark (2017) said, in Turkey trolls produce content for political polarization and make mass agitation. Not only in Turkey but all around the world those accounts play negative roles in the circulation of disinformation. The most discussed example of disinformation discussions is the FacebookCambridge Analytica data scandal. The British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested millions of people’s Facebook profiles through an app named ‘thisisyourdigitallife’; hundreds of thousands of people took the personality test and shared their data. However, test takers who did not read terms and conditions unknowingly shared their Facebook friends’ data too. In the end, the company gathered almost 87 million people’s data all around the world. With personal data, they created psychographics and built a system to profile voters. They utilized this data for the Project Alamo which is the datadriven digital campaign of Donald Trump. Within this campaign, the potential voters whom they call ‘persuadable people’ had been targeted, and to influence these people they produced false information and with the use of micro-targeting technics and algorithmic manipulation they made their promoted content visible for them (Bartlett, 2018; Amer & Noujaim, 2019; Cadwalladr & Graham Harrison, 2018; Rampling, 2017). This scandal is an example of how (dis)information can be weaponized and become a threat for the democracy. Cambridge Analytica might be exemplified for the misuse of big data, the violation of data privacy, the circulation of fake news, and the use of bots to make fake news visible and convince people.

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This broken information sphere that leads the post-truth politics and harms the democracy consists of digitally manipulated/produced content like doctored/deepfake videos, algorithms which create filter bubbles, Internet trolls that produce and diffuse fake news, bots which are used both as a part of algorithmic manipulation and also for generating false information, and the misuse of big data and violation of data privacy. For this reason, it has to look for a way for how to heal the current sphere. At this point, the role of fact-checking initiatives should be analyzed and discussed.

Looking at the Fact-Checking Landscape With the rise of post-truth politics, the boundaries of truth have reshaped and the sense of truth has changed. As Keyes (2004) said despite lying, you might ‘exaggerate’ and/or ‘misjudge’ the situation. In our days with the advanced digital technologies you might create/recreate the ‘truth.’ For this reason, the need for fact-checking initiatives has emerged, and the number of fact-checking initiatives has increased according to the fast flow of false information in the social networks (Vizoso & Vázquez-Herrero, 2019; Cheruiyot & Ferrer-Conill, 2018). Fact-checking, which is originally a journalistic practice that should be done while gathering the information and seeking truth, dates back to the first journalistic practices started in the early 18th century. The very first examples of modern fact-checking movement, which aim to observe political claims, can be traced back to the early 1980s in the USA. Likewise, the first dedicated factchecking organization is the FactCheck.org that is centered in Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, which was founded again in the USA in 2003, by hiring professional journalists to monitor and reduce the deception in US politics (Baybars Örsek1, personal communication, September 27, 2018; Graves, 2013; Graves, 2018; Graves, Nyhan & Reifler, 2015). The first fact-checking initiatives mostly aimed to keep track of political claims, especially during election times. Since digitization changed the traditional form of the news, the online platforms gained importance for providing opportunities to nonjournalists to produce and diffuse content (Tandoc, Lim & Ling, 2018), and new forms of fact-checking initiatives emerged and fact-checkers started to occupy an increasingly noticeable role in the digital information sphere. 1 He is the director of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) the Poynter Institute, the premier global coalition of fact-checking organizations. He is also the founder of the Doğruluk Payı that is the first and only political fact-checking network in Turkey.

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Facebook and Google work with fact-checkers to identify and reduce the spread of false information in the networks (IFCN, 2019). There are many forms of fact-checking organizations. According to International Fact-Checking Network, 49.3% of their signatories are nonprofit organizations, 46.7% are owned by for-profit media outlets, and 4% are academic initiatives. According to Duke Reporters’ Lab (2019), which is a journalism research center that maintains a database of global fact-checking sites, there are 226 active and 82 inactive fact-checking initiatives all around the world. Duke Reporters’ Lab does not put fact-checkers in specific categories but it provides detailed information on how those initiatives have been funded, what kinds of rating system they use, where they fact-check (in which region and country), who have established those initiatives, and if they have a partnership with a university or media outlet. However, the number of fact-checking initiatives and their structural specialties are changing too fast. According to Lucas Graves and Federica Cherubini (2016), the landscape of fact-checking outlets in Europe is remarkably diverse and fast-changing. Not only in Europe, all around the world this landscape is changing so rapidly.

Research Methodology and Findings In this study to answer the questions such as ‘Do fact-checking initiatives play a prominent role to sustain democracy and media freedom? In the post-truth era, can fact-checking initiatives be defined as a need to guarantee a healthy information sphere for democracy?’ we conducted a semistructured interview with the director of the IFCN Baybars Örsek (September 27, 2019), and we asked him how the structure and the function of fact-checking organizations change from country to country. Then within the information that we gathered from the semistructured interview, we did a research and constructed our research sample that consists of 211 fact-checking outlets. Fact-checking initiatives in our research sample is determined mostly by the reference of the Duke Reporters Lab Database and by web searches that we did during August–September 2019. Since the number and the function of fact-checking initiatives have changed rapidly, we updated our research sample regularly. On November 11, 2019, we prepared the final document and started to analyze our research findings. On 22nd November, we updated our research sample one more time and the number of fact-checking initiatives in this research increased to 222. At first, we asked how the post-truth politics and digitization affect the rise of fact-checking initiatives. When we constructed our research sample, we looked at when those initiatives had been founded. Some of those organizations have

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given information about when they decided to establish their organizations. Unfortunately, some of them did not give details on the exact date. For those who did not give information, by utilizing webarchive.org, we searched their web pages and found when they constructed their websites.2 For the seven of 222 organizations, we could not find information about their foundation dates and web archives of their websites. According to our findings, 146 of 216 factchecking initiatives have been founded after 2016. When we looked at the dates a bit further, we noticed that 9 organizations were founded in 2013, 19 in 2014, 15 in 2015, 32 in 2016, 33 in 2017, 35 in 2018, and 47 in 2019; in total 189 of 216 had been founded after 2014. The number of fact-checking organizations has increased especially after 2016 with the rise of post-truth politics. Within this research, we visited websites of fact-checking organizations and translated their webpage to understand on what kind of topics they mostly focus while doing fact-checking and what kind of roles they play on the political landscape; in other words, we asked ‘Are they doing fact-checking of controversial content on political and social issues or political claims?’ To make an analysis on how they do fact-checking, we categorized those organizations according to the fact-checked news on their web pages. Fact-checkers that regularly work on the crucial social problems and discussions that directly or indirectly affect democracy like ‘refugee problem,’ ‘false claims of politicians,’ ‘governmental taxes or inflation,’ ‘international affairs,’ etc., have been defined as political and social fact-checking networks. According to our findings, 192 of 222 fact-checking initiatives are checking false information spread on political and social issues. At least 853 of 222 organizations have been founded just before, during, or just after the elections times to fact-check political claims and promises of politicians. Some of those organizations fact-check just or mostly promises of politicians and utilize some tools to measure their promises statistically like Trudeau Meter4 in Canada, Rouhani Meter5 in Iran (based in Toronto/Canada), Lui Président6 (Le Macronomètre) in France, and Doğruluk Payı7 in Turkey. 2 To be sure about our methodology, we got the opinion of Gülin Çavuş who is one of the fact-checkers of Teyit.org which is a Turkey-based fact-checking organization. 3 Some of the organizations in our research sample fact-check political claims and promises but they did not explain when they decide to found their organization for what purpose. 4 Detailed information can be gathered via https://trudeaumetre.polimeter.org. 5 Detailed information can be gathered via https://rouhanimeter.com/fa/. 6 Detailed information can be gathered via https://www.luipresident.fr/. 7 Detailed information can be gathered via https://www.dogrulukpayi.com/hukumetre.

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These numbers show that fact-checking can be described as a prominent instrument for the empowerment of democracy. On the other hand, when we analyze in which countries political fact-checkers work, our analyses give us another point of view. According to Freedom House’s Global Press Freedom Index 2019, there are 54 countries which are indexed under the ‘not free’ category. However just 12 of those countries (China, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela) have fact-checking initiatives. In Saudi Arabia NoRumours, in Egypt Dabegad, in Kazakhstan Factcheck.kz, in China Tencent News Fact Check, and in Thailand Sure and Share Center mostly fact-check fake news spread on social media, not focusing political topics. In Jordan, there are two fact-checking organizations and one of them fact-checks misinformation and hoaxes, mostly religious and social myths on the Arab World like ‘the first Egyptian on the moon.’ Iranian fact-checking initiatives Rouhani Meter and Fact-Nameh are based in Toronto/Canada, and Syrian fact-checking initiative Verfy-Sy is not based in Syria, because of the civil war going on the country, and they also factcheck false information spread in Turkey. When we analyze fact-checking initiatives in authoritarian countries, we found similar results. According to the Economist’s World Democracy Index 2018, around 68 countries have been ruling under the authoritarian regimes. Just 11 of those countries (Venezuela, China, Kazakhstan, Iran, Jordan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon) have fact-checking initiatives. However again, within these countries, we see Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, Kazakhstan, Jordan, and Thailand as countries that have fact-checking initiatives working mostly on social media hoaxes and rumors. Differently from Global Press Freedom Index, Lebanon is in the list. Within the effects of very last antigovernment protests8 in Lebanon, Agence France Press opened a fact-checking initiative. The interesting thing is this initiative is constructed by a French News Agency. Agence France Press (AFP) has 17 fact-checking centers all around the world (France, Lebanon, Poland, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Pakistan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, India, and Sri Lanka). But it is not the only news outlet that has fact-checking initiatives. A total 129 of 222 fact-checking initiatives are owned by a media outlet or have been constructed and/or staffed by journalists. But just in three countries under

8 Lebanese Anti-Government Protests started on 17th October to protest against the planned taxes on gasoline, tobacco, and WhatsApp phone calls.

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the authoritarian regime (China, Thailand, and Lebanon) those initiatives had been founded by media outlets or staffed by media professionals. On the other hand, when we compare it with the Freedom House’s Global Press Freedom Index (2019) just in two countries (China and Thailand) there are newsroom model fact-checking organizations. Baybars Örsek (personal communication, September 27, 2019) says that in many parts of the world, journalists are unable to fulfill their basic duties, and for this reason, nongovernmental organizations are trying to undertake it. According to Örsek, especially in Eastern Europe, Africa, and South-East Asia not the journalists but mostly nongovernmental organizations or activists who have roots outside the media environment undertake fact-checking initiatives; but in America and Central Europe, mostly news outlets or journalists’ associations establish fact-checking organizations. Our findings prove Örsek’s idea, since just 31 of 129 fact-checking organizations are established by media professionals based in Africa and Asia; and 10 of 31 have been founded by the French News Agency AFP. About the Eastern European countries,9 there are 16 fact-checking organizations and just three of them based in Poland are established by news outlets and one of those organizations is established by AFP. When we look into topics that they work on, it can be clearly seen that fact-checkers choose to analyze specific cases regarding the countries they are based in. For example, in Africa, it is important to fact-check public debates going on health problems as AfricaCheck10 does. Or as Baybars Örsek (personal communication, September 27, 2019) declares, in India, South America, and Africa, fact-checkers focus on the diffusion of false rumors on dark social, namely on WhatsApp, since it caused deaths and human rights violations in those regions. Or for Teyit.org11 fact-checking false information spread on social media about Syrian refugees is prominent since in Turkey 3,684,982 registered Syrian refugees live according to the data of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR, November 14, 2019).

9 Countries in Eastern Europe are categorized by the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs as Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Detailed information on the geographic regions defined by the UN can be found via the link https:// unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/. 10 Detailed information can be gathered via https://africacheck.org/latest-reports/ health-check/. 11 Detailed information can be gathered via https://teyit.org/.

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Differently from the topics that they work on, Fullfact.org12 (founded in 2009), the independent fact-checking charity in the UK, plays a peculiar role while fighting bad information in the UK, and they are effective in the UK’s interior politics since they work with government departments and research institutions to improve the quality of information. Also Politifact13 that was founded in 2007 by Tampa Bay Times with reporters and editors to report on the accuracy of statements made by politicians is an interesting example; with its 18 state editions, it plays an important role in the USA. Our comparative analysis shows that the fact-checking activities are changing from country to country and what they do, how they do, and for which purpose they do are very related to democracy and the media freedom. We may say that in the digital age, fact-checking initiatives get importance day by day with the acceleration of the circulation of disinformation. However, as our findings show it is hard to say that fact-checking initiatives become more important in countries that do not have media freedom and are governed by the authoritarian regime. In these countries neither there are fact-checking initiatives nor there are fact-checking initiatives that mostly focus on political and social problems; for this reason, they do not function same as in the democratic countries.

Discussion and Conclusion In this study to understand the underlying reasons for the rise of fact-checking initiatives, at first we attempted to describe the (dis)information sphere within the very recent examples. We discussed some digital threats that broke the information sphere and harm the democracy such as: the ease of producing digital content like deepfake videos, algorithms based upon personalization that create filter bubbles, Internet trolls that produce and diffuse false information, bots that are used for algorithmic manipulation, and eventually the malicious use of big data and violation of data privacy. Within this context, we thought that those digital threats should have some effects on the rise of fact-checking initiatives all around the world. As our findings showed, all those reasons that weaken the information sphere affect the increase of the number of fact-checkers since there is a rise especially after 2016 when the post-truth is named as the word of the year. However, our findings also showed that those initiatives are not powerful in undemocratic countries. Just 1 2 Detailed information can be gathered via https://fullfact.org/. 13 Detailed information can be gathered via https://www.politifact.com/.

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11 countries governed by authoritarian regimes have fact-checking initiatives. So, in most of the countries, there are no fact-checkers; and for the countries that have fact-checking initiatives, these organizations mostly fact-check social media hoaxes. Eventually, they do not focus on political and social problems to ensure a more democratic environment. Another important finding is also about the relationship between press freedom and fact-checking. Just in three authoritarian countries, there are factchecking initiatives founded by media outlets and/or staffed by journalists. It shows that if there is a lack of journalistic practices, fact-checking initiatives try to fulfill this lack. However the countries which are not free according to Global Media Freedom Index (2019) have just a few fact-checking organizations. As a result, our research findings show that fact-checking initiatives play a prominent role mostly in democratic countries. When authoritarianism rises, the function of those initiatives declines. Without a doubt, in the future because of the negative effects of post-truth politics and the malicious use of digital technologies, we will need fact-checking initiatives more than ever. However, we need to think about how we can make those initiatives more functional and reachable for each part of society. Within this question, new researches to develop policies to strengthen the role of fact-checkers especially in authoritarian countries should be done.

References Amer, K., & Noujaim, J. (2019). The great hack. [Documentary Movie]. United States: Netflix. Bartlett, J. (2014). The dark net: Inside the digital underworld. London: William Heinemann. Bartlett, J. (2018). The people vs. tech. how the Internet is killing the democracy (and how we save it). London: Penguin. Bauman, Z., & Lyon, D. (2013). Liquid surveillance. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Binark, M. (2017). Algoritmaların Yarattığı Yankı Odaları ve Siyasal Katılım Olanağı veya Olanaksızlığı. Varlık Dergisi, 1317, 19–23. Burns, A. (2017). Echo chamber? What echo chamber? Reviewing the evidence. In 6th Biennial Future of Journalism Conference (FOJ17), Cardiff, UK. Retrieved from https://eprints.qut.edu.au/113937/. Cadwalladr, C., & Grahamik-Harrison, E. (2018). Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/ mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election.

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Center for Information Technology & Society (CITS). (n.d.). How is fake news spread? Bots, people like you, trolls, and microtargeting. Retrieved from https:// www.cits.ucsb.edu/fake-news/spread. Cheruiyot, D., & Ferrer-Conill, R. (2018). Fact-checking Africa. Digital Journalism. doi:10.1080/21670811.2018.1493940. Chivers, T. (2019). What do we do about deepfake video?. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/23/ what-do-we-do-about-deepfake-video-ai-facebook. Erbaysal Filibeli, T., & Şener, O. (2019). Manipule Edilmiş Bir Enformasyonel Vitrin ve Populist bir Enformasyon Alanı olarak Twitter, Moment Dergi. Hacettepe Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi Kültürel Çalışmalar Dergisi, 6(2), 492–515. Fisher, M., & Taub, A. (2019, August 11). How YouTube radicalized Brazil. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/ world/americas/youtube-brazil.html. Flood, A. (2016, November 15). ‘Post-truth’ named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/15/ post-truth-named-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-dictionaries. George, S. (2019, June 13). ‘Deepfake’ called new election threat with no easy fix. AP News. Retrieved from https://apnews.com/4b8ec588bf5047a981bb6f7ac4 acb5a7. Global Fact Checking Sites. Duke Reporters’ Lab (2019, November 25). Retrieved from https://reporterslab.org/fact-checking/. Global Press Freedom Index. (2019). Freedom House. Retrieved from https:// freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-media/freedom-media-2019. Graves, L. (2013). Deciding what’s true: Fact-checking journalism and the new ecology of news (Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, New York, USA). Retrieved from https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/ D8XG9Z7C. Graves, L. (2018). Boundaries not drawn: Mapping the institutional roots of the global fact-checking movement. Journalism Studies, 19(5), 613–631. doi:10.1080/1461670x. 2016.1196602. Graves, L., & Cherubini, F. (2016). The rise fact-checking sites in Europe. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Graves, L., Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2015). The diffusion of factchecking: Understanding the growth of a journalistic innovation (American Press Institute Research Paper). Retrieved from http://www. americanpressinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/The-Growth-ofFact-Checking.pdf.

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Haim, M., Graefe, A., & Brosius, H. B. (2018). Burst of the filter bubble? Effects of personalization on the diversity of Google News. Digital Journalism, 6(3), 330–343. doi:10.1080/21670811.2017.1338145. Hern, A. (2018, April 10). How to check whether Facebook shared your data with Cambridge Analytica. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/10/ facebook-notify-users-data-harvested-cambridge-analytica#img-1. Hunt, E. (2016, March 24). Tay, Microsoft’s AI chatbot, gets a crash course in racism from Twitter. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/24/ tay-microsofts-ai-chatbot-gets-a-crash-course-in-racism-from-twitter. International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). (2019). State of the fact-checkers. Retrieved from https://www.poynter.org/ international-fact-checking-network-transparency-statement/. Keyes, R. (2004). The post-truth era. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Martinez, M. (2018, November 12). Burned to death because of a rumour on WhatsApp. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-latin-america-46145986. Mervosh, S. (2019, May 24). Distorted videos of Nancy Pelosi spread on Facebook and Twitter, helped by Trump. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/us/politics/pelosi-doctored-video. html. Nicas, J. (2018, February 7). How YouTube drives people to the Internet’s darkest corners. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/ how-youtube-drives-viewers-to-the-internets-darkest-corners-1518020478. Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you? New York: Penguin Press. Parkin, S. (2019, June 22). The rise of the deepfake and the threat to democracy. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/​ ng-interactive/2019/jun/22/the-rise-of-the-deepfake-and-​the-threat-​ to-democracy. Prasanto, K. R. (2019, October 30). Why India wants to track WhatsApp messages. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-asia-india-50167569. Rampling, J. (2017). Secrets of Silicon Valley: The Persuasion machine. [Documentary Movie]. UK: BBC. Roy, P. K. (2019, October 30). Why India wants to track WhatsApp messages. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-asia-india-50167569.

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Silva, M. (Presenter) (2019, May 25). How YouTube decides what you should watch. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csyvmt. Sunstein, C. R. (2009). Republic.com 2.0. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Tandoc, E., Lim, Z. W., & Ling, R. (2018). Defining “Fake News”. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137–153. doi:10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2018. (2019). The economist. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/01/08/ the-retreat-of-global-democracy-stopped-in-2018. Tufekci, Z. (2018, March 10). YouTube, the great radicalizer. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/ sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html. Vizoso, Á., & Vázquez-Herrero, J. (2019). Fact-checking platforms in Spanish. Features, organisation and method. Communication & Society, 32(1), 127–142. Warner, B. (2019, June 12). Deepfake video of Mark Zuckerberg goes viral on eve of house A.I. Hearing. Fortune. Retrieved from https://fortune. com/2019/06/12/deepfake-mark-zuckerberg/. Yurdakul, A. (2019, July 18). What’s the future of Syrian Refugees in Turkey? The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/ opinion/turkey-syrian-refugees.html.

3.  From Useful Idiots to Useful Facts:  What Is Behind the Fake News Debate? Sarphan Uzunoğlu and Ahmet Alphan Sabancı Abstract: It is claimed by many liberal pundits and some scholars that Lenin used the term “useful idiot” when referring to Western intellectuals who supported the communist experiment, in the time the new Soviet State was still particularly vulnerable (Landes, 2013). However, there is no conclusive evidence that Lenin used this concept. Nevertheless, this did not preclude the use of the concept to define the function of different political actors in daily political debates. Like useful idiot, the terms “post-truth” and “fake news” are often used by politicians, journalists, and academics without questioning histories of these terms and their function in academic and political life. The word “post-truth” was chosen by the Oxford Dictionary in 2016 as the word of the year. There has also been a dramatic increase in the number of searches for the word “fake news” since presidential elections in 2016, according to Google Trends statistics. Regardless of the prevalence of these terms in the circles of journalists, politicians, and intellectuals, Keyes (2004) as the first author to publish a book about the term stated that politicians, authors, journalists, scholars, and intellectuals are the subjects who benefit from post-truth politics the most. Likewise, Žižek (2018) claimed that even big media organizations may establish a troubled relationship with the truth and provide a crooked representation of controversial cases such as the situation of Julian Assange. In another interview, Žižek stated that the main problem was that people wanted to believe in more controllable lies (RT, 2019). Taking Žižek’s and Keyes’ arguments into consideration, this chapter is going to provide the critique of contemporary uses of the term “fake news”; and focus on how fake news debate is politically manipulated. Keywords: Post-truth, fake news, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda

Introduction There is a common perception that world politics has changed radically since 2016. Newsweek, The Economist, and similar magazines; pundits; and journalists provide several definitions of the methods and discourses of the politicians such as right-populist, new authoritarian, etc. In many narrations, occasions such as election of Donald J. Trump as the president of the United States of America and the result of the Brexit Referendum are defined as the key milestones in the evolution of this process (Rose, 2017; Gewin, 2017). There are even some authors defining that period as the great fake news panic of 2016 (Uberti, 2016).

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Two key terms used in discussions about these dramatic changes in media and politics sphere are fake news and post-truth. However, we should question if these two terms are adequate to describe this new situation in the political sphere or not while we also question if these two terms are misused or exploited by scholars, journalists, and politicians with malicious motives. There are numerous reasons why we question both terms and their functions. We are questioning the terms because the use of these terms in both academic and fact-taking practices is often subject to criticism. The criticism comes from how the definition of these terms are manipulated and misused for political and other motives. We also suggest that functions of these terms should be discussed in terms of the results of the political debates that emerged around these terms in the political practices and in the journalistic practice, since the terms “Fake News” and “Post-truth” have led to the growth of an industry called the factchecking industry; and also a fact-checking focused scholarship (Marietta, Barker, & Bowser, 2015; Lowrey, 2017). Over one hundred fact-checking organizations all over the world operate to examine the activities of politicians and journalists. From Brexit to the election of Trump, many developments, defined as a shock for the liberal political actors, are tried to be explained solely by these two terms and their derivations. However, limiting the fake news and post-truth debate to the political developments of the post 2016 period is featuring political and academic problems such as limiting factors that impact voting behavior to media consumption patterns or political communication strategy of candidates or discourses of political actors. This limitation also makes all of these debates blind to the factors that helped the development of these issues long before the aforementioned events happened. In order to deepen the understanding of these two keywords, we will start by defining them and then we will try to discover the political and academic relationship between these two terms. Adopting Slavoj Žižek’s approach to fake news debate, which suggests that those who fight fake news are more bothered by uncontrollable plurality and usability of fake news generation mechanisms by nonconventional actors (Žižek, 2018), we will try to provide a criticism of liberal understanding of fake news and post-truth political order.

Fake News There is an ongoing debate about the definition of fake news and some key terms related to this term in academic and journalistic communities. Accordingly, we will start with analyzing definitions of these keywords by several institutions

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and documents such as the Council of Europe’s Information Disorder Report of November 2017 (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017) and Ethical Journalism Network. Before entering the academic and journalistic communities after the fall of 2016, the term “fake news” was mostly used for things such as April Fools jokes in news article format, news articles written to news sites by hackers through defacing the website, or parody news websites’ articles. Until the fake news hit political landscape and tactics to make jokes used for political propaganda, academics and journalists did not see a need for defining this issue. That’s one of the reasons why when the issue first started to get traction, debates were focusing around the teens from Macedonia making money by fake news (Subramanian, 2017). Ethical Journalism Network defines fake news as information deliberately fabricated and published with the intention to deceive and mislead others into believing falsehoods or doubting verifiable facts (Ethical Journalism Network, n.d.). Report by the Council of Europe’s Information Disorder Report (Wardle & Derakshan, 2017), on the other hand, focuses on three different keywords: misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. They defined disinformation as false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization, or country. In their website they defined misinformation as information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm while defining malinformation as information that is based on reality, used to inflict harm on a person, organization, or country. Fact-checking activists worldwide are avoiding to define news stories as fake news more and more day by day. There are several academic studies about problems caused by the misconception or misunderstanding of fake news debate. There is also a collective effort among the fact-checkers and verification activists to endorse the use of the terms such as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation instead of the term “fake news.” But why did this terms suddenly become an undesirable term? Why, this term, which was often mentioned in academic studies in the last two decades, got replaced by new terms? In her article about misinformation ecosystem, Claire Wardle (2017) of First Draft News states, to understand the misinformation ecosystem one needs to understand types of fake content, content creators motivations, and how it is being disseminated. To truly understand the situation, it is needed to understand the severity in misinformation area and throwing the term “fake news” around is not getting them (fact-checkers, scholars, and journalists) anywhere. Mehmet Atakan Foça (personal communication, May 2019), cofounder of Turkey-based fact-checking platform Teyit.org, states that fake news defines fabricated news that might be labeled as lies, and fact-checking communities mostly

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tend to avoid it since it is used by politicians very often in wrong ways. Foça states that since the word “lie” demonstrates a bad motive, their platform avoids this term, stating that defining a message as a lie is dangerous in cases where people do not have malicious purposes. Agreeing with the approach of Wardle (2017), Foça states the problem about disinformation or misinformation is not limited to lies and these issues are observed more often. Waisbord (2018) indicates that the term “fake news” has been primarily used to refer to content featuring the style of conventional news intended to deliberately misinform; and this version of the term fundamentally refers to fabricated information that astutely mimics news and taps into existing public beliefs to influence electoral behavior. For him, what differentiates fake news today from propaganda with its mass scale and lies and distortion in interpersonal communication is the speed, scale, and massive proliferation and consumption of false information disseminated on dominant digital platforms such as Facebook (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017) and Twitter. His focus on the new actors benefiting from fake news mechanisms such as right-wing politicians, commentators, and activists to castigate critical news organizations provides an understanding of fake news while it lacks to provide critical understanding of fake news and the use of the term by political organizations, which we will discuss in the third part. As we have seen so far, in the field of journalism studies and in the factchecking networks’ environment, fake news seems to be outdated as a term. Nevertheless, politicians and institutions often use the notion. Although the term is identified with Donald Trump’s Twitter account and his fight against US-based mainstream news outlets, many politicians from the opposition and the ruling parties worldwide benefit from this term. Many new nonfiction books are written on this term. It became a widely used term in contemporary political magazines. It became a useful keyword to use just as the following controversial term: post-truth.

Post-Truth, Post-Truth World, and Post-Truth Politics The term, post-truth, was first explained by Ralph Keyes in detail. In his book, The Post-Truth Era:  Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life (2004), Keyes states that the common bond in today’s society is based not on truth, but on rejection or ignorance; the foundation of the loss of our faithfulness is the artificiality of the relationship established up to now to the truth. In his book, he also points out the post-truth politics which he defines as a political culture, in which debates are framed mostly by appeals to emotion and desire for being right, and factual rebuttals are ignored. Keyes (2004, p.  30) deals with world

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politics and its representations in the media, which originally appeared in the second half of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s; but when doing so, the traces of the lie from the small town in the USA to the antiquity are searched. Because he is trying to confront a moral phenomenon that he named one section of his book as follows: “With the collapse of honesty and the rise of lie.” He bases his narrative on popular literature on the habit of lying, often telling that popular adolescents are better offenders than unqualified ones. For him, most of the high-profile social actors are experts in deception: university professors, productive journalists, politicians, clergymen, and important storytellers. They are all prominent actors of a period of integrity. He proposes that lying has become an acceptable strategy in our daily life and politics and it is in our lives. According to Keyes, while main deterrents of lying and the possibility of being caught, it has made it easy for us not to compromise on what the wrong is and to lose the importance of others in the next stage or to lie to others in a cold-bloodedness reminiscent of game theory. The word was also used by blogger David Roberts who defined the term as “a political culture in which politics have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation)” (Jeffery, 2016; Roberts, 2010). This definition takes post-truth as a term to define the current political landscape, more limited from Keyes’ more general approach. This usage became more widespread especially in post-2016 political debates. It is possible to come across many other and more recent definitions of posttruth after the term became more popular by 2016. Some scholars prefer to use the term post-truth world instead of only mentioning post-truth. McIntyre (2018) defined post-truth world as a place where “alternative facts” replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence. Likewise, Suiter (2017) defined post-truth world as a place where appeals to emotion are dominant and factual rebuttals or fact-checks are ignored on the basis that they are mere assertions. While Gross (2017) was questioning how rational arguments and proven facts cannot compete against demagoguery and scapegoating in post-truth world, d’Ancona (2017) stated that the art of the lie is shaking the very foundations of democracy and the world as we know it. In his book titled Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World, James Ball (2017) also provides a detailed analysis of the post-truth era, and he suggests these as actors responsible for the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation:  politicians, old media, new media, fake media, social media, and individuals themselves. After defining responsible actors, Ball indicates that there are several reasons why people fall for lies. He lists some of these factors such as readers’ and journalists’ poor general understanding

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of statistics; our willingness to fit in with our social audience through. Ball does not limit his work with the actors, and he tries to examine the political economy of post-truth era and how people make money out of lies and misinformation (which he calls bullshit). He states that misinformation and practices alike can help politicians to bring election victories, mire opponents in nonsense scandals, and crowd out unhelpful media narratives; while these practices are mostly motivated by money for other actors. Ball states that publishing misinforming stories is just a side effect of shrinking newsrooms and cost cutting for some newsrooms, while for some outlets it is done for pushing for mass traffic whatever the consequences. Ball’s finance-focused diagnosis regarding the source of fake news in contemporary media seems very relevant and more functional than regular discourse of polarization and political biases, since posttruth debate should not be limited to narrations of new right-leaning political movements nor political leaders like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. While Ball’s perspective seems to be politically more subjective than Keyes’ approach, due to its focus on the news media and how news contents are manufactured, disseminated and consumed; it is a functional reading to start a critical discussion over and we will benefit from it in the following section where we will provide a critique of the contemporary definitions and understandings of fake news and post-truth. As seen above, all the basic definitions of post-truth are triggering statements or speculations about a world where the world or the democracy as we knew it does not exist any more. Some scholars claim that the precariat and working class are not heard by “conventional political actors”. As a result, populists rise with the claim of being the voice of the “unheard” -while this is mostly limited to a rhetorical level. According to these scholars, politicians like Trump or Orban say what the crowds want to hear but these do not need to be true or promises need not be fulfilled (Standing, 2016; Bang & Marsh, 2018).

