Project Details
Description
Project co-developed with the University Library.
It is not uncommon to find the term "fake news" in social media platforms. While the former U.S. President Donald Trump accused the media of publishing fake news repeatedly during his term of office, many others saw the dissemination of false information as a big problem during the Brexit referendum. Given how social media accelerate the speed of information diffusion, the spread of misinformation has also become an unprecedented societal challenge in Hong Kong. Since the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement and the outbreak of COVID-19, the dissemination of disinformation has become an even greater concern. Mis/disinformation not only brings financial loss but also physical and psychological harm and even the possibility of tearing a society apart.
In fact, media practitioners and academic scholars have long been discussing the issue of misinformation, which nevertheless focuses on misinformation producers as well as ways to reduce the spread of misinformation, for instance, how authenticity can be ensured when delivering messages from the perspective of an organization or media outlet. Nonetheless, discussion focusing on the message receiver is seldom researched as extensively, such as how Hong Kong residents interpret the term "fake news" and the motivations that drive news users to accuse a piece of information as "fake news".
To understand how social media users apply the term "fake news", the Hong Kong Facebook News Analytics Dashboard ("the Dashboard") presents data of the Facebook public pages of 17 news outlets in Hong Kong from January 2019 to June 2021, including the text in posts, text in comments, and Uniform Resource Locator (URL) links, in addition to user engagement counts, such as frequencies of likes, shares, and post reactions.
It is not uncommon to find the term "fake news" in social media platforms. While the former U.S. President Donald Trump accused the media of publishing fake news repeatedly during his term of office, many others saw the dissemination of false information as a big problem during the Brexit referendum. Given how social media accelerate the speed of information diffusion, the spread of misinformation has also become an unprecedented societal challenge in Hong Kong. Since the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement and the outbreak of COVID-19, the dissemination of disinformation has become an even greater concern. Mis/disinformation not only brings financial loss but also physical and psychological harm and even the possibility of tearing a society apart.
In fact, media practitioners and academic scholars have long been discussing the issue of misinformation, which nevertheless focuses on misinformation producers as well as ways to reduce the spread of misinformation, for instance, how authenticity can be ensured when delivering messages from the perspective of an organization or media outlet. Nonetheless, discussion focusing on the message receiver is seldom researched as extensively, such as how Hong Kong residents interpret the term "fake news" and the motivations that drive news users to accuse a piece of information as "fake news".
To understand how social media users apply the term "fake news", the Hong Kong Facebook News Analytics Dashboard ("the Dashboard") presents data of the Facebook public pages of 17 news outlets in Hong Kong from January 2019 to June 2021, including the text in posts, text in comments, and Uniform Resource Locator (URL) links, in addition to user engagement counts, such as frequencies of likes, shares, and post reactions.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 2/03/20 → 30/10/21 |
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