INF6000 Dissertation COVER SHEET (TURNITIN) Registration Number 160128763 Family Name Yu First Name Ziying Use of unfair means. It is the student's responsibility to ensure no aspect of their work is plagiarised or the result of other unfair means. The University’s and Information School’s advice on unfair means can be found in your Student Handbook, available via http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is/current Assessment Word Count _____15536_____. If your dissertation has a word count that is outside the range 10,000 – 15,000 words or if you do not state the word count then a deduction of 3 marks will be applied Late submission. A dissertation submitted after 10am on the stated submission date will result in a deduction of 5% of the mark awarded for each working day after the submission date/time up to a maximum of 5 working days, where ‘working day’ includes Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays) and runs from 10am to 10am. A dissertation submitted after the maximum period will receive zero marks. Ethics documentation should be included in the Appendix if your dissertation has been judged to be Low Risk or High Risk. (Please tick the box if you have included the documentation) A deduction of 3 marks will be applied for a dissertation if the required ethics documentation is not included in the appendix; and the same deduction will be applied if your research data has not been available for inspection when required. The deduction procedures are detailed in the INF6000 Module Outline and Dissertation Handbook.
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INF6000 Dissertation COVER SHEET (TURNITIN)
Registration Number 160128763
Family Name Yu First Name Ziying
Use of unfair means. It is the student's responsibility to ensure no aspect of their work is plagiarised or the
result of other unfair means. The University’s and Information School’s advice on unfair means can be found
in your Student Handbook, available via http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is/current
Assessment Word Count _____15536_____.If your dissertation has a word count that is outside the range 10,000 – 15,000 words or if you do not state the wordcount then a deduction of 3 marks will be applied
Late submission. A dissertation submitted after 10am on the stated submission date will result in a deduction
of 5% of the mark awarded for each working day after the submission date/time up to a maximum of 5
working days, where ‘working day’ includes Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays) and runs from
10am to 10am. A dissertation submitted after the maximum period will receive zero marks.
Ethics documentation should be included in the Appendix if your dissertation has been judged to be
Low Risk or High Risk. (Please tick the box if you have included the documentation)A deduction of 3 marks will be applied for a dissertation if the required ethics documentation is not included in theappendix; and the same deduction will be applied if your research data has not been available for inspection whenrequired.
The deduction procedures are detailed in the INF6000 Module Outline and Dissertation Handbook.
Investigation of the way people verify news on social media
A study submitted in partial fulfilmentof the requirements for the degree of
MSc Information Management
at
THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
by
Ziying Yu
September 2017
I
Abstract
Background
Nowadays, social media has become an important part in people’s life and a popular way for
people to get news. However, since user-generated content on social media could also be
integrated into news, fake news which could have bad effect on society always exists on
social media. Therefore, the research concentrates on investigating the way people verify
news on social media.
Aims
The research aims to investigate the way a small sample of Chinese students verify news on
social media, explore their attitudes towards news verification on social media, and finally
propose a methodical method of verifying news relying on research findings.
Methods
The qualitative research method and the coverging-question approach of interview were
selected to collect data in this research. 8 students of the University of Sheffield who have
experience of using social media were chosen to be interviewed, and the interview questions
designed aimed to investigate their understanding of news and channels to obtain news, their
usage of social media, their opinions on existing news verification methods, their attitudes
towards fake news and news verification on social media, and their own ways to verify news.
Based on thematic analysis, the characteristics of all participants and the 8 interview
conversations were recorded, summarised and further compared with previous research
findings.
Results
First, social media is the most popular way for participants to get news, and part of them have
already had the leading awareness of news. Second, all participants use different social media
II
platforms for different proposes, although most of them are not active on posting and
reposting information on social media, all participants have the habit of checking the
information authenticity before reposting. When participants share information on social
media, the recipient varies depending on the social media platform being used and the type of
information being shared. Next, for the existing news verification methods summarised, most
of them agree with checking the reliability of the news provider, checking the soundness of
the news content relying on personal knowledge and experience, searching relevant
information online, and the influence of people's position on their attitudes and judgment to
news. Simultaneously, they think it is useful but difficult to use tool and technology to verify
videos and images in news. Then, all participants do not deliberately repost fake news, and
they clearly acknowledge the significance of news verification on social media. Finally, their
simple and basic ways to verify news are given by participants. On this basis, a methodical
method of news verification on social media is proposed.
Conclusions
Participants in the research neither actively spread fake news on social media nor spend much
time or skill on verifying it. In order to reduce the spread of rumors, actions from both social
media platforms and news providers need taking, while the public also need to improve their
media literacy.
III
Acknowledge
First of all, I would like to extend sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Ms. Sheila Webber,
who has given me useful suggestions and constructive guidance throughout the entire process
of my writing of the dissertation. I am really grateful of her support and encouragement.
Second, I am also indebted to all of the participants taking part in the research. Without their
kind help, data collection would not have been completed successfully.
Finally, special thanks should be given to my parents, for their continued support and
encouragement without any expectation of return.