Fake News and Post-Truth: Critical Analyses of Two Trending Words and Responses to Them Mentions of fake news and post-truth spiked in the news during 2016’s US presidential elections period (Carson, 2017). Former works on post-truth such as Keyes’ The Post-Truth Era:  Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life gained high level of popularity since 2016. The word “post-truth” also enjoyed its peak in Google Trends between November 2016 and March 2017, when Donald Trump was elected as the president of the United States of America. Fake news, likewise, enjoyed popularity in the same time period. Having defined post-truth

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and fake news in the parts above, we will analyze the connection between posttruth and fake news in this part and bring together critical analyses of these two concepts. Corner (2017) states that fake news is a snappy identifier of a kind of a fraudulent media product (the negative judgment and the sense of intention are even stronger than with, say, “bias” or even with Chomsky’s distorting, propagandistic “filters”) and it carries far less by way of philosophical baggage than the term “post-truth.” In addition to its lack of philosophical baggage, fake news is a limiting word and uses of the term are mostly related to the practices in the media industry. However, it does not necessarily mean that rising popularity of the term demonstrates that there was no academic work about the credibility of news organizations or factfulness of news stories before. From ethical statements by news organizations and journalism associations to classical journalism education, factfulness of the news production has always been an important case in journalism environment. The leading differences between fake news stories before 2016 and after 2016 are as follows: Pre-2016 fake news stories are mostly about the effect of social networks on dissemination of fake news and their main focus is on the role of platforms, while post-2016 fake news studies are more focused on the governmental and nongovernmental actors benefiting from fake news and how fake news fabrication has been institutionalized. The words such as “trolls” or “astroturfers” are often mentioned in post-2016 articles, and focus on UK- and US-focused news outlets seems to be enjoying a rise. It is possible to make a similar statement about post-truth. Although the term “post-truth” became acquainted by Keyes’ aforementioned book, Keyes (2004) takes a more generalized look at post-truth and includes changes in every aspect of life and society. He claims the people today have come up with rationales to tamper with truth without feeling any guilt. This takes us to a more general problem than how this term is used by politicians and journalists today. Current usage and polemic around post-truth focuses more on its political and media aspect, especially on the current wave of populist politics. But this side of the argument also has a long history. One of the most important examples of works about post-truth from a political and media perspective comes from the sociologist and cultural critic Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard’s Screened Out (2002) can be read as a post-truth critic of media, and The Perfect Crime (2007) analyzes the problems of post-truth from a philosophical and sociological perspective. The main difference comes from Baudrillard’s perspective. Most of the current debates around post-truth is focused solely on populist and right-wing political movements such as alt-right. Baudrillard shows the problems we’re now defining

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with the term “post-truth” originated not from there but from the issues immanent to neoliberal capitalism. Agnotology is another important study area which has come before the posttruth and studies this issue. According to Proctor and Schiebinger (2008), who coined the term with Iain Bogal, agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. The term was originally coined in 1995; and since then, Proctor and other researchers who study the field focus on how ignorance has become more prevalent and how some groups are benefiting from it. One important point we can take from the earlier agnotology studies is the road to the post-truth era was paved long before we noticed it after 2016. Especially politicians and other influential figures like advertisers were well aware of the power of created ignorance and deploying it for their benefit long before we started talking about post-truth. This is one of the main reasons why the debates around post-truth are not fruitful enough. Current debate is mostly focused on analyzing populism and alt-right and has a prejudice on the sources of this problem. Here, it is possible to refer to thoughts of Slavoj Žižek regarding fake news. Žižek (2018) states that those who fight with the fake news are more bothered by uncontrollable plurality. According to him, fake news and post-truth order was available in periods such as the Cold War Era. The practices of fake news, back then, were affiliated to hegemonic ideologies such as Soviet Union or Western Bloc of the time. Decentralization of fabrication of fake news, according to him, bothers power holders, while they also tend to speak about only a specific part of history, not all facts. Without a more critical look at the issues under the umbrella of post-truth or fake news, it is hard to make any progress. Existing literature about fake news and post-truth are either politically biased or too narrow to resolve the problems they address.

Post-Truth and Fake News: Threat or Tool? After defining post-truth and fake news, we tried to bring together some critical perspectives towards these two terms so far. In this final part, benefiting from the critical perspectives provided, we will try to define political function of these terms and evaluate if these two phenomena pose threat to democracy or they are useful concepts used by political actors. Therefore, we will analyze four actors which are supposed to hold the main responsibility against post-truth era or dissemination of fake news: fact-checkers, newspapers, platforms, and politicians themselves.

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Fake news and post-truth politics caused emergence of fact-checking industry. It would be very a limited approach to define the fake news era or the post-truth era only based on fabrication of facts, since these are also about the activities of fact-checkers and how their works are perceived by the audience. Reactions to fake news and post-truth politics are as important as the phenomena themselves. Shin and Thorson (2017) found out that partisans selectively share fact-checking messages that cheerlead their own candidate and denigrate the opposing party’s candidate, resulting in an ideologically narrow flow of fact-checks to their followers. Although, organizations like International Fact-Checking Network (ICFN) try to control activities of fact-checkers in their networks through a set of principles which are regularly checked by IFCN’s contracted assessors, due to dynamic and flexible nature of the media environment, it is possible to come across some cases where fact-checkers turn into politically biased organizations, even propagandists. Even if they are not members of the IFCN, there are numerous organizations defining themselves as fact-checkers in polarized countries like Turkey. In the Turkish case, project named @FactcheckingTR, for instance, is known to be affiliated to Bosphorus Global (which is a progovernmental think tank with close relations to some members of the cabinet). Besides their affiliations, they have no code of conducts that they are loyal to, and there is no methodology publicly available to readers. Of course, this kind of use of fact-checking is not unique to Turkey. Before Democratic Debate on June 26, 2019, Donald Trump invited his followers on Twitter to follow accounts such as @teamtrump and @trumpwarroom, which are known to be partisan accounts other than accounts expertised on fact-checking. So an industry fake news and post-truth political order gave birth to is also now going through a difficult era, where even signatories of IFCN’s code of conducts show significant weaknesses in terms of their non-partisanship. Media, on the other hand, has an important role in weaknesses of the society against misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. According to Basu (2018), there is a problem of forgetfulness in today’s hyper-commercialized media industry. Creating a framework regarding forgetfulness of media industry, Basu states that news media is alienated from its own past publications and practicing a nonaccountable journalism practice where some countries are forgotten, some events never make it to the news, there is always lack of historical context. Basu’s frameworks is similar to Žižek’s (2018) explanation regarding partial facts and risks they cause for the society. She does not limit the critique of media landscape with alt-right media or media in underdeveloped or authoritarian countries. Cases like war in Yemen, invasion of Iraq, or the status of Julian Assange are seen as the most prominent examples of mainstream media

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isolating some certain issues or forgetting their past publications. Decreasing trust in media in global scale is also another factor when it comes to dysfunction of media industry against fake news and post-truth politics. Platforms, as the scapegoats of the post-truth era, have been targeted by the media and politicians on a regular basis due to their regulations or user generated contents they host on their websites. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit, Ekşi Sözlük (Turkey-based social network), and many others have been targeted by various actors, some even demanding these services to be shut down. Their roles in the dissemination of fake news and rise of right-populist leaders are discussed so heavily recently that, the numerous scandals Facebook went through such as getting their users’ data stolen have not been discussed enough. Their hypercommercialized structure and controversial and profit-focused algorithmic regulations are not discussed enough by wider audiences despite some strong critiques in academic environment (Pickard, 2017). Especially, their role in the financial weakening of news industry has not been discussed enough or understood by the audience. Post-truth and fake news debate are very oriented towards platforms since they are in the center of publishing industry and political communication today, but it is very rare that people provide a proper, critical, and structural critique of platforms that goes beyond conspiracy theories. The fourth and probably the most effective actor in this crisis is the politicians themselves. As defined by Keyes (2004), they are traditional actors of post-truth politics and leading lying actors in the society. They contribute to post-truth order via traditional categories Keyes proposed which may be defined as denialism, lack of steadiness in discourse, and harmony between actions and promises. However, we would like to propose an additional category. As prominent actors of post-truth era, politicians themselves are both functionalizing misinformation practices and benefiting from condemning other politicians regarding their misinformative or disinformative communicational activities. From oppositional politicians to politicians from ruling parties, especially in cases of polarized countries such as Turkey, most politicians use misinformation as a political tactic and they have the perception that everything on the road to purpose is permissible. This situation also requires us to revisit agnotology. Researcher danah boyd (2019) calls agnotology a tool of oppression by the powerful. The politicians are well aware of this; and although many are talking like they are not happy about the fake news, they are also the main beneficiaries of this malinformation tactics as we said. Ignorance created in the society in a sense which defined in the agnotology helps politicians to hold onto their power and oppress powerless through this. This is why anyone studying these issues should be skeptical of the

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political methods to fight against fake news. As we see in the French (McAuley, 2018) and Latin American (Rodriguez & Alimonti, 2018) examples, the tactics to fight against fake news easily turns into censorship; and this can easily develop agnotological trends through the hands of the powerful. To conclude, politicians’ critique of post-truth reminds the use of the term “useful idiots,” which is suggested to be used by Lenin to define Western intellectuals who supported communist experiment, in the time the new Soviet State was still particularly vulnerable. While there is no proof that Lenin has ever used this term to define Western intellectuals of the time this way, this term has been used by political commentators for dozens of times to define this group of intellectuals. Likewise, post-truth and fake news became words that are regularly pronounced by politicians, journalists, platform representatives, and fact-checkers; which no one seems to really fight against or try to examine core reasons of. It is clear that we need a wider and more critical literature about the political economy of the post-truth politics and fabrication of fake news. As we tried to discuss in our article, existing literature is ironically biased, commercialized, or limited to hegemonic frontiers of contemporary politics.

References Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of economic perspectives, 31(2), 211–36. Ball, J. (2017). Post-truth: How bullshit conquered the world. London: Biteback Publishing. Bang, H., & Marsh, D. (2018). Populism: A major threat to democracy?. Policy Studies, 39(3), 352–363. doi:10.1080/01442872.2018.1475640. Basu, L. (2018). News satire: Giving the news a memory. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 16(1), 241–255. Baudrillard, J. (2002). Screened out. London & New York: Verso. Baudrillard, J. (2007). The perfect crime. London & New York: Verso. boyd, d. (2019). Agnotology and epistemological fragmentation. Data & Society: Points. Retrieved on June 27, 2019 from https://points.datasociety. net/agnotology-and-epistemological-fragmentation-56aa3c509c6b. Carson, J. (2019, November 20). Fake news: What exactly is it – and how can you spot it? The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ technology/0/fake-news-exactly-has-really-had-influence/. Corner, J. (2017). Fake news, post-truth and media–political change. Media, Culture & Society, 39(7), 1100–1107. doi:10.1177/0163443717726743.

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d’Ancona, M. (2017). Post-truth: The new war on truth and how to fight back. London: Ebury Press. Ethical Journalism Network. (n.d.). Fake News (p. 2). Retrieved from https:// ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/tag/fake-news/page/2. Gewin, V. (2017). Communication: Post-truth predicaments. Nature, 541(7637), 425–427. Gross. (2017). Fake news and the digital media: The changing battle for people’s hearts, minds and illusions. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai-Ephemerides, 62(1), 23–36. Jeffery, T. (2016, June 26). Britain needs more democracy after the EU referendum, not less. The Huffington Post. Retrieved on April 30, 2019 from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tom-jeffery/britain-needs-moredemocr_b_10699898.html. Keyes, R. (2004). The post-truth era: Dishonesty and deception in contemporary life. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Landes, R. (2013). From useful idiot to useful infidel: Meditations on the folly of 21st-century “Intellectuals”. Terrorism and Political Violence, 25(4), 621–634. Lowrey, W. (2017). The emergence and development of news fact-checking sites: Institutional logics and population ecology. Journalism Studies, 18(3), 376–394. Marietta, M., Barker, D. C., & Bowser, T. (2015, December). Fact-checking polarized politics: Does the fact-check industry provide consistent guidance on disputed realities?. The Forum, 13(4), 577–596. McAuley, J. (2018, January 10). France weighs a law to rein in ‘fake news,’ raising fears for freedom of speech. Washington Post. Retrieved from https:// www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-weighs-a-law-to-rein-infake-news-raising-fears-for-freedom-of-speech/2018/01/10/78256962-f55811e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html. McIntyre, L. (2018). Post-truth. Cambridge: MIT Press. Pickard, V. (2017). Media failures in the age of Trump. The Political Economy of Communication, 4(2), 118–122. Proctor, R. N., & Schiebinger, L. (Eds.). (2008). Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance (1st ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Roberts, D. (2010, April 1). Post-truth politics. Grist. Retrieved on December 1, 2019 from http://grist.org/article/2010-03-30-post-truth-politics/. Rodriguez, K., & Alimonti, V. (2018, April 2). “Fake News” offers Latin American consolidated powers an opportunity to censor opponents.

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Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.eff.org/ deeplinks/2018/03/fake-news-offers-latin-american-consolidated-powersopportunity-censor-opponents. Rose, J. (2017). Brexit, trump, and post-truth politics. Public Integrity, 19(6), 555–558. doi:10.1080/10999922.2017.1285540. RT. (2019, February 8). “The real problem with fake news….”: Slavoj Zizek in RT’s ‘How to watch the news’, episode 03”. Retrieved from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=nI8z8EL1M-s. Shin, J., & Thorson, K. (2017). Partisan selective sharing: The biased diffusion of fact-checking messages on social media. Journal of Communication, 67(2), 233–255. Standing, G. (2016). The precariat. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing. Subramanian, S. (2017, February 15). Inside the Macedonian fake news complex. Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2017/02/ veles-macedonia-fake-news/. Suiter, J. (2016). Post-truth politics. Political Insight, 7(3), 25–27. Uberti, D. (2016). The real history of fake news. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved on May 1, 2019 from https://www.cjr.org/special_report/fake_ news_history.php?link. Waisbord, S. (2018). Truth is what happens to news: On journalism, fake news, and post-truth. Journalism Studies, 19(13), 1866–1878. Wardle, C. (2017). Fake news. It’s complicated. First Draft News. Retrieved on May 23, 2019 from https://firstdraftnews.org/fake-news-complicated/. Wardle, C., & Derakshan, H. (2017). Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Report. Retrieved from https://rm.coe.int/ information-disorder-report-version-august-2018/16808c9c77 Žižek, S. (2018). Like a thief in broad daylight: Power in the era of posthumanity. London: Penguin.

4.  The Accuracy Crisis of (Online) Journalism in Turkey: Unverified News Reports During the 2018 Presidential Campaign Can Ertuna Abstract: With the ever-increasing Internet penetration rates in Turkey, different types of information disorder which spread through social media started to shape public and political agenda as never seen before. The number of false news stories generated with the intention of spreading either disinformation or “malinformation” (targeting reputation of political candidates) typically increase dramatically during election campaign periods. As such, before the 2018 presidential elections in Turkey, in which Tayyip Erdoğan won by getting nearly 53% of the votes and got new executive powers, a heated debate between the two opposing camps of the election campaign not only spread to the digital platforms, but also the false news in digital platforms were used in different proportions in the political campaigns. The Turkish news verification initiative teyit.org had detected 29 major different false news claims in circulation across the social media in the two-month period before the elections. However, among 136 social media accounts, which circulate these claims that reach hundreds of thousands of people, not all are anonymous or a “troll” social media accounts. In fact, considerable percentage of those accounts belong to well-known news outlets, which take viral social media content as a news source without verifying. In this chapter, the aim is to demonstrate the spread of information disorder in an election period through internet news sites by analyzing the raw data gathered by teyit.org. Emphasis will also be given to the “correction” or removal rates of false news from these sites after verification proves them false in order to understand the spillover effect and the “survival” rate of disinformation against truth. Keywords: Verification, news websites, disinformation, false news, elections

Introduction The parliamentary and presidential elections in Turkey in 2018 were a scene of a fierce political competition. What was at stake was not only electing the MPs and a president, which would decorate the top position in the state hierarchy with mostly symbolic authority, but electing a top politician to the state apparatus, who would assume the office with sweeping new executive powers after significant changes were approved for a constitutional referendum a year ago in 2017. In the elections, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of Justice and Development Party, which had been in power for 16  years, assumed the presidency by getting 52,59% of the

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votes, whereas the leading opposition candidate of the main opposition party CHP, Muharrem İnce got 30,64% of the votes. Other two opposition candidates Selahattin Demirtaş and Meral Akşener got 8,40% and 7,29%, respectively. The turnout rate was 86,24%, a very high rate compared to many democracies; and voters’ interest in the candidates’ campaigns was not limited to the election day, but there had been an enthusiastic participation to the rallies and digital propaganda during the two-month campaigning period before the snap elections. According to the Turkish independent fact-checking organization teyit.org, the tip-offs that had been sent to them about false content reached a level of “record high” before, during, and after the elections (Foça, 2018a). False claims and disinformation had not ceased after the preliminary results showed that Erdoğan won the elections. A  rumor that the opposition candidate İnce was “threatened” or even “abducted” circulated widely in the election night in the social media after he did not show up in any press conference or live broadcast, etc. It was he who later falsified the claims in his personal Twitter account by saying that he was not “silenced, threatened, abducted or in a position which he cannot make any announcements.” According to him those were all lies. This time the disinformation had not been originated from the “usual suspect” sources. Although there is a tendency to associate the disinformation epidemic with the rise of mostly right-wing populist political movements, the left-wing opposition is also open and/or vulnerable to adapt “conspiracy theories” in formulating their responses to various (political) crises (Parlak & Tangün, 2018, p. 37). Further, the spread of false content, disinformation, and conspiracy theories are not restricted to anonymous users, internet trolls, propagandists, and people with poor levels of media literacy, but also the media outlets, which in fact are expected to heal the problems in post-truth environment, and sometimes play an active role in the dissemination of false content. Therefore, in this study, the role and the effect of the media outlets and their motivation and/or incompetence in this process are analyzed with the raw data provided from the fact-checking organization, teyit.org.

Literature Review In recent years, there has been a debate about conceptualizing the information disorder by simply referring to every false content as “fake news.” Bennett and Livingston (2018, p. 124) argue that the usage of the term “fake news” “serves to frame the problem as isolated incidents and confusion.” Reports written by media scholars for international organizations (Ireton & Posetti, 2018; Wardle &

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Derakshan, 2017) emphasize the need for differentiating between different types of information disorder rather than adopting a general term like “fake news.” Disinformation is used to define a “deliberate” attempt to confuse and/or manipulate the public, whereas the term “misinformation” is employed to define “a misleading information created or disseminated without manipulative or malicious intent” (Ireton & Posetti, 2018, p. 7). Similarly, according to Tandoc, Lim, and Ling (2018, p. 138), there is no single motivation behind the production of what is called “fake news.” It is either ideologically oriented by promoting particular ideas or people while discrediting others, or financial, aimed at providing content producers with clicks to secure advertising revenues. During the election period, we see both widespread disinformation and misinformation. Not only anonymous social media accounts but also fake news websites systematically spread disinformation to favor one political party and/ or candidate over another. Further, ideologically oriented news sites that offer biased coverage and favor one political perspective are active in spreading disinformation. Garrett, Weeks, and Neo (2016, p. 334) also argue that it is not only always factual distortion of content but usually “misunderstanding of evidence” in the quest for clicks and the usage of sensational headlines in the competition for the engagement of online news readers. As Burkhardt (2017, p. 7) states, the internet is funded by advertisers; and these funders are “in business to get information about their products to as many people as possible.” Marwick and Lewis (2017, p.  42) similarly argue that the internet is also an “attention economy” where profits come from the contents that attract attention. Thus, the content that is sensational and/or emotional becomes the most valued one. Therefore, the desire for more clicks lead the mainstream news outlets to spread misinformation and sometimes disinformation that is intentionally produced with a political motivation. When the form of these contents are analyzed, it becomes visible that the form of disinformation shifts from text-based to audiovisual content. Vaccari (2018, p. 47) states that visual contents are more likely to be shared than textual contents and tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images, and Facebook posts with images generate 2.3 times more engagement than those ones without any. A comprehensive research about 2016 US elections carried out by Harvard scholars point out that disinformation and partisan reporting become a part of public agenda only after mainstream press picks the story and legitimizes it (Faris et al., 2017, p. 130). The basic proposed countermeasure for this problem is to retain the professional responsibilities of journalism, which also includes the effort to confirm and verify the information. However, the financial strains on journalistic activities and the ever-increasing pressure of fast-paced reporting in the

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age of the internet disrupts the practice of even the most basic journalistic skills. The mainstream media’s hunger for sensationalism and drive for profit maximization rather than the quest for public good is just one dimension of the problem. Also the general trend of job cuts in the media sector, the cost cutting policies in the press that negatively effect investigative works together with the decline of local news due to economic factors, and the formation of the “news deserts” in many parts of a country led to a climate where misinformation can rapidly spread (Marwick & Lewis, 2017). In the age of convergence, powered by online platforms, the audiovisual products of “non-journalists” rapidly make their way to the news feeds of journalists and ordinary people (Tandoc, Lim & Ling, 2018, p. 139). The spread of disinformation and false content can only be contained with the careful practice of journalistic standards. The lack of such a strong verification filter in most of the competing web-based news outlets and the selective usage of disinformation campaign materials by the partisan media firms contaminated the information ecosystem for the voters before and during the elections. It is therefore crucial to analyze the media landscape in Turkey during 2018 elections to understand the structural reasons behind the spread of disinformation.

The State of the Media in Turkey in 2018 According to a report by Reporters Without Borders, Turkey ranked 157th in 180 countries in terms of press freedom in 2018. The organization described the conditions in Turkey as “the worst in the last 30  years” and the negative effects of the state of emergency were one of the main reasons for the deteriorating press freedom (Reporters Sans Frontiers, n.d.). According to a report by Independent Communication Network (Bianet)  – an independent news network and press freedom watchdog – there had been 123 journalists in prison due to press freedom and/or politically motivated cases by October 2018 (Önderoğlu, 2018). The mainstream media landscape was dominated by a handful of business groups some of which were owned by pro-government businessmen while the others were under the strong influence of the government because of their business interests in other sectors such as energy, mining, finance, car industry, tourism, and construction (Adaklı, 2014:  18). These media outlets, which had been “instrumentalized” by their owners as bargaining chips in the realm of media and political field relationship (Ertuna, 2018, p. 66), had gradually lost their subscribers, while the internet, with the ever increasing availability of computers, tablets, and smartphones and the increasing connection speeds, had become the primary medium for millions of Turks in accessing news.

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By 2018, the primary source for news in Turkey was still television. However, this only underlined a declining trend. A report by KONDA research company (2018), conducted by 5793 people in 951 different administrative units including rural areas, demonstrated that the percentage of population who said that their new source was TV declined from 98% in 2008 to 84%. The same figures for newspapers are 61% and 26%, respectively. However, the social media usage results displayed a totally different picture. The percentage of the respondents who said that they used social media was 38 in 2011, whereas the same rate rose to 72% in 2018. The most favorite social media platform was Facebook, with 46% of people being active users. Facebook was followed by Instagram (40%), YouTube (27%), and Twitter (14%). Another research by Reuters Institute (Yanatma, 2018), however, displays different results by giving the lead to online platforms (including social media) over TV. However, it should be mentioned that these findings are obtained by an “urban population only” research unlike KONDA’s. According to the Reuters Institute report, 87% of the respondents said that “their source of news in the last week was” online (including social media platforms). Television comes second with 77%, whereas printed materials constitute 46% of overall news sources. A third indication of the rise of online platforms is the advertisement budgets for each different media. According to Advertisers Foundation data (Üçhisarlı, 2019), the first platform for advertisements in 2018 was still the TV with 47% of all investments; and the online platforms came second, before print, open air ads, etc. However, one could see a constant increase in online platforms’ advertisement shares. Compared to 2017, the resources diverted to online platforms by advertisers increased by 14%, 14 times more than TV’s share. The constant rise of digital platforms as news sources in Turkey might be part of a global trend. However, with the restraints on press freedom as was stated at the beginning of this section, the overall trust to traditional mainstream media had decreased sharply. Again, according to the Reuters Institute report the percentage of people who said that they “trusted the news” was less than half, only 43%. On a global scale when it comes to distrust in the media Turkey shared the top position with Greece, Bulgaria, and the USA. The lack of trusted, respectable media increases the vulnerability of people to information disorder since people cannot exactly decide on which news organization they should trust.

Methodology The raw data used in this work was gathered by the independent fact-checking organization in Turkey: Teyit.org. They had concentrated on false news claims between the dates April 18, 2018, the date that president Erdoğan announced

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that there would be snap elections on June 24, and July 4, that is, 10 days after the election (Foça, 2018a). Although the fact-checking organization is more concerned with the overall social media accounts (including politicians, anonymous accounts, etc.) that spread disinformation and false news; in this chapter, the emphasis is given to analyzing the data gathered only about the news websites and their social media platforms parallel to the focus of this analysis. In their research, teyit.org had detected that overall, the false content had 731,617 interactions. The share of news outlets in this viral spread of disinformation is 6,5% (with 47.842 interactions). However, this research does not cover the spread of disinformation in the whole information ecosystem in Turkey. In a note about their selection criteria of the false content, teyit.org stressed that they had decided on the basis of the virality of the content and the interaction it gets (comments, likes, shares, and retweets). Therefore, although the consent given by the teyit.org directors in using their raw data makes this study possible, the sample was restricted by this “high-profile” content picked by the fact-checking organization. Further, another limitation of the study should also be mentioned at this point. In Turkey, the social messaging application, WhatsApp has been becoming more and more popular, not only in sharing personal messages but also a variety of third-party content including political ones.

The Role of News Websites in the Spread of False News The online verification platform Teyit had detected 29 widespread false claims that went viral before and after the elections. These claims were circulated by 137 different social media accounts. Among these, there were 30 different news outlets, big and small and pro-government or oppositional. Although the percentage of interaction that these news outlets get from their false contents is considerably low (6,5%), this is just the tip of the iceberg. The overall presence of false content in these news sites is 24,49% whereas, various Twitter accounts have the share of 42,86% and Facebook accounts have 32,65%. The news websites’ social media accounts harbor nearly one fourth of the false content detected by teyit.org in the given time frame; however, they do not always get as much interaction as various anonymous and/or onymous social media accounts (Fig. 4.1). Among these 30 different news websites, it is worth noting that 13 of them are in the list of top 100 websites in Turkey according to Alexa rankings gathered by the time that this chapter was written (Alexa, n.d.). These news websites and their ranking in the list are as follows: aksam.com.tr (11), hurriyet.com.tr (14), sozcu.com.tr (19), mynet.com (20), yeniakit.com.tr (22), yenisafak.com (24), sabah.com.tr (31), haber7.com (35), star.com.tr (49), cumhuriyet.com.tr (54),

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80,00% 70,00% 60,00% 50,00% 40,00% 30,00% 20,00% 10,00% 0,00%

False News %

Social media accounts (Twitter + Facebook)

False News Interaction News outlets' social media accounts

Fig. 4.1:  The percentage of false news in the news websites’ social media accounts and the interactions they get in comparison to other social media accounts. Source: teyit.org; data chart created by the author

takvim.com.tr (69), cnnturk.com (80), and ahaber.com.tr (83). The websites listed here mostly represent the digital platforms of widespread pro-government newspapers and or TV channels such as:  aksam.com.tr, yeniakit.com.tr, yenisafak.com.tr, sabah.com.tr, haber7.com.tr, star.com.tr, takvim.com.tr, and ahaber.com.tr or opposition dailies such as: sozcu.com.tr and cumhuriyet.com. tr. It should also be noted that the major news outlets, Hürriyet and CNN Türk, which once were mainstream news outlets had been sold to a pro-government business group at that time. However, it is not only these 13 websites that make to the list of first 100, but also other (mostly left-wing) opposition and/or independent news websites as well that play a significant role in the spreading of mis/ disinformation. The news websites’ social media accounts spread 34 false/misleading claims through social media. Russian government funded “Sputnik,” leftist outlet “İleri,” popular opposition outlet “Sözcü,” and independent/opposition website “T24” shared two false claims whereas the others shared one. Another finding that is worth to be underlined is the reflection of the already heavily existing political and social polarization in the false, misleading content that had been shared and spread. The most viral claim was the canceling of Turkish Air Force’s demo team “Solo Türk” flights by authorities because they had saluted

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opposition candidate İnce at the Samsun Airport. This claim, later to be falsified by teyit.org, had more than 100 thousand interactions. More than 10 % of these interactions were due to news website traffic. This false content got 15.523 interactions on news websites, most of which were opposition news outlets like BirGün, Artı Gerçek, Sözcü, Diken, etc. The false claim that the “Higher Electoral Board (YSK), annulled the regulation that a presidential candidate should have university diploma” was similarly shared only by opposition left-wing news outlets; namely Evrensel, Sözcü, BirGün, and Yurt (each are the websites of daily newspapers) together with oppositional Twitter accounts. Conversely, the false claim that the Twitter hashtag campaigns that were calling president Erdoğan “Tamam” (“enough” in Turkish) or “devam” (“carry on” in Turkish) were directed from abroad were only spread by pro-government news outlets, namely; Star and Akşam newspapers, parallel to the populist understanding that the opposition was designed and supported by “foreign powers.” The fake visual purporting to show opposition candidate Muharrem İnce playing a tilebased game (Okey in Turkish, a game similar to rummikub) on the night of the bloody coup attempt of 2016 was only published again by pro-government websites of newspapers Takvim, Yeni Akit, and Sabah and the TV channel A Haber (Picture 4.1). Another example demonstrates the fact that the picking up of a false story by a major news agency and usage of it without any verification or checking results in the spread of the false news to major news networks followed by millions. The claim that an MP candidate of conservative Saadet (Felicity) Party went to the sea with his suit on to convince the swimming voters was covered by DHA (then Doğan News Agency) and was immediately used by its client news organizations under the same media group’s umbrella: Hürriyet newspaper’s and CNN Türk’s websites as well as Saadet Party–affiliated Milli Gazete (National Newspaper) (Picture 4.2). The false content that had been shared by the news websites showed a similarity to the widespread misinformation on Twitter but differed from the one on Facebook. The three most viral contents on Facebook were: 1) Opposition candidate İnce’s fake Kadıköy rally photograph, 2) A picture purported to show opposition candidate İnce dancing inside a mosque, and 3) President Erdoğan claimed to show a video in one of his rallies in which opposition candidate İnce is recorded while singing a Turkish folk song. All three were mostly related to fake audiovisual content. However, the most widespread on Twitter and on news websites were text-based than audiovisual. The three most viral contents on Twitter were: 1) The canceling of Turkish Air Force’s demo teams’ flights by authorities because they had saluted opposition candidate İnce at the Samsun

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Picture 4.1:  Screen capture of A Haber news website purported to show opposition candidate İnce playing a tile game at a café on the night of the coup in 2006. Source: Arabacı (2018)

Airport, 2)  Twitter hashtag campaigns that were calling President Erdoğan “Tamam” (“enough” in Turkish) or “devam” (“carry on” in Turkish) were directed from abroad, and 3) Erdoğan made his supporters in one of the rallies to watch a video showing opposition candidate İnce was singing a folk song. The social media accounts of the news websites had spread the following false contents most: 1) The canceling of TAF “Solo Türk” demo team flight, 2) The claim that the “Higher Electoral Board” (YSK) annulled the regulation that a presidential candidate should have university diploma, and 3) The photograph purporting to show opposition candidate Muharrem İnce playing a tile game on the night of the coup attempt. These three are also the ones that got most interaction on social media (see Fig. 4.2).

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Picture 4.2:  Screen capture of the hurriyet.com.tr content claiming that an MP candidate asked for voters’ support in the sea with his business suit on. Source: Kovan (2018)

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12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0

İnce playing backgammon on coup night (A Haber)

Cancelling of Solo Türk flights (BirGün)

Higher Electrote Board diploma decision (Sözcü)

Fig. 4.2:  The interaction level of top three false news stories and the outlets that shared them. Source: teyit.org; data chart created by the author

Conclusion The percentage of the interactions that false content and disinformation spread from news websites’ social media accounts may seem lower in comparison to the other type of accounts on Facebook and Twitter, but this does not mask the fact that inaccuracy is another sign of Turkey’s ongoing media crisis. The finding by teyit.org that one fifth of the false content was contained in news websites’ social media accounts, not anonymous users etc., points to an important problem, that is; these sites either act as partisan sources and became propaganda apparatuses and/or demonstrate poor journalistic standards. The different “false news” agenda of the news websites when compared to social media platforms show that not every false content that becomes viral in the digital sphere is picked up by news editors, and there are still some editorial filters in tackling them. However, the overall picture again showed that these filtering and/or gatekeeping practices are either not as strong as they ought to be or not put in practice at all for political, ideological affiliations of these outlets. This, in turn, leads to the further diminishing of the already low level of public trust in the media. The editors of teyit.org further published a report measuring the impact of their effort in tackling the false content (Foça, 2018b). According to their data, despite the verification site proving that the news/content was false, 78% of the

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abovementioned false news links were still active two weeks after the elections. There has been a heated debate about the effect of corrections in changing factual misperceptions about politics. Nyhan and Reifler (2010, p.  323) suggest that responses to corrections differ according to subjects’ ideological views, and they fail to reduce misperceptions for the most committed participants if not “backfire.” McIntyre (2018, p. 51), on the other hand, by citing different studies suggests that there is a “tipping point” after continuous efforts of corrections in which even the strongest partisans might change their beliefs. A recent report by again the same organization, Teyit, argued that the role of the opposition and independent news sites in spreading of the false news before and during the local elections held on March 31, 2019, had decreased dramatically (Foça, 2019). The reason for a change should further be studied; the verification effort of third parties might be influential in shaping some media outlets’ approach to suspicious content as well as the difference in the nature of the election campaigns and campaign strategies of the candidates, which also include their media strategies. However, it should be noted that there still was considerable room for false news and disinformation in the media also then. Further, it should be noted that the messaging apps such as WhatsApp have been becoming more and more popular in the sharing of news content in Turkey, and this makes an important part of the spread of disinformation “undetectable.” A solution to this problem in general lies in the decreasing of social polarization and increasing of transparency as the echo chambers disappear. As Bennett and Livingston argue (2018, p. 127–128), the divided and disrupted public spheres as well as the breakdown of trust in democratic institutions opened information systems to large disinformation campaigns. Therefore, the restoration of the media institutions will definitely be possible only with the restoration of democratic public sphere.

