Acta Informatica Pragensia 2020, 9(2), 74-91 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aip.1346748

The Digital Media in Lithuania: Combating Disinformation and Fake News

Aelita Skarzauskiene ORCID...1, Monika Maciuliene ORCID...1, Ornela Ramasauskaite2
1 Faculty of Creative Industries, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Sauletekio Al. 11, Vilnius, Lithuania
2 Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology, K. Donelaièio St. 73, Kaunas, Lithuania

The prevalence of so-called “fake news” is a relatively recent social phenomenon that is linked to disinformation, misinformation and other forms of networked manipulation facilitated by the rise of the Internet and online social media. The spread of misinformation is among the most pressing challenges of our time. Sources from which disinformation originates are constantly changing and present an enormous challenge for real-time detection algorithms and more targeted science based socio-technical interventions. The primary aim of this paper is to illuminate the practices and interpretations, focusing on three perspectives: general attitudes to fake news, perceived interaction with disinformation and opinion on counteraction with respect to fake news. The innovative character of the research is achieved by the focus on community solutions to combat disinformation and the collaboration between media users, media organizations, scientists, communication managers, journalists and other important actors in the media ecosystem. Based on insights from interviews with communication field experts, the paper sheds light on the efforts of Lithuanian society to confront the problem of fake news in digital media environment. Lithuania is also an interesting case study for fake news due to its status as a former Soviet state now in the EU. Our research indicates that not all media users are prepared and/or have the necessary competencies to combat fake news, so that citizen engagement might actually negatively influence the quality of the counteraction process. Indeed, proactive citizens’ organizations and NGOs could be an important catalyst fostering collaboration between stakeholders. The responsibility of governments could be to create the structures, methodologies and supporting educational activities to involve the stakeholders in collaborating activities combating disinformation.

Keywords: Fake news, Disinformation, Collaboration, Digitalization, Media.

Received: July 1, 2020; Revised: August 12, 2020; Accepted: August 14, 2020; Prepublished online: August 14, 2020; Published: December 31, 2020  Show citation

ACS AIP APA ASA Harvard Chicago Chicago Notes IEEE ISO690 MLA NLM Turabian Vancouver
Skarzauskiene, A., Maciuliene, M., & Ramasauskaite, O. (2020). The Digital Media in Lithuania: Combating Disinformation and Fake News. Acta Informatica Pragensia9(2), 74-91. doi: 10.18267/j.aip.134
Download citation