Table of Contents
Abstract....................................................................................................................................... I
Acknowledge............................................................................................................................III
Chapter 1. Introduction...............................................................................................................1
1.1 Background.................................................................................................................. 1
1.2 Research aims and objectives.......................................................................................2
1.2.1 Research aims....................................................................................................2
1.2.2 Research objectives........................................................................................... 2
1.3 Research structure........................................................................................................ 2
Chapter 2. Literature review.......................................................................................................4
2.1 Social media................................................................................................................. 4
2.2 News and the emergence of fake news........................................................................ 7
2.3 Influence of fake news and people’s attitudes towards it.............................................9
2.4 People’s ability and methods to verify news on social media....................................10
Chapter 3. Methodology...........................................................................................................13
3.1 Research design..........................................................................................................13
3.2 Sample........................................................................................................................13
3.3 Data collection............................................................................................................13
3.3.1 Interview planning and pilot............................................................................13
3.3.2 Final interview questions.................................................................................15
3.3.3 Carrying out the interviews............................................................................. 17
3.4 Data analysis...............................................................................................................18
3.5 Limitations..................................................................................................................18
3.6 Ethical aspects............................................................................................................ 19
Chapter 4. Findings and results................................................................................................ 20
4.1 Characteristics of each participant............................................................................. 20
4.2 The comparison of 8 interview conversations...........................................................23
4.2.1 Participants’ understanding of news and the way they get news.................... 23
4.2.2 Participants’ social media usage preferences and habits.................................24
4.2.3 Participants’ opinions on existing news verification methods........................ 27
4.2.4 Participants’ attitudes towards fake news and news verification.................... 29
4.2.5 Participants’ own ways of news verification on social media.........................31
Chapter 5. Discussion...............................................................................................................33
5.1 Participants’ understanding of news and the way they get news............................... 33
5.1.1 Definition of news...........................................................................................33
5.1.2 The way to get news........................................................................................33
5.2 Participants’ social media usage preferences and habits............................................34
5.2.1 Social media use intensity............................................................................... 34
5.2.2 Participants’ usage of social media................................................................. 34
5.2.3 Participants’ usage of posting and reposting...................................................34
5.2.4 Participants’ choices of checking information authenticity before reposting. 35
5.2.5 People who participants share information on social media with................... 35
5.3 Participants’ opinions on existing news verification methods................................... 35
5.3.1 Concentrating on the news provider’s identity................................................35
5.3.2 Checking the soundness of the news content, based on participants’
knowledge and experience....................................................................................... 36
5.3.3 Accessing eyewitnesses or relevant information from search engines, other
news media and credible sources............................................................................. 37
5.3.4 Using tools to check the videos and images in news...................................... 37
5.3.5 Influence of participants’ position on their attitudes and judgment to news...37
5.4 Participants’ attitudes towards fake news and news verification on social media.....38
5.4.1 Participants’ opinions of news and fake news on social media...................... 38
5.4.2 Participants’ attitudes towards fake news on social media............................. 38
5.4.3 Participants’ attitudes towards news verification on social media..................39
5.4.4 Participants’ attitudes towards news presented in different forms..................39
5.5 Participants’ own ways of news verification on social media....................................40
5.6 Summarised methods of news verification on social media...................................... 41
Chapter 6. Conclusion.............................................................................................................. 43
6.1 The research achievements of aims and objectives....................................................43
6.1.1 The research achievements of aims.................................................................43
6.1.2 The research achievements of objectives........................................................ 43
6.2 Recommendation........................................................................................................45
6.2.1 For practice......................................................................................................45
6.2.2 For further research......................................................................................... 45
References................................................................................................................................ 47
Appendix.................................................................................................................................. 51
Appendix 1: Interview questions......................................................................................51
Appendix 2: Characteristics of P2, P3, P4 and P8........................................................... 53
Appendix 3: Ethic consent form.......................................................................................57
Appendix 4: Ethics application........................................................................................ 59
Appendix 5: Approval letter.............................................................................................64
Appendix 6: Access to dissertation form......................................................................... 65
Appendix 7: Confirmation of address after completion form.......................................... 66
1
Chapter 1. Introduction
The first chapter includes 3 parts aims to show the basic information of the dissertation. It
will begin with the background description of the dissertation, followed by the exposition of
research aims and objectives. Finally, the research structure will be explained.
1.1 Background
In recent years, with the increasing development of technology and the prevalence of the
Internet, social media has become an important part of people’s daily life. Based on mobile
devices and the Internet, it offers a virtual platform where individuals and communities can
highly interact with each other by co-creating and modifying user-generated content and
further sharing and discussing that (Kietzmann, Hermkens, Mccarthy & Silvestre, 2011).
According to Gupta, Lamba, Kumaraguru and Joshi (2013), one of the general uses and aims
of social media is to provide the opportunity for every user to create, spread, share and update
information about real-time events. It follows that social media is regarded as an important
news source. National survey results show that obtaining news is becoming the main
objective for most of the American to use social media and more than half of them (62%) get
news through social media (Greenwood, Perrin & Duggan, 2016; Gottfried & Shearer, 2016).