References Adaklı, G. (2014). Medya Sermayesi ve Ultra-Çapraz Bütünleşmeler. Perspectives: Siyasi Analiz ve Yorum, 8, 18–23. Alexa. (n.d.). Top sites in Turkey. Retrieved on July 17, 2019 from https://www. alexa.com/topsites/countries;0/TR Arabacı, A. O. (2018, June 22). “Fotoğrafın Muharrem İnce’nin darbe gecesi kahvehanede olduğunu gösterdiği iddiası”, Teyit. Retrieved on October 17, 2019 from https://teyit.org/fotografin-muharrem-incenin-darbe-gecesikahvehanede-oldugunu-gosterdigi-iddiasi/ Bennett, L., & Livingston, S. (2018). The disinformation order: Disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions. European Journal of Communication, 33(2), 122–139.

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Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Research Paper. Retrieved from https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33759251/2017-08_ electionReport_0.pdf Burkhardt, J. M. (2017). History of fake news. Library Technology Reports, 53(8), 5–2. Ertuna, C. (2018). Türkiye’de Televizyonlarda Kanaat Üretimi: Haber Kanallarındaki Tartışma Programları ve Kanaat Teknisyenleri. Galatasaray Üniversitesi İletişim Dergisi, 29, 57–81. doi:10.16878/gsuilet.496644. Faris, R., Roberts, H. Etling, B., Bourassa, N. Zukerman, E., Benkler, Y. (2017). Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Berkman Klein Center Research Publication 2017-6, Retrieved from: https://ssrn.com/ abstract=3019414. Foça, M. A. (2018a, July 6). “#Seçim2018 sahte haber karnesi: En çok ne nerede ne kadar paylaşıldı?”, Teyit. Retrieved on July 7, 2019 from https://teyit.org/ secim2018-sahte-haber-karnesi-en-cok-ne-nerede-ne-kadar-paylasildi/ Foça, M. A. (2018b, July 9). “#Seçim2018 sahte haber karnesi: Zamana göre etkileşim oranları ve teyit etkisi”, Teyit. Retrieved on July 17, 2019 from https://teyit.org/secim2018-sahte-haber-karnesi-zamana-gore-etkilesimoranlari-ve-teyit-etkisi/ Foça, M. A. (2019). Sahte Haber Karnesi: Yerel Seçimler 2019. Retrieved on July 17, 2019 from https://teyit.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ Rapor-YS-2019-1.pdf Garrett, R. K., Weeks, B. & Neo, R. (2016). Driving a wedge between evidence and beliefs: How online ideological news exposure promotes political misperceptions. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 21(5), 331–348. Ireton, C., & Posetti, C. (2018). Journalism, fake news & disinformation: Handbook for journalism education and training. Paris: UNESCO. Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ journalism_fake_news_disinformation_print_friendly_0.pdf KONDA. (2018). Hayat Tarzları: 10 Yılda Ne Değişti? Retrieved on July 6, 2019 from https://interaktif.konda.com.tr/tr/HayatTarzlari2018/#13thPage/2 Kovan, N. (2018, 22 June). “Takım elbise ile denize girerek vatandaşlardan oy istedi”, Hürriyet. Retrieved on October 17, 2019 from http://www.hurriyet. com.tr/takim-elbise-ile-denize-girerek-vatandaslardan-40875456 Marwick, A., & Lewis, R. (2017). Media manipulation and disinformation online. New York: Data & Society Research Institute. Retrieved from https:// datasociety.net/pubs/oh/DataAndSociety_MediaManipulationAndDisinfor mationOnline.pdf

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5.  Breaking News: A Look into Turkey’s Polarized Mobile News Notifications Emre Kızılkaya Abstract: As mobile Internet penetration rises around the world, notifications—or alerts— that applications send to users increase in numbers, as well as its value in many countries. As one of these countries, Turkey presents a unique scene with a polarized political and social landscape under an increasingly authoritarian government. This study provides an analysis of 1,568 notifications sent by the 26 most popular news applications in Turkey throughout the week before the crucial local elections of March 31, 2019. The results indicate that Turkey’s ruling party dominates “notification-sphere” too, and this domain also fails to provide the Turkish news consumer a better access to quality journalism. Keywords: News, mobile applications, notifications, alerts, content analysis, Turkey

Introduction Smartphones are changing the lives of people around the world as a pervasive digital tool. The ongoing transformation also affects an individual’s preferred ways to consume media. In this context, “push journalism” has been a focus of news outlets who race with each other to grab the attention of the consumer, which is becoming an increasingly harder goal to accomplish. Mobile notifications, or alerts, from news applications are part of this process. As a hybrid democracy with an increasingly authoritarian government that tightens a screw on the news media, Turkey presents a unique example among developing countries with its fast-paced digitization of everyday life of its more than 82 million citizens. Conventional media was dominated by staunchly progovernment companies, as Turkey was listed as the 157th country in the Reporters Without Borders’ 2019 World Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders, 2019). “Television remains the most important source of news in Turkey while social and digital media are an important outlet for alternative and critical perspectives,” Reuters’ Institute’s Digital News Report 2019 said (Yanatma, n.d.). Most Turkish citizens have regular access to digital media, as Internet penetration stands at 75.3%, according to Turkey’s Statistics Institute (TÜİK, 2019). A total 77% of Turkey’s adult population used a smartphone and downloaded 2.877 billion mobile applications in 2018 (Kemp, 2019). Average time spent

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on mobile applications reportedly reached to 186 minutes per day in 2018, as Turkey ranked as the eight country in terms of the number of mobile application downloads (App Annie, 2019). This chapter aims to make a modest contribution to the public understanding of how the leading news organizations of Turkey used mobile notifications during a news-heavy week.

Academic Studies into Mobile Applications Get Deeper Mobile applications have a long history in academic research. As early as 1993, the issue of customizing mobile applications was on the table (Schilit, Theimer, Welch, 1993). What was widely understood when writing about “mobile devices” in the early 1990s were not smartphones, tablets, or phablets, though. Any computer system that was not stationary was labeled as mobile then. Studies into the type of mobile applications that we are familiar today started in the late 1990s and continued throughout the 2000s. Flinn and Satyanarayanan showed in 1999 how mobile applications could be made “energy-aware” to prolong the devices’ battery life (Flinn & Satyanarayanan, 1999). Propagation of mobile phones accelerated in the early 2000s. Following drastic improvements in battery life, researchers started to focus on other aspects, such as the increasing need to develop platforms for “context-aware” mobile applications. Raento, Oulasvirta, Petit, and Toivonen (2005, p. 51) outlined such a platform in 2005, integrating “existing technologies and users’ everyday lives.” The mid-2000s was a period in which mobile applications were studied in a more multidisciplinary, multilayered way. Business issues, architectural design, integration with existing web and legacy applications, and the management of mobile application development projects were in the focus of studies (Lee, Schneider & Schnell, 2007). The back catalogue of mobile applications in several operating systems also got deeper in this period. Choi, Durrell, and Chang (2007) patented a system and methods for managing content in preexisting mobile applications. Since the early 2010s, the number of academic studies into specific categories of mobile applications, like health (Nkosi & Mekuria, 2010) and tourism (Kennedy-Eden & Gretzel, 2012), has been growing steadily. One of the popular fields of research has been the touch points of a mobile application with the user. As a result, usability (Harrison, Flood & Duce, 2013), effectiveness, acceptability, and usefulness (Coorey, Neubeck, Mulley & Redfern, 2018) of mobile applications in various categories, or as a whole, have been probed recently.

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As news consumption moved from desktop computers to mobile devices, legacy news media outlets boosted their efforts to adapt to the ongoing change, which intensified from the mid-2000s and on (Seale, 2012). These efforts were part of legacy media’s earlier attempts to reach the mobile user in more effective ways. Pushed news alerts utilizing SMS and MMS technology in the early 2000s, for instance, were used by a number of news publishers in developed countries like those in Europe (Wolf & Hohlfeld, 2012), as well as developing ones, including China (Bruns, 2012) and Brazil (Fidalgo, 2009). Launch of iPhone in 2007 changed the game as this user-friendly touchscreen mobile phone brand found immense success in a global mass market with initial advertisements highlighting its ability to bring The New York Times to the consumer’s pocket (Westlund, 2013). Google Android’s commercial launch followed it in 2008, and news publishers were racing with each other to develop mobile-friendly websites, as well as native applications to reach ever-larger audiences. With the rise of the mobile, push notifications become an increasingly important tool for a wide range of companies—including news publishers—driving traffic to their content, creating added value for the user, and helping conversion processes. According to The Wall Street Journal’s chief innovation officer Edward Roussel, the homescreen of the phone is the “most valuable real estate in media” (Greenberg, 2017). A push notification is one of the most direct ways to reach and control that real estate. A push notification is described as “a message that can be shown on the user’s device and is triggered either locally by Web Notifications API [application programming interface] or can be pushed from the server to the user when the app is not even running (…)” (Hajian, 2019, p. 201). Beside their widespread implementation on the desktop domain, both native mobile applications and progressive web applications (PWA), which were developed in the mid-2010s to combine a set of concepts and technologies used in web and mobile application domains, can send push notifications, significantly increasing their reach (Biørn-Hansen, Majchrzak & Grønli, 2017). Mobile notifications have been the focus of academic studies, particularly in Europe and the United States, as their role in digital user experience gained importance. In the United States, the average news application user’s first contact via direct traffic and social media had been in decline in recent years, while the share of mobile notifications soared, especially among younger demographics and “heavy news users” who are 2.5 times more likely to use mobile notifications than casual news users (Kemp, 2019). The Tow Center for Digital Journalism reported that most of the 30 news outlets in their study averaged more push alerts

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per week in 2018 than in 2017 (Brown, 2018). The average length of alerts across the two studies in two consecutive years, as evaluated by number of characters, also grew over 30% in the same period, according to the report.

Changing Value of Mobile Notifications for News Providers and Users News organizations’ increasingly more aggressive use of mobile notifications puts a toll on the digital consumer. As applications from the category “reader/ news” update the notification bar more often than most of the other types of applications, relatively more users blacklist, disable, block, or uninstall them. News applications are also in the category that has the “longest click time,” an interval between the sending of the notification and its opening by the user, showing that they do not rank high in the consumer’s priority list (Shirazi et al., 2014). Still, the share of people who come across news stories through mobile notifications has been increasing, rising more than 10% in the past five years in many countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Spain (Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos, & Nielsen, 2019) (Tab. 5.1). The Tow Center found out that there is “an ongoing shift away from using push barely for breaking news” as media organizations around the world increasingly resort to the lock screen to deliver as much value as possible even without tapping through, using a more “conservational” and “compassionate” tone in their alerts. During the two weeks of this study in the United States, a total of 284 alerts related to President Donald Trump’s statements and key policies were sent by news outlets (Brown, 2018). Scholars have been studying the use of push notifications by news media in recent years. Some of the effects of this digital tool have broad consequences for media outlets. Fletcher and Nielsen (2018) noted that “the incidentally exposed users use significantly more online news sources than non-users,” especially among younger audiences and those with low interest in news.” In addition to this study, Stroud, Peacock and Curry (2019) found out that notifications increased self-reported use of the news app. Whether partisanship and polarization in news coverage could also be detected in push notifications alongside other media was another question on the effects of this digital hook. Sanfilippo and Lev-Aretz (2019) pointed that “polarization of topics is evident across a variety of news sources, when examining push notifications relative to breaking news stories on terrorism, gun violence, and disasters” and “push notifications are contributing to filter bubble effects.”

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USA

France

Spain

Finland

25% 20% 19% 18% 16%

20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

7%

6% 6% 5% 5% 3% 2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

Q10. Thinking about how you got news online (via computer, mobile or any device) in the last week, which were the ways in which you came across news stories? Base: All in 2014-19 that used a news gateway in the last week in each country = 1750.

Tab. 5.1:  Mobile notifications. Source: Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos, and Nielsen, 2019, pp. 14–15

In another study, Sanfilippo and Lev-Aretz (2017) tried to pinpoint how push notifications were used by media outlets while exploring a case comparison between representations of two historically parallel breaking news stories, US President Nixon firing special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973 and President Trump firing FBI Director James Comey in 2017, through computational textual analysis. As part of this study, the researchers compared the online headlines in 2017 with the messages in push notifications by the same news outlets. They asserted that there was “a growing shift from objective justice to subjective politics in the media” as the “more analytical reporting style” in the online headlines yielded to a less formal and nonneutral language in notifications. “Even when pertaining to the same article, the negative language employed in push notifications is not only more subjective, angry, and tentative, in the rush to provide news to users in advance of competitors, but also introduces elements of fear into the message,” they added (Sanfilippo & Lev-Aretz, 2017). In Turkey, mobile applications have been an area of academic interest since the early 2000s. One of the earlier works had studied e-commerce applications, covering issues around technology and advertising (Turan, 2002). Later work focused on other operational areas for mobile applications, such as banking

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(Aktaş, 2005). Although there is a strong back catalogue of Turkish academic articles from the fields of computer engineering and electronics, social scientists began investigating mobile applications rather recently, investing their attention on a wider range of fields, including education (Yıldırım, 2012) and business administration (Koçak, 2013). Despite the soaring public interest and ever-expanding scholar literature on the issue, mobile notifications—particularly their usage by the producers and consumers of news—remain as an area largely unexplored by Turkey’s academia. Journalistic content on Turkey’s online domain was probed as early as 2002 (Aktaş, 2002), and works that followed it include those that analyzed the users’ perception of news on social media (Sütcü & And, 2015). One of the earliest works on mobile content in Turkey, on the other hand, was focused on their impact on marketing (Köroğlu, 2009). A  journalism master thesis on social media applications only mentions Twitter notifications in passing without any reference to news content (Karatay, 2018). As a result, mobile news applications and their use of notifications in Turkey have yet to be examined thoroughly. This chapter aims to be an introduction to one of the areas related to the issue.

Methodology The 26 most popular Turkish news applications as listed on App Store were installed on an iPhone for the study. All push notifications sent by the applications from noon March 21 to noon 28 March were fetched. The name of the application, content of the notification, its thematic category, and timestamp were recorded for analysis. The selected applications included those of both pro-government media outlets and independent media outlets:  Anadolu Agency and TRT Haber are directly controlled by the Turkish state; Sabah, Yeni Şafak, Milliyet, Hürriyet, CNN Türk, NTV, Vatan, Haber 7, TGRT, A  Haber, Internet Haber, Haberler. com, and Haberturk are indirectly controlled through politically allied or intimidated owners. Sözcü, Cumhuriyet, BirGün, and T24 cover the news critically; while Bundle, Sanal Basin, Son Dakika, and Mynet are aggregators, distributing news from both sides of the political spectrum arbitrarily. At the time, the Russian state–funded Sputnik was largely skeptical about the Turkish government editorially, but the news website ultimately fired most of their critical reporters after the elections, following a pro-government think tank’s report that condemned international news organizations for employing “opposition” journalists (Goktus, 2019).

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The observation process was conducted in an “as is” basis regarding the conditions of the user and the news provider. To assure that, default settings were used for each application; and those who requested permission to have access to location data, for geographically customized notifications and other features, were denied. A total of 1,568 notifications were recorded throughout the week. They were thematically grouped into 14 categories: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statements, other ruling party politicians’ statements, opposition politicians’ statements, news stories on two groups that Turkey labels as terrorist organizations (the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK] and the Fetullahist Terrorist Organization [FETO]), foreign news, diplomacy, articles on Turkish lira’s losses against the US dollar, other economy news, sports, crime, accident and disasters, information on local elections, promotional content, and “all the others” including stories on weather and education. In terms of the Turkish news agenda, the period of data gathering was intense. It was the week before the March 31 local elections in Turkey, which was deemed as crucial by Erdoğan, as well as the opposition. Meanwhile, Turkish lira fluctuated between 5.46 and 5.81 against the US dollar, Turkey conducted airstrikes in northern Iraq, and two Turkish cities were hit by multiple earthquakes throughout the week. The world was also in hot water. US President Donald Trump recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel through a presidential proclamation on March 25, stirring outcry in the Middle East, and giving even more reasons for some Turkish news outlets to send out breaking news alerts.

Results Twenty-two of the selected applications sent mobile notifications throughout the period of observation. Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency sent the greatest number of mobile notifications (238), churning out an average of 34 alerts per day. Milliyet trailed it with 152 notifications, A Haber television with 145, and Hürriyet with 112. Excluding the four applications that did not send any notifications (BirGün, Haberler.com, Son Dakika, and Sanal Basin); the average number of alerts sent each day by Turkey’s leading news applications was 10. Besides the four news organizations that are listed above, Yeni Şafak and Sabah also exceeded the average by a wide margin. Sputnik stood at the median with an average of 10 notifications each day. All the other outlets were below the median in terms of the number of notifications that they sent each day (Fig. 5.1).

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Emre Kızılkaya 250 200 150 100 50

An ad ol u Ye Aja ni nsi Şa M fak CN illi N yet Tü r TR Va k T tan H H ab eb er er ü Bu rk nd M le y H net ab H er 7 ür ri Ak yet şa TG m R Sö T z Sp cü ut n En N ik so T nh V a A ber H ab e Sa r ba h Cu In mh T24 te u rn ri et yet H ab er

0

Fig. 5.1:  Number of mobile notifications sent by the Turkish news outlets that were monitored from March 21 to March 28, 2019

The most frequently used phrase in notification messages was “son dakika,” which literally means “last minute” and used as the Turkish equivalent of “latest” or “breaking news.” It was used 502 times. “President Erdoğan,” on the other hand, was used 253 times, as the second most popular phrase. “Canli yayin” (live coverage) was in the third spot with 50 times of use. A nuance about the usage of the word “President” should also be noted. In Turkish, the official title of the head of the state is “cumhurbaşkanı” (the president of all people). This title has been historically linked to Turkey’s original parliamentary system in which the head of state played a largely ceremonial and nonpartisan role. “Başkan” (President), on the other hand, is a word that denotes the head of state in an executive presidential system in which the parliament is abolished or sidelined. Under Erdoğan, Turkey switched from parliamentary system to executive presidency through a controversial referendum in 2017. The change also allowed the president to remain as the head of a political party. Although the new system has retained the title “cumhurbaşkanı” for the head of state, most progovernment media outlets began referring to Erdoğan as “başkan” (president) after he told journalists in 2018 that he can be addressed as so. More critical outlets adopted an opposing position, sticking to the legal title of “cumhurbaşkanı” while

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some of them also stress in their wording that Erdoğan is still a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP’li cumhurbaşkanı), hence a partisan leader of the new presidential system in contrary to the nonpartisan president of the parliamentary system in Turkey’s recent history. In this context, 87 notifications with the phrase “Başkan Erdoğan” were sent by staunchly pro-government outlets Sabah, Akşam, and A Haber during the monitoring period. Opposition outlets Cumhuriyet, Sözcü, T24, as well as Sputnik alerted their users with messages including the word “Erdoğan” 46 times without referring to any title. The rest of the monitored outlets, including the state-run Anadolu Agency and public broadcaster TRT Haber, referred to Erdoğan as “cumhurbaşkanı” 253 times in their notifications. The longest notification message that was replicated by several outlets was referring to an Anadolu Agency story, breaking the news of the resignation of an opposition party’s mayoral candidate (Anadolu Agency, 2019). In three minutes after the original story was published, the message, which read “Saadet Party’s Elmadag candidate Nuri Yurdakul, as the father of a martyred soldier, announces his resignation in reaction to his party’s political alliance,” was sent verbatim by Milliyet, Sabah, CNN Türk, Sputnik, Yeni Şafak, Akşam, Haber 7, Ensonhaber, and Hürriyet. A Haber covered the same story with a different notification message.

Pro-government Media Outlets Send Incorrect Alerts Thematically, Erdoğan and other AKP politicians dominated with a total of 602 notification messages that merely echoed their own statements. Excluding the negative stories like the one mentioned above, opposition politicians’ statements were the themes of notifications only 28 times. Stories on Turkey’s “war on terror” (168), as well as articles on foreign news (125) and diplomacy (110) trailed AKP politicians’ statements as the most referred news pieces through mobile notifications (Fig. 5.2). The overall thematic share, which can be labeled as unbalanced, was even more accented in the notifications sent by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. Out of the 238 notifications that the agency sent during the period, 130 of them were merely the statements of the ruling party politicians. Apart from them, the only thematic category that consisted of more than 10% of all Anadolu Agency notifications was Turkey’s anti-terrorism operations. The agency relayed only one statement from an opposition figure, and that was Yurdakul’s resignation that criticized the opposition’s political strategy. Several notifications with incorrect information were recorded during the period. For instance, pro-government Sabah newspaper sent a notification at

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382

Statements or other ruling party politicians

220

Stories on PKK or FETO

168

Foreign News

125

Diplomacy

110

USD vs. Turkish Lira

102

Sports

94

Economy Statements of opposition politicians Content announcement

90 40 36

Crime news

46

Accident / Disaster

65

Info on local elections

48

Other news categories

40 0

100

200

300

Fig. 5.2:  Thematic distribution of mobile alerts sent by the Turkish news outlets that were monitored from March 21 to March 28, 2019

5:13 p.m. on March 26, announcing that “all the arrested suspects in the legal case into the assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Ankara have been released.” In fact, they were not, as noted in Sputnik’s notification that was sent nine minutes after Sabah’s. The Turkish newspaper did not send a consequent notification to correct its error. Most of Turkey’s leading digital news providers, whether pro-government or opposition, also failed during the period of observation to present the full picture to their readers through notifications during breaking news moments. This failure can be linked to the political affiliations or sympathies of these news organizations. For example, the pro-opposition Cumhuriyet daily sent four notifications as lira lost value against the U.S.  dollar from March 22 to March 25, which was a story that was embarrassing for the government, but it did not update its users when the Turkish currency recovered its losses in the following days. Similarly, pro-government Sabah sent four notifications as Lira was recovered from March 25 to March 28, but it had not sent a single notification when the Turkish currency dramatically lost value a few days earlier. It is remarkable that the users who preferred Bundle, a news aggregator, was better informed in this period, as the application sent both types of notifications; on lira’s fall from an opposition outlet and on lira’s recovery from a pro-government one.

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Although American and European media outlets increasingly resort to mobile notifications to highlight their exclusive content, Turkey’s leading digital news providers were observed to keep using them to distribute “commodity news,” mainly produced by news agencies. Only 36 of the 1,568 notifications referred to original content, like exclusive analysis, live video, or infographics. Beyond that, most of the articles that these outlets selected for their notifications throughout the week can be labeled as having a low public value, as they were recycling public statements or breaking news without providing any additional information, context, or depth. Similarly, Turkish news outlets differ from the U.S.  and European media outlets in form and style of their mobile notifications. A few hours of monitoring Turkish news alerts were enough to see that they use more clickbait content in their notifications compared to the outlets in the West. Even opposition outlets used Erdoğan’s statements as a clickbait. A tactic that they use in such situations is to use an ellipsis to create an information gap, hoping that the user will get curious and click on to visit their website. For instance, Cumhuriyet daily sent a notification on March 24, which can be translated as “Erdoğan: ‘On Oct. 29, Fazil Say…’ ” The last two words of this phrase refers to a prominent Turkish pianist who was critical of Erdoğan’s ideology in the past. Although Cumhuriyet daily omitted to relay this information directly on the screen of its mobile application’s users, Erdoğan had stated in the news detail that Say would be organizing a piano concert at his palace, apparently as a sign of reconciliation between the two figures. Another difference between Turkish news alerts and American/European ones could be observed in the use of visual elements. Rich push notifications allow the publishers to send out more engaging content, including videos, audio, and interactive. In contrary to the ongoing trend among the Western news applications, Turkish news outlets did not send a single rich push notification throughout the period of observation. Almost all notifications during the monitoring period used either no images or only stock images featuring archive photos of the subject of the story or visuals of textual messages like “Son Dakika.” Only Hürriyet, Ensonhaber, Mynet, A  Haber, Bundle, and sometimes Sabah used some kind of visual element, while the rest stuck to text messages. Anadolu Agency and Aksam used emojis in some of their notifications. All outlets, excluding Sabah and Anadolu Agency, used the default sound for their mobile alerts. During the monitoring period, Turkish news outlets could be criticized for not being user-centric in other dimensions, too. For instance, timing of notifications were frequently problematic not only for pro-government outlets, but for others too. Although notifications, given their direct contact with the user, can

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be distracting, and even highly disturbing at times, Turkish news outlets were observed as too easily sending them out. As an example, six outlets (Habertürk, NTV, Anadolu, Hürriyet, TRT Haber, and Sputnik) sent push notifications at 12:45 a.m. on March 23 to alert their users about the result of a football match between Turkey and Albania. As there was no way to opt out of certain categories of news, all users—including those who are not interested in football—received these alerts after midnight. Similarly, British Minister for Business and Industry Richard Harrington’s resignation over the Brexit saga was the subject of a series of news alerts by Anadolu, NTV, and Sputnik from 1:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. on March 25, potentially vibrating the phones of many Turkish users who were not interested in world news.

Discussion Increased polarization in Turkish society was labeled as an “externality” of the “dominant party status” of Erdoğan’s AKP (Keyman, 2014). The ongoing political and social polarization is echoed not only in the traditional media, but also on New Media, affecting Turkey’s news providers and consumers as well (Bulut & Yoruk, 2017). This study presented a glimpse into how Turkey’s leading news outlets used their mobile notifications during a key period for politics and society. According to the results, Erdoğan and his AKP dominate Turkey’s news notifications-sphere, amplifying and politicizing the social polarization on this digital domain, too. The pressure encourages partisanship among the leading news outlets, which also sustain the traditionally poor standards of journalism in Turkey. It can be argued that the results confirm the assumptions suggesting that digital news media in Turkey is as polarized as the traditional media. Most of the leading news applications are controlled or heavily influenced by the political authority. Meanwhile, many of their counterparts that are closer to the opposition in their affiliation or sympathy also fail to provide an alternative that fulfills universal standards of journalism for the public good. As a result, almost half of all the mobile notifications were simply the statements of the ruling party politicians. Given the ordinary Turkish citizen’s ongoing daily struggle, more important news categories, like economy, were largely ignored by news applications. Only 90 of 1,568 notifications (5.8%) were about economy news. Albeit irregularly and temporarily, “neutral” aggregators sometimes provide a more balanced news coverage, but the fact that they do not produce a significant amount of original content suggests that they cannot present a lasting solution to the average Turkish news consumer who demands truthful, accurate, fair,

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impartial, and independent journalism. The findings show that most outlets, and particularly the ones that are funded by all taxpayers, are far from fulfilling this demand, considering their mobile notifications as a key indicator. Traces of ideological discourse even in the wording of an official title for the head of state can be observed in news notifications. As a polarizing figure, President Erdoğan remains as the centerpiece of news, whether they are published by pro-government or opposition outlets. Opposition figures are largely muted, and not enough space or attention was given to public-interest news content in the age of “he said, she said” type of reporting in Turkey. The lack of quality content in Turkish news applications is coupled with poor standards in other areas, as seen in the ongoing technical mediocrity and an utter disregard of a consumer’s personal preferences, which can all be observed in push notifications. The goal of this study was to lift the lid off Turkish news applications’ usage of mobile notifications. As Turkey’s highly polarized digital users move from public spaces, like Facebook, to gated communities provided by other apps, like WhatsApp groups, further studies are needed to understand both the providers and the consumers of news, particularly on the mobile domain.

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6.  Fake News and Politics in Italy Giovanni Brancato and Melissa Stolfi Abstract: The diffusion of fake news has allowed the public debate to focus on two specific topics: the uncontrollability of the web and the production of grassroots information, but also the transformations due to the advent of an ever more “disintermediated” journalism. If, on the one hand, new production routines require publishing companies to use automatisms in packaging and diffusion of news; on the other hand, users – tied to the digital more than to the “paper” medium – are not able to distinguish “true” from “false” news. For these reasons, the political class have to deal with this phenomenon, especially after arising of many ad hoc platforms with the goal of limiting the dissemination of fake news. At the same time, it is central to pay attention to the relationship between the use of populist rhetoric by the political class, in order to create a “disintermediate” bond between the leader and the voters, and the political strategy which considers the fight against fake news as one of its typical elements.The chapter’s purpose is to analyze how “Pagella Politica” (an Italian web-platform based on a system of fact-checking on politicians’ statements) has successfully made operational a system of checking news spread through the media: from radio-television shows to newspapers, passing over online newspapers and social networks. Firstly, we will analyze topics related to a greater spread of fake news and whether there is a correlation between belonging to a given political group and/or political role and the truthfulness of statements about specific macro-areas of debate (i.e. economy, foreign affairs). Secondly, we will proceed with the identification of recurrent elements that allow the emergence of a possible relationship between treatment and use of specific strategies implemented by some political subjects (i.e. the use of fake news for specific issues such as migration) and their potential populist “nature”. Keywords: Fake news, post-truth politics, populism, fact-checking

Introduction It is not surprising that our choice reflects a year dominated by highly charged political and social discourse. Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, posttruth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). This is the definition with which the Oxford Dictionaries announced to choose the word post-truth as 2016’s Word of the Year, because of that year was characterized by a great usage of this concept (Flood, 2016). The start of the post-truth era seems to be related to the rise of a new public sphere into the

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web, that is considered as a degeneration of the traditional “public places” of debate because it is able to stimulate conflicts and reinforce personal opinions (Veltri, 2017). New media became the most important instrument for the diffusion of information but also the most relevant place for public debate between citizens. The diffusion of social media lead to the definition of the post-truth era, in particular for their role into the fragmentation of information (Pratellesi, 2004, 2013; Maistrello, 2010, 2013), the polarization of public opinion (Sunstein, 2002, 2017), the growth of distrust towards politics, representative institutions and political parties, these last characterized by a weakening of the relation with their activists and voters (Dalton & Wattenberg, 2002; Dalton, 2007). In addition, we can observe the gradual predominance of subjectivity of individuals over objectivity of events, that seems to be a result of the individuals’ incapacity to discern the truth from false information (Gandini, 2017). The relationship between “truth” and “individuals” is becoming more complex day by day, and the presence of a dichotomic vision of the world – not only linked to an ideological dimension – seems to have improved this complexity and to have removed some intermediate positions and incomplete solutions about different topics into the contemporary public debate. It is also this polarization which has overshadowed the search of the truthfulness of facts, contributing to the success of fake news in an information and media system characterized by a period of crisis (Morcellini, 2011). There are lots of websites which diffuse exclusively fake news to maximize profits quickly, attracting advertisers thanks to the large number of clicks and visualizations, such as abcnews.com or TheBostonTribune. com and the Italian Il Corriere della Notte, World News Daily Report, and Il Fatto Quotidiano, which try to confuse and attract the web users through a name that is similar to some information websites. This market-oriented strategy modifies the structure of the information system: marketing and profit logics became the most important things of the productive process, instead of the control of the journalistic sources and the truthfulness of events. According to the elements of the post-truth era, we can see a gradual degeneration of the social utility which characterized the transition from journalism to post-journalism (Marini, 2017).