References

  1. Allen, J., Howland, B, Mobius, M., & Rotdshild, D. (2020). Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem. Science Advanced, 6(14), eaay3539. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay3539 Go to original source...
  2. Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election (No. w23089). National Bureau of Economic Research. Go to original source...
  3. Barthel, M., Mitchell, A., & Holcomb, J. (2016). Many Americans Believe Fake News Is Sowing Confusion. http://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-issowing-confusion/
  4. Caplan, R. (2020). COVID-19 misinformation is a crisis of content mediation. https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/covid-19-misinformation-is-a-crisis-of-content-mediation/
  5. Combating Fake News. (2017). Harvard University, Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/combating-fake-news-agenda-research-and-action
  6. Cunha E., Magno G., Caetano J., Teixeira D., & Almeida V. (2018) Fake News as We Feel It: Perception and Conceptualization of the Term "Fake News" in the Media. In Staab S., Koltsova O., Ignatov D. (eds) Social Informatics, SocInfo 2018 (pp. 151-166). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01129-1_10 Go to original source...
  7. Collins Dictionary Word of the year. (2017). Collins 2017 Word of the Year Shortlist. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/collins-2017-word-of-the-year-shortlist,396,HCB.html
  8. Denisenko, V. (2018). Lithuania: Disinformation Resilience Index. http://prismua.org/en/9065-2/
  9. Dorussen, H., Lenz, H., & Blavoukos, S. (2005). Assessing the Reliability and Validity of Expert Interviews. European Union Politics, 6(3), 315-337. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116505054835 Go to original source...
  10. Edelman study. (2019). Edelman study: High Levels of Trust in Traditional Media Persist. https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/edelman-study-media-trust/
  11. Egelhofer, J. L., Aaldering, L., Eberl, J., Galyga, S., & Lecheler,S. (2020). From Novelty to Normalization? How Journalists Use the Term "Fake News" in their Reporting. Journalism Studies, 21(10), 1323-1343. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1745667 Go to original source...
  12. Ferrara, E., Varol, O., Davis, C., Menczer, F., & Flammini, A. (2016). The rise of social bots. Communications of the ACM, 59(7), 96-104. https://doi.org/10.1145/2818717 Go to original source...
  13. Garrett, L. (2020). COVID-19: the medium is the message. The Lancet, 395(10228), 942-943. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30600-0 Go to original source...
  14. Gorwa, R. (2017). Computational Propaganda in Poland: False Amplifiers and the Digital Public Sphere. Computational Propaganda Project Working Paper Series.
  15. Humprecht, E., Esser, F., & Van Aelst, P. (2020). Resilience to online disinformation: A framework for cross-national comparative research. International Journal of Press/Politics, 25(3), 493-516. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219900126 Go to original source...
  16. Edelman study. (2019). Edelman study: High Levels of Trust in Traditional Media Persist https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/edelman-study-media-trust/
  17. Jain, S., Sharma, V., & Kaushal, R. (2016). Towards automated real-time detection of misinformation on Twitter. In 2016 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI) (pp. 2015-2020). IEEE. Go to original source...
  18. Kazlauskas, A. (2020) Dezinformacijos apie koronvirus± netrūksta. https://www.vz.lt/rinkodara/komunikacija/2020/04/02/demaskuoklt-dezinformacijos-apie-koronavirusa-netruksta
  19. Khaldarova, I., & Pantti, M. (2016). Fake news. Journalism Practice, 10(7), 891-901. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2016.1163237 Go to original source...
  20. Kreft J., & Hapek, M. (2019). Fake news: possibility of identification in post-truth media ecology system. Zarz±dzanie Mediami, 7(3),133-142. http://doi.org/10.4467/23540214ZM.19.009.11120 Go to original source...
  21. Kumar, S., Villa, R. A., & Carley, K. M. (2017). Identifying Bots that Spread Fake News. SBP-BRiMS. Washington, DC.
  22. Libakoba, N. M., & Sertakova, A. (2015). The Method of Expert Interview as an Effective Research Procedure of Studying the Indigenous Peoples of the North. Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences, 1(8), 114-129. Go to original source...
  23. Lindlof, T. R., & Bryan C. T. (2002). Qualitative Communication Research Methods. Sage.
  24. Lischka, J. A. (2017). A Badge of Honor? How The New York Times discredits President Trump's fake news accusations. Journalism Studies, 20(2), 287-304. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2017.1375385 Go to original source...
  25. Meier, K., Kraus, D. & Michaeler, E. (2018). Audience Engagement in a Post-Truth Age: What It Means and How to Learn the Activities Connected with It. Digital Journalism, 6(8), 1052-1063. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1498295 Go to original source...
  26. Metzger, M. J. (2009). The study of media effects in the era of Internet communication. In R. L. Nabi and M. B. Oliver (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Media Processes and Effects (pp. 561-576). Sage.
  27. Morris, M. R., Counts, S., Roseway, A., Hoff, A., & Schwarz, J. (2012). Tweeting is believing? Understanding microblog credibility perceptions. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative, Work (CSCW2012) (pp. 441-450). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2145204.2145274 Go to original source...
  28. Nimmo, B., Czuperski, M., & Brookie, G. (2017). BotSpot: the intimidators. Twitter bots unleashed. Social media disruption tactic. https://medium.com/dfrlab/botspot-the-intimidators-135244bfe46b
  29. Jourova, V. (2020). From pandemic to infodemic. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_20_1000
  30. Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Fighting Misinformation on Social Media Using Crowdsourced Judgments of News Source Quality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(7), 2521-2526. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1806781116 Go to original source...
  31. Schäfer, M.S., Fuchslin, T., Metag, J., Kirstianse, S., & Rauchfleisch, A. (2018). The different audiences of science communication: A segmentation analysis of the Swiss population's perceptions of science and their information and media use patterns. Public understanding of science, 27(7), 836-856. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662517752886 Go to original source...
  32. Shao, C., Ciampaglia, G. L., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2016). Hoaxy: A platform for tracking online misinformation. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web (pp. 745-750). https://doi.org/10.1145/2872518.2890098 Go to original source...
  33. Starbird, K., Arif, A, & Wilson, T. (2019). Disinformation as Collaborative Work: Surfacing the Participatory Nature of Strategic Information Operations. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (No. 127). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359229 Go to original source...
  34. Starbird, K. (2020). How a Crisis Researcher Makes Sense of Covid-19 Misinformation. https://onezero.medium.com/reflecting-on-the-covid-19-infodemic-as-a-crisis-informatics-researcher-ce0656fa4d0
  35. Tandoc, Jr., E. C. (2019). Tell Me Who Your Sources Are: Perceptions of News Credibility on Social Media. Journalism Practice, 13(2), 178-190. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2017.1423237 Go to original source...
  36. Taneja H., & Jaeger K. (2019). Do People Consume the News they Trust? Incidental News Usage and the High-Choice Media Environment. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing systems, paper No. 540 (pp. 1-10). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300770 Go to original source...
  37. Thomson, R., Garfin, D. R., & Holman, A. (2018). Distress, Worry, and Functioning Following a Global Health Crisis: A National Study of Americans' Responses to Ebola. Clinical Psychology Science, 5(3), 513-521. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702617692030 Go to original source...
  38. Trust in Science and Changing Landscapes of Communication. (2019). Trust in Science and Changing Landscapes of Communication. https://allea.org/portfolio-item/trust-in-science-and-changing-landscapes-of-communication/
  39. Tsfati, Y., Boomgaarden, H. G., Strömbäck, J., Vliegenthart, R., Damstra, A. & Lindgren, E. (2020). Causes and consequences of mainstream media dissemination of fake news: literature review and synthesis. Annals of the International Communication Association, 44(21), 157-173. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2020.1759443 Go to original source...
  40. Turcotte, J., York, C., Irving, J., Scholl, R. M., & Pingree, R. J. (2015). News recommendations from social media opinion leaders: Effects on media trust and information seeking. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20(5), 520-535. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12127 Go to original source...
  41. Vosoughi, S. (2015). Automatic detection and verification of rumours on Twitter. Doctoral dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  42. Wagner, M. C., & Boczkowski, J., M. (2019). The Reception of Fake News: The Interpretations and Practices That Shape the Consumption of Perceived Misinformation. Digital journalism, 7(7), 870-885. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1653208 Go to original source...
  43. ®iniasklaidos priemonių naudojimo ra¹tingumo tyrimas. (2017). ®iniasklaidos priemonių naudojimo ra¹tingumo lygio nustatymo tyrimas. http://lrkm.lrv.lt/uploads/lrkm/documents/files/Ziniasklaidos_vartojimas12_galutine.pdf
  44. Zhang, J., Carpenter, D., & Ko, M. (2013). Online astroturfing: A theoretical perspective. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems (pp. 1-7). AISNET. https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1620&context=amcis2013

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is properly cited. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.