Thus, in the context of social media, news is no longer just provided by traditional news
media. User-generated content presented on social media and from the public is also
newsworthy and can be integrated into news (Hermida & Thurman, 2008). However,
although using social media as a news source has benefits, it brings a growing problem
simultaneously that fake news containing fabricated and inaccurate information is easier to
create, spread and cause negative influence. Nowadays, scholars pay more attention to this
field to investigate the way people verify news on social media. As shown in Chapter 2,
previous research focused more on professionals such as journalists than ordinary people, and
the verification methods found show that people’s ability to handle fake news is inadequate
(e.g. Nolleke, Grimmer and Horky, 2016). Therefore, it is necessary to investigate ordinary
people’s methods to verify news and summarise a methodical way. This research
2
concentrates on studying how ordinary people verify news on social media and discussing the
details and their attitudes towards fake news and its verification.
1.2 Research aims and objectives
1.2.1 Research aims
1. To investigate the way ordinary people verify news on social media.
2. To explore people’s attitudes towards verifying news on social media.
3. To propose a methodical approach to news verification of social media, based on
research findings.
1.2.2 Research objectives
1. To search previous research about social media, news and the emergence of fake news,
influence of fake news and people’s attitudes, and people’s ability and methods to verify
news on social media.
2. To understand, analyse and critique the literature collected of fake news and its
verification on social media.
3. Drawing on previous research, to explore people’s attitudes and habits with fake news,
by interviewing a small sample of Chinese students.
4. To analyse the data collected by thematic analysis and draw valid conclusions.
1.3 Research structure
The dissertation consists of 6 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the background information and
research aims and objectives. Chapter 2 reviews relevant literature of the research topic,
including social media and its function as a news source, news and the emergence of fake
news, effect of fake news and people’s attitudes towards it, and people’s ability and methods
used for news verification on social media. Chapter 3 focuses on the methodology, the entire
process of the choice and design of the research method is described in detail. Chapter 4
concentrates on summarising and analysing the data collected by interviews. Furthermore, the
results obtained from Chapter 4 is analysed, discussed and compared with previous research
findings in Chapter 5. Finally, Chapter 6 is to summarise the achievement of each research
3
aim or objective. Additionally, recommendations for practice and further research can be
developed.
4
Chapter 2. Literature review
In order to make the research more targeted and practically valuable, an in-depth literature
review need presenting essentially. It includes 4 parts: first, the definition of social media and
its function as a news source will be elaborated, focusing on its big influence on journalism.
The second section will introduce the development and changes related to news, and the
emergence of fake news in the context of social media. Then, the effect of fake news and
people’s attitudes to it will be investigated. Finally, the final section will concentrate on
summarising people’s ability and methods to verify news on social media. Although literature
related to people’s attitudes towards fake news and its influence is insufficient, this literature
review is conducive to understanding the meaning and deficiency of current research findings
and determining a more clear direction of the research.
The literature was collected from Google Scholar, Baidu Scholar and Star Plus, by searching
the keywords like “social media”, “news”, “fake news” and “news verification”. Besides,
some articles and reports were recommended by my supervisor or acquired from the journal
called Journalism Practice.
2.1 Social media
As the main context in which the research topic will be investigated, social media can be
defined as a virtual platform based on mobile devices and the Internet where individuals and
communities can highly interact with others through co-creating and modifying user-
generated content and further sharing and discussing that (Kietzmann et al., 2011). According
to different characteristics, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) clearly classified social media into 6
categories: collaborative projects focusing on co-creating online content generated by many
users, blogs attracting individuals to record their daily life and related content about a specific
field, content communities offering places for users to share media content, social networking
sites building a bridge of online social communication between different users, virtual game
worlds represented by online role-playing games, and virtual social worlds concentrating on
providing a free place for users to live a virtual life resembling their real life. Furthermore,
5
Gupta et al.’s (2013) definition of social media focused more on its function as a platform
where information about real-time events can be created, spread, shared and updated.
Therefore, it can be concluded that one of the primary objectives of social media is to
generate, spread and obtain information from users.
With the continuous development of social media, it is becoming a common first-hand news
source for journalists and ordinary people (Schifferes & Newman, 2013; Paulussen & Harder,
2014). Java, Song, Finin and Tseng (2007) clearly divided users’ motivations of using Twitter
into 4 reasons: daily chatter, conversation, sharing information and reporting news. Therefore,
besides getting people more connected online as a social tool, Twitter can also play the role
of a news media where users from both verified and unverified accounts can report and
comment on real-time news. According to the data collected from the API, Kwak, Lee, Park
and Moon (2010) classified trending topics on Twitter for the first time. Their finding showed
that the majority (over 85%) of trending topics were related to news. Additionally, Gottfried
and Shearer’s survey result (2016) showed that more than half of American people (62%)
obtained news through social media. Compared with the answer to the same question in a
similar survey implemented in 2014, the rate highly increased by 20%. Thus, the trend of
regarding social media as a tool to get news is becoming increasing popular. Hermida (2010)
further introduced the concept of awareness system to emphasise the significance of social
media for people to feel and interact with the surrounding.