Fake News in the Neo-populism Era In the contemporary democracies, the political class have to face an even greater challenge linked to the rise of indifference and disaffection towards politics by citizens, which is known as “crisis of democracy” (Crozier, Huntington & Watanuki, 1975). The lack of trust towards politics, institutions and politicians is a very widespread condition among citizens, who are “disappointed” with a

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political system that is “faraway” from its voters and that is not able to understand the real problems and needs of the Country (Diamanti, 2014). As a result, we can see a gradual reduction of the participation at the political and public “life” of the Country. Even if there are some Countries not affected in toto by this crisis, it is important to point out that many Western Countries have to address a critical situation in which the media system has gained an important role into the decision-making processes about social and political topics. If previously the media had only a status of “mediation” between political class and citizens, now the media is able to influence the political discourse and sometimes the political actions, too. In Italy, such as in other European and international contexts, the distance between civil society and its political representatives was encouraged by public discontent and political and economic instability, starting with the 2008 economic and financial crisis. The traditional roles and relations between political system, media system, and citizens have changed, and politicians were obliged to create new forms of communications to reach out and persuade voters often without the help and complicity of the traditional media (Mazzoleni & Sfardini, 2009). The presence of these conditions has driven political groups and movements to assume a neo-populist approach, based on the most relevant elements of the post-truth, by focusing their discourse and strategies not on “what” saying but on “how” saying something: to excite, engage, and persuade before informing. The success of these new political approaches seems to be confirmed also from the “unexpected” election results obtained by Movimento 5 Stelle and Lega in the last 2018 Italian General Election, which can be considered as a turning point into the political, social and cultural scenario of the Country. Internet and social media play an important role in the rise of these political forces which continue to consider themselves as anti-establishment, even if they are now included in the traditional political system that they are going to fight. They are creating “direct talks” with citizens, without the mediation of the media system, in order to involve citizens in the “battle” against the old and corrupt system. Both the lack of mediation between politicians and voters and the mistrust towards traditional media, but also the desire of a “break up” with the traditional system are some relevant elements of the populist phenomenon rising in the Western democracies. Social media have become fundamental instruments in the definition of a new communicative space characterized by a direct and disintermediated relationship between leaders and citizens. Internet represents the ideal habitat for birth and development of neo-populism forces, because the possibility to create a direct participation and to express your own opinion is in contrast with the typical top-down structure of the traditional political parties and

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the political system in general (Anselmi, 2017). On the one hand, the absence of mediation gives each political exponent the possibility to diffuse his/her opinions overcoming the risk to be subject to manipulation and decontextualization by media system; but, on the other hand, it is difficult to check information and sources of the contents published and shared on the web. Political system tries to elude the mediation of media and to diffuse its contents leveraging on the more transparency and truthfulness, but sometimes this information is fake news. In this scenario, it is clear that the post-truth era lead to two different phenomena: the rise of atypical political forces and the increase in the circulation of fake news. US presidential elections (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017) and Brexit are the two events that were characterized by the diffusion of a great number of fake news during 2016. In fact, these events can be considered as moments which officialized the definition of the post-truth era, because they are characterized by a different interpretation of the reality that have influenced citizens’ opinions and their vote. In spite of the traditional influencers and some power groups declaring their opposition to Trump’s candidacy and “UK leave”, the results show us that these were not able to affect public opinion. Citizens have started to build their opinions not on the reality of facts or taking into account the opinions of the traditional sources (i.e. mass media, public institutions, etc.), but they rely their opinions on the information present online without verifying its correctness (Campa, 2016; Riva, 2017). The American elections and the English referendum results underline the need to stop the diffusion of fake news, which has become a central problem because fake news are able to direct and influence opinions of large numbers of citizens mainly due to the high level of sharing among network users. It is not surprising that a great debate has developed about the problems arising from the diffusion of fake news. In particular, politicians are asking for much control on online information: from the elimination of some contents to the regulation of some providers (Ziccardi, 2017). These solutions seem to be forms of censorship, in contrast with the freedom of the Internet, but they can be considered a good way to solve the problem at the moment. European Commission (2018), together with the European Parliament, has started some activities to counter fake news, but also manipulated and inaccurate information especially related to the European integration issue as from the beginning of 2018. The first step was the constitution of a group of 39 high-level experts from different sectors, such as universities, economic system and traditional and new media, in order to study the phenomenon and propose some political and legislative actions to fight their circulation. In addition, there were an online survey and a report by Eurobarometer (2018) on fake news and online disinformation topics, which are

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valid instruments to know the contemporary scenario. Some EU Member States seems to start a deeper debate about the issue. In January 2017, probably after Brexit referendum, the UK Parliament started a public consultation to pay attention to the risks linked to the diffusion of fake news and their role in the weakening of the democratic structure and in the rise of distrust towards traditional media (UK Parliament, 2017). Also in France and in Germany, during the national elections, some political exponents decided to start actions in order to limit the diffusion of fake news. In October 2017, the Chancellor Angela Merkel has driven the approval of Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz. This is, a law against fake news that provides a monetary sanction up to 50  million euros towards providers, with more than two millions of users which are not able to limit the circulation of fakeand to delete the untrue and discriminatory contents. This measure leads to several controversies about both the decision to recognize only the responsibility of the providers and the possible limitation of the freedom of expression. In January 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron announced his commitment in the enactment of the Law on trust and reliability of information which granted to the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel the possibility to interrupt the diffusion of incorrect and untrue contents on the traditional and new media, also after the complaint of one or more French citizens. In the early period, the measures will be applied exclusively starting to the 35th day before the election day. In the case of France there were some criticisms, too. In particular, from the leader of the Front National (now renamed as Rassemblement National), Marine Le Pen, who said that the measure could be a threat for the freedom of expression. The different actions begun by national government – useful both to pay much attention on the topic in the public debate and to develop strategies for limiting risks linked to this phenomenon  – seem to be interesting in legitimately discerning the responsibility of the providers, such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter, instead of focusing their attention on the cultural and social elements on which the diffusion of fake news is based.

A Matter of Topics? The role of the fact-checker obtains much relevance because of the great circulation of fake news above all in the digital spaces and the rise of populist political forces (Smith, 2004; Dobbs, 2012; Graves, Nyhan & Reifler, 2015). We can cite some virtuous experiences such as the American PolitiFact and Factcheck.org, which aim to identify how true a news or a politicians’ quotes are. This is a very “social function” that is important to limit the effects of the manipulation strategies

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on the citizens. In Italy, there are different experiences of fact-checking, but the most famous is Pagella Politica which works to check the politicians’ statements. The success of Pagella Politica is probably due to both the rise of citizens’ mistrust in politics and the need to better know the real politicians’ positions. The aim of this work is to analyze fact-checking procedures on the Italian politicians’ declarations, and in particular the activities of Pagella Politica – a platform created in 2013 on the occasion of the 2013 General Elections – in order to notice a link between the reliability of politicians’ statements and their political affiliation. Pagella Politica is now a solid structure, and it is now a unicum in the Italian context. The activities of the Italian platform, following the experience of PolitiFact, starts with the choice of some statements in national newspapers and news agencies, but also information websites and social accounts of politicians and political parties on Facebook and Twitter. Consequently, the statements are compared to some official data and sources which are useful to understand if the statements are true or false. On the basis of the degree of correctness the statement will be labeled with a flag: “vero” (true) if the statement is totally true and “panzana pazzesca” (false) if the statement is totally false, passing through “c’eri quasi” (almost true), “nì” (not true and not false) and “Pinocchio andante” (almost false). This procedure permits, after a testing period on ten quotes, to establish a ranking of politicians who are divided in “iscritti” (entered), “matricole” (freshman) and “fuori corso” (off course) based on the participation of these political exponents in the public debate. This classification is important to see which politicians say the most wrong things and on which topics of the national agenda: economics, social issues, justice, environment, foreign affairs and institutions – the category “other” that included the topics that are not ascribable to the previous ones is also present. This classification is realized by the analysts of Pagella Politica and is composed by seven macro-areas (see above) (Tab. 6.1). Tab. 6.1: Total number of statements with level of truth and macro-areas. Source: pagellapolitica.it Environment Economics Vero C’eri quasi Nì Pinocchio andante Panzana pazzesca Total

Foreign Affairs 76 42 49 20

Justice Institutions Social Issues 26 150 159 17 68 90 11 45 72 11 34 35

7 9 4 1

140 101 107 56

2

21

10

2

13

23

425

197

67

310

Other

Total

13 7 2 4

571 334 290 161

12

4

64

368

30

1420

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It is interesting to see the analysis by Pagella Politica on the politicians’ statements from the creation of the platform to the 15th of March 2018, the month of the General Elections. We have decided to use a quantitative-qualitative approach to analyze in which way Pagella Politica have analyzed the quotes of the most relevant political exponents of last years. For this reason, from the total number of statements (1420) we have chosen to not take into account the analysis realized on Beppe Grillo (240) and Susanna Camusso’s (1) statements. Both of them play a “political role” into the national public debate (the first is the founder of Movimento 5 Stelle together with Gianroberto Casaleggio, while the second is the General Secretary of CGIL), but they cannot be considered as politicians because they have never been involved in the Institutions or the Government. From a first reading of the data collected in the Pagella Politica database, we can observe the presence of lots of statements related to four macro-areas. The first one is “Economics”, and it represents about 30% of statements on the total number (425 of 1420), and it is the macro-area with the highest number of analysis on the platform. In this macro-area are included all the statements related to economic issues, such as public debt, unemployment, economic recession after the 2008 crisis, etc.; a great number of quotes is focused on the fiscal and economic policies in a supranational dimension, for example, the possibility to “leave” the eurozone and the regulation of the exports/imports between EU Member States and extra-European Countries. The second one is “Social Issues” (360 analyzed statements) that included all the quotes related to public health and education services, and above all policies to fight poverty. These topics are often linked to immigration and unemployment, the latter in regard to young people. Following, we find the macro-areas of “Institutions” and “Foreign Affairs”, respectively, with 310 and 197 analyzed statements. In particular, while in the “Institutions” area there are quotes related to the composition of the Parliament (formations, exponents, political parties, etc.), that is some statements about the rise of the Movimento 5 Stelle and his entry into the Chambers; the “Foreign Affairs” areas is composed by different typologies of statement, that is problems related to immigration and economic crisis in an European perspective, but also some comments about international political events such as the US presidential elections and Trump’s win or the good result of Marine Le Pen in the 2017 presidential elections. Not relevant are the data of the “Justice” (67 statements) and “Environment” (23 statements) areas which represent together about 6% of the total analysis of Pagella Politica. In addition, it is important to notice the low attention toward topics such as political alliances and coalitions, which are included in the residual category: “Other” (30 statements).

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According with the tag chosen by Pagella Politica analysts, we can see the great presence of statements totally true, about 40% of the total quotes, and which are labeled with the tag “true” (571 of 1420). With the reduction of the level of truth there is also a reduction of the numbers of statements, so the number of true quotes is greater than the number of false quotes. In addition, we cannot identify any kind of correlation between the level of truth of the statement and the macroarea to which it belongs. The only result we can underline is the presence of more accurate statements in the “Environment”, “Justice”, “Institutions”, “Social issues” and “Other” (about 65% or 70%) areas than more incorrect statements in the “Economics” and “Foreign Affairs” areas.

Or a Matter of Actors? The previous results seem to be not in line with some findings which consider fake news as central elements in the contemporary public and political discourse. In fact, data show a small presence of incorrect and untrue statements in Pagella Politica database. If the numeric data cannot give us a credible indicator about the use of fake news, and probably it is a complex aim to achieve, we can study the possible relation between the level of truth and the belonging to populist political forces. We have decided to reduce the corpus of analysis, selecting also the political parties that have more than 100 analyzed statements in the Pagella Politica database. As a result, our study is focused on five political parties: Forza Italia (223), Lega Nord (207), Liberi e Uguali (167), Movimento 5 Stelle (170) and Partito Democratico (499). This choice had no impact on the number of total declarations, because the number of statements changed from 1420 to 1266 but gives us the possibility to reduce the number of politicians to analyse. We have excluded from this second study four political parties of the nine included in the database, in particular +Europa (21), Alternativa Popolare (63), Fratelli d’Italia (67) and Potere al Popolo (1). We have left out the quotes of Romano Prodi (1) and Giorgio Napolitano (1), because they do not belong to any political forces and for this reason not useful for our work. Moreover, in order to identify the possible link between fake news and populist forces, we have decided to pay attention exclusively on the statements flagged as “Panzana pazzesca” (totally false) that are totally false, “Pinocchio andante” (almost false) that are not false but are incorrect and inaccurate, and “Nì” (not true and not false) that are true information but reported in an incomplete way (Tab. 6.2). Forza Italia is the political party with the highest number of statements that can be traced back to the three chosen tags (Nì, Pinocchio andante and Panzana

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Tab. 6.2:  Statements of different political parties with a medium/low level of truth by macro-areas. Source: pagellapolitica.it Other Environment Economics Forza Italia Nì Pinocchio andante Panzana pazzesca Lega Nord Nì Pinocchio andante Panzana pazzesca Liberi e Uguali Nì Pinocchio andante Panzana pazzesca Movimento 5 Stelle Nì Pinocchio andante Panzana pazzesca Partito Democratico Nì Pinocchio andante Panzana pazzesca Total

Foreign Affairs 10 3 5

Justice Institutions Social Total Issues 4 29 14 108 1 13 5 46 3 7 7 36

2 0 0

1 0 0

48 24 14

2

1

10

2

0

9

2

26

1 0 1

1 0 1

32 17 12

25 14 7

3 1 2

9 4 5

26 15 9

97 51 37

0

0

3

4

0

0

2

9

1

0

8

4

2

9

9

33

0 1

0 0

4 4

3 1

1 1

4 5

7 2

19 14

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

2

15

11

3

22

10

64

0 0

1 0

8 5

8 2

1 1

11 9

6 2

35 19

1

1

2

1

1

2

2

10

4

2

65

19

9

20

45

164

2 1

2 0

46 16

13 3

6 3

11 7

27 13

107 43

1

0

3

3

0

2

5

14

9

6

168

69

21

89

104

466

pazzesca): 108 statements out of a total of 223, that is about 48,4%. First of all, we can see the great “personalization” of this political party and the central role played by the leader Silvio Berlusconi. In fact, 59 statements of the 108 total quotes (about 55%) belong to Berlusconi, 48 quotes belong to Renato Brunetta,

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and only one quote belongs to Mara Carfagna. Leaving aside the statements of the former Minister for the equal opportunities and the ones related to the historical leader of the party, the attention on the third exponent, Renato Brunetta, is probably due to his institutional role played during the previous Government as Group leader of the deputies of Forza Italia at the Chamber of Deputies. Also, if we pay attention to the different levels of truth of the statements and their placement in specific macro-areas, we can observe that the large number of inaccurate and/or incorrect statements are related to “Economics” (54%), “Foreign Affairs” (62%) and “Environment” (100%) – the latter is calculated on a single quote. The political party which presents a lower number of statements inaccurate and incomplete or totally false is Lega Nord:  97 statements out of 207, that is about 46,85%. Also in this second case, “personalization” is a central factor, because there are 85 statements of the leader Matteo Salvini, while the other 12 quotes belong to Roberto Maroni who is a relevant exponent in the party structure but has also played some institutional role at national level, as President of the Lombardia Region from 2013 to 2018. As for Forza Italia, we can identify which are the macro-areas characterized by a highest number of not truth quotes tagged as “Nì”, “Pinocchio andante” and “Panzana pazzesca”. In the case of Lega Nord, incomplete and false statements are focused on topics related to “Economics” (58%) and “Foreign Affairs” (55%), while in the macro-areas “Social Issues” and “Institutions” are included as truth statements. Unlike the previous political forces, Forza Italia and Lega Nord, there are two parties which present a good number of truth statements. These are Movimento 5 Stelle, which counts 108 incomplete or totally false statements out of 223 (48,4%), and Partito Democratico, which instead counts 164 incomplete or totally false statements out of 499 (33%). The numbers do not give us some indications about the difference between these two political parties, but if we focus our attention on the level of truth that characterized each quote, we can observe some divergences. A great number of statements of the Partito Democratico is labelled as “Nì” (65%), and it is a demonstration of the highest level of reliability compared to the previous political parties; the statements tagged as “Pinocchio andante” and “Panzana Pazzesca” are, respectively, 26% and 8,5%. The Movimento 5 Stelle presents an opposite trend, because we can observe more statements tagged as “Panzana Pazzesca” (15,9%) and “Pinocchio andante” (30%), and instead is. The data related to the statements flagged as “Nì” is about 55%. We can see some differences in the situation that concerns the correlation between the level of truth and the macro-areas. In particular, clear differences emerge about “Social Issues” and “Institutions” macroareas, while for the other categories there are not relevant differences. On the one

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hand, for the statements related to the “Social Iissues” area, the Movimento 5 Stelle seems to be more truthful than the Partito Democratico: the first one presents only 10 incorrect or totally false statements out of 37 (27%), while the second one presents 45 not true quotes out of 123 (36%). On the other hand, the situation is totally opposite for the “Institutions” areas, where Partito Democratico is truer thanks to Movimento 5 Stelle. Looking at the data, we can notice that Partito Democratico counts 20 true statements out of 89 (about 22%), while Movimento 5 Stelle counts 22 true statements out of 55 (about 40%). We have to take into account that there are two elements that probably have influenced the data of these two latter political parties: firstly, lack of personalization strategies. Movimento 5 Stelle decides to rely on a double guide, specifically Luigi Di Maio and Alessandro Di Battista to whom are attributed, respectively, 29 and 32 statements out of 64 statements; the other ones are ascribed to Paola Taverna and Virginia Raggi. Partito Democratico, in spite of the dominance of Matteo Renzi who counts 127 statements out of 164, seems to give more space to the other exponents of the party, also because of the failure of the over-personalization of the referendum of 4th December 2016. The second factor  – which has already influenced the data related to Renato Brunetta (Forza Italia)  – is the presence of politicians who played a role in national institutions. In particular, Matteo Renzi and Paolo Gentiloni have both been Presidents of the Council, and also Maria Elena Boschi, Piercarlo Padoan and Graziano Delrio have been Ministers of different areas. This has probably influenced the level of truth of their statements: Government party has been more truthful in the statements than the opposition parties, Movimento 5 Stelle, Lega Nord and Forza Italia. At the end, the political party that is characterized by the highest level of truth linked to the statements of its exponents is the new Liberi e Uguali driven by Pietro Grasso. This party counts 19 and 14 statements, respectively, tagged as “Nì” and “Pinocchio andante”, but there are not statements totally untrue and tagged as “Panzana pazzesca”. Out of 167 statements, only 33 are the ones that Pagella Politica analysts have considered as incomplete or inaccurate. This result can be justified once again with the political role played by the exponents of the party. The most important members of Liberi e Uguali, Pietro Grasso and Laura Boldrini, played an important institutional role during the previous Government, because they are the Presidents of the two Chambers of the Parliament. As a result, it is not surprising that the statements collected in the macro-areas “Foreign Affairs”, “Institutions”, “Justice” and “Social Issues” are labelled as “Vero” (totally true) or “C’eri quasi” (almost true); just for the macroarea “Economics” we can observe some inaccurate statement, in particular 8 out of a total of 25 (32%).

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Conclusion Fact-checking activity seems to have achieved a central role into the contemporary scenario. The information system, characterized by hybrid stiles and formats, needs to be supported by the three different functions of this new instrument. First of all, fact-checking is fundamental for checking information diffusion into the global information system both offline and online, and this function is helpful not only for who receives information but also for who produces it. The second function is related to the capacity of fact-checking to inform people. The checking of information and consequently the correction of it led to a new diffusion of the correct information by the fact-checker and saying more about the truthfulness of some sources. The last function is linked to the reliability and authority of the sources. In a time when informative overload seems to have encouraged the readers’ loss of trust towards journalists and traditional information sources, not so long ago considered as the most important and respected sources of truth. Now, fact-checkers are becoming the new holders of truth, because they are able to discover and correct fake news, but also to limit their circulation and to identify the unreliable sources. From the work findings emerges a low presence of fake news into political and public discourse, but we have to take into account the “role” that each politician played during the time of the analysis. It is important to underline that sometimes politicians who are directly involved in the institutions’ activities are used to disseminate less incorrect information (i.e. Laura Boldrini, Pietro Grasso and Matteo Renzi). Moreover, the truthfulness of statements is linked to the macro-areas of the topic: the presence of fake news seems to depend on both the type of the political party and the capacity of the issue to leverage on the citizens’ emotions. It is evidenced by the large number of sentences related to young unemployment, the migration crisis, and the economic recession of the Country which are labelled as “Pinocchio andante”. We can observe incomplete and sometimes totally false sentences related to the populist political parties, that want to persuade and to involve citizens. To do this, in many cases the populist leaders decide to diffuse information not true but at the same time that are able to decrease the distance between themselves and voters. Using fake news becomes an instrument to simplify the national problems and a way to convince voters about the rightness of own opinions, even if sometimes it could lead to a polarization of positions and a debate based on untruth information – two phenomena which represent a risk for the democratic structure and for the development of the civil society.

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References Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211–236. Anselmi, M. (2017). Populism. An introduction. New York & London: Routledge. Campa, R. (2016). Post-truth. La lezione dimenticata della sociologia della conoscenza. Orbis Idearum, 4(1), 97–115. Crozier, M., Huntington, S. P., & Watanuki, J. (1975). The crisis of democracy. Report on the governability of democracies to the trilateral commission. New York, NY: New York University Press. Dalton, R. J. (2007). Partisan mobilization, cognitive mobilization and the changing of the American electorate. Electoral Studies, 26(2), 274–286. Dalton, R. J., & Wattenberg, M. P. (2002). Parties without partisans: Political change in advanced industrial democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diamanti, I. (2014). Democrazia ibrida. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Dobbs, M. (2012). The rise of political fact-checking. How Reagan inspired a journalistic movement: A reporter’s eye view. Washington, DC: New America Foundation. Eurobarometer. (2018). First findings of the Eurobarometer on fake news and online disinformation. Retrieved June 14, 2019, from https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/ first-findings-eurobarometer-fake-news-and-online-disinformation European Commission. (2018). Public consultation on fake news and online disinformation (13 November 2017 – 23 February 2018), Retrieved February 20, 2018, from https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/ public-consultation-fake-news-and-online-disinformation Flood, A. (2016). ‘Post-truth’ named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. The Guardian. Retrieved January 15, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/15/ post-truth-named-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-dictionaries Gandini, A. (2017). Informazione «dadaismo digitale» e socialità di rete. Problemi dell’informazione, 1, 106–122. Graves, L., Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2015). The diffusion of factchecking: Understanding the growth of a journalistic innovation. Arlington, VA: American Press Institute. Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2011). Blur. How to know what’s true in the age of information overload. New York: Bloomsbury.

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Maistrello, S. (2010). Giornalismo e nuovi media. Milano: Apogeo. Maistrello, S. (2013). Fact checking: dal giornalismo alla rete. Milano: Apogeo. Marini, R. (2017). Potere dei media, interdipendenza tra poteri e pluralismo dell’informazione. Problemi dell’informazione, 1, 3–30. Mazzoleni, G., & Sfardini, A. (2009). Politica pop. Da «Porta a porta» a «L’isola dei famosi». Bologna: il Mulino. Morcellini, M. (2011). Neogiornalismo. Tra crisi e Rete come cambia il mondo del giornalismo. Milano: Mondadori Università. Oxford Dictionaries. (2016). Oxford Dictionnaires word of year 2016 is posttruth. Retrieved January 15, 2018, from https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ press/news/2016/12/11/WOTY-16 Pratellesi, M. (2004). New journalism: Teorie e tecniche del giornalismo multimediale. Milano: Mondadori. Pratellesi, M. (2013). New journalism. Dalla crisi della stampa al giornalismo di tutti. Milano: Mondadori. Riva, G. (2017). Interrealtà: Reti fisiche e digitali e post-verità. il Mulino, 2, 210–217. Smith, S. H. (2004). The fact checker’s bible. A guide to getting it right. New York: Anchor books. Sunstein, C. (2002). The law of group polarization. Journal of Political Philosophy, 10(2), 175–195. Sunstein, C. (2017). #Republic. Dividen democracy in the age of social media. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. UK Parliament. (2017, January 30). Fake news inquiry launched. Retrieved from https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commonsselect/culture-media-and-sport-committee/news-parliament-2015/ fake-news-launch-16-17/ Veltri, G. A. (2017). Scorciatoie mentali, bolle e post-verità: La sfera pubblica 3.0. Milano: Volta. Ziccardi, G. (2017). La soluzione c’è: Si chiama censura. il Mulino, 2, 226–234.

7.  Populism and Media in Turkey:  Partners in Crime Burak Özçetin and Ayşegül Akaydın Aydın Abstract: Populism researchers are becoming more interested in the relationship between media and populism. Studying the elective affinity between media logic and populist political logic shed new light on the phenomenon, and launched further research questions in the field. In this chapter, our objective is to provide a theoretical and empirical account of the relationship between populism and media with a specific focus on the Turkish case. We explore how the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP), as a populist political party in power, used media to pursue its political agenda; and how the contemporary media system in Turkey laid the grounds for populist politics. In this study we identify four aspects of populism-media tandem in Turkey through presenting an analysis of major political, legal, economic, and cultural transformations in Turkey’s media-sphere: creation of a pro-government, partisan media bloc; forging a new cultural hegemony; suppressing critical voices in the media; and using fake news and political trolling. Keywords: Populism, media, democracy, media ownership, fake news, censorship

Introduction Analyzing populism primarily as a mediatized phenomenon, this study problematizes the role played by the media (including the social media) in production and dissemination of populist discourses in Turkey; and the way populist political actors use media to forge and strengthen their political agendas. Any debate on dynamics of contemporary politics must tackle a series of questions related with populism. Rising authoritarianism, crises of representative democracy, anti-immigration policies, increased polarization, post-truth politics, and anti-vaccine sentiments are among many issues pertaining to the rise of populism and populist politics on a global scale. In a mediatized world, media is at the intersection point of different dimensions and aspects of the populist upsurge. A common tendency among populism researchers is to evaluate populism primarily as a political problem in the narrowest sense of the word. Less attention is given to ‘nonpolitical’ actors, venues, and manifestations of populism. It is our contention that contemporary populism or neo-populism cannot be fully grasped without taking its media dimension into consideration. This chapter will underline that the relationship between media and populism in Turkey must be understood through a thorough analysis of structural transformation of Turkey’s

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media-sphere. The AKP’s creation of a pro-government, partisan media bloc; efforts to forge a new cultural hegemony; moves towards suppressing critical voices in the media; and spread of fake news and political trolling are the four dimensions that define the characters of media-populism tandem in Turkey.

On Populism In his impressive account of populism, Arditi (2007, p. 57) maintains that be it because it is a fellow traveler, an unpleasant by-product, or a threat to democracy, populism is not an independent phenomenon, and it is a must to understand the dynamics of contemporary democratic politics in order to have a full grasp of populism. Despite its extensive use, populism is a ‘notoriously vague term’ (Canovan, 1999, p.  3), and ‘a notoriously elusive and slippery concept’ (Stavrakakis & Katsambekis, 2014, p. 121). Two basic premises of populism are restoration of the primacy of the people and the so-called betrayal of the elites such as politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals, or the judges (Canovan, 2002; Meny & Surel, 2002, pp. 11–13; Mudde, 2004). For the purposes of this inquiry, we will not try to traverse the voluminous literature on populism. Since ‘the study of populism, like the phenomenon itself, limited in scope, and somewhat episodic’ (Taggart, 2002, p. 62), it is beyond the reach of this specific investigation. Rather we will try to present what we basically understand from populism, by pointing the fundamental populist logic, ‘the populist mood’ (Canovan, 1999), and the ‘populist style’ (Moffitt, 2016). A simple but powerful starting point is Mudde’s (2004, p. 543) definition of populism ‘as an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.’ In this study, we rest on a ‘symptomatic’ account of populism, which ‘understands populism as an anti-status quo discourse that simplifies the political space by symbolically dividing the society between “the people” (as the “underdogs”) and its “other”’ (Panizza, 2005, p. 3). This definition rests on the claim that the identity of both ‘the people’ and ‘the other’ are political constructs, symbolically constituted through the relation of antagonism. ‘Antagonism’ plays a key role in the ‘symptomatic’ account of populism. It is based on the simplification of the political space, ‘replacing a complex set of differences and determinations by a stark dichotomy whose two poles are necessarily imprecise’ (Laclau, 2005, p. 18). Simplification of the political sphere, dichotomizing issues in pro- or anti- terms, and reasserting popular sovereignty as its primary value are the

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distinguishing features of populist political discourse (Taggart, 2002, pp. 76–77). This is why populist political style could easily be embraced and performed by religious as well as secular political actors. As Taggart (2002, p.  78) notes ‘in many populist movements, there is a strong overlap between religious imagery and moral fundamentalism. . . in the battle between good and evil it is always clear to populists on whose side the common people stand.’ At one pole of this opposition, we have the morally pure and fully unified people, and small minorities or elites, who are placed outside the authentic people (Müller, 2015, p.  83). Naming populism as the ‘specter,’ or the ‘threatening underside of democracy,’ Arditi stresses how this Manichaean outlook can become an alibi for using antidemocratic and authoritarian measures against political adversaries and competitors (Arditi, 2007, p.  83). A  crucial aspect of this authoritarian and anti-pluralist political stance is its reliance on personality cult. Personalization of politics and political communication is one of the distinguishing features of the world we live in (McNair, 2011; Perloff, 2014; Strömbäck & Esser, 2014). The distinguishing element in populist politics is not the importance of the charismatic leader, but the leaders’ ambition to identify themselves with the people. By identification we refer to an overlap between the will of the people and the leader’s will. The leader ‘wants the same thing with us,’ or ‘he is the people’ (Müller, 2017). Also political communication today is highly affected by a ‘general process of mediatization of political leadership and action’ (Mazzoleni, 2008b, p. 52). Populists’ simplification of the political sphere aims at achieving an ideological closure; a move towards ‘articulating the totality of a society around a fundamental antagonism’ (Stavrakakis, 2004, p.  257). Slavoj Žižek introduces the concept of social fantasy as a mechanism of achieving that closure which is also impossible. The fundamental social fantasy, states Žižek, is constructed around the idea of a society which exists, but being always threatened by the ‘other.’ The ‘other’ is seen as the main cause of dislocation, as if the elimination of it will bring the community which is longed for so long:  ‘In populism, the enemy is externalized or reified into a positive ontological entity whose annihilation would restore balance and justice’ (Žižek, 2006, p. 555). The bond linking together the members of a given community always implies a shared relationship toward a Thing, enjoyment incarnated: ‘this relationship toward the Thing, structured by means of fantasies, is what is at stake when we speak of the menace to our “way of life” presented by the “other”’ (Žižek, 1993, p. 201). It is the ‘other,’ with its excessive enjoyment inaccessible to us, that threatens our way of life, and is responsible for our miserable condition.

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Demonization of the other is, at one and the same time, a way of coping with subject’s constitutive void and the impossibility of the society (Laclau & Zac, 1994). As we will show below, populist political fantasy uses fake news, disinformation, and conspiracy theories as handy instruments to achieve aforementioned closure. In some cases it is the immigrant, or the foreigner, that poses the threat to the purity of the community; or in the Turkish case the Westernist cultural (bureaucratic, or economic, or political, or judicial) elites and ‘overeducated ivory tower folks with pointed heads looking down their nose at us’ who despise the majority’s traditional habits, beliefs, and opinions (cf. Canovan, 2002, p.  44). Stavrakakis (2004, p.  260), in his analysis of religious populism in Greece, points out a similar point when stating that according to the populist discourse of the Church of Greece, Greek modernizers are characterized by ‘living apart from “the people”, isolated from the “everyday popular ways of life”, “from the soul and the heart of the people.”’ Religious populism in Greece, as we will discuss in the next section, has many parallels with religious tones of AKP populism in Turkey: ‘It distinguishes between Us, the forces of Go(o)d (the People as represented by the Church under God) and Them, the forces of Evil (an atheist, modernizing, intellectualist and repressive government and its supporters), constructing thus two chains of equivalences at war with each other’ (Stavrakakis, 2004, p. 260). Two powerful motifs of populist political style are restorative nostalgia and conspiracy theories. Restorative nostalgia, which ‘stresses nostos and attempts a trans-historical reconstruction of the lost home’ (Boym, 2001, p. xviii), is at the core of recent national and religious revivals. All traditions are, in fact, invented (Hobsbawm, 1983); and re-representing past belongs ever more to the present (Huyssen, 2003). Populist politics in a mediatized political world rendered the so-called golden past (Make XXX Great again) as one of the most important elements of political and cultural lexicon and iconography. Taggart stated that the populists tend to define themselves with a heartland and adds: ‘the heartland is a retrospective construction which is diffuse, blurred around the edges, and clearly romanticized and profoundly ahistorical; it is a vision derived from the past and projected onto the present:  “a shared belief in the virtues of the heartland unites populists”’ (2002, p. 67). The heartland is a restorative nostalgic construct in which the actual home and the imaginary one are confused (Boym, 2001). Conspiratorial worldview is the bedrock of the Manichaean outlook presented by populist political discourses (Bergmann, 2018, p. 101); it is based on a single transhistorical plot (Karaosmanoğlu, 2019), ‘a Manichaean battle of good and evil and the inevitable scapegoating of the mythical enemy’ (Boym, 2001, p. 42). As Müller (2016, p. 56) states, ‘conspiracy theories are thus not a

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curious addition to populist rhetoric; they are rooted in and emerge from the very logic of populism itself.’

Media-Populism Tandem ‘Audience democracy’ is the term coined by Bernard Manin (1997) to explain the current phase of Western liberal democracies. Increased voter volatility, dealignment, replacement of ideological and political cleavages with cultural ones, and the increased media presence in politics are the defining characteristics of audience democracy. With respect to the latest trait, Manin (1997) highlights the increased importance of media specialists, polling experts, and journalists. In audience democracy, ‘people tend to vote for a person and no longer for a party or a platform’ (Manin, 1997, p. 219), since the channels of political communication in contemporary societies affected the nature of the representative relationship. Centrality and abundance of media have definitely changed the way politics and political communication were performed. We contend that mediatization is a fruitful term to conceptualize the place of the media in contemporary societies, which refers to ‘a social change process in which media have become increasingly influential in and deeply integrated into different spheres of society’ (Strömbäck & Esser, 2014, p. 4). Mediatization approach does not only state the centrality and importance of media in contemporary societies, but points to the advent of a ‘new information environment’ characterized by ‘a dramatic increase in the volume and range of the information available to and about citizens; the faster rate at which this information is gathered, retrieved and transmitted; the decentralization of sources of information; greater control by individuals over the information they receive; an increased ability to target specific contents to specific audiences; an increase in both vertical and horizontal communication between citizens and elites of the one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many kinds’ (Mazzoleni, 2014, p.  44). In this new environment, the media emancipates itself strongly from the political actors and impose its logic, formats, content, grammar, and rhythm upon them (Strömbäck & Esser, 2014). Populism is also a political communication style (Jagers & Walgrave, 2007; Moffitt, 2016). Mediatization of politics has provided populist political actors with a fruitful communication environment to produce and disseminate their discourses. Firstly, in this new information environment, political journalism was undermined with increased market orientation. Hard news and serious political content were replaced with the competition over sensational, easily digestible political content which will attract the attention of the audience. The

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situation was further exacerbated by dominance of infotainment approach to politics, which denotes ‘the entangling of political actors, topics, and processes with the entertainment culture’ (Nieland, 2008, p. 3659). The media promotes a new ‘cultural-low’ (Ostiguy & Roberts, 2016) that is in line with the anti-elitist discourse of populism, which pampers the tastes and values of the ordinary citizen. Arguing for an elective affinity between post-truth politics and populism Waisbord notes that ‘the upsurge of populist politics is symptomatic of the consolidation of post-truth communication as a distinctive feature of contemporary politics’ (2018, p. 2). Accordingly, populism’s Manichean politics is antithetic to truth telling, and populists are mostly against facts and truths produced by knowledge-producing elites such as scientists and experts. For instance, Kennedy (2019) finds out that there is a highly significant positive association between vaccine hesitancy and voting for populist parties, which are driven by a profound distrust in elites and experts. Populists’ main concern is not facts but the ‘reaffirmation of a dulalistic narrative that remains indisputable regardless of actual events’ (Waisbord, 2018, p. 10). Mazzoleni (2008a, p.  56) notes that communication strategies of populist leaders and movements include ‘playing the role of the underdog; use of professional expertise; rallies; free media publicity; staging events; and tactical attacks on the media.’ In polarized political environments where partisanship is a distinctive trait of media outlets, the media is skillfully used by populist leaders and movements. They use the media for mobilizing the electorate, setting the agenda, and closing the ranks; and media willingly or unwillingly take their part in the process. One of the common points among contemporary populist leaders including Trump in the USA, Nigel Farafe in the UK, Marine Le Pen in France, Pauline Hanson in Australia, Alexis Tsipras in Greece, Pablo Iglesias in Spain, the late President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Narendra Modi in India, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey is their savvy use of media communication (Block & Negrine, 2017; Chakravartty & Roy, 2015). In some of these cases, as we will show in the following section, the savvy use was accompanied by the leaders’ and movements’ systematic attempts for creating their media bloc and/or keeping media under control.