However, not everyone treats social media as a news source, because they do not think the
content people post are always verified and can be regarded as news (Arrington, 2008;
Ingram, 2008). Objecting to this prejudice, the 2 authors compared and evaluated social
media with other traditional mainstream news media. They argued that wrong or inaccurate
information can exist in all kinds of news media, and the advantages of Twitter are its strong
timeliness and the ability to offer constant updates of the current event. Accordingly,
something wrong or fake can be corrected immediately in the spreading process. Therefore,
although sometimes news on social media is fake and imprecise, social media is still a worthy
news source which provides timely first-hand information.
Similarly, Sankaranarayanan, Samet, Teitler, Lieberman and Sperling (2009) also identified
the strength of social media, which is to immediately spread users’ feedback and viewpoints
of any action happened in the real world. Hence, instead of just waiting for the update from
6
conventional news media, social media offers an attractive way for people to gain and
comment on breaking news. In terms of different groups of people’s reflection of using social
media to gain news, Marchi (2012) argued that compared with adults and old people,
adolescents prefer learning about current events and news through social media, because they
do not think anything in the traditional news media is directly related to them. But the
characteristic of social network in social media makes teenagers better link to the news
posted by their friends, families or someone else related to them.
As social media is becoming a prevalent way to obtain news, its influence on traditional
journalism and news media has attracted more scholars’ attention. Extracting from literature
on computer science, Hermida (2010) argued that social media can accelerate the online
diffusion of both official and unofficial information, and provide a new interaction about
news. Therefore, its outstanding ability to disseminate news widely and timely causes an
increasing number of mainstream news media to start struggling for a place in the market of
social media. Further focusing on Latin American journalism, Saldaña, Higgins Joyce,
Schmitz Weiss, and Alves (2016) specifically identified social media as an important
contribution to investigative journalism which is significant in Latin America. Accordingly,
social media has affected journalism and news media heavily.
Moreover, in terms of the relationship between social media and news media, scholars often
share similar views. Through a multi-method study including an online survey, an analysis of
the Twitter networks of German sports journalists and a content analysis, Nölleke, Grimmer
and Horky (2016) evaluated the relation between sports journalism and social media. The
results show that although social media and news media are in competitive and integrative
relation, there is a main complementary relation between them in the process of news
gathering, selection and distribution. This kind of “complementary force” was also confirmed
by Wang and Mark’s (2016) study. Additionally, Wahl-Jorgensen et al. (2016) definitely
argued that although the use of social media as a news source and the subsequent user
participation are increasing, elite sources are still dominating the news content of mainstream
media. Therefore, social media is a threat to the journalism but it can not replace traditional
news media.
Besides, in some ways using social media as a news tool has affected journalists as well. By
carrying out a survey of 877 journalists in Latin America, Saldaña et al. (2016) emphasised
7
the change of the gatekeeping role of journalists. Because social media can be shared with
more ordinary people who are not professional or official, the more journalists use social
media, the more trust they can gain from them. Then, through an online survey of US
journalists which belonged to a national project, Weaver and Willna (2016) identified the
positive effect of social media on US journalists’ behaviour and attitudes: social media can
make journalism accountable to the public. It is becoming a popular way for journalists to
gather information from both other news organisations and the audience, but they use it less
common to interview sources or to verify information. Simultaneously, a problem was also
mentioned that social media may not good for the journalistic profession because of its
preference for speed rather than accuracy.
Accordingly, nowadays social media has become an important news tool for both ordinary
people and professional journalists. The former uses it as a channel to gain news in real time,
and the latter regards it as a complementary news source. Besides, social media poses a threat
to the traditional news media but can not replace it at the present stage. Simultaneously, it
also attracts people’s attention to the quality of the news.
2.2 News and the emergence of fake news
With the development of culture and technology, the meaning of news has been changed
(Deuze, 2005). By investigating Twitter, Sankaranarayanan et al. (2009) found that most of
the tweets were users’ original content. It can be inferred that Twitter to some extent changed
the characteristic of conventional news media that audience can not express their opinions.
Furthermore, the research implemented by Leskovec, Backstrom and Kleinberg (2009)
indicated that news in the form of a quoted phrase can first appear from either news media or
blogs. Therefore, information from unofficial organisations or individuals can be also
identified as news. They also pointed out the advantage of social media that news on blogs
can keep popular longer and blogs often react quickly on latest news than large news media.
Analogously, after analysing the online survey and further interviews with British newspaper
websites, Hermida and Thurman (2008) argued that user-generated content (UGC) from the
public is newsworthy and can be integrated into news. As a result, besides the information
from traditional professional news media, user-generated content from both organisations and
individual users on social media who can be either authoritative or not, can also be regarded
8
as news. And it is more and more common to be cited by journalists into their formal news
reports. However, the drawback of UGC should not be ignored. It may raise the possibility of
misinformation. Meanwhile, the quality of news on social media may be poorer than that
from other news sources because of the word count limitation as well as users’ use of
language (Sankaranarayanan et al., 2009). To figure out this problem, Hermida and Thurman
(2008) and Hermida (2010) emphasised the importance of journalists’ supervision and
examination. Journalists should justify carefully what can be integrated into a report and what
can not to keep their organisations and content professional, credible and legal.
In the context of social media, reasons leading to the emergence of fake news can be various.
First, Mullainathan and Shleifer (2004) confirmed that fake news can result from readers’
biased beliefs and the consequent competition of news media. In other words, in order to gain
a competitive advantage in the market, news media tends to slant the news to cater to reader
diversity and their biased beliefs. These 2 reasons finally have an influence on the accuracy
of news and to some extent result in the biased news which does not cover the whole truth.
Qiuqiu (2010) analysed the formation process of a piece of fake news with the headline:
“Tomorrow NASA will announce the news from space, which is enough shocking for all
mankind”. At the beginning, the headline released by Studio Aperto, an Italian news
programme of Italia 1, was that “Tomorrow NASA will announce shocking news from
space”. Then it was changed into “Tomorrow NASA will announce the news from space,
which may be shocking for all mankind” and finally “may be shocking” evolved into “is
enough shocking”. It is evident that the words used in the news headline were changed to be
more attractive so that the headline could better cater to people’s curiosity then the click rate
could increase. The author also mentioned that as the amplifier, Weibo played an important
role in the process of rumour spreading. Therefore, social media can to some extent
encourage the spread of fake news.
Then, Khaldarova and Pantti (2016) analysed Russia’s strategic narratives in the information
war, and they argued that fake news always occurs in the form of agitation propaganda. For
example, fake news was used as strategic narratives to slander Ukrainian government and
army and could simultaneously incite public opinion. Similarly, using the example of the fake
news that Apple Store is removing Chinese applications from the shelves, Lingzhang (2017)
clearly stated that the media (We Media) used one-sided explanation and over amplifying of
9
the truth to fan people’s feelings of nationalism. Accordingly, fake news can be created and
used to control and guide the public opinion.
In addition to these active reasons, Weaver and Willnat (2016) also identified the passive
cause of fake news -- the popular usage of social media can decrease the quality of news and
end up with fake news. Furthermore, information distortion resulting from reposting may
cause the formation of fake news. In the case of the fake news of movie Titanic, what made a
joke gradually become a piece of fake news was that the tag #fake news# disappeared during
the communication process (Doubandounimei, 2012). Therefore, the information may be
misrepresented either intentionally or unintentionally during the process of people’s reposting,
and eventually deviates from the intention of the original news or information provider.
In conclusion, the invention and constantly innovation of social media to some extent extend
the range of news. Nowadays, even ordinary people without professional qualification can
become news providers. Simultaneously, however, it also increases the likelihood of fake
news.
2.3 Influence of fake news and people’s attitudes towards it
The number of literature collected about the effect of fake news and people’s attitudes
towards it is limited, it to some extent shows the research tendency and indicates that they
can be new research directions to fill the gap. On one hand, in terms of people’s attitudes, Fu
(2015) interviewed with 8 people to investigate their attitudes to fake images on social media.
The analysis of the results evidently shows that people would not repost a fake image that
they knew was fake, except to notify people of the truth or just for fun. However, they would
not always verify if an image is true or fake on social media. Besides, in Khaldarova and
Pantti’s (2016) evaluation of Russia’s strategic narratives in the information war, comments
including people’s sarcasm and satire became the majority of the feedback of fake news.
Therefore, people always think that fake news is shameful and disgusting, and they often try
to prevent it from incessant spread by simply stopping reposting it or notifying people of the
truth. But sometimes they will repost fake information just for fun.
On the other hand, Fu (2015) also focused on the influence of fake news. In this investigation,
most of the participants agreed on the statement that fake images can misguide people.
10
Specifically, fake commercial images may result in cheating, fake images about terrorist
attacks can have a negative effect on both people who see them and people who are in the
photo. Therefore, different kinds of fake news may have different effects. Basically, all of
them are bad for people and can even threaten the stable development of the society.
2.4 People’s ability and methods to verify news on social media
The special characteristic of social media can benefits the emergence of fake news, so there is
a strongly urgent for both journalists and ordinary people to develop and improve their ability
and approaches to verify news on social media. This field is becoming a research trend for
scholars all over the world.
First, people’s ability to verify news and the current status of news verification on social
media have been investigated. From the perspective of verification tools, by interviewing
journalists working with social media in European news organisations, Brandtzaeg, Lüders,
Spangenberg, Rath-Wiggins and Følstad (2015) stated the drawback that news from social
media is more difficult to be controlled and verified. Thus, this kind of verification must
depend more on technology. Nowadays, however, there is not a single tool which can satisfy
the total verification requirements. This view was backed up by Schifferes and Newman’s
(2013) research, and they further argued that a user-centred and multi-faceted method should
be created to cater to the need of verification. From the perspective of people’s ability, taking
image verification as an example, Fu (2015) identified the weakness that people did not get
used to verifying images on social media, and there was not a uniform way for verification.
Moreover, people tended to judge images subjectively without using any method.