Populism, Mediatization, and the Turkish Case In an election rally in 2017, Turkey’s current President Erdoğan was complaining that ‘these people are not against Erdoğan, they are against the nation.’ Indeed,

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his words were a summary of the populist political discourse of the AKP. As the unquestionable leader of the party and nation, challenging his authority meant questioning the people’s vote. The populist discourse of Erdoğan and the AKP rests on the assumption that Turkish society is ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups: ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ or the residues of the old regime. Only the AKP or, to put it aptly, Erdoğan himself could express, represent, and reflect the general will of the people. Populism is neither a new nor exclusively an AKP phenomenon. The Democratic Party (1946–1961) was the first populist experience in modern Turkish Republic, which defined itself as the voice of the people against the Kemalist-modernist bureaucratic elites (Sunar, 1990, p.  749). The Democrats believed that they are the ‘authentic representatives’ (Mert, 2001) of the society, and rested on a majoritarian understanding of electoral politics which did not give place to a legitimate opposition. This populist political discourse became one of the distinctive traits of center-right political parties and movements in Turkey. A more antagonistic version of populism, however, was developed by Islamist political movements in the 1970s and 1980s. The dominant Islamist paradigm of this period was a Third Worldist Populism, which posed a chasm between the forces of Islam and forces of kufr (Özçetin, 2011). Every social, political, and cultural phenomena is evaluated and interrogated under the rubric of this simple dichotomy. In the Islamist discourse of dissent, kufr functioned as a central nodal point that totalizes the discursive field through forming a set of equivalences (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Sayyid, 1997). The West, imperialists, the Westernizing bureaucracy; all are seen as the embodiment of the forces of evil, of kufr. In this discursive operation, Islam functioned as the master signifier, ‘as the most abstract principle by which any discursive space is totalized ... it is not that a discursive horizon is established by a coalition of nodal points, but rather by the use of a signifier that represents the totality of that structure’ (Sayyid, 1997, p. 47). Denouncing its Islamist background, the AKP started its journey as a conservative-democratic political party ‘bringing together former center-right voters, moderate Islamists, moderate nationalists, and even certain segment of the former centre-left’ (Özbudun, 2006, p. 546). The road to the EU membership was one of the catalysts behind the moderate, conservative, and relatively liberal policies of the AKP. However, as the party consolidated its power over the years, and due to several structural and contingent domestic and international factors which cannot be dealt here, the allegedly democratic opening of the AKP started to leave its place to an authoritarian turn. Among many other issues, Gezi Park protests of 2013 (Gürcan & Peker, 2015; Tuğal, 2013; Yörük &

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Yüksel, 2014) was a response to the authoritarian turn of the AKP, especially to Prime Minister Erdoğan’s exclusionary and paternalistic rhetoric. The AKP’s and Erdoğan’s answer to Gezi Park protests was further polarization, and exclusion, and dividing the society between two enemy blocs: those who support him and those who did not. In other words, populism has gained a new character, increasingly capitalizing on the secular-religious cleavage (Yabanci, 2016). ‘National will,’ ‘national power,’ and ‘new Turkey’ against the remnants of the ‘old Turkey’ were the keywords of the AKP’s populist discourse (Yabanci, 2016). In this schema, Erdoğan assumed the role of the authentic leader of the people and nation. ‘Erdoğan is performatively able to construct an iconic relationship between his electoral power and the nation as a whole by binding them together “in a linkage that appears to be inherent” ’ (Koçer, 2018, p.  237). Both terms [people and nation] had authentic and essentialist connotations mostly referring to (Sunni)-Muslim Turkish nation (Bora, 2017). ‘Muslim nationalism’ (White, 2014), as a new form of nationalism, labeled those who reject this identity as enemies of the nation and the people: nonreligious Kurds, Alevis, liberals, leftists, seculars, and all dissidents (Yabanci, 2016). By religious scholar and columnist Hayrettin Karaman’s (2016) words, Turkish society is divided into two camps, ‘Erdoğan lover religious-conservative people who are not alienated to their original values; and the rest who are a part of this nation only on paper.’ The division of the society into two antagonistic camps goes hand in hand with demonization of known and unknown external forces and enemies. The ‘interest lobby,’ ‘the crusaders,’ ‘international superior mind,’ or the Germans who are afraid to lose their monopoly over European air traffic are mostly pointed as the external forces, which are behind the economic and political disturbances in Turkey. The crises with the external powers (Russia, Netherlands, the USA, etc.) also fueled the populist-nationalist discourse and closed the ranks within the AKP constituency. The restorative nostalgia for the glorious Ottoman past (Carney, 2014; Özçetin, 2019) with a blend of a neo-Ottoman, adventurous foreign policy added a peculiar characteristic to AKP’s populism (Birdal, 2014; Yabanci, 2016; Özpek & Yaşar, 2018). Academic Ahmet Davutoğlu’s (the former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Turkey) bestseller Strategic Depth (2012) is a culmination of Turkey’s search for influence in the last decade. The whole document is a reevaluation of Turkey’s economic, political, and cultural role (or its geopolitical position) in the region, aiming at creating an axis of civilization and increasing Turkey’s sphere of influence (Nocera, 2013). The shared Ottoman past is seen as being instrumental in Turkey’s effective presence in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans. ‘The past is evoked to cement, update and reformulate

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new ties to Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries’ (Nocera, 2013, p. 5). In addition to this foreign policy dimension, neo-Ottomanism is also instrumental in popularizing a new political identity at home (Tokdoğan, 2018). From the outset, Erdoğan and the AKP recognized the key role played by the media in politics for manufacturing consent, neutralizing dissent, and mobilizing the masses. Moreover, dramatic transformation of Turkey’s media environment in the last three decades towards commercialization, tabloidization, and press-party parallelism provided Erdoğan and the AKP to pursue their political agenda. Departing from a historical and structural analysis of transformation of Turkey’s media-sphere we have defined four dimensions of media-populism tandem in Turkey: • • • •

The AKP’s creation of a pro-government, partisan media bloc; The AKP’s efforts to forge a new cultural hegemony; The AKP’s moves towards suppressing critical voices in the media; and Fake news and political trolling.

The AKP promoted the foundation of a pro-government media bloc by encouraging and greasing the wheels for pro-government companies to invest in the media sector (Buğra & Savaşkan, 2014). The state banks gave cheap credits to businessmen who were known with their close ties to the ruling party. This was the case in the 2008 sale of Turkuvaz Media to Kalyon Group. In 2018, the sale of one of the biggest media holdings in Turkey, Doğan Holding to Demirören Holding with 675 million dollars credit provided by state bank, was labeled as the ‘death of media pluralism in Turkey’ by Reporters Without Borders (RSF, 2018a). By Tunç’s (2018, p.  151) words, ‘the media has become tools for both financial interests and political manipulation once corporate owners, vested in other economic sectors such as construction, energy, telecommunications, and banking also bought newspapers and TV channels.’ According to Media Ownership Monitor project (MOM, 2019) in Turkey 2,474 daily newspapers, 3,650 magazines, 899 radio stations, and 196 TV channels are active, and 71% of media followers are owned by four media groups. These four media groups have investments in at least three media types out of the four types studied in the research, which are radio, TV, newspapers, and online web portals. Cross media ownership in Turkey is 71%, meaning high concentration of Big Four (Turkuvaz/Kalyon Group, Ciner Group, Demirören Group, and Doğuş Group) in these four areas. Out of 10 most watched TV channels 9, out of 10 most read dailies 9, and out of 10 most read portals 7 belong to that are affiliated with the government. The same report states that the 45% of the audience in Turkey watch TV that is owned by companies politically affiliated with the AKP.

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This rate is 73% among online news portal audience, 52% in print media audience, and 42% of radio listeners. In carrying out a strategic reorganization of Turkey’s media sphere, successive AKP governments also restructured the TRT and state run news agency Anadolu Agency. Amendments made to the TRT law (No. 2954) in 2008 brought further commercialization and centralization (through strengthening the powers of the Directorate General of TRT), and weakened the contested public nature of the organization (Sümer & Adaklı, 2010). In 2018 TRT has been tied to Directorate of Communications, which is under direct control of the President. Likewise, the official news agency of Turkey, Anadolu Agency, is indirectly controlled by the Presidency through appointment of names close to Erdoğan. Leaving aside the task of carrying independent and investigative journalism, governmentally controlled media functions as a mouthpiece of the Justice and Development Party. In line with the AKP’s populist political program, they act as one-sided propaganda machines working for legitimating government’s policies and demonizing all kinds of opposition. The media was also critical in forging a new cultural hegemony, which is ‘national and authentic’ (yerli ve milli) in form and content. In 2017, in the Third National Culture Council, President Erdoğan was underlying the need for a new cultural hegemony with his words: The people, who are the dominant color of our nation are far away from the cultural power. We must leave the people’s mark on this field, which is dominated by a bunch of marginal, and even by some terrorist organization sympathizers. No single state may breed and feed the enemies of the state and nation. Organizations who arrange cultural events, public institutions in the first place, should disregard the enemies of the state and the nation, and should not support them.1 The new cultural hegemony, accordingly, must have been freed from Western influence, and must embrace the people’s tastes, values (primarily religious), and glorious historic past. Elsewhere we have discussed how this call resonated within the Islamist media circles (Özçetin, 2019). We have also noted that how popular culture (for our case historical TV dramas) are utilized in forging a new cultural hegemony with a neo-Ottoman blend. Pro-AKP commercial media, state-run television TRT, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Education, pro-AKP/ religious conservative civil society, and AKP municipalities are the primary actors of this hegemonic transformation.

1 Authors’ translation. Erdoğan’s speech was retrieved on October 16, 2019, from https:// kultursurasi.ktb.gov.tr/TR-175196/iii-milli-kultur-surasi-basladi.html.

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Financial pressures on media companies, legal suppression of media professionals, online censorship, surveillance, and accreditation-based discrimination against journalists were among the strategies used by the AKP to suppress critical voices in the media (Akser & Baybars-Hawks, 2012). The AKP’s strategy to suppress the media gained momentum after the coup attempt that took place on July 15, 2016. Five news agencies, 62 newspapers, 19 periodicals, 34 radio stations, and 29 television channels (including STV) were shut down following accusations of taking part or aiding in the 15 July coup attempt or supporting the terrorist activities of Kurdish separatists. According to RSF (2018b), Turkey, facing a severe crackdown on press and media freedom, is the biggest jailer of professional journalists. Committee to Protect Journalists’ (2018) 2018 prison census notes that 68 journalists are jailed in Turkey in direct relation to their work. Making a broader definition of journalism through including all media workers, “Expression Interrupted” report by Punto 24 and Article 19 notes that at least 126 media workers are in prison at the moment (Punto 24, 2019). Online censorship and prosecution is another side of (social)media’s suppression in Turkey. Reuters Institute’s 2018 findings show that 65% of social media users in Turkey concerned ‘that openly expressing their political views online could get them into trouble with the authorities’ (Yanatma, 2018, p. 30). The concern is not groundless at all, since more and more people are being prosecuted for their social media comments targeting government’s policies. According to Transparency Report regularly released by Twitter, just between July and December 2018, out of 1139 court orders worldwide for removing Twitter content, 597 belonged to Turkey. In the same period, there were 4417 legal demands from Turkey, of which only 4% were accepted. Turkey presents an excellent example to the elective affinity (Waisbord, 2018) between populism, fake news, and political trolling. There are different aspects, actors, and types of fake news; a plurality which cannot be covered fully here. With the advent of new communication technologies, it is no longer only the politicians or news outlets who are behind production and dissemination of dis- and misinformative content. Ordinary social media users, anonymous profiles, Internet trolls, etc., are the new and influential sources of mis/ disinformation today. According to Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019 (Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos, & Kleis Nielsen, 2019), due to high level of political and media polarization in Turkey, in recent years misinformation and fake news have been some of the most debated issues of the agenda. Reuters Institute’s 2018 Turkey Supplementary Report (Yanatma, 2018) found out that 49% of respondents stated that they have come across stories that are completely

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made up for political commercial reasons, which placed Turkey at the top of the list of 37 countries surveyed (Avg. 26%). Three prominent functions of political fake news in Turkey are discrediting the political opponents, stirring up enmities and divides, and mobilizing the political constituency. All these functions are in line with distinctive traits of populist political communication which we have discussed above. Take the ‘Kabataş case’ of 2013 in which the anti-government protestors were blamed for beating up a headscarfed woman with her newborn baby. Pro-government daily Star reported the fake news with the headline “Women were cursing and men were hitting!”.2 Immediately then Prime Minister Erdoğan, pushing the secular/conservative divide, pointed finger at nonexistent perpetrators for allegedly targeting a woman because of her religious identity. Ruling party politicians, pro-government news agencies, journalists, commentators, and the AKP supporters found this ‘incident’ as an opportunity to argue that the political opposition is evil and they are all together alien to Turkish nation and its religious values. In the following days, the pro-government news agencies manufactured another news claiming that the protestors entered one of the mosques with their shoes and with beer bottles. Despite the falsification of the news by the Imam of the very same mosque, the fake news was referred to as a fact time and again by Erdoğan and his followers. Most recently, fake news with manipulated visuals were used in Istanbul municipal elections of 2019. For instance, an AKP politician implied that major opposition party’s (the Republican People’s Party-Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi-CHP) candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu is of Pontian descent (T24, 2019), while a doctored photograph showing İmamoğlu wearing a crucifix necklace was all over the Internet (Arabacı, 2019). Alongside the problem of fake news, the social media in Turkey, especially Twitter, is struggling with another phenomenon:  political trolling. Bulut and Yörük (2017, p. 4103) contend that ‘trolling in Turkey is directly associated with manipulation, insult, accusation, polarization, and therefore is to be regarded as lulz (flaming) trolling related to politics.’ The authors also show how political trolling activities became instrumental in consolidating government’s power by networking scattered masses and to reassert its declining hegemony. Conspiratorial and Manichean political discourse of trolls, which demonizes the opposition and glorifies Erdoğan and the AKP governments, intensifies the populist character of political conversation and debate in the social media.

2

Star (2013, June 3), see the headline. Retrieved on October 15, 2019 from https://www. gazeteler.org/star-gazetesi/2013-haziran-13/.

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Conclusion Following Arditi (2007), we consider populism as a specter, or threatening underside of democracy. Contemporary right-wing populist leaders, parties, and movements evaluate democratic and independent institutions which are fundamental to a fully functioning democratic system as threats to their existence. According to the populists, these institutions stand as obstacles between leader/party/movement and the nation. As proponents of immediate and direct representation, the populists strive for undermining these intermediary organizations. Media is one of these institutions which play a key role in democratic systems. Schudson (2014, p.  97) states, ‘journalism exists without democracy, but it is much harder to imagine democracy without journalism—at least, it is difficult to imagine democracy without protections for the freedom to speak and write, including to speak and write about and against the government.’ According to Schudson (2014), journalism and free press can make seven contributions to democracy: information, investigation, analysis, social empathy, public forum, mobilization, and democratic education. In Turkey and other national contexts, what we see is populist leaders’ and movements’ systematic attacks against media actors striving for fulfilling these functions. As we have pointed, populists hamper free flow of information and feed on dis-/misinformation; as the true authentic representatives of the people, they consider themselves untouchable, and any attempts towards investigating their deeds as impairment of democratic representation; contemporary media logic undervalues analysis, and goes after sensational content; increased partisanship in the media stirs up enmities and polarization, which also damages public forum quality of the media. To sum up, populists try to control, own, and suppress the media; and aptly use the media for disseminating their messages, mobilizing their constituency, and polarizing society. Meanwhile, the contemporary media, with its logic and current ownership structure, provides a fruitful ground for populists to pursue their political agenda. This is why issues regarding media independence, freedom of expression, and news verification must be given their deserved place in conversations on populism.

References Akser, M., & Baybars-Hawks, B. (2012). Media and democracy in Turkey: Toward a model of neoliberal media autocracy. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 5(3), 302–321. Arabacı, A. O. (2019, September 19). Fotoğrafın İmamoğlu’nun boynundaki haç şeklinde kolyeyi gösterdiği iddiası. Teyit. Retrieved on October 14, 2019

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8.  Mapping the Mechanics of Truth:  Fake News and Suburban Young Adult News Consumers in India Sushmita Pandit Abstract: Fake news has become a significant issue in the Indian context. A number of violent incidents have taken place recently, which are directly or indirectly related to the distribution and circulation of fake news in India. In India, WhatsApp and Facebook have been struggling to curb the impact of fake news, messages, photos and videos peddling misleading or outright false information. While a number of measures are being taken to curb the proliferation of fake news in India, including limiting the number of forwarded messages on Whatsapp, publishing advertisements in print and television media, training the journalists through workshops, fake news still continues to be a pressing concern for various stakeholders. Under this backdrop, this chapter seeks to understand how suburban college students negotiate with fake news. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with suburban college students, the chapter would question in what way the young consumers of news and information identify and manage the manifestation of fake news. The demography is significant, since most of the studies usually focus on the urban context. The objective is to explore the nuanced and multidimensional relationship between truth, media, and socioeconomic background. Keywords: Fake news, disinformation, social media, suburban, young adult, ethnography, India

Introduction Fake news is not a new phenomenon. It is believed to have found prominence in the late nineteenth century with the rapid growth of newspapers (Love, 2007). Some scholars identified it as a news satire (Baym, 2005), news parody, news fabrication, photo manipulation, advertising and public relations and propaganda (Tandoc, Lim, & Ling, 2018). However, in the past decade, the meaning of fake news has shifted significantly (Tandoc, Lim, & Ling, 2018) and gained much prominence after the Unites States presidential elections in 2016, as there was an overwhelming surge of false information (Albright, 2016). Fake news poses as real news by blurring the lines between fiction and fabrication by directly challenging the boundaries of news (Berkowitz & Schwartz, 2016). The present phenomenon of fake news is the result of the existing digital ecology that has led to several factors; for instance, economic waning of legacy news, the rapidity of

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the news cycle, the rise of user-generated content leading to spread of misinformation and disinformation, the emotional shaping of online discourse and the financial gains experienced by the people investing on algorithms used by the social media platforms and search engines (Bakir & McStay, 2018).1 It is also argued that fake news is cheaper and provides value for some consumers as they may enjoy news that is biased as it becomes easier for them to conform (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). Some researchers keep fake news outside mainstream journalism by arguing the presence of fact-checking movement, data journalism and the rise of quality investigative journalism that strives to authenticate reality (Waisbord, 2018, p. 2). However, for the news consumer, it increasingly becomes problematic to understand the surrounding reality through the lens of fake news, which may incur personal or social costs. In the present times, fake news is produced and disseminated for financial and ideological gains. Often, generating fake content helps in the generation of easy advertising revenue for some producers while for some it is all about promoting their own ideology, political or otherwise, to persuade the people that they intend to influence (Tandoc, Lim, & Ling, 2018, p. 138).

The Scenario of Fake News in India While fake news is a global phenomenon, it is necessary to discuss the Indian context before stating the arguments of this chapter. There has been a rise in the coverage of fake news in Indian media by 200 percent over the last three years (Chakrabarti, Stengel, & Solanki, 2018), but still people are not aware of the ways in which it can be averted. The internet has provided users the scope to use, create and manipulate content which is digitized, news being one of them (Dodda & Dubbudu, 2019, p. 23). India witnessed the widespread use of social media for spreading propaganda materials during the 2014 elections (Dodda & Dubbudu, 2019, p.  26). The spread of rumours and false information has only increased due to the presence of social-networking apps on smart phones. There also has been circulation of hate messages against particular countries, photoshopped pictures of politicians, misleading videos about the minority community, which have added fuel to fire time and again. Not only the common people but the politicians, celebrities, journalists and sometimes established media houses have 1 Disinformation, according to fake news activist, Pratik Sinha, is news that you know is false and still circulate, while misinformation is where the sender is not aware if something is true or false but decides to forward it anyway (Dhara, 2019). So, disinformation is a deliberate attempt to spread false news.

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shared these messages, mostly because of lack of awareness, ideological agenda or for financial gain, thus influencing the common people. Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp in India have been used as the primary platforms to share these fake news and disinformation. Cases of disinformation or misinformation circulated by social media such as Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, has been awarded the title of best Prime Minister in the world by UNESCO; India’s national anthem been declared the best national anthem in the world by UNESCO; the new notes after demonetization to have a GPS chip to detect black money and the misuse of WhatsApp profile pictures by ISIS and several others created a considerable concern and false alarm among the common people (IANS, 2016). The Indian mainstream media too fell prey to these messages circulated online. The mainstream media even broadcast programs on topics like conversion rate card for individuals who convert Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist girls to Muslims in Kerala (broadcast on news channel Times Now); Delhi’s Jama Masjid’s electric connection suspended due to non-payment of electricity bills (broadcast on Republic TV); fatwa issued in Saudi Arabia that men can eat their wives if hungry (broadcast on Aaj Tak) and retaliation of the Indian army from the Line of Control (broadcast on Aaj Tak, Zee News, ABP News, India TV and published by India Today) without even verifying the facts (Jawed, 2018). Again, the spread of rumours has led to the lynching and killing of people in states like Maharashtra, Kerala, Assam and Telangana. For example, the killing of two men at the Karbi Anglong in Assam by the villagers on suspicion of being child traffickers in June 2018, the killing of five men in the Rainpada district of Maharashtra by a mob on suspicion of being child lifters in July 2018, the circulation of fake images leading to the 2017 communal riots in the Baduria district of Basirhat, West Bengal, and many more. The emotional appeal of nationalism frequently played a crucial role in wide dissemination of fake news rather than truthful news (Chakrabarti, Stengel, & Solanki, 2018). According to a survey conducted by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and data journalism portal, in fact, about 2.7 percent Indians rely on the news provided by the social media websites. The survey also stressed on the fact that the respondents believed that the real problem lay in the circulation of misleading news items through family and trustworthy news outlets (Bhattacharya, 2019). Also, newspapers were found to be the most trustworthy news medium among the 891 respondents, but it was a preferred choice for only 22.2 percent of respondents falling in the age group of 15–20 years (Malik, 2019). BBC News’ (2018) research has identified that while receiving and sending messages on WhatsApp, people are more interested about their familiarity with the sender of

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the message and on the entertainment quotient of the message as well as whether the message has been able to invoke a sense of identity among them, rather than thinking about the message’s source and content (Kamra & Williams, 2019). It is to be noted that the spread of fake news and disinformation in India is intrinsically linked with the wide availability of smart phones and cheap data tariff. Particularly, the mobile apps of social media play a formative role in the ecosystem of fake news and disinformation. India is the biggest market for WhatsApp, having about 200  million users (Dodda & Dubbudu, 2019, p.  28). WhatsApp adopted a few measures to restrict the circulation of fake news by limiting the number of forwarded messages (Bhattacharya, 2018); publishing advertisements in print, radio and television (Thaker, 2019) and funding research projects to understand the sociopolitical implications of fake news. Similarly, in a move to verify the authenticity of content, Facebook promised to engage with third party fact-checking agencies, using algorithms to monitor hate speech (Ganesh, 2018) and implementing political and transparency measures (Thaker, 2019). Twitter too followed suit by introducing a new dashboard showing the expenditures of political parties on advertisement (Thaker, 2019; PTI, 2019b), talking to various stakeholders during elections for verification and training party and election officials on identifying and reporting suspicious information (PTI, 2019b). Google India too launched Google News Initiative India Training Network for training journalists, journalism students and teachers regarding online verification and fact-checking methods (PTI, 2019a). However, these initiatives were mainly executed in urban regions and often the English-speaking, upwardly mobile middleclass news consumers were the main beneficiaries. Under these circumstances, this chapter aims to explore how the suburban, young adult news consumers in India are responding to fake news and disinformation. The demography is significant, since most of the studies usually focus on the urban context. Based on interviews with 26 young adult, college students conducted from January to March 2019, this study illustrates how suburban young adults are negotiating with fake news and disinformation. For understanding the ways in which the suburban, young adults approach fake news, the interviews were taken inside the college campus of two colleges situated in the district of South Twenty-Four Parganas of West Bengal, eastern India. The time period is also crucial, since it was right before the Indian general election and there were substantial debates on fake news and disinformation. The students interviewed were within the age of 18–24, mainly pursuing their undergraduate degrees in different subjects. The objective was to explore the nuanced and multidimensional relationship between truth, media and socioeconomic background. Because of

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the dispersed nature of the phenomena, instead of a hypothesis-oriented approach, the responses were clustered around themes through inductive reasoning. The purpose was to generate meanings from the responses collected in order to identify patterns and relationships that may be useful to understand the phenomena of fake news from the perspective of suburban, young adult news consumers of a developing nation. The suburban, young adult college students were selected as the subject of this study because they are a significant subset of young media consumers in India but are relatively understudied in research on youth and news.2 The sample size may not be representative of the suburban, young adult population of India, but it may be useful for identifying preliminary relationships between the proliferation of fake news and the practices of young adult, suburban news consumers of India.

Understanding Access and Consumption of News in Social Media Media audiences have been categorized based on their exposure and reaction to the media content as active and passive by the early communication scholars. However, with the advent of internet, a new category of audience has emerged: a category named “prosumers” who consume as well as create content online. The launch of the Digital India campaign, the decline in the prices of smartphones and the availability of cheap 4G internet connection even at the remotest corners of India have made entertainment and information easily accessible to the people. While there have been several studies looking into the ways in which fake news affects people and how people are playing a part in its dissemination, there has been limited focus on the young adults belonging to the suburban areas of India. The semi-structured interviews underlined a number of issues and debates regarding the young adult’s engagement with fake news in suburban India. Similar to other studies, most of the students used their mobile phones for entertainment (watching videos, listening to music) as well as to stay in touch with their friends and family. WhatsApp emerged as the most favoured messaging and sharing app among the students mainly because of its very simple interface and ease of use. WhatsApp is used widely not only for sharing and accessing personal messages but also to circulate study materials among the peer 2 There has been a steady growth in the suburban regions of India. These suburb regions provide about 18 percent of employment. According to reports, India has witnessed a rapid suburbanization in the previous decade.

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group. A number of respondents also work as private tutors for young schoolchildren and actively use WhatsApp as a primary source of contact for sharing their work-related data (especially phone numbers) among themselves. However, when asked about their exposure to news related to politics, sports, health and business, most of them stressed on getting information from their peer group and relying on social media websites like Facebook and WhatsApp for news. They also stressed that reading newspapers daily is not an activity that they engage in on a daily basis. Nevertheless, their college teachers and friends provided them information about important news items. “I did not have any clear idea about the general election. My college professor informed me about the election and then I decided to know more about it and browsed the internet on my phone” mentions Sambhu Sarkar, 20.3 “I have so many (school) children to teach that I hardly get any time to read something online. But in my college classes if I find something interesting, then I go back home and try to find out more about it on my phone” said Sahana Das, 19. Social media platforms offered the young adults not only an opportunity to read the news published on websites but also helped them to understand the trending pattern of discussions being carried out by their friends and classmates. The discussions helped them to create an opinion about an issue and provided them an opportunity to share and distribute the content with others. The discussions ranged from sports to politics. They were mostly influenced by the stories of national identity, religion and politics. WhatsApp played a major role in providing the students with the information on a daily basis. As Mithun Mondal, 21, notes “Since WhatsApp works like a messaging function available on our phone so, it becomes easier for me to interact with my friends than Facebook”. “WhatsApp provided me with many important information about different issues. I got to know about them from several WhatsApp groups and also from my friends and then I  shared some of them with my friends” said Sayan Karmakar, 20. They visited the websites of the links shared on WhatsApp and Facebook craving for some more information. However, they did not verify the facts published on these websites from some authentic source before forwarding them to others. Some of them also used Instagram to share photos but Twitter was hardly used by majority of the students. Another important aspect that the students mentioned is that they forwarded some texts and images just for fun or as a gesture of reciprocation to a message sent by a friend or sometimes just to make people believe that they are part

3 Names of some of the respondents have been changed on request.

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of the group and were very much active members of social media. The idea of becoming socially ostracized (in the virtual world) scared them. Deepa Saha, 22, mentioned “Sometimes I shared some content without reading it. I just did so to make myself visible among the (WhatsApp) group members”. For Sayani Dasgupta, 21, it was more a means to reciprocate a message so that the other person might not feel offended. “I just don’t want the other person to think that I  am unresponsive and so, I  posted some stuff which I  thought is relevant to the information he posted. However, I  did not go through the entire material I posted [on WhatsApp]”.

The Issue of Media Literacy One of the crucial factors that emerged during the interview sessions was the complete lack of discussion regarding fake news among the adult members of the family. A number of students informed that most of their parents have very little or no information about fake news or the practice of spreading disinformation through social media or even the mainstream media in India. “I did not know about fake news. My father never talks about this. I  am sure he is also unaware about it”, says Joydeep Mistry, 20, whose father works in a government office. This offers an ideal social context, where the dissemination of fake news witnesses a greater spread, since the disinformation confronts minimum skepticism. As there is hardly any discussion within the sphere of family, the students often do not consider the matter as serious enough. As Kakoli Sardar, 21, mentions, “We sometimes talk about the influence of political leaders. How violence is spreading in different parts of our state for political conflict. However, my parents never mentioned anything about fake news”. Similarly, Rimiaya Afri, 19 states, “My parents often talk about how some of the news channels are covering particular events in a very partial manner. They say these channels receive money from specific political parties, but they never mentioned fake news regarding this”. Moreover, since the senior members of the family show evident indifference and/or complete unawareness, the young adult news consumers are also influenced by this. The suburban demography becomes important here. As a number of respondents come from working class or low-income families, it might be unfeasible for their parents to engage with the issue of fake news and the menace of disinformation. “My father works as a bidi worker and comes home late at night”, claims Anwar Laskar, 20, “he does not care about all these things. In fact, he rarely reads newspaper”. The increasing economic hardship and growing unemployment (Patel, 2019) may hinder in prioritizing such issues over the more pressing ones. If we are able to sidestep the issue of

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economic hardship, it may be possible to find the root of this problem in the lack of media literacy among both the suburban students and their parents. Media education makes for an active citizenry strengthening critical abilities and communicative skills necessary for empowered action and informed participation (Jayachandran, 2018). The basic ability to inquire, analyze and evaluate media content and to think critically about the creation and sharing of the media content is lacking among the majority of the respondents and their family members. Such a condition makes the young adult news consumers more susceptible to fake news and disinformation.

Mapping the Indifference Towards Fake News Interestingly, since the interviews were conducted just before the 2019 Indian general election, it was expected that the respondents may state particular concerns or anxieties regarding fact-checking and propaganda news content shared through social media. Especially, since WhatsApp widely publicized its initiative towards countering fake news and spreading of disinformation ahead of the election season. As per this initiative, WhatsApp users could send or forward their queries about uncertain information or rumours they have received to a specific number, which is the WhatsApp account number for Checkpoint Tipline, launched by an India-based media start-up PROTO. The request would be followed by a notification or response from the Checkpoint Tipline, informing whether the message that they have received contains any misleading information. In other words, the WhatsApp account would inform the user if the information in the message is true, false, misleading, disputed or out of scope and would also contain any other relevant information that is related to the query. The fake news or disinformation can be in the form of pictures, video links or text; and apart from English, it would review content in four regional languages including Hindi, Telugu, Bengali and Malayalam. The purpose behind this project was not only to help Indian users identify fake news and disinformation but the data generated at the PROTO’s verification center would be sent to the International Center for Journalists for formulating more effective measures and campaigns to confront fake news and disinformation. However, most of the suburban students were unaware of this campaign. Only three of the respondents claimed to know about the campaign but admitted that they did not know in which number the queries needed to be sent, and they have never even considered sending any of the forwarded messages or news contents that they have come across in the recent time. “I have seen the full page advertisement of WhatsApp but did not have any clear idea. I thought that it was just an advertisement of WhatsApp,

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similar to various other ads printed in the newspaper”, said Shantanu Gharami, 19. The practice of fact-checking or the practice of being skeptical about certain information and news that they receive through social media is hardly there among the suburban young adult news consumers. “I cannot read and understand English properly”, said Soumitra Mondal, 18; “hence, it is not possible for me to send messages in English or to understand information written in English. I have never come across information about fake news in Bengali, perhaps that is why I do not have any idea about it”. Particularly, WhatsApp has been persistently focused on creating awareness among Indian users about disinformation and spread of rumours. The Facebook-owned company took a proactive approach towards curbing fake news and disinformation after it faced strong condemnation from the Indian government for circulating fake news that provoked several incidents of mob lynching across the country. The popular messaging platform started the campaign since August 2018 in some of the states in India. Later the campaign was expanded to the entire nation and to different media platforms. The “Share Joy, Not Rumours” campaign included television, print and radio advertisements to educate WhatsApp users to avoid fake news and how to use the platform responsibly (IANS, 2019).4 However, several participants underlined the fact that irrespective of the advertisement campaigns in print media and electronic media, a large segment of news consumers, particularly those living outside the periphery of urban regions, remain indifferent to the various options and strategies of guarding against fake news and disinformation.

A Question of Trust One of the major breakthroughs of this study is that a number of respondents, in fact, talked about fake news and disinformation for the first time in their life. While some of them had a vague idea about the possibility of some of the news and information being untrue or misleading, almost none of them actually took the matter seriously and never even discussed it among their peer groups. However, often at the end of the interview sessions, the students seemed to ask questions about various issues on fake news and disinformation. One student 4 Draft amendments to intermediary guidelines of the Information Technology Act published in December 2018 expect all internet platforms to guarantee traceability of the origin of all content shared through them. In reference to growing incidents of fake news in India, the Indian government has asked WhatsApp to digitally fingerprint every message sent on its platform without compromising the encryption.

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asked, “If this is such a serious issue then why the government is not doing anything?” Sagar Gayen, 20, asked, “Aren’t there any punishment for spreading fake news? Has anybody ever been punished for this?” A  group of students even started to blame each other, somewhat jokingly, for spreading disinformation through messaging apps. One of the crucial issues that seemed to bother them even with very little understanding of how fake news operates in a country like India is the issue of trust. The idea that even mainstream media like newspaper that is delivered to their home every morning or the relatively mundane television news that is running in their living room can potentially deliver disinformation is a fact that surprised them. “These things only happen on the internet, right?” asked, Susama Mali, 21. Interestingly, the students stated that they trust the public or government news channels more than the private news channels. They also seem to trust the news or information forwarded by person(s) known to them than relatively unknown person(s). “I did not know that the news about Bengali language being the best language in the world, as declared by United Nations was a fake! I received the message from my maternal uncle. I thought he always forwards important news and information to me”, stated, Papri Chakraborty, 20. However, online news and information seems to be less trustworthy in general, when they were asked to compare between different media outlets. However, while there is an undercurrent of scepticism about online media, as mentioned earlier, none of them have actually reacted to any of such seemingly suspicious news or information that they received. “I never thought that these news and information could be deliberately wrong. At times I was somewhat suspicious of some of the news, but I did not even know what to do and whether I need to do anything” explained Animesh Naskar, 21. While the decline in the trust in media can be posited within the broader situation, in which a number of institutions and other areas of public life have been marked as untrustworthy all over the world5, in India, such perception of wide

5 According to Reserve Bank of India, over 6800 cases of bank fraud involving scheduled commercial banks and select financial institutions have been reported in 2018–2019. The information emerged as large-scale fraud had prompted anti-corruption watchdog Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to do an analysis. As per a newspaper report, “The frauds were classified and analysed for thirteen sectors, including gem and jewellery, manufacturing and industry, agriculture, media, aviation, service and project, discounting of cheques, trading, information technology, export business, fixed deposits, demand loan and letter of comfort” (PTI, 2019).

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distrust is intrinsically linked with the widening gap between the social classes and rising inequality across societies. “Everybody is corrupt nowadays. You cannot get anything without bribing . . . what can you expect?” said, Anirudha Dutta, 22, “these things are a natural outcome of our time”. In the context of increasing rate of corruption and noticeable unscrupulous practices of political parties, the emerging phenomena of fake news and dissemination of disinformation in India is often considered as a “natural outcome”. Hence, the indifference shown by the young adult suburban news consumers is not only a reflection of their unawareness and inadequate media literacy but can also be read as a reflection of their increasing distrust in institutions, that mark them as unaccountable.

Conclusion While most of the students were significantly connected to the internet and social media through their mobile phone and received considerable amount of information and news through the internet, they were largely underexposed and somewhat indifferent to the idea of fake news and disinformation spreading through the media. This sought to add to the research on the youth and their use of media in developing countries by underlining that even in this mediasaturated condition, with greater connection and access to news and information, the suburban, young adult news consumers’ engagement with fake news and disinformation remains inadequate due to lack of media literacy and a wider distrust in the accountability of institutional structures. The economic condition of the suburban young adults also invests in their prioritization of engagement with the issue of fake news and disinformation. Interestingly, the students admitted that they consider it very important and useful to be informed, especially for this exceedingly competitive job market in India. Studies have proved that personal interests often motivate young adults to develop the skill of information seeking (Bennett, 2005). However, their responses to the kind of information they received is much subdued than expected, considering the wide-ranging campaign against fake news and disinformation by both the government and private sectors in India. Although a sense of distrust can incite watchfulness among the news consumers, in this case, the failure of offering accurate and truthful information and news is considered to be a natural outcome of the wider failure of institutions. In other words, the mistrust in media in general and online media in particular has failed to produce active citizenship among the suburban young adult demographic of India.

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Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the students of two educational institutes in the district of South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, for providing invaluable research data, and the authorities of the institution for their cooperation.

References Albright, J. (2016, November 16). The #Election2016 micro-propaganda machine. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@d1gi/ the-election2016-micro-propaganda-machine-383449cc1fba Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211–236. Bakir, V., & McStay, A. (2018). Fake news and the economy of emotions: Problems, causes, solutions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 154–175. Baym, G. (2005). The daily show: Discursive integration and the reinvention of political journalism. Political Communication, 22(3), 259–276. Bennett, W. L. (2005). News as reality TV: Election coverage and the democratization of truth. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22(2), 171–177. Berkowitz, D., & Schwartz, D. A. (2016). Miley, CNN and the onion: When fake news becomes realer than real. Journalism Practice, 10(1), 1–17. Bhattacharya, A. (2018, July 20). WhatsApp is limiting message forwarding in a country where fake news can kill. Quartz India. Retrieved from https://qz.com/india/1332652/ whatsapp-limits-forwarding-in-india-to-curb-fake-news-and-lynching/ Bhattacharya, A. (2019, February 22). Forget fake news on Facebook and WhatsApp, it’s newspapers that sway Indians. Quartz India. Retrieved from https://qz.com/india/1556193/ indias-fake-news-crisis-goes-beyond-facebook-whatsapp-twitter/ Chakrabarti, S., Stengel, L., & Solanki, S. (2018). Duty, identity, credibility: Fake news and the ordinary citizen in India. BBC. Retrieved from http:// downloads.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/duty-identity-credibility.pdf Corbin, J., Strauss, A., & Strauss, A. L. (2015). Basics of qualitative research. London: Sage. Dhara, T. (2019, March 8). Alt news co-founder Pratik Sinha on the fake-news ecosystem in India. The Caravan. Retrieved from https://caravanmagazine. in/politics/alt-news-pratik-sinha-fake-news-election Dodda, T. P., & Dubbudu, R. (2019). Countering misinformation fake news in India: Solutions & strategies. Factly.in. Retrieved from https://factly.in/

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wp-content/uploads//2019/02/Countering-Misinformation-Fake-News-InIndia.pdf Ganesh, V. (2018, October 31). Ahead of 2019 elections, Facebook takes steps to curb fake news, hate speech. The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved from https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/social-media/aheadof-2019-elections-facebook-takes-steps-to-curb-fake-news-hate-speech/ article25382686.ece IANS [Indo-Asian News Service]. (2016, December 26). UNESCO declares Modi best Prime Minister: Top 10 fake news that we (almost) believed in 2016. India Today. Retrieved fromhttps://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/ top-ten-fake-news-that-we-almost-believed-in-2016-modi-best-pmdeclared-unesco-359619-2016-12-26 IANS [Indo Asian News Service]. (2019, May 31). Share joy, not rumours: WhatsApp launches first TV campaign to fight misinformation in India. Hindustan Times. Retrieved from https://www.hindustantimes.com/ tech/share-joy-not-rumours-whatsapp-launches-first-tv-campaign-to-fightmisinformation-in-india/story-ZC7GoD9COZx7fANI2NeV5K.html Jawed, S. (2018, January 03). 2017’s top fake news stories circulated by the Indian media. The Wire. Retrieved fromhttps://thewire.in/ media/2017s-top-fake-news-stories-circulated-by-the-indian-media Jayachandran, J. (2018). Media literacy and education in India during times of communication abundance. Journal of Creative Communications, 13(1), 73–84. Kamra, L., & Williams, P. (2019, March 05). Why WhatsApp could play a more potent role in India’s elections than it has in other countries. Scroll.in. Retrieved from https://scroll.in/article/915356/why-whatsapp-could-play-amore-potent-role-in-indias-elections-than-it-has-in-other-countries Love, R. (2007, March 1). Before Jon Stewart: Fake news is back, but our tolerance for it isn’t what it was before journalism donned the mantle of authority. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved from http://www.cjr.org/ feature/before_jon_stewart.php?page=all Malik, Y. (2019, February 21). People below 20 and above 50 fall easily for fake news: IAMAI survey. Business Standard. Retrieved fromhttps://www. business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/people-below-20-and-above50-fall-easily-for-fake-news-iamai-survey-119022101131_1.html Meddaugh, P. M. (2010). Bakhtin, Colbert, and the center of discourse: Is there no “truthiness” in humor?. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 27(4), 376–390. Patel, A. (2019, May 31). Cat finally out of the bag: Unemployment at 45-year high, government defends data. India Today. Retrieved from https://www.indiatoday.

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in/business/story/india-unemployment-rate-6-1-per-cent-45-year-high-nssoreport-1539580-2019-05-31 PTI [Press Trust of India]. (2019a, January 11). Twitter to bring new dashboard for enhanced political ad transparency in India. The Economic Times. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politicsand-nation/twitter-to-bring-new-dashboard-for-enhanced-political-adtransparency-in-india/articleshow/67480268.cms?from=mdr PTI [Press Trust of India]. (2019b, February 21). Google to host training sessions in 30 Indian cities on online verification, fact-checking. The Economic Times. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ tech/internet/google-to-host-training-sessions-in-30-indian-cities-ononline-verification-fact-checking/articleshow/68101354.cms Tandoc, Jr, E. C., Lim, Z. W., & Ling, R. (2018). Defining “fake news” a typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137–153. Thaker, A. (2019, February 08). Are WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter ready for the Indian election? Quartz India. Retrieved from https://qz.com/india/1545204/ are-whatsapp-facebook-and-twitter-ready-for-the-indian-election/ Waisbord, S. (2018). Truth is what happens to news: On journalism, fake news, and post-truth. Journalism Studies, 19(13), 1866–1878.

9.  Understanding the Dark Social and Shedding Light on Online Deception among Children Sinan Aşçı Abstract: Social media platforms not only furnish occasions for children to inform each other about what is happening right now, but also cause them to engage with the obtained information within their networks through sharing, reposting, commenting, liking, and direct messaging in order to bridge, bond, communicate, discover, and take action among themselves. In this study, the existing literature on the duality of social media was reviewed in order to shed light on online deception as a problematic stance among children. The dark social is inevitable for public connection as a means to connect individuals’ private worlds. Following the discussions on the functionalities of social media platforms, the characteristics of online deception were matched and adapted to provide a general viewpoint on how to spread and fabricate social media lies and rumors. Applying the concepts of social media duality, online deception, and digital literacy skills, this study provides the literature for researchers and educators engaged in bringing new queries into the field. Keywords: Dark social, deception, young children, social media, unintended consequences

Introduction The way young children live their lives and build social relationships has been influenced with the rise of Internet-based technologies, ever-growing information availability, and excessive numbers of social media if truth be told. Although early scholars and researchers recognized the positive assets and potentials of such technological developments, no doubt few of them envisioned the staggering possibilities of what social media can do or to what extent social media would be inextricably linked with children’s everyday lives. Regarding cyberspace, young children today learn how-to-make-use-of skills which many of their parents and grandparents cannot even try to learn: moreover, such a technology related to social media has advanced at a rapid rate that its powers seem unlimited. On the one hand, there is an unpredictable prospect filling some with eager anticipation, but on the other hand, it also leaves others feeling intimidated and frightened. Cyberspace, a word coined by author William Gibson in his sci-fi novel Neuromancer, commonly refers to the nonphysical space and sense of community created by Internet users around the world, the virtual world which users inhabit and communicate when they are online. How Couldry, Livingstone, and

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Markham (2010) approach to these communicative actions and inhabitation reveals the new perspectives of “public connection” because social media provide individuals with some preestablished frames enabling them to engage and come in on their cultural, social, civic, and political networks. By looking at these embedded routines into children’s online lives, we can easily make an inference that social media blur formerly distinct boundaries between private and public information and between producers and consumers (Chadwick, 2017; Ekström & Shehata, 2018). Since not only children but also all individuals can do any number of activities that they have been accustomed to do in physical space, these blurred boundaries in social media make scholars and professionals determine a need for bringing on digital literacy skills like critical thinking, online safety skills, digital culture, collaboration and creativity, finding information, communication and netiquette, and functional skills. The digital literacy skills consist of placing emphasis not on stable products consumed by the children on the Internet, but rather on the digital interface itself where the public connection happens. In reviewing and scrutinizing the need of digital literacy skills, I use boyd and Ellison’s (2007) reasoning on social media as web-based services which allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2)  articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system (para. 4). These connective potentialities, which facilitate children’s public connection, result in the need for new literacies for both the users and bystanders. Lankshear and Knobel (2008, p. 5) define digital literacy as “a shorthand for the myriad social practices and conceptions of engaging in meaning-making mediated by texts that are produced, received, distributed, exchanged, etc., via digital codification.” Such a set of literacy skills allows us to consider the strategies and tactics that we bring to bear on new media at the same time that our technologies constrain and empower us (Brooke, 2009, p. 41). Considering these reasonings to use social media platforms and the need for digital literacy, the actions children can take and their connective potentialities give rise to several questions on the bright side of them with a less bright perspective – “dark social.” What Madrigal (2012) describes as “dark social media” is the networking sites that process user traffic without adding referral data, because this vast trove of social traffic is essentially invisible to most analytics programs. This makes the private part of the public connection in social media difficult to track what type of content is shared and disseminated, much less how it is discussed and perceived. These discussions and perceptions are not easy to handle like daily mischievous behaviors, for instance, mispronouncing and

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perceiving “three as a tree” or “sheep as a ship.” Hiding or falsifying the truth behind a screen or a device within an established channel is one of the mischievous behaviors and basic tricks for different reasons in an online life consisting of behaviors against netiquette. The set of behavior rules on hiding themselves behind a screen or a device has several weaknesses, and it is prone to a set of attacks that nontrivially permit to detect these behaviors – obviously as reasoned in Madrigal’s definition on dark social media. Regardless of the countless opportunities individuals are provided with social media, a growing number of incidents have undoubtedly demonstrated “dark social media” such as lies and rumors, cyberbullying, trolling, privacy invasions, fake news, and online firestorms. Chamath Palihapitiya, an old Facebook executive, stated that he regrets that some of the tools he has helped to create “are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works” (Wong, 2017, para. 1). This saying vividly exemplifies and shows to what extent the well-being of children is affected on social media platforms. Rather than being empirically and theoretically informed about adults, children have also become so accustomed to social media for conversations, self-expression, community building, and any other forms of social engagement which are immersive parts of their own realities and even education. Based on the argument of Borgatti and Foster (2003) that most of the attention in field researches has been directed to positive consequences rather than causes, we can make an inference that the field is young and has strong aims to achieve legitimacy. That’s why the debate over children in this book chapter is based on dark social, netiquette, and digital literacy skills against online deception. In this book chapter, the duality of social media has been touched: in other words, the review in this book chapter draws attention to the dark side of social media that is worthy of being investigated so that all the users become more confident and aware of potential risks and take better decisions before and during their usages. By using the ideas and issues in the current literature without drawing on a particular example, online deception experienced through the dark social among children have been discussed. At the end, netiquette-based solutions and possible actions about gaining digital literacy skills have been outlined with a number of essential research opportunities that may facilitate a healthier use of social media by better understanding the dark social.

The Duality of Social Media – Bright vs. Dark? Social media (boyd & Ellison, 2007; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011; Obar & Wildman, 2015) generally refer to computer-mediated and interactive technologies which facilitate the

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production and dissemination of information, ideas, any kind of interests, and different forms of expression through virtual networks. Some basic features to meet the requirements as social media platforms are:  (a) creating a user profile, (b) content generated by the users, (c) a method permitting users to be in contact and connect with each other, and (d)  joining virtual groups based on common interests (Cox, 2010). In other words, there are specific characteristics like virtual identity/digital persona, user-generated content, network interaction like communicative and direct actions, network building, network maintenance, and network governance. As previous research suggests (Barnhurst, 1998; Ekström, 2016), individuals have got a tendency to make sense of public issues within their own created personal networks through social media. For example, social media enable individuals to create their individualized timelines by following (and being followed by) specific accounts and adjusting their settings. Not only the content they have been generating but also the technical settings and personal preferences expose the individuals to a specific point, which makes every social media unique for every user. Such a change in social interaction potentially creates a shift in the dynamics of a public connection. By thinking of public connection, how to navigate through everyday life as part of larger networks, individuals share the same or similar languages and signs to communicate, exhibit voting behaviors at the same time with different purposes, share the same platforms to be involved in as a citizen, and enjoy reading the same book or watching the same movie for their leisure time. When such a public connection transferred to the environment of social media was considered, this only sets the primary focus on the positive assets an individual can obtain by being an active user within his/her personal network. When the spotlight turns to how social media penetrates into individuals’ daily lives, there is also another applicable phenomenon which is called “downsides” by Adler and Kwon (2002) – i.e., the dark side of social media. In 1863, Joseph Wilbrand, a German chemist, intended to create a honeycolored yellow dye to be used in clothing and made trinitrotoluene (TNT). Because it was so insensitive and difficult to blow, it was removed from the Explosives Act in the UK; however, this insensitivity made TNT an explosive of choice during World War I and II (Brown, 1998; Krehl, 2009). In addition to this experience, as a second example focusing on today’s technology, Google Earth enabled us to have access to detailed views of anywhere in the world (apart from North Korea and other restricted areas). Such a powerful satellite-view map app has essentially granted worldwide access to the kind of perspective on the world which was reserved for intelligence agencies and governments. There have been

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several murder cases where the victims’ homes or neighborhoods were scoped out on Google Earth before attacks, most infamously in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, where it was found that the terrorists used Google Earth to plan the attacks (Bedi, 2008). Such consequences for many innovations which are intentional or unintentional have both bright and dark sides. The duality of social media exemplifies how we can stay in touch with our friends, stay up-to-date with the news and current events, fill up the spare time, find entertaining content, share photos/videos/opinions, meet new people, and connect with the other users for general networking. However, on the other side, social media is also used for creating discord by upsetting the other users by posting inflammatory messages, harassing victims from remote and local areas, and phishing websites/apps/social media accounts. As a result, these kinds of usages cause serious negative influences on any user. The reason why children are not aware of the reality behind what they have been making use of has long-term implications in their future lives or in the other users’ future social media experiences because they leave digital footprints. Despite all, the idea of how social media creates a social network is pervasive and ubiquitous. What Madrigal (2012) focused on is the fact that individuals behave as if the traffic which their content sharing receives through social media is the same as their social traffic in society. Madrigal approaches to this phenomenon in terms of three perspectives (2012, para. 15, 16 & 17): • The only real way, on the operational side, to optimize for the social spread is in the nature of the content itself. • The social sites which arrived in the 2000s did not create the social web, but just structured. Publishing social interactions makes them more visible, searchable, and adds a lot of metadata to their simple link or photo post. • The behaviors that we are now all familiar with on the large social networks were present long before they existed. People layered communication technologies easily and built functioning social networks with most of the capabilities of the Web 2.0 sites in semi-private and without the structure of the current sites. In summary, it can be inferred that individuals are giving their personal data in exchange for the ability to share the link with a number of their friends in the network – it is done for publishing and archiving a record of sharing, as well. To add more, the bright side of social media was studied and analyzed with a multidimensional honeycomb framework within seven social media building blocks (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011).

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SHARING

CONVERSATIONS

GROUPS

PRESENCE

IDENTITY

RELATIONSHIPS

REPUTATION

Fig. 9.1:  Social media functionality. Source: Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, and Silvestre (2011)

This honeycomb model was used in this book chapter to understand how social media can lead to desirable outcomes and vice versa. Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, and Silvestre (2011) summarize these functionalities as: a. sharing – the extent to which users exchange, distribute, and receive content; b. presence – the extent to which users can know if others are accessible; c. conversations – the extent to which users communicate with each other; d. identity – the extent to which users reveal themselves; e. relationships – the extent to which users can connect to each other; f. groups – the extent to which users form communities; and g. reputation – the extent to which users know the standing of others. The dark side of these functionalities was discussed by Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, and McCarthy (2018) in order to present the risks for individuals, communities, organizations, and society. According to their functional building

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blocks in the dark side (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, & McCarthy, 2018), (a)  sharing is used for inappropriate distribution and content; (b)  presence is used for location tracking and monitoring; (c) conversations are used for misinformation, disinformation, and aggressive engagement; (d) identity is used for exploitation of online self; (e) relationships are used for threat, coercion, abuse, intimidation; (f) groups are for in-group and out-group bias; and lastly, (g) reputation is for shaming and defamation. The frameworks depicting the bright and the dark side of social media functionalities represent different user experiences. How social media platforms make use of these functionalities on the bright side is obviously studied and discussed, but the honeycomb (see Fig. 9.1) may be transferred to the darkness of social media platforms to understand the negative consequences with the help of functionalities within the systems.

Online Deception and Digital Use of Children Deception refers to transmitting messages to a receiver with the intent to foster a false belief or conclusion (Buller & Burgoon, 1996). Considering social media, the public connection is broadly based on textual messages with an opportunity of visual anonymity if or when needed or wanted. For this reason, how individuals are confused about social media usage for authentic communication is extensively discussed and examined by different scholars. As a generic outcome of the research (Turkle, 2012), individuals have a tendency to act differently online and usually do not become afraid of hurting others and adopting an unusual manner. To deceive or be deceived online is experienced in different ways: (1) a man establishing a female character who was paralyzed and unable to speak (Gelder, 1996); (2) a man describing himself as unpopular and non-athletic in real life (Turkle, 1995); (3)  individuals pretending to have an illness (Feldman, 2000); (4) a pedophile representing himself as a child on the Internet (Quayle & Taylor, 2001); (5) boys in a relationship with the pedophile on the Internet pretending to be adult men (Quayle & Taylor, 2001); (6) a mom having an online relationship and having been reported as dead in a car accident (Joinson & Dietz-Uhler, 2002); and (7) an imaginary teenager suffering from leukemia (Joinson, 2003). These online deception examples are not only based on the technical infrastructure of social media, but also on the usages of individuals as they adopt different manners. Cornwell and Lundgern (2001) found that 27.5% of the research participants misrepresented their physical attractiveness online; 22.5% misrepresented their

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ages; 17.5% misrepresented their occupation, neighborhood, and education; and 15% misrepresented their interests, hobbies, or religion. Another research (Whitty, 2002) revealed that approximately 61% of chat room participants lied about their ages and 23% about their gender. As seen in different and noncontemporary research, individuals may be confronted with several identity deceptions that play an important role during their public connections, and research suggests that 20–50% of perpetrators employ identity deception (Briggs, Simon, & Simonsen, 2011; Malesky, 2007; Shannon, 2008; Wolak, Finkelhor, & Mitchell, 2004). Not only by disguising themselves but also for having fun and enjoyment, individuals may have malignant intentions; and some guilt, shame, or stress may appear in the online environment. There have been noticeable increases in such occasions where individuals make use of social media unconsciously – especially children. According to the European Commission JRC Science for Policy Report (Chaudron, Di Gioia, & Gemo, 2018, p. 12), the usage patterns of tweens (9–12 years olds) resemble those of teenagers 3 to 4  years ago, and younger school-aged children’s usage is increasing to the equivalent of tweens. In addition to this, very young children (0–8) are showing particularly increased patterns of Internet use. As seen in the numbers, even preschool-aged children go online and have a digital presence. The main findings revealed with this report (Chaudron, Di Gioia, & Gemo, 2018) are as follows: • Children have their first contact with digital technologies and screens at a very early age, usually through their parents’ devices which are not tailored for them in the first place. • Young children learn very quickly how to interact with digital devices by observing the behavior of adults and older children. • For young children, digital technology is useful for four main purposes: (1) leisure and entertainment, (2)  information and learning, (3)  creation, and (4) communication. • Young children learn to interact with digital technology and build their digital skills and competencies mainly in the home context – influenced by (a) the type of digital devices and content they have access to, (b) their own interests and needs, and (c) the level and typology of support and engagement they can benefit from their parents. The fact that children have their first contact with digital technologies at a very early age and their purpose is mostly leisure and entertainment causes both inevitable usefulness and challenges.

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These challenges may refer to negative events online, such as the children’s exposure to bullying, worrying or nasty and hateful content, tricks to be seduced, trolling, and deception. The basic step to prevent experiencing such a negativeness is to make children perceive the fact that other users may behave differently online and to allow them to experience how to protect themselves by using the functional and operational allowances of social media platforms. Another report about children’s negative experiences and risky behavior (Ofcom, 2017) revealed that: • Nearly all Internet users aged 8–11 (97%) and 12–15 (97%) recall being told about how to use the Internet safely. • More than half of users aged 12–15 who go online say they know how to block messages on social media from someone they do not want to hear from (68%). Less than half (47%) know how to change the settings so fewer people can view their social media profile. • Close to one in five children aged 8–11 (17%) who go online say they have ever seen something online that they found worrying or nasty. • Three-quarters of users aged 12–15 who go online are aware of online reporting functions (74%) and one in eight (12%) have ever reported something they have seen online that they considered to be worrying or nasty. • More than two in five users aged 12–15 who go online (46%) say they have seen something hateful about a particular group online in the last 12 months. A third of users aged 12–15 (37%) who have seen hateful content online in the past year said they took some action in response, while three in five (60%) ignored it. • Around one in eight users aged 8–11 (12%) and one in five users aged 12–15 (20%) who opted to answer the question say they have ever personally experienced some form of bullying. One in eight users aged 12–15 say they have been bullied either face to face (12%), or on social media (12%). • More than half (57%) of children aged 12–15 who go online say they know how to do any of the four “risky” measures they were asked about, and close to two in five (37%) have ever done any of them. One in four (27%) say they have ever deleted the history records of the websites they have visited, and one in five (20%) have ever used a browser in privacy mode. Less than one in ten say they have ever unset any filters that prevent websites being visited (6%) or used a proxy server (3%). • Seven in ten (72%) agree that there should be rules about what can be said online, so that people cannot say hurtful things about others. • One in eight users aged 12–15 with a social media profile (13%) agree that getting likes or followers is more important to them than keeping their posts, comments, or photos private.

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SHARING

CONVERSATIONS

GROUPS

PRESENCE

IDENTITY

RELATIONSHIPS

REPUTATION

Fig. 9.2:  Adapted functionalities of online deception in the dark social

• Although children do not have an adult permanent viewpoint of preventing deception, an enjoying occasion in a social media platform to alter a daily situation may lead to negativeness. The original version (Fig. 9.1) of the functionalities of Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, and Silvestre (2011) were adapted to the darkness of social media specifically about online deception (Fig. 9.2) by using a nominal rating system (from black to white) which does not depict the real function in an examined case. Conversations are provided and supported by social media platforms with functions like liking, replying, commenting, reposting, direct messaging, and reacting. The darkness of the conversation within an online deception case consists of too much, exaggerated, and erring connections. Besides conversations, sharing and identity have become prominent to discuss within the concept of online deception. Sharing is based on the user-generated content within the functionality of social media:  however, the content which could be audiovisual or textual can

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easily be deteriorated and changed in an inappropriate and undesirable way. This is the basic risk regarding sharing the content with changes without getting any permission from the holder of the rights. In addition, identity is used as an attachment to the conversations and sharing because the reality of personal information like gender, age, occupation, educational background, and religion is involved in identity. Creating a profile with such information makes the users identifiable; however, users in social media are not always in control of their own social being because of trying to protect themselves. Relationships are not always necessary to deceive someone because connection can be established by only standing there as a profile. That’s why users have some forms of profiles to show why and how they engage with each other. On the contrary, all relationships established between users within a social media platform enable both self-fulfilling and positive assets and unexpected social engagements like cyberbullying, stalking, and using symbolic violence. As a product of relationships in the society, reputation is influenced by the standing of others and how the users define themselves on social media. The basic risk users can be confronted with for the sake of their reputation is sharing content and acting inappropriately when compared to their presence in the platforms. Presence of a user is known by others who want to have access, and groups which the user is involved in shows the circles of communities s/he shared interests in common. Both functionalities picturize the characteristics of a user; however, the user can find himself/herself in an echo-chamber because of being involved in a specific group, and his or her availability and location can be tracked without any warning. Online deception seems exceptional, but has a problematic stance on social media because of some motivations such as privacy concerns of individuals or the anxiety of technological faults caused by the ill-informed.

Digital Literacy Skills and a Call to Action for Children The facts revealed by international research are that children experience digital technologies at a very early age in the home context by using their parents’ devices and by observing the behaviors of their parents. Besides the percentages of children’s experiences within social media being significantly obvious, it is also apparent that they are capable of making use of different types of digital technologies functionally and operationally. Digital literacy is defined with the actions like production, reception, distribution, and exchange; therefore, it may be basically defined with the ability to access, understand, and create communication in different forms through digital

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platforms. Children’s abilities in each of the three areas proposed by Buckingham et al. (2015) regarding: (1) access:  level of functional literacy  – that is, the skills and competencies needed to gain access to media content, using the available technologies and associated software. (2) understanding: children’s awareness of areas such as television “language,” the difference between representation and reality, and the persuasive role of advertising, develops both as a function of their increasing knowledge of the world and as a result of their broader cognitive and social development, and (3) creativity: considerable potential for media to be used as means of communication and self-expression, not least by socially disadvantaged groups. These three areas to be developed for children’s further experiences during the usage of social media show that children are supposed to show some awareness of risks, and training of digital media literacy regarding online deception is more effective than training them to block, filter, or ignore. As a component of digital literacy skills, critical thinking or judgments about the content which should be evaluated and interpreted are potential skills to cope with such incidents. As much as they are able to think critically and decide on the content or messages they have been getting on social media, they can decide whether there is any falsifying or hiding action or not. Any action in childhood should be paid more attention to than the upcoming years because learning how to use digital tools for children starts with how their parents or adults around them use technology in their lives. That’s why digital literacy skills are not the ones to be developed through digital platforms, but they also matter in children’s offline lives. As Renee Hobbs (2010) emphasized, not only states, educational bodies, and parents but also technology companies and media organizations are responsible for promoting literacy skills for any kind of media content. These are (Hobbs, 2010, p. 49): – Support is needed for professional membership associations to develop a national leadership conference with an educator showcase competition to raise the visibility of digital and media literacy among policymakers, federal officials, and leading nonprofit and charitable organizations. – Using a host of innovative online news tools already on the market that help teachers and students to use and analyze news and current events as part of general education, companies should offer modest grants to support partnerships with key educational groups. School districts, community colleges, museums, libraries, colleges, and universities could be invited to apply for these funds, which would support teacher education and outreach activities.

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Conclusion Given today’s climate of increased interest in using social media for personal standing, the fact that social media creates a picture of a virtual world of deception because any attitude, existence, and content may be inaccurate, misused, and spoilt. The amount of users in childhood recorded in different reports is growing exponentially year by year. With such an increase that should be reported annually, numbers and types of positive and negative experiences do not coincidentally change. Deception, as an example to discuss in this book chapter, has been experienced prevalently on social media, because it is easy to lie and rumor without being caught. In this sense, the only need for any social media user is digital literacy skills to detect it. In other words, people use the structural possibility on social media more than they can do in offline experiences, and this possibility enhances it to an extent. The threats against children require doing research and preparing an action plan to alleviate the setbacks of social media use – not by banning to use but building up today’s needed skills like digital literacy skills. By doing so, it is possible to discuss some distinctions between everyday lives of children and their online experiences because the set of digital literacy skills possibly reveal factors of online deception. Empirically, the findings of this very limited study is to inspire parents, educators, regulators, and policymakers to specifically think of children for Internet usages in their everyday lives. In addition to this, even such a limited literature review presented herein may suggest the importance of analyzing the darkness of social media, the dark personality traits on social media, and the identification of social media lies and rumors with a predefined typology of users.