Accordingly, people’s ability to verify images is inadequate because they often proceed from
their own intuition and methods used are not in a systematic way based on the limitation of
technology. But this poor situation may be undergoing a change for the better because Wang
and Mark’s (2016) research results clearly show that more and more people have the
experience of verifying news on social media.
Compared with ordinary people’s approaches to verify news on social media, methods used
by journalists attract more scholars’ attention because the truth of news is more significant for
journalists. Hermida (2012) argued that a more iterative and collaborative method should be
applied. Through the analysis of interviews with journalists, Brandtzaeg et al. (2015)
11
summarised the way they verify news on social media: first, identify if the news provider is
trustworthy, such as the verified accounts; second, access eyewitnesses and authenticating
sources, for example contact people involved in the news to validate the information; next,
use traditional journalistic methods because conventional journalistic criteria can still be
applied to social media; then, use multimodal verification and verification tools to identify
and check videos and images; last but not least, sometimes journalists need to keep balance
between the time cost to verify the news and the timeliness to report the news immediately,
so the result of trade off is to present disclaimers.
On this basis, Nölleke et al. (2016) added an important way which is to get relevant
information from other news media complementarily to verify the news. Simultaneously, it is
worth noting that some unexpected research results are concluded. By carrying out a
quantitative overview of articles from 2 newspapers and a content analysis, Paulussen and
Harder (2014) found something worthy of researching: different from the traditional
“hierarchy of credibility”, when journalists deal with the source from social media, they
tended to trust the information generated by the public rather than the content from people
who were more authoritative, professional or famous. In Saldaña et al.’s (2016) research, the
result of the correlation analysis also confirmed this point of view--journalists prefer trusting
the information from people they are not familiar with instead of public figures. This
phenomenon is opposite to the traditional way of news verification and to some extent can be
seen as a special method to identify fake news. So it is interesting and can be deeply
considered in this research.
In terms of ordinary people and their ways to verify news on social media, Khaldarova and
Pantti (2016) identified the significance of a website called Stopfake.org where people can
verify the accuracy of the news they have found with the given guidance. One of the common
methods is to point out the insufficient evidence, while another one is to find out the detail
which is inconsistent with the reality. And the strongest method to refute the fake news is to
find evidence including totally opposite narratives. Besides, they also found that people’s
nationalities may affect their attitudes towards fake news, aa shown in the research that all
trust came from Russian while all distrust came from Ukrainian. Thus, people’s position is
often taken into account unconsciously when they verify news.
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Wang and Mark (2016) evaluated and justified verification methods through 2 online surveys.
In addition to Khaldarova and Pantti’s (2016) research results, the 2 authors discovered that
most of the ordinary people (about 70%) also pay attention to checking the credibility of the
source cited and the soundness of the argument. Specifically, people search for relevant
information by search engines, focus on related information on citizen media, compare and
contrast the reports about the same events in different sources, trace the source of the
information, and refer to reports from official media. However, it is worth mentioning that
they found people would rarely verify the credibility of the author and the authenticity of the
number of re-posts and likes. Concentrating on image verification, Fu (2015) logically
summarised 3 approaches: first, look for the photoshopped marks and refer to other users’
comments, then compare information with other bloggers to check if there is a coincidence in
the picture and if it is defective, and finally verify images from the perspective of common
sense and their experience. Therefore, it can be concluded that current methods of ordinary
people to verify news on social media are not methodical enough. In this context, based on
the concept of conflicting information, Jin, Cao, Zhang and Luo (2016) designed a systematic
way to deal with news verification on social media and took Twitter as an example: first,
according to the topic model method, conflicting information about a specific piece of news
can be identified. Next, a credibility propagation network showing the supporting or opposing
relationships of those tweets can be created. With continual iterations, the final assessment
result is able to show whether the news is reliable.
In conclusion, currently news verification is difficult for both journalists and ordinary people,
and there is not a perfect approach to catering to the growing verification requirements.
People tend to use their experience of life and work to deal with the news they suspect the
truth of, so a more methodical method of news verification on social media is needed.
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Chapter 3. Methodology
3.1 Research design
Because of the research aims and objectives, the qualitative research method was chosen in
this study. Qualitative methods involved a researcher to interpret people’s characteristics or
events in the natural setting and included lots of empirical materials such as case study,
interview and personal experience (Thomas, 2003). According to the research aims which
were to investigate the way ordinary people verify news on social media and their attitudes
towards it, and further propose a more methodical method based on the former results, the
qualitative method was more applicable. Specifically, the converging-question approach of
interview was used in this research to make questions more flexible and deeper.
3.2 Sample
In terms of the participants, 8 students at the University of Sheffield were selected as the
participants. All of them had some degree of the experience of using social media, such as
WeChat, Weibo, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Therefore, they could provide enough
information and data related to the research topic. Additionally, in order to decrease the effect
of nationality on the study, all participants needed to come from one single country. Because
the researcher is Chinese, it was convenient to access and communicate with Chinese
students. Therefore, all participants were from China. On this basis, the gender ratio of the
participants was balanced that the number of female participants and male participants were
the same. As a result, the potential risks brought by gender could be reduced.