References Adler, P. S., & Kwon, S. W. (2002). Social capital: Prospects for a new concept. Academy of Management Review, 27(1), 17–40. Baccarella, C., Wagner, T., Kietzmann, J., & McCarthy, I. P. (2018). Social media? It’s serious!: Understanding the dark side of social media. European Management Journal, 36(4), 431–438. Barnhurst, K. (1998). Politics in the fine meshes: Young citizens, power and media. Media Culture & Society, 20(2), 201–218. Bedi, R. (2008). Mumbai attacks: Indian suit against Google Earth over image use by terrorists. Telegraph. Retrieved April 28, 2019, from https://www.

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telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3691723/Mumbai-attacksIndian-suit-against-Google-Earth-over-image-use-by-terrorists.html Borgatti, S. P., & Foster, P. C. (2003). The network paradigm in organizational research: A review and typology. Journal of Management, 29(6), 991–1013. boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ pdf/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x Briggs, P., Simon, W. T., & Simonsen, S. (2011). An exploratory study of Internet-initiated sexual offences and the chat room sex offender: Has the Internet enabled a new typology of sex offender? Sexual Abuse, 23(1), 72–91. Brooke, C. (2009). Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Brown, G. I. (1998). The Big Bang: A History of Explosives. New York, NY: Sutton Publishing. Buckingham, D., Banaji, S., Burn, A., Carr, D., Cranmer, S., & Willett, R. (2015). The Media Literacy of Children and Young People. London: Ofcom. Retrieved from http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10000145/1/Buckinghammedialiteracy.pdf Buller, D. B., & Burgoon, J. K. (1996). Interpersonal deception theory. Communication Theory, 6, 203–242. Chadwick, A. (2017). The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chaudron, S., Di Gioia, R., & Gemo, M. (2018). Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology, a Qualitative Study Across Europe. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. doi:10.2760/294383. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/ en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/ young-children-0-8-and-digital-technology-qualitative-study-across-europe Cornwell, B., & Lundgern, D. C. (2001). Love on the Internet: Involvement and misrepresentation in romantic relationships in cyberspace vs. real place. Computers in Human Behavior, 17, 197–211. Couldry, N., Livingstone, S., & Markham, T. (2010). Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cox, S. A. (2010). Online Social Network Member Attitude Toward Online Advertising Formats (Master’s Thesis). The Rochester Institute of Technology. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=5596&context =theses

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Ekström, M. (2016). Young people’s everyday political talk: A social achievement of democratic engagement. Journal of Youth Studies, 19(1), 1–19. Ekström, M., & Shehata, A. (2018). Social media, porous boundaries, and the development of online political engagement among young citizens. New Media & Society, 20(2), 740–759. Feldman, M. D. (2000). Munchausen by Internet: Detecting factitious illness and crisis on the Internet. Southern Medical Journal, 93, 669–672. Gelder, L. V. (1996). The strange case of the electronic lover. In Kling, R. (Ed.), Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices (2nd ed., pp. 533–546). New York: Academic Press. Hobbs, R. (2010). Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action. Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute. Joinson, A. N. (2003). Understanding the Psychology of Internet Behaviour: Virtual Worlds, Real Lives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Joinson, A. M., & Dietz-Uhler, B. (2002). Explanations for the penetration of and reaction to deception in a virtual community. Social Science Computer Review, 20, 275–289. Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53, 59–68. Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54(3), 241–251. Krehl, P. O. K. (2009). History of Shock Waves, Explosions and Impact: A Chronological and Biographical Reference. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media. Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2008). Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies, and Practices. London: Peter Lang. Madrigal, A. (2012). Dark social: We have the whole history of the Web wrong. The Atlantic. Retrieved May 15, 2019, from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/ dark-social-we-have-the-whole-history-of-the-web-wrong/263523/ Malesky, A. L., Jr. (2007). Predatory online behavior: Modus operandi of convicted sex offenders in identifying potential victims and contacting minors over the Internet. Journal of Child Sex Abuse, 16(2), 23–31. Obar, J. A., & Wildman, S. (2015). Social media definition and the governance challenge: An introduction to the special issue. Telecommunications Policy, 39(9), 745–750.

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Ofcom. (2017). Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report. London: Ofcom. Retrieved from https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_ file/0020/108182/children-parents-media-use-attitudes-2017.pdf Quayle, E., & Taylor, M. (2001). Child seduction and self-representation on the Internet. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 4, 597–608. Shannon, D. (2008). Online sexual grooming in Sweden: Online and offline sex offences against children as described in Swedish police data. Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention, 9, 160–180. Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Turkle, S. (2012). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York, NY: Basic Books. Whitty, M. (2002). Liar, liar! An examination of how open, supportive and honest people are in chat rooms. Computers in Human Behavior, 18(4), 343–352. Wolak, J., Finkelhor, D., & Mitchell, K. J. (2004). Internet-initiated sex crimes against minors: Implications for prevention based on findings from a national study. Journal of Adolescent Health, 35(5), 11–20. Wong, J. C. (2017). Former Facebook executive: Social media is ripping society apart. Retrieved May 21, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2017/dec/11/facebook-former-executive-ripping-society-apart

10.  Survival in the New Communicative Sphere: Is Media Literacy the Remedy? Eylem Yanardağoğlu and Dilara Eldaş Baş Abstract: This research is based on an empirical study that analyzes the users’ media literacy skills in dealing with news and non-news content. It considers the ways in which highly educated internet users are motivated to be involved in fact-checking organizations as volunteers and in which ways they seek to develop their digital media literacy skills. In order to explore this question, this study takes activities of fact-checking organization Doğruluk Payı and its workshops as a case study. Through the analysis of the experiences of participants in such workshops, this chapter aims to reflect on notions of media literacy and digital literacy in an age of post-truth era in the informational sphere. Keywords:  Fact-checking, fake news, media literacy, clickbait, native advertising, internet users

Introduction The media sector in Turkey boasts a diverse media environment with 14 national television channels, 172 national newspapers, and 13 national radio channels (Media Ownership Monitor, 2017). In the recent years, pluralism in the media in Turkey was challenged by a number of political events and economic pressures. Since 2014 international press freedom indicators vacillate between “partly free” and “not free” status. Following the terror attacks and a failed coup attempt between July 2015 and December 31, 2016, many media organizations were shut down and media continues to be concentrated in the hands of few media companies. Despite a general decline in the traditional media readership, Turkey also boasts one of the highest levels of social media use, around 70% in terms of news consumption (Digital News Report, 2016; 2017). The internet penetration in Turkey is 72.9% in the adult population. However, the computer use comprises of 59,6% of all the adult internet users. Research show that majority of internet users associate internet with social media (Bozdağ, Baybars Hawks, Yanardağoğlu, Tol & Alkurt, 2017). According to the recent “We are social” report (2019), internet users spend 7 hours and 15 minutes per day online in Turkey. There are 55 million active social media users who spend on average 2 hours 45 minutes on social media, which is also higher than the world average. Internet is frequently used to follow up political news (Bozdağ, Baybars Hawks,

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Yanardağoğlu, Tol & Alkurt, 2017). But the mistrust in news and social media are also high. Recently ratio of people who are worried to meet with fake news on Internet in Turkey was estimated to be 60% in 2018 (Reuters Institute, Digital News Report, 2018). The term “fake news” is not new. It has been around since the growth of yellow journalism in the 19th century. The notion of media manipulation is also not a new phenomenon. However, the term “fake news” has not been a key term in media discourse until after the 2016 US presidential elections. It is the atmosphere after the elections that created a perception in the public opinion that “we live in a post-truth era dominated by fake news” (Mason, Krutka, & Stoddard, 2018, p. 5). Fake news are considered to be one of the most pressing problems to be solved for educators, publishers, and media scholars (Berners-Lee, 2017). There are a number of factors that contribute to this perception. For instance, the speed of internet publishing is a disadvantage for newsrooms. Newspapers, news channels, as well as news websites can fall into the trap of using information without verification and can put fake news into their news feed as if it is real. According to Daniel Funke, who covers fact-checking and fake news for Poynter Institute, most of the newsrooms are not prepared to deal with false information spreading online (Funke, 2019) The most vulnerable time for newsrooms are especially considered to be during breaking news events, such as foreign attacks, transportation accidents, and weather incidents. Hoaxers and fake news writers use this environment in order to produce fake photographs, fake videos, and fake claims. Furthermore, the new media environment can be used to “create buzz” around certain stories by planting stories in small blogs and by creating trending topics or videos on social media which are then picked up by larger mainstream news organizations (Mason, Krutka, & Stoddard, 2018). News website editors can allow advertorial contents to appear as “real news” contents by not marking it as sponsored material. While new media technologies increase the volume of news, social media can be utilized for various ideological purposes which may be fueling political polarization (Mason, Krutka, & Stoddard, 2018). Sometimes manipulation happens on purpose in the newsrooms. The content is manipulated in order to attract the attention of Internet readers in order to compel them to click on the links by framing the stories around attractive headlines which could be used as clickbaits. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of nonprofit organizations that are established for verification of news internationally. Increasing internet penetration helps the growth of online journalism in Turkey. Since Gezi Park protests in 2013, the involvement of citizens in media production and distribution manifest itself in the growing number of alternative media platforms.

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It is not surprising to see that in the last few years, young enterprising citizen journalists and veteran journalists utilize the opportunities offered by new media tools in order to reach out to the public. Another growing trend in the involvement of citizens or entrepreneurs in news provision can be seen in the development of fact-checking platforms. Such platforms harness new media tools and emerge as new reference points for news in the highly polarized post-coup media setting. The initiative entitled Doğruluk Payı (The Share of Accuracy) is one of those verification initiatives that was established in 2014 as part of İzlemedeyiz (We are Watching) association in Turkey. Doğruluk Payı is one of the signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network based at the Poynter Institute. The main focus of Doğruluk Payı has been to monitor and verify the accuracy of speeches and deeds of political actors in Turkey. Their aim is to make politicians to be accountable to their voters and the voting public more knowledgeable about politics. This chapter considers the ways in which highly educated internet users get involved in fact-checking organizations based on an empirical study that analyzes the users’ media literacy skills in dealing with news and non-news content. In doing so, it takes activities of Doğruluk Payı as a case study and through the experiences of participants in its workshops, this chapter aims to reflect on notions of media literacy and digital literacy in an age of post-truth era in informational sphere.1

Media Literacy Media literacy is defined as a set of perspectives that we actively use to expose ourselves to the mass media to interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter (Potter, 2011). The term “media literacy” was used before the internet era to refer to the competencies of understanding and evaluating the media messages of the traditional media. The traditional media was also considered to be facilitating democratic citizenship as citizenship was usually seen as the capacity of the individuals to participate in civic life and in the process of social and political decision-making process. In the pre-internet era it was the traditional media which were believed to affect this process by facilitating citizens’ democratic rights (Şimşek, E., & Şimşek, 2013, p.  128). In individual, social, and political sense, the lack of media literacy skills have been seen as a problem. 1 This chapter is developed from the findings based on researcher Dilara Eldaş Baş’s (2018) MA thesis completed at Kadir Has University New Media Department.

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Scholars and educators have long hoped that media education will be positively contributing to goals such as political and civic engagement (Ashley, Maksl & Craft, 2017). Internet and mobile technologies broaden “citizen’s media practices” and “diversify” their entry and participation in the public sphere (Harju, 2007, p. 98). New communication technologies change the scope of citizenship by allowing them to take part in civic life. The digital transformation of the media necessitated acquiring new skills that can help the audiences to navigate the multimodal information forms of the emerging digital media environment (Şimşek, E., & Şimşek, 2013). The use of new technologies involves a shift from “receiving” to “seeking” information. This involves a change in process of reaching the informed citizenship goals. Through seeking information, the focus is much more on the users to find out things for themselves. In this way, users who seek and evaluate information in a more engaged and critical manner are expected to become more active citizens (Davies, 1997). However, whilst some internet users act more responsibly and critically when evaluating the content before they take any action, others do not evaluate the information in the same way. In online news consumption, the internet user’s actions have a significant role to play in the spread of fake news or manipulation. In the chaotic digital media environment, the internet users can be part of the manipulation in news by making such news stories go viral by clicking, liking, sharing, and texting. This is not to say that all Internet users are biased; but as some commentators maintain, susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning (Pennycook, Cannon, & Rand, 2018). However, Internet users, who use their tendencies of reasoning and evaluating the content they are engaging with, are expected to be more likely a digital media–literate person. Digital literacy is defined as the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers (Gilster, 1997). Digital media literacy presents combination of skills, knowledge, and understanding in order to participate fully and safely in an unceasingly digital world. It pertains to use of social media skills as well as the skills to use and manipulate Web 2.0 features that enable the users to create and publish text, images, pictures, sounds, and videos. Digital media literacy differs from traditional literacy education because of its specific focus on nonwritten modes afforded by media communications technologies such as film, television, print media, radio, video games, online and mobile media, and the increasing convergence among these (Jenkins, 2008). Media literacy education was considered

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to be helping individuals to analyze social, economic, political, and historical factors that influence media (Hobbs, 2005). News media literacy is an “important subset of the broader field of media literacy” which focuses on the “necessary abilities relevant to becoming a critical news consumer” (Tully, Vraga, & Smithson, 2018, p. 3). In this view the relationship between journalists, news production, consumers, and democracy are seen as interconnected and fundamental to gaining news media literacy skills in general. The increasing convergence of contemporary media means that we need to be addressing the skills and competencies—the multiple literacies—that are required by the whole range of contemporary forms of communication (Buckingham, 2007). A  digitally literate individual is a person who can perform an online search efficiently, who compares a range of sources, and sorts authoritative from nonauthoritative, and relevant from irrelevant, documents (Livingstone, 2004). New literacies include the knowledge of technical information along with the approaches of critical thinking and interpreting. For instance, one of the new literacy approaches identify how young people read and write across a variety of textual forms to socially participate in and learn in digital cultures (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008). Research shows that young people with differentiating levels of academic performance display differences in their “media knowledge, news analysis, and advertising analysis” skills (Martens & Hobbs, 2015, p. 134). Then it can be said that being a digital native is not enough to be digital media literate, even if the user can explore to use a brand new tool immediately. The technical capability is in the secondary importance of the digital media literacy.

Doğruluk Payı Fact-Checking Workshop as a Case Study and Its Methodology This chapter is based on a qualitative research effort that aimed to explore the ways in which young adults who are already concerned about the spread of fake news and misinformation on the internet engage with digital media news. The initial starting point for this study was based on an existing presumption that educated people must already possess news media and media literacy skills. However, due to the different competencies required by digital media literacy, this study was particularly interested in tracking the motivations and reasoning behind participants’ evaluation when identifying news and non-news content on digital media. The data collection process has been unique and experimental. The researchers collaborated with Doğruluk Payı which is a nonprofit organization

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working towards verifying and debunking controversial news content which are able to go viral on Internet easily. The data collection took place in Istanbul during workshops that were conducted on March 9, 2018, and March 25, 2018, by Doğruluk Payı. The workshops aimed to train volunteers in fact-checking and verification methods on digital media. The methodology used in this research was inspired by an academic research entitled “Evaluating information:  The cornerstone of civic online reasoning” at Stanford University in 2016 about evaluating fake news and sponsored content (Wineburg, McGrew, Breakstone & Ortega, 2016). This research adopted certain questions and categorizations of the Stanford survey. For instance, the participants were similarly asked questions such as “do you think that it is a news or not, and explain why it is” rather than asking closed ended “yes” or “no” questions. The style of scoring the responses such as mastery, emerging, and beginning were also adopted. The mastery ones are expected to be questioning the content they deal with and use their reasoning skills for evaluating the meaning of a type of content. The beginners are mostly seen to avoid questioning the content they are reading/watching. The participants of this study comprised of 25 persons (12 women and 13 men) who attended the fact-checking courses of dogrulukpayi.com organization. The participants of the workshops were motivated by the goal of gaining higher levels of digital media skills at the end of the workshops. The study was initially based on two presumptions: that media literacy increases as general education level increases. And the level of media literacy skills should reflect the level of interest or involvement in media. In order to explore the validity of these assumptions, the study focused on the following research questions: To what extent having basic media literacy skills is sufficient enough for possessing digital media literacy? How can readers/users/audiences of digital media cope with digital media contents? Would simply being concerned or skeptical about fake news be sufficient for identifying various types of content on digital media? During the workshops, all 25 participants responded to 11 test questions. The questions were based on content that were chosen from websites of Cumhuriyet Newspaper, Milliyet Newspaper, T24 News Platform, aHBR News Platform, Posta Newspaper, Hürriyet Newspaper, Sabah Newspaper, and HaberTürk News Platform. Only one piece of content was chosen from the satirical 9GAG website. In total, the researcher who conducted the field work collected 275 responses from the participants. The answers to each text was analyzed under themes such as the participants’ ability to spot fake news, native advertising, and manipulated content.

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The researcher then classified the questions into two main sections. The first section aimed to explore whether the participants can differentiate between a news story and content that looks like a news story and an advertorial. The questions that the participants were asked were questions such as: “Do you see any advertorial on this page?” and then they were shown a native advertorial and then they were shown a news story on company/business news which can also be considered wrongly by some participants as native advertorial. And in the second section, the participants were asked questions about their tendency to click on clickbait stories, their habits or tendencies for fact-checking, and their tendencies to question whether the content they are engaging with can be fake or not. During the participant observation period and interaction with the volunteers in the workshops, the main purpose was to explore the ways in which readers/ users interact with digital media content. The answers to the news stories that were under discussion were not categorized as “true” or “false” as the researcher wanted to track the reasoning when they were dealing with the content. Overall, the participants’ tendency during their reasoning process about the information on the Internet news content can be summed up in one sentence: the participants were more impressed with the visual elements of the content, by what it is seen first. The participants who were all highly educated and who possessed certain concerns about developing their media literacy skills were able to move between news websites, Internet blogs and forums, and TV news programs. But when it comes to evaluating information, they can easily substitute their reading and questioning tendencies with their tendency to decide according to what they see in the first glance. The visual elements used in the content that was shown to them for discussion were more important. The participants answered questions based on four different types of content:  Regular Advertorial, Native Advertising and Company News, Clickbaits, and news that might require Fact-Checking. Some questions focused on the form and others focused on the information of the content. The participant groups comprised of 13 male and 13 female respondents. Their responses were analyzed according to gender, but no meaningful difference was observed in their approach to the questions based on their gender.

Finding I: The Group’s Approach to the Advertorials and Native Ads, Company and Business News Audiences/users awareness of advertising is a part of media literacy. Media facilitate various platforms via which advertisers can reach their potential customers. This is especially the case for digital advertising, where ads appear on news

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websites as ads, advertorials, or native advertising (Potter, 2004). To differentiate these are considered to be an important skill in acquiring digital media literacy. In the research, three questions comprised of questions about advertorials. The first one was “Please mark the advertorial area(s) on the page and please explain how do you understand that it is an advertorial.” Out of 25 respondents, all of which hold university degrees, six of them could not relate the advertorial content message. The respondents usually recognize the advertorial from its visual features. For instance, Respondent 1 (Female, 20, Undergraduate degree), said: “It is located away from the news, in the corner of the page.” Respondent 2 (Male, 29, Postgraduate degree) said: “I understand (that it is an advertorial) from the sign of the i (information) and x (exit) in the right corner of it and from the vertical shape.” Respondent 7 (Male, 22, Postgraduate degree) said: “I thought it is an advertorial because of the (i) (information) and x (exit) icons. I recognize it from the icons.” In newspapers, the locations of traditional advertorials are obvious and very different from the location of the news. Most of the time, they are placed almost in the same footer or a corner below. The shape is mostly framed, and they are mostly colorful. This definition is surely important for the ones who firstly focused on the shape of the content. Two more questions were asked to understand whether the reader can understand the difference between native advertising and news. One of the texts chosen for this question was paid content published for a brand. The other one was economy news chosen by the editor. The headline of the business-economy news read: “Middle East investors keep a close eye on the Worldwide Turkish Brand: The meetings about Vakko’s sale come to life.” For this question, the participants were asked to fill in the blanks of the following statement: “This is a news story/ this is not a news story because because…” Most of the participants could not give a certain answer, and could not focus on what the headline says. While only three of them could focus on the meaning of it, the replies of nine participants were identified as beginner level. The photo used in this news story featured the brand’s logo, but the use of brand names and logos in economy news is generally accepted as appropriate. One participant, Respondent 3 (Male, 21, Undergraduate degree), thought due to the logo in the picture, this was not “news” because “the image used in that news emphasizes the reputation of brand more than an economic collaboration.” For another respondent (Male, 21, Undergraduate degree), it was news because it seemed like it is “the content of the website.” The participants mostly proceeded with their evaluation of news based on the visuals. The availability of a logo in a news story has a tendency to lead the

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readers to think that it is not news. If, as we have observed in our case study, the readers/users base their reasoning on their visual perceptions, then it would be easier for advertisers to manipulate the readers especially through native advertising. Content such as advertorials or native advertising which “seems” undistinguishable from news for readers indicate the importance of media literacy skills.

Finding II: The Participant Group’s Approach to Clickbaits In journalism, clickbait refers to headlines on online content that entice readers to click on a link to a story. Online news and commentary websites rely on clickbait to attract higher number of clicks to their articles, thereby increasing traffic to their sites and attracting advertisers (Kivak, 2019). A clickbait featured in an article’s body under the headline actually does not give what it is promised in the headline before clicking it. A clickbait headline can do this by drawing reader’s curiosity. Some of them are also called curiosity bait and trick bait. Clickbait is used by the news editors in Turkey frequently even though they admit that they do not like to do it (Karaca, 2019). Clickbait is used on news websites because the traffic to that site and click numbers for each contents on that site constitute the determining factors for the general as well as the advertising value of the site. The number of clicks determines the digital advertising that can be sold on the site. Therefore, content creator websites are motivated for getting more and more clicks. Clickbaits have a great place in the field of native advertising in sponsored contents published by advertisers. Readers in Turkey continue to express their frustration for clickbait articles (Karaca, 2019). In terms of clickbait, two questions were directed to respondents. One of the texts had the curiosity-bait headline on the main page of a news website which read: “Surprise decision: He forgives!” The headline does not give a clear idea about its content. For the clickbait question, the respondents were more critical. Only three respondents said: “I would click, because I wonder what it is.” The majority of the respondents said that they would not click it because they were not “interested.” For instance, Respondent 7 (Male, 22, Postgraduate degree,) said: “I wouldn’t click. I am not interested in news which does not give any idea with its headline and image.” Respondent 4 (Female, 24, Undergraduate degree) said:  “I wouldn’t click. I  would though that it is the paparazzi news. If it was really important they would write who he/she is. They would use his/her name to increase click numbers. (I thought it was not a very famous one).”

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Concluding Remarks It is generally believed that introducing literacy to illiterate people enhances their cognitive skills, improves their economic prospects, and makes them better citizens, regardless of the social and economic conditions that accounted for their illiteracy in the first place (Street, 2003). Being suspicious, curious, and interrogative of media message as possible as it can be is equal to a fresh beginning to be literate; and to learn, unlearn, and relearn (Toffler, 1990). Internet news sites, anonymous social media accounts, forums, blogs, and people on social media are now able to manipulate a situation on purpose or indirectly. Internet user’s actions have a determining role in digital news consumption. Internet users, who are more likely to use their reasoning when evaluating the digital media content, are expected to be more digital media–literate. On the other hand, the suggestion that media literacy increases with general education level is not always true as higher education was found not to be widening the knowledge gap with increased media information (Goh, 2015). The involvement or interest in media could be more relevant to media literacy skills than education. This research was an attempt to further explore the aspects of current digital media literacy by analyzing a group of people who already possess an awareness and interest in gaining more skills in digital media literacy. This is why highly educated people’s digital media literacy formed the test group profile for this study, because the volunteers of Doğruluk Payı workshop on fact-checking were all university graduates or students. There were 25 participants in the study who responded to 11 test questions. When examining the 275 answers that were given by the participants, it was seen that many respondents first prefer to consider the content by its visual elements or by its form. The participants who can be considered as “beginners” in this sense do not question the content’s meaning and decide whether that content was news or not based on the images. For example, some respondents could not explain why an advertorial is an advertorial except referring to its shape in the process of evaluation of the content. In the business news question, respondents who gave beginner level answers firstly tried to focus on shape of content and form of the website in general. In clickbait question, most readers were not interested in the headline and did not click it. The participants of the study are highly educated people who wanted purposefully to become more digital media–literate. They can easily move from news websites to websites, Internet blogs and forums, and TV news programs.

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But when it comes to evaluating information, our research showed that they can easily substitute their reading and questioning tendency with their initial visual impression. They were found to be reasoning according to what they see at first glance. In print, language is the primary element, while visual factors, such as the physical setting or design format and illustration, are secondary and supportive. In modern media the reverse seems to be more relevant. The visual dominates the verbal augments. Print is not dead yet, nor will it ever be, but as commentators pointed out decades ago, our language-dominated culture has moved perceptibly toward the iconic (Dondis, 1973). An Internet user can easily be surfing the net and skipping quickly for contents on Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, or any social media music platforms. All of such content can be consumed by fast streaming. Reliance on the initial visual perception begs the question whether internet users’ attention and perception could be changing due to the changes in streaming services and speed of mobile internet. Furthermore, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, news websites, and many digital media sites have become more visual with their contents more than ever. It means visual literacy becomes more essential for media literacy especially for internet users. Ultimately, there are billions of active users on internet that affect the sharing of information, which impacts even decisions of citizens about policies. Media literacy education is not only for protecting audiences/readers from unreliable or harmful content. It is also about encouraging audience/users to be able to demand media outlets to become more competent and reliable in their content production (Hobbs & Jensen, 2009). Internet users’ experiences and usage patterns are changing. These changes need to be incorporated into digital media literacy education as fast as they change. In countries like Turkey where literacy is generally low and the use of social media is higher than the world average, more efforts are needed to enhance citizens’ digital media literacy and news media literacy skills. As this research has shown, albeit in a limited scope, even the highly educated internet users do not effectively employ reasoning and interrogation skills in evaluating news and non-news content. The news media literacy is becoming more and more important in contexts such as Turkey where the media is partly free, and extremely concentrated. The media literacy education in Turkey must be developed not only in higher education tertiary level, it must also be enhanced at the secondary education level. The digital media skills must be included in news media literacy as well as visual literacy in such an environment where visual elements are more prominent than printed or written content.

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References Ashley, S., Maksl, A., & Craft, S. (2017). News media literacy and political engagement: What’s the connection?. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 9(1), 79–98. doi:10.23860/JMLE-2017-9-1-6. Baş Eldaş, D. (2018). Highly Educated People’s Approaches to News on New Media. Unpublished MA thesis, Kadir Has University, Istanbul. Berners-Lee, T. (2017). Three Challenges for the Web, According to Its Inventor, World Wide Web Foundation, March 12, 2017, Retrieved from https://webfoundation.org/2017/03/web-turns-28-letter/. Bozdağ, Ç., Baybars Hawks, B., Yanardağoğlu, E., Tol, U. U. & Alkurt, S. V. (2017). Türkiye’de yeni medya kullanım eğilimleri : araştırma raporu [electronic resource]. Retrieved from http://ctrs.khas.edu.tr/sources/ Yeni%20Medya%20Egilimler%20Rapor.pdf Buckingham, D. (2007). Media education goes digital: An introduction. Learning, Media and Technology, 32(2), 111–119. Davies, M. M. (1997). Fake, fact, and fantasy: Children’s interpretations of television reality. London and New York: Routledge. Dondis, D. A. (1973). A primer in visual literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Funke, D. (2019, April 25). Study: Journalists need help covering misinformation. Poynter. Retrieved on September 20, 2019 fromhttps://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2019/ study-journalists-need-help-covering-misinformation/ Gilster, P. (1997). Digital literacy. New York: Wiley Computer Pub. Goh, D. (2015). Narrowing the knowledge gap: The role of alternative online media in an Authoritarian Press System. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 92(4), 877–897. doi:10.1177/1077699015596336. Harju, A. (2007). Citizen participation and local public spheres: An agency and identity focussed approach to the Tampere postal services conflict. In B. Cammaerts & N. Carpentier (Eds.), Reclaiming the media communication rights and democratic media role (pp. 92–106). Bristol: Intellect. Hobbs, R. (2005). The state of media literacy education. Journal of Communication, 55, 865–871. Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and media literacy: Connecting culture and classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Hobbs, R., & Jensen, A. (2009). The past, present and future of media literacy education. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 1(1). Retrieved from https:// files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1095145.pdf

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Jenkins, H. (2008). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York, New York University Press. Karaca, A. (2019). News readers’ perception of clickbait news. Unpublished MA Thesis, Istanbul: Kadir Has University. Kivak, R. (2019) ‘Clickbait’, Salem Press Encyclopedia. Retrieved on January 9, 2019 from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN =121772802&lang=tr&site=eds-live Lankshear, C. J., & Knobel, M. (2008). Introduction: Digital literacies: Concepts, policies and practices. New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang Publishing. Livingstone, S. (2004). Media literacy and the challenge of new information and communication technologies. The Communication Review, 7, 3–4.  doi:10.1080/10714420490280152. Martens, H., & Hobbs, R. (2015). How media literacy supports civic engagement in a digital age. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 23(10), 120–137. Mason, L. E., Krutka, D., & Stoddard, J. (2018). Media literacy, democracy, and the challenge of fake news. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 10(2), 1–10. doi:doi:10.23860/JMLE-2018-10-2-1. Retrieved fromhttps:// digitalcommons.uri.edu/jmle/vol10/iss2/1 Media Ownership Monitor. (2017). Retrieved from https://turkey.mom-rsf.org/ Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018). Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(12), 1865–1880. doi:10.1037/xge0000465. Potter, W. J. (2004). Theory of media literacy: A cognitive approach. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc. Potter, W. J. (2011). Media literacy (5th ed.). United States of America: SAGE Publications, Inc. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Digital News Report. (2018). Retrieved from https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/ digital-news-report-2018.pdf Şimşek, E., & Şimşek, A. (2013). New literacies for digital citizenship. Contemporary Educational Technology, 4(2), 126–137. Street, B. (2003). What’s “new” in new literacy studies? Critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice. Current issues in Comparative Education, 5(2), 77–78. Toffler, A. (1990). Future shock. New York: Bantam Books.

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Tully, M., Vraga, E. K., & Smithson, A.-B. (2018). News media literacy, perceptions of bias, and interpretation of news. Journalism, 1–18. doi: 10.1177/1464884918805262. Wineburg, S., McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., & Ortega, T. (2016). Evaluating information: The cornerstone of civic online reasoning. Stanford Digital Repository. Retrieved fromhttp://purl.stanford.edu/fv751yt5934

11.  New Literacies for Disinformation and Manipulation Through Digital Sound and Video Orhan Şener Abstract: Audio and video recordings, despite the limited possibilities for manipulating them, have long been considered as evidence that have the capacity to influence the public opinion in certain events. However, thanks to the new developments in the field of machine learning, the so-called deepfake algorithms enabled the manipulation of audio and video content with high sophistication that has not been experienced before. In the post-truth environment in which many liberal democracies struggle with the problem of “fake news”, more specifically disinformation and manipulation, the possibility of complex audio and video manipulation makes the problem even more severe. It is suggested in this chapter that new forms of literacies are required in order to cope with the problem. Keywords: Video manipulation, audio manipulation, new media literacy, post-truth

Introduction Media has always been a significant power in democratic societies as it is the main source of information for voters in shaping their political decisions. Each media tool has been used for political purposes throughout the history (Ashley, 2015). However, trust in press remains at all-time-lows following the rapid growth of awareness among masses thanks to the expansion of technological tools as well as access to information while polarization pushes people to believe in media sources based on their political beliefs (Tully & Vraga, 2018). Although the effectiveness of media, particularly mainstream media, is on free fall, attempts to use the media as a manipulation tool for political purposes continue (Aral & Eckles, 2019). Following the rapid technological developments that allow near-perfect interventions, audio and photography technologies have turned to manipulation and disinformation tools although they have long-time been solid proofs for judiciary (Boomgaarden, Boukes, & Iorgoveanu, 2016). Currently, photography has almost completely lost its feature of being a judicial proof while audio and video recordings are also near to share the destiny of photography, particularly after the rise of deep learning and deepfake (Chesney & Citron, 2019). In this chapter, the historical background of audio and video technologies in terms of serving as solid references through the current deep learning and deepfake era will be discussed.

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Media Literacy Media literacy has emerged as a new requirement in media era, suggesting that reading and writing is not enough anymore but people have an obligation of properly identifying the manipulations imposed via media. Media literacy enables people to properly identify solid media sources to access true information as well as to identify the subtext messages media carries. The emergence of Web 2.0, which made people to publish their own media posts on the internet, has translated former media audience to individual media publishers/broadcasters, particularly after the fast expansion of new media. Consequently, a new requirement called digital media literacy has emerged although even media literacy had yet to be succeeded. In addition to the capabilities, which media literacy refers, to analyze the message and/or manipulations media carries, digital media literacy suggests that people have also a responsibility as producers and/or redistributors of information on social media to create proper social media posts that would correctly deliver their own message (Buckingham, 2010). Mihailidis (2016), on the other hand, sees news literacy as a subset of media literacy, originating from journalism with respect to professional-level questioning of all kinds of information. Digital literacy is much more complicated to achieve, not only because of the invasion of new media tools in each point of life but also due to the different perspectives digital native new generations, who were born into new media, have. Thus, Buckingham (2010) views digital literacy as a “cultural understanding” while Tully and Vraga (2017) suggest that individual characteristics have a direct impact on developing media literacy skills. Tully, Vraga, and Smithson (2018), meanwhile, show that people have also political biases in evaluating the accuracy of news, and they tend to rely on sources that are close to their own political views. With the aim of dealing with the harmful effects of media manipulations on democracies, educators have been spending their efforts on developing the proper educational curriculums to train people against manipulators. Mainly, the focus of academic studies suggest that the media literacy education shall start at early childhood ages, while the curriculum shall include a wide scope of fields that include each kind of manipulation techniques as well as proper identification of reliable sources along with properly decoding the message that news carry.

Image/Video and Sound as Proof Everyday more than a billion images and videos are uploaded online and nearly half of them are known to be manipulated (Akthar, Dasgupta, & Banerjee,

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2019). Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes sophisticated manipulations possible. In the field of communication, manipulation through media was a subject that is debated for long years. Messaris (2012) wrote that the visual communication was open to manipulative and persuasive aims even before the technology was not as developed as today. Even without using a computer-based technique, one can show something very much different than the reality by using different camera angles or frames. In addition to this, manipulation through visions is more successful than manipulation through words, because, the author says, the connections between images and their meanings are universal. Image manipulation using technology is not a new practice. The famous example is a photo of Abraham Lincoln, published in the 1860s, where the head of Abraham Lincoln was combined with the body of John Calhoun, another politician. Through the 20th century, different images were combined in photographic studios. This was sometimes done with good intentions, like getting family members together in a photo, and sometimes with manipulative political intentions, like showing Mussolini as a good horse rider. With the 1990s, when the digital cameras, computers and photo editing software began to develop, manipulations of photos became more common and more professional. The frequency of image manipulation using computer-based applications increased in the 1990s and 2000s. Photo manipulation was very common even in the best-known agencies and newspaper, including Reuters, The New York Times, etc. In several incidents, these agencies and newspapers had to admit that they used manipulated photos sent by their photographers, without detecting the fakes (Coleman, 2007). This issue is taken in terms of journalism ethics. The manipulated images were also used in researches, in order to deceive the controllers of researchers, in addition to data manipulation. The aim was to change the experiment results. Journal editors and other authorities worked on detection of such manipulation (Parrish & Noonan, 2009). In recent years, the manipulation became more professional and included the manipulation of videos and sound. AI is used for malicious applications, in addition to their positive use in beneficial applications. “Deepfake” is the name used for the synthetic videos, images, and audio generated through AI with illicit or unethical aims. It is the combination of the phrase “deep learning” and fake because deep learning methods made it possible to reach realistic images and sounds. Originally, it was a nickname of an autonomous user on the internet platform Reddit (Van de Weghe, 2019). The technology used for deepfakes, generative adversarial networks (GANs), replicates the patterns of real images

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and voices. Voices can be generated based on the high number of voice samples belonging to real persons.

The Rise and Fall of Audio Technologies as Proof The history of audio records dates back to the 19th century while the digital era in voice records began in the 1970s. With the launch of mobile voice recording devices in the 1950s, audio forensics emerged as evidences through secret recordings at courts. However, following the introduction of the digital era through the end of the 1970s, the reliability of voice records as forensic evidence has come under question (Maher, 2018). The state-of-the-art audio manipulation technologies supplied more power to fake news makers. Currently, it is almost impossible to distinguish the true voice record from the fake one. Adriani (2019) suggests that the rise of AI technologies is supposed to make fake news makers even much more powerful in audio manipulation. It is actually not just about the news, but the AI is supposed to make it almost impossible to distinguish between real people and AI (Groh, Epstein, Obradovich, Cebrian, & Rahwan, 2019). The use of audio recordings, however, still continues despite controversies. In Turkey’s corruption scandal in 2013, voice recordings were the main forensic evidences; and the political authority rejected their accuracy (Saatcioglu, 2016). Later on, in 2019 during the elections campaign, the opposition candidate in Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, was accused to call the governor of the country’s Ordu province as a dog. The evidence for the allegations was an audio recording but Imamoglu has rejected the claim (Slee, 2019). Voice records have also been involved in the US President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal in 2019 (Kotkin, 2019).

Deepfakes The term “deepfake” emerged for the first time as the name of an anonymous account at the social forum portal Reddit. The account used to release manipulated videos of celebrities in pornography scenes. Deepfake refers to manipulated video or audio recordings that are not possible to be distinguished from the real records (Averbuch-Elor, Coher-Of, Kopf, & Cohen, 2017). Video manipulation has actually been used since the 1920s by the cinema industry, while it has been a tool used by intelligence agencies. However, what has lately changed is that it is currently available for everyone to easily download and use deepfake software (Ananny, 2016).

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Technically, the ability of state-of-the-art deepfake software in producing such perfectly manipulated recordings come from AI technology that has recently gained momentum. Simply, two AI software simultaneously work while one of them produces deepfakes and the other one tries to identify the manipulations on them. It is why deepfake software work better in manipulating famous figures since they have too many available videos to check. In theory, through such a process, a deepfake software may achieve to create a perfectly manipulated video (Bendel, 2017). People mainly use deepfake software for fun, but it does not mean they could be used with harmful purposes. The success of achieving some harmful goals with using deepfakes depends again on the same reality, namely people believe in what they would like to believe (Kawai, Iwao, Mima, Maejima, & Morishima, 2014). It is not because people are ignorant but rather they are aware that everything on traditional or new media simply lacks the ability of reflecting the truth as it is in reality. Fake videos and audios are increasingly becoming popular. The problem is that fake videos can be made by anyone as the open source programs and applications are easy to reach and any one can be included in these videos without their consent (Maras & Alexandrou, 2018). It is not always possible to detect the deepfake, so people and websites can unwillingly become part of this action. In time, the deepfakes became very common, and the development of technology enables transfer of the movements of one person to the other, for example, to change people’s words in videos in a successful way. The growth of machine learning makes people realistically do or say something that they never did or said (Chesney & Citron, 2018). Deepfake technology actually has some positive areas of use; but the easy-toreach tools make this technology available for nonresponsible actors. Among positive areas of use of deepfake, education and art may be listed (Chesney & Citron, 2018). For example, videos of historical personalities are animated in order to attract the attention of students. Also, actors in a film can be shown as speaking in different languages, which will make translation of movies in other languages more smart looking; the words and the movements of the actor’s lips will be synchronized (Van de Weghe, 2019). However, the technology of deepfakes is generally misused, and the malicious use of them dominates the positive use (Nguyen et al., 2019). The synthetic media are commonly used in pornography. Porn videos where the faces are switched with celebrities’ face became popular. Actually, the first deepfake was a video released in 2017 where a celebrity’s face was used instead of a porn actor (Nyugen et  al., 2019). In time, this trend included ordinary people. Revenge

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pornos are now produced to humiliate or abuse victims, who are generally women (Van de Weghe, 2019). The deepfakes can also be used for identity theft and blackmailing. It is enough to upload photos of oneself in the social media, to be a victim of such abusive use of deepfakes. The photos can be downloaded by the programs and the machine can work on them to create a model. Only one photo is enough to create a “living portrait” of someone, which means that he/ she can be showed as doing anything she/he did not actually do. Experts agree that deepfakes that replace the face, voice, and mimics of someone with another person have the potential to create catastrophic impact in the future. Deepfake technology imposes a threat of exploitation for people and for institutions. Deepfake videos have the potential to be used to blackmail someone, to create political stress (Güera & Delp, 2018), or to trigger financial chaos (Nyugen et al., 2019). Several bureaucrats demand more control on manipulated media, because this problem is deemed as a new threat to democracy and national security (Chesney & Citron, 2018; Van de Weghe, 2019). Deepfake also raises concern in the individual security area in social media (Stehouwer, Dang, Liu, Liu, X., & Jain, 2019). The easy-to-use tools developed for photo and video manipulation decrease the performance of automated face recognition systems (AFRSs) (Akhtar, Dasgupta, & Banerjee, 2019). It is hard for the existing technology to detect the sophisticated manipulations. This situation decreases trust in biometrics-based person identification and authentication services and in digital communication. So the AFRSs must be aware of manipulation, or the industry as a whole may suffer from this loss of trust. Several studies are being developed in order to ensure personal security in biometrics. Several techniques are being developed to detect manipulated photos and videos, as the increasing threat imposed by them are recognized. For example, a comprehensive data set of deepfakes is claimed to make it more possible to detect the manipulations (Li, Yang, Sun, Qi, & Lyu., 2019). It is forecasted that more authorities will need the services to detect if a video, photo or sound is manipulated or not, because the detection of manipulated media began to take place in laws; for example, Israeli government prohibited the use of manipulated pictures in advertisements without a disclosure (Ramadan, Sutardja, & Zhao, 2019). Legal institutions are growing aware of the need of control of the photos, videos or sounds before used as evidence. In the area of law, open-source videos are increasingly included in the investigations of crimes (Koenig, 2019). But common practice of deepfake videos, which replace the appearance and voice of someone with someone else, decreases the probative value of videos in courts (Maras & Alexandrou,

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2018). International investigators are now aware of the fact that they should have the adequate knowledge in technology, in order to test the accountability of any video or image as a piece of evidence. The easiness of creating manipulated visions and videos create a load on law institutions (Koenig, 2019). On the other hand, a legal workforce that has expertise in detecting manipulated media and has trained in verification techniques is absent. Creation of such an organization is an urgent need for the health of and trust in international authorities.

The Threat of Video and Sound Manipulation on Democracy and Political Life Video manipulation also imposes large-scale threats. Miller (2019) evaluates the manipulated videos in a more comprehensive way. According to the author, the use of technology and social media created a new battlefield for political actors in the world: the people themselves. All the popular political campaigns, including Donald Trump’s campaign and the Brexit election, are the battles where opposing parties use online personal data to create mass effects. A  fake public opinion is created online through fake identities and fake voices, in order to make people more and more angry and sticking to their views. In Ukrainian Civil War, for example, fake news was introduced to the public by repeated broadcasting and social media tools that it became the commonly accepted “truth”. Another article by Robinson, Lewis and Carlson (2019) claims that the journalism transformed in the “digital” era, but this transformation does not necessarily mean an improvement. Digital technologies did not lead to positive changes in the social structures, but rather led to strengthening of existing hierarchies. Manipulation of masses was an aspect of this transformation. The danger of fake videos is related with the speed that they can spread. A fake video of White House speaker Nancy Pelosi spread rapidly in May, and this speed was seen as a sign of how such manipulations may cause trouble for the presidency campaign in 2020 in the USA. This is to say that, political area became very much fragile against video manipulation, and it is becoming impossible to say which information is true and which is false. This is a great danger because rapid spread of fake videos can change the public view about someone in just a couple of hours whereas the information that the video is fake cannot be circulated in such a rapid way. Especially if the video or sound is provocative, it becomes viral more easily. This can lead to catastrophic results, leading to conflicts. In addition to this, such a rapid spread of misinformation can change

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the result of an election and decrease people’s faith in democracy (Charlet & Citron, 2019). What exaggerates the threat is the psychology of people. It is claimed that people are inclined to spread provocative news even if they understand there is a manipulated aspect of the picture, voice, or video (Charlet & Citron, 2019). This means that the development of technologies that can detect the manipulation in media will not be effective in decreasing the devastating results of deepfakes, because people will do what they are inclined to in a short time before the common sense wins. This fact shows that detecting and proving that a particular media is faked is not enough; measures must be taken to prevent the spread of such videos, especially related to political tension. This is very hard, and it is tough to control the social media and internet channels. Charlet and Citron (2019) recommend that politicians should denounce their denial of fake and manipulated media of their opponents at the beginning of their campaigns. This can create an environment of reciprocal responsibility. Also, technologies able to detect the original video or audio in a short while after a deepfake goes viral can limit the harm of manipulation. Audio records have lately emerged as a political tool but their effectiveness remains varied. One of the main politically motivated audio leakage scandal has been about James R.  Fouts, mayor of Warren city Michigan, USA, since 2016. Fouts has denied all recordings that suggest he was a racist and so on as fake. Fouts won the elections in November 2019 to run his fourth term at his post. A more symbolic leakage also happened in 2018 when a tape was leaked to publicize a bar talk between four rightist MPs, including the former PM Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson who had resigned from his post in 2016 after Panama Papers were published. Gunnlaugsson has accepted that the audio tape was correct, and he has kept its post as the leader of the Centre Party. In 2016, South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma was also subject to an audio leakage scandal about his interview with Public Protector Thuli Madonsela. Zuma had to leave his post in 2018 but it was not due to the audio leakage scandal. In 2016, US Presidential candidate Donald Trump was also subject to an audio leakage scandal regarding his sexist chat with television host Billy Bush back in 2005. Trump won the elections despite the audio leakage. In May 2019, a deepfake video was also released showing the US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as drunk. Many other examples of audio tape leakages that are used with political purposes suggest that audio tape leakages are currently used as a political tool. However, the accuracy of those records varies, and their impact on achieving the desired results have been proven as useless (Bakdash et al., 2018).

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Conclusion Photo manipulation has a long history; however, the improvement of technology made manipulation of not only images but also video and audio very much professional and common, and very hard to detect. Even though there are some areas of positive use of manipulated media, these are very limited. On the contrary, the malicious use of manipulated media poses serious threat on personal security and trust in technology use in banking sectors, etc., because personal traits can be copied easily. More importantly, the manipulated media that can easily go viral online have the potential (some events already showed that the potential turned into reality) to create political catastrophes, violent conflicts, and disasters. Adequate measures are not yet taken to control these negative consequences.

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videos. The International Journal of Evidence & Proof, 23(3), 255–262. doi:10.1177/1365712718807226. Messaris, P. (2012). Visual “Literacy” in the digital age. Review of Communication, 12(2), 101–117. doi:10.1080/15358593.2011.653508. Mihailidis, P. (2016). Digital curation and digital literacy: Evaluating the role of curation in developing critical literacies for participation in digital culture. eLearning & Digital Media. doi:10.1177/2042753016631868. Miller, C. (2019). Inside the information wars. New Science, 244(3252), 38–41. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(19)31973-6. Nguyen, T., Nguyen, C., Nguyen, D., Duc, T., Nguyen, & Nahavandi, S. (2019). Deep Learning for Deepfakes Creation and Detection. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11573.pdf Parrish, D., & Noonan, B. (2009). Image manipulation as research misconduct. Science and Engineering Ethics, 15(2), 161–167. doi:10.1007/ s11948-008-9108-z. Ramadan, O., Sutardja, A. & Zhao, Y. (2019, November 4). Digital Image Manipulation Forensics. EECS at UC Berkeley. Retrieved from https:// www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2015/EECS-2015-125.html Robinson, S., Lewis, S., & Carlson, M. (2019). Locating the “Digital” in digital journalism studies: Transformations in research. Digital Journalism, 7(3), 368–377. Retrieved October 21, 2019, from: https://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/full/10.1080/21670811.2018.1557537?af=R& Saatcioglu, B. (2016) De-Europeanisation in Turkey: The case of the rule of law. South European Society and Politics, 21(1), 133–146. doi:10.1080/13608746.2 016.1147994 Slee, C. (2019, June 24). Turkey: Opposition wins Istanbul election. Green Left Weekly, 1227. Retrieved from https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/ turkey-opposition-wins-istanbul-election Stehouwer, J., Dang, H., Liu, F., Liu, X., & Jain, A. (2019). On the Detection of Digital Face Manipulation. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.01717. pdf Tully, M., & Vraga, E. K. (2017). Who experiences growth in news media literacy and why does it matter? Examining education, individual differences, and democratic outcomes. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 73(2), 167–181. doi:10.1177/1077695817706572. Tully, M., & Vraga, E. K. (2018). A mixed methods approach to examining the relationship between news media literacy and political efficacy. International Journal of Communication, 12(0), 22. Retrieved from https://ijoc.org/index. php/ijoc/article/view/7467

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12.  Online Foreign News: Are We Capable of Recognizing Manipulation? The Role of Political Competence and Media Literacy Context Vasyl V. Kucherenko Abstract: The proliferation of new media technologies and the Internet, in particular, has contributed greatly to making various kinds of biased media information widely distributed and, seemingly, ‘prevalent’ in news coverage of certain topics. While purposefully developed online services for fact-checking and overall reliability of news may be helpful in some situations, personal abilities to recognize manipulation and misinformation according to its certain characteristics and owing to certain individual skills and competencies appear to be more important. This chapter introduces the concept of ‘manipulated media information’ and is focused on the investigation of the effects of individual levels of political competence and the media literacy context on spotting manipulated information in Internet news reports on foreign affairs issues as well as on the acceptance/rejection dichotomy of the standpoint(s) such news reports promote. The basis of the investigation is a series of experiments (N = 914) conducted in three European countries, differing in their levels of media literacy context – Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands. University students in the age category of 18–26 years old, which is usually referred to as ‘heavy Internet users,’ from the three countries were the target group of participants in this research. Analysis revealed that political competence appeared to have no effects at all on spotting and rejecting manipulated information both in ‘traditional’ and ‘alternative’ Internet news sources. However, participants from countries ranked with a higher media literacy context were more likely to spot manipulation and reject the promoted standpoint(s). In addition, a puzzling relationship was discovered between spotting and rejecting, as not everyone who spotted manipulation subsequently rejected the manipulated standpoint, but accepted it instead. The chapter discusses these findings as well as other factors, particularly, media trust and sources’ trustworthiness, within the context of manipulated information. Keywords: Manipulated media information, media literacy, political competence, media trust, Internet news sources

Introduction In the era of post-truth, when misinformation and disinformation proliferate, and allegations are regarded as indisputable facts, Walter Lippmann’s idea of ‘pseudo-environment’ created by media takes on a new particular meaning.

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Thus, the news media construct a specific reality which turns out not to be the real environment but a pseudo-environment that audiences respond to with their opinions, attitudes, and behaviors manifested in the real world. These days, the situation has become more complex, and it is often more challenging to separate the husk from the grain when individuals encounter biased, or slanted, or even totally untrue information in the news media. As a result, disinformed opinions, ill-informed attitudes, and misinformed behaviors may arise that, in turn, reveal themselves as reactions to real-life situations including political, social, etc. Preventing such consequences is no easy task. Naturally, the ability of spotting various kinds of misinformation and not being susceptible to its influence does not presume thoroughly analyzing and verifying every piece of news – it is both time and effort inefficient. “Rather matters whether critically thinking individuals notice certain characteristic features of a news message that indicate possible bias, slant, information manipulation overall”.Observing such characteristic features, they will not immediately jump to the conclusions promoted by a manipulated news message, but rather ‘postpone’ their judgments until getting more comprehensive information and facts about the news topic. When considering the ability to critically assess media information, we may reasonably assume that individuals, who for reasons of necessity are dealing with complex, incomplete, and controversial information on a regular basis ought to develop such critical evaluation skills as well. In particular, it is hypothesized that persons who are interested in politics and thus ‘immersed’ in the world of complex political information and political activity will have higher levels of political competence and, for this reason, should possess stronger ability to critically evaluate media information and, as a result, to reveal manipulation and not buy into it. In addition, the ability to critically assess media information should apparently be influenced by a level of media literacy skills which, in turn, are affected by general media literacy context inherent to a certain social environment, for instance, such as a country. Thus, this chapter sought answers to two principal questions: What effects do individual political competence and media literacy context have on (1) spotting manipulation in Internet news reports on novel issues in foreign affairs, as well as (2)  accepting at face value the standpoints introduced by the manipulated news reports? In particular, it is hypothesized that manipulated media information on novel issues of foreign affairs should be spotted easier and its influence should be weaker for citizens with higher levels of political competence due to their assumed ability to analyze information more carefully and think about it more critically. On the same ground, and, specifically, based on the findings of

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the two studies on assessment media literacy levels in the EU (2009, 2011), it is hypothesized that citizens of countries with more favorable media literacy context should be better in critical assessment of manipulated media information. The present comparative experimental study was conducted in three countries with differing overall media literacy ranks – Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Literature Review Manipulated Media Information Manipulated media information is defined as one-sided presentation of information which is based on opinions instead of facts and as such contains allegations, causal interpretation(s) of the issue or problem described in the news reports/ messages, and assignment of responsibility for it. All of these together eventually provide ready templates for news consumers for making certain ‘programmed’ conclusions about the issue/problem described and might lead a consumer of such information to draw incorrect, erroneous conclusions about it. In addition, manipulated media information oftentimes includes emotionally loaded language and framing and reasoning devices, strengthening its overall negative effects. One-sidedness here implies presenting only one viewpoint on an issue in a news report. In addition, the presence of only one standpoint also means that more than one source might be mentioned or interviewed regarding the issue, but all the viewpoints will eventually ‘coincide.’ In other words, no alternative position on the issue is presented. The lack of any alternative point of view in a news report automatically makes the information unbalanced. Opinion-dominated or ‘opinion-laden’ messages usually report not stark facts about events, issues, etc., but contain interpretations of the events and issues. In turn, the opinions often fulfill the role of allegations, that is, statements without proof and references to the sources on which the opinions are based. In the context of the concept of manipulated information, such opinion-dominated news messages also comprise unsubstantiated causal interpretations of the issue or problem described in the report and/or a precarious attribution of responsibility for it to someone or something. Lastly, loaded language implies the use of positively or negatively connoted words and phrases and/or various rhetorical structures consisting of framing and reasoning devices. Therefore, manipulated news information might be regarded as a deceptive tool, enabling the misinforming/disinforming citizens, especially with respect to

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novel news topics. The ability to recognize manipulative techniques and not to accept the news-pushed standpoint(s) then should depend greatly on the degree a news consumer is able to critically evaluate media information. Such critically thinking individuals are expected “to a greater degree [to] be immune to both unwitting and intentional attempts of news media to deceive or mislead with their news reports” (Kucherenko & Christen, 2015, p. 139).

Political Competence Political sophistication carries significant weight as a compound of general intelligence. According to Luskin (1990, p.  336), “the dependence on intelligence should be greater for political than for many other sorts of knowledge, because politics is more abstract and remote – simply ‘harder material’ – than, say, sports or cooking.” Further, higher levels of political sophistication are indicative of a higher degree of political schemas development (Fiske, Lau, & Smith, 1990). In turn, individuals possessing more developed political schemas consider persuasive messages more carefully (Nelson, Oxley, & Clawson, 1997; Rhee & Cappella, 1997), process news more deeply, and employ more analytic processing strategies in evaluating messages (e.g., Judd & Downing, 1990; Guo & Moy, 1998). In turn, Hsu and Price (1993, p. 687) concluded that political sophistication is a ‘significant predictor of the extent of subjects’ analytic processing’ which perfectly corresponds to what Eveland (2005) referred to as elaborative informationprocessing strategies that are positively associated – and, moreover, reciprocally related – with high levels of political knowledge. With that, the developed elaborative information processing component of political sophisticates is presumed to function identically (in a ‘schematic’ way) irrespective of the type of information encountered, as its evaluation would follow the same mechanisms and reference points underlying the process of elaborative thinking. Based on the previous research, political competence is defined here as the amount of political knowledge and experience sufficient to process political information, as well as other complex information. As a result of such processing, comes a decision whether the information received might be trusted at face value or should be verified first before coming to a certain conclusion on it. The concept comprises five components: political interest, media use for getting political information, factual political knowledge, political discussion, and political participation/activity. Higher scores on the five indicators described above indicate a higher level of political competence, implying also the abilities to think critically, mentally

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connect distinct and disjointed pieces of information, and determine the relevance of the information presented in a news message to the overall conclusions to be inferred from it.

Media Literacy Context The importance of developing and cultivating critical thinking as a component of media literacy has been repeatedly emphasized by many scholars in the field (e.g., Alvermann & Hagood, 2000; Hobbs & Frost, 2003; Buckingham, 2003, 2006; Kellner & Share, 2007, 2010; Ashley, Poepsel, & Willis, 2010; Mihailidis & Thevenin, 2013). In particular, Silverblatt (2008, p. 4) pointed out that: “Media literacy is, first and foremost, a critical thinking skill that is applied to the source of most of the information we receive: the channels of mass communications.” Thus, to be able to make informed decisions on the basis of various political, economic, and social news; citizens should understand what influences news reliability and credibility and be able to distinguish reliable and credible information from questionable and uncertain one (Craft, Maksl, & Ashley, 2013). In turn, the successful development of this ability should indispensably be related to and depend on the favorable media literacy context existent in that society/country. Media literacy context as is used in this research is based on the results of two studies: the ‘Study on Assessment Criteria for Media Literacy Levels in the Member States of the European Union’ (2009) and the ‘Study on Testing and Refining Criteria to Assess Media Literacy Levels in Europe’ (2011). The purpose of the first study was set to provide an understanding of what implies to have media-literate citizens, and to identify what level of media literacy each of the Member States possesses. The second study was aimed at testing and refining the indicators for assessment of media literacy levels in the EU. Two dimensions have been identified:  Individual Competencies and Environmental Factors. Individual Competencies presumed personal/individual abilities to exercise certain media skills (to access, use, analyze, understand, and create), including the capacity for critical analysis. Environmental Factors implied “a set of contextual factors (affecting Individual Competencies) that impact the broad span of media literacy, including informational availability, media policy, education and the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in the media community” (Celot, Gonzalez Lopez, & Thompson, 2009, p. 7). With that, the development of individual competences is clearly correlated with the state policy on media literacy that is implemented in a given country: “…there is a broad correlation between individual media literacy competence and the Environmental Factors” (Celot, Gonzalez Lopez, & Thompson, 2009, p. 12).

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Resting upon the measured indicators, the average European media literacy rank/value was set at 100. Countries ranked above 130 were regarded as advanced on media literacy, countries ranked between 70 and 130 were regarded at medium level, and those countries ranked below the value of 70 – as having only basic levels of media literacy. For the present research, three countries from three different ranks were selected: Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands (Tab. 12.1). Thus, the most advanced, or favorable, media literacy context was assigned to the Netherlands, and the least one – to Italy. Hence, it was expected that more favorable media literacy context should also have a general positive effect on individual ability to critically assess media information, in particular, as to spotting manipulation in news reports and rejecting a standpoint promoted by such reports. Tab. 12.1:  Overall media literacy context ranks for Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands*. Source: Adapted from Celot, Gonzalez Lopez, and Thompson (2009) Country EU-27 average Italy Austria The Netherlands

Overall media literacy rank 100 79.03 110.17 136.69

Notes: Above 130 – Advanced level. 70–130 – Medium level. Below 70 – Basic level.

Hypotheses and Methods Four hypotheses were developed for this study. Hypothesis 1: The higher the political competence level individuals have, the more likely they spot manipulated information in the Internet news reports on a novel international affairs topic. Hypothesis 2: The higher the political competence level individuals have, the less likely the standpoint of the manipulated news report will be accepted. Hypothesis 3: The more advanced media literacy context a particular country has, the more likely participants from that country will spot manipulated information in the Internet news reports on a novel international affairs topic. Hypothesis 4: Those who are able to spot manipulated media information will not accept the standpoint promoted in the information.

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Methods The Study Variables The first outcome variable is spotting/non-spotting was measured by questions that the news report is one-sided, contains allegations, and cannot be trusted. The second outcome variable refers to accepting/non-accepting the resulting standpoint(s) the manipulated news message promoted. It was measured by questions on placing responsibility for the situation described. The first explanatory variable is individual political competence comprising five dimensions – political interest, media use, factual political knowledge, political discussion, and political participation – all of which were integrated into one scale. Political competence has been measured as a part of post-hoc analysis. The higher score a person had on the scale (from 0 to 36), the higher level of political competence was assumed. Among all the measures of the political competence construct, only content of factual political knowledge questions was different and targeted for each country domestic political issues. All the other measures were standardized and identical. Therefore, to ensure comparability between the three countries included in the study on factual political knowledge dimension, questions used in the European Election Studies for measuring factual political knowledge were employed, for they were long term (not tied for time), showed different degree of difficulty, standardized across countries, and time-proven. The second explanatory variable – media literacy context – resulted from the Member States media literacy ranking. Thus, the media literacy context variable was stable or constant for each of the countries, and the political competence variable could vary.

Research Design The study took the form of a series of survey-based laboratory experiments/ quasi-experiments that employed between-subjects posttest-only design. First, the study participants answered questions measuring their media habits, media trust, and political competence. Then they read stimuli – news reports. Finally, they answered questions measuring their evaluation of the news reports and demographics.

Stimuli Two short simulated news reports – one manipulated and one balanced – were used as stimuli in the study. The reports were approximately of the same length (280 words), written in English, Italian, and German.

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Both news reports described a protest march which supposedly took place in Moldova and the death of a protester during the protest march. Also, both news reports assigned responsibility for the death to the police/president in the manipulated version and the police/president or the protester herself/himself (due to heart attack) in the balanced version. At the same time, the manipulated version of the news report: • lacked the context of the protest march; • contained multiple allegations unreservedly assigning responsibility for the situation; • was completely one-sided; and • integrated framing and reasoning devices including unfounded speculations about the horrific consequences of the situation described. The balanced version of the news report: • provided the event context starting from the headline; • indicated the possible cause of the protesters’ death but did not insist on it; • contained the opposition’s viewpoint about the responsibility of the police and the president but also presented opinions of the chief of the police and the president regarding the situation described; and • the language of this report was neutral. Both news reports were not formatted to look like actual copies of online news reports of particular Internet news sources, for the reason different news sources have different degrees of likeability and trustworthiness for different participants. Thus, the study stimuli were introduced by the phrases: “The following news report was taken from one of the most popular traditional [or alternative] Internet sources of news in your country. In order to avoid identifying the source through any of its characteristics, only the text of the news report is reprinted here in a standard computer font.” Since both manipulated and balanced news reports were presented in two subtypes each – ‘taken’ from a traditional or alternative Internet news source – there were four versions of the news reports. Prior to carrying out the actual study, all the questionnaires and news reports in three languages were pretested.

Participants The study participants were undergraduate students from one large Austrian university, one large Italian university, and one large Dutch university. Only

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those who indicated citizenship of the countries where the study was carried out were regarded as eligible for the study. As a result, the total number of the study participants (and valid survey questionnaires) was 914:  246 participants from Austria, 394 participants from Italy, and 274 participants from the Netherlands. The primary age category in the study was 18–26 year olds, that is, those who were referred to as the ‘heaviest’ Internet users. The participants were randomly assigned to read one of four versions of the news reports, so that an approximately equal number of participants of each country would read every news report.

Results The importance of the topic of the news reports and their understandability The majority of participants in all samples considered the topic important in both ‘traditional’ and ‘alternative’ subtypes of the news reports. With regard to the understandability of the situation described, the large majority of participants in all the three samples found it easy to understand. Thus, subsequent participants’ answers were not given due to reasons such as considering the subject matter of the news as unimportant or incomprehensible.

Outcome Variables First outcome variable – Spotting manipulated information Fact-basedness, balance, allegation-loadedness of the news reports, and overall trust in it were measured by original questions with four ordinal response options:  ‘definitely no,’ ‘rather no,’ ‘rather yes,’ and ‘definitely yes.’ Then these response options were recoded so that to take the form of the binary response options ‘yes/no’ (‘definitely no’ and ‘rather no’ were summed up as well as ‘definitely yes’ and ‘rather yes’). Only participants who answered ‘no’ to all the four questions were regarded as those who spotted manipulation, whereas all the others were considered as those who did not spot manipulated information. Second outcome variable – Accepting manipulated news report standpoint, or who should be blamed for the situation The second outcome variable was measured by utilizing two questions aimed at revealing whether participants, first, understood or not the standpoint promoted and, second, personally accepted it or not. In the balanced condition, a majority of participants in all the three samples considered the situation described as ‘unclear’ in terms of being able to express

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a decided opinion on the subject. Further comparison made between the balanced and manipulated conditions revealed that in the manipulated condition the percent number of participants who could not offer a definite opinion as to placing responsibility was from 1.4 to 2 times less than in the balanced condition. Overall, 51% of the Austrian participants, 43% of the Dutch participants, and 60% of the Italian participants agreed with the standpoint promoted in the manipulated news report as to assigning the responsibility. Further, chi-square test revealed a strong positive association in all samples between understanding who is named responsible for the death(s) of the protester(s) in the manipulated news report and the personal placing of responsibility by the study participants. In particular, χ2(df  =  1, N  =  117)  =  19.81, p