3.3 Data collection
3.3.1 Interview planning and pilot
The converging-question approach of interview was selected in the research as the way to
collect data. Several questions related to the research topic were asked. First, in order to get
some background information, participants needed to specify their thoughts of news and the
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way they obtained news. Second, questions about participants’ social media habits were
asked. Then questions summarised from the literature were discussed to investigate their
opinions about some existing methods used to verify news on social media. After that,
participants’ attitudes towards fake news and news verification on social media and their own
ways of news verification were asked.
In order to ensure that the quality of the interview could better achieve the research aims, the
pilot interview which 1 participant took part in was carried out as the first step. From the pilot
interview, some potential problems were discovered. First, some questions designed were not
so perfect that sometimes the answers were too simple and not deep enough. Accordingly, for
some research questions, the researcher could only get the participant’s superficial opinions
and the way of act, but felt difficult to find out the reasons behind the behaviour. Moreover,
sometimes the participant was confused about the question meaning and had a different
understanding which was different from the researcher’s original intention of the question
setting. All of the above made the interview last less than 20 minutes. It indicated that the
question design and the way to ask needed refining. On this basis, in the formal interview, the
interview questions were improved to be more detailed and easily understood. Some
examples and cases could be included in to make sure participants can properly understand
the question meaning. Simultaneously, the researcher also improved the way to ask.
According to the different responses from different participants, sometimes questions should
be adjusted appropriately to achieve better results. For instance, questions like “Why do you
think that?” and “Can you give an example?” could be posed when the answer was not
detailed or not in-depth. Therefore, the interview could better serve the research and deeper
reveal the way people verify news on social media. In the formal interviews, the duration of
each interview lasted between 28 minutes and 61 minutes. Although improvements were
made after the pilot, the data from the pilot was all relevant to the research aims, and in
consultation with the supervisor it was decided it could be included in analysis, as participant
P1.
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3.3.2 Final interview questions
As shown in Appendix 1, the formal interview including 26 questions were divided into 5
parts based on different aims. Besides, in order to achieve a deep-level investigation, some
supplementary questions were asked.
1. What is your definition of “news”?
2. How do you usually get news?
The first part was designed to investigate each participant’s own understanding of news and
the general way he or she accesses news. In the context of social media, the definition of
news may differ from the participant’s traditional understanding of it. Therefore, participants’
views of news and their common channels to get news could be collected and compared to
previous research findings. After data analysis, maybe some similarities and differences
could be found. At the end of this part, the researcher needed to elaborate on the meaning of
news in this research context to ensure that all participants had the correct background
knowledge of the interview.
3. How much time do you spend on social media everyday?
4. Do you agree that social media has become an indispensable part in your daily life?
5. Which social media platform do you use? How do you use it?
6. Do you use all of the social media platforms for the same purpose? With the same use?
7. Do you always post texts or images on social media? What kinds of information do you
always post? Why do you post?
8. Do you always repost texts or images on social media? What kinds of information? Why?
9. Will you check the authenticity of the information before reposting? Why?
10. Who do you always share the information on social media with?
Question 3 to 10 aimed to find out participants’ habits of using social media, such as their
preferences and activities for different social media platforms and behaviour of sharing first-
hand and second-hand information. Question 9 particularly focused on their behaviour of
checking the authenticity before resposting.
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11. Paying attention to the news providers (the original provider and people who reposted it)
and their identities.
12. verifying the identities of the news providers.
13. You may prefer to trust the information from ordinary people or someone you are not
familiar with instead of public figures and official accounts.
14. Based on your experience and knowledge, checking the soundness of the news content,
such as the argument, details and evidence.
15. Accessing eyewitnesses, insiders or relevant information from search engines, other
news media and credible sources.
16. Using tools to check the videos and images in news.
17. Your position may affect your attitude and judgment toward a piece of news.
The third part of the interview included 7 statements summerised from previous studies,
which showed some existing methods of news verification on social media. They were used
to investigate participants’ opinions. In order to achieve a better effect, all statements were
printed in both English and Chinese. This piece of paper was given to participants to help
them better understand and deliberate on each of the statement.
18. What do you think of the news on social media?
19. Do you agree that fake news can impact heavily on people’s real life? How big influence
can it have?
20. What do you usually do when you find a piece of news on social media is fake? Why?
21. Did you ever post or repost a piece of fake news even though you knew it was fake?
Why?
22. What do you think of news verification on social media? Is it necessary? Why?
23. What is your attitude to the news presented in the form of radio, texts, videos and
pictures? Which one is easier to be fake? Which one is more credible?
Question 18 to 23 were designed to figure out participants’ attitude towards fake news and
news verification on social media. In this section, the researcher could know about their
general feeling of the current situation of news on social media, their understanding of news
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verification and their reactions and treatment methods when they face to fake news.
Furthermore, question 23 aimed to investigate participants’ feelings of different forms of
news.
24. Do you have the habit to doubt the truth of news on social media? Why?
25. Will you proactively verify the news you think may be fake? Why?
26. How will you verify news on social media?
The last 3 questions focused on each participant’ own methods of verifying news on social
media. The answers could be compared with their opinions of the 7 existing news verification
methods summarised in the third section. It could be helpful to further figure out their
cognition of news verification.
3.3.3 Carrying out the interviews
All interviews were designed to take place in the iSpace and the Diamond where both the
researcher and participants were convenient to access. Furthermore, each interview was
carried out in a group room booked in advance. First, it could protect participants’ privacy.
Simultaneously, the environment might affect their intention of sharing, they might get relax
and be more willing to express their views and experiences of this topic in a private and quiet
place without other people’s interference and distraction. Besides, the face-to-face interview
was chosen because this direct form of communication could make the researcher and
participants better understand each other. It also gave the researcher more flexibility to
control the interviews so that much deeper research findings could be obtained.
During the interview, the entire conversation between the researcher and the participant
needed recording, which got permission after the participant signed the consent form.
Because both the researcher and all participants were Chinese, the language of Chinese was
used for communication so that the interview could be smoother and participants could feel
relaxed to express their ideas. After each interview, the entire conversation was transcribed
and translated into English, and all of the documents were stored safely.
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3.4 Data analysis
In order to prepare for the data analysis better, first of all, all of the 8 interview records were
transcribed from the audio files and then translated into English for discussion with the
supervisor and presentation of quotes in the dissertation. Second, each participant’s
characteristics of the understanding of news, social media habits, opinions of existing news
verification methods, attitudes towards news verification and fake news, and his or her own
methods to verify news were summarised. Next, according to the research aims, objectives
and the 5 sections of the interview, the data collected was divided into some different themes.
Then thematic analysis could be used to compare participants’ answers so that the similarities
and differences could be discovered. Thematic analysis was chosen because it is appropriate
for data interpretation, coding and categorising (Alhojailan, 2012). Hence, the main themes
were recognised and the data could be analysed in depth.
3.5 Limitations
Although the formal interviews were improved by learning from the pilot interview’s results,
there were still some limitations could be summarised in the research. First, participants were
Chinese. Although it could overcome the language barrier, it also meant that the research
failed to involve different nationalities and cultures, which might impact on people’s
responses and reaction to the same question. For example, in terms of radio, students in
western countries might have more experience, by contrast, Chinese students had less access
to it. So they were not familiar with the radio news and did not know how to evaluate it.
Simultaneously, the 2 most common used social media platforms mentioned by participants
were WeChat and Weibo, although they were very popular in China and could to some extent
replace the function of Facebook and Twitter, they were not the most representative and
pervasive social media in the whole world. Therefore, the research findings might reflect
more of the China’s current situation about fake news and news verification on social media,
which might not be applied universally.
Second, all participants were Chinese overseas students at the University of Sheffield.
Originally, the research aimed to investigate ordinary people who might have different ages,
educational backgrounds, professions and beliefs. However, it was difficult to access
different kinds of people and conduct face to face interviews to them, so Chinese students at
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the University of Sheffield were finally selected to make up the participants in the research.
Accordingly, the research finding might be more biased towards the opinions of young
people with high education, instead of all kinds of ordinary people.
The third limitation resulted from the researcher’s lack of experience. On one hand, some
participants occasionally thought that some questions were repetitive. It indicated that the
question design need improving. Besides, because the researcher was inexperienced to carry
out face to face interview, sometimes the researcher found that an interview should have been
better implemented. For example, more detailed questions should have been asked when the
participant’s responses were too simple, and some interesting points which were worth of
studying should have been paid attention to. The research was also impeded because the
researcher was stranded, unable to re-enter the UK, for the 6 weeks before the submission
date, with limited access to resources to enable completion of the dissertation.
3.6 Ethical aspects
In social research, ethical principles are essential and need considering carefully. It should be
judged from 4 perspectives: kindness to participants, informed consent, privacy protection
such as anonymity and confidentiality, and honesty (Bryman, 2012). In this research, human
participation was involved and interview was used to collect data, so the ethical aspects must
be considered. First, there were no sensitive issues contained in the interview and informed
consent forms were sent to the participants before interviewing with the researcher. Second,
all data collected in the research was respected and consistent with participants. Then, all data
and participants’ personal information was kept anonymously to protect their privacy. The
data was stored with a password on a storage device and was destroyed after the research.
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Chapter 4. Findings and results
This chapter concentrates on the data analysis of the 8 interviews carried out in the research.
First, each participant’s characteristics will be summarised from different perspectives. On
this basis, thematic analysis will be applied to compare and analyse the 8 interviews in depth.
4.1 Characteristics of each participant
According to their sequence of participating in the interview, P1, P2...P8 are used to represent
the 8 participants respectively. Specifically, P1, P2, P4 and P6 are females, while P3, P5, P7
and P8 are males. Individual descriptions of P1, P5, P6 and P7 are shown as following
because they are most distinctive and each can represent a kind of specific characteristic. The
rest of descriptions are in Appendix 2.
P1 holds the traditional understanding of news that only official news media can release news,
and she usually gets news online. P1 thinks social media is very important for her because
nowadays many news medias open their official accounts on social media, but she does not
spend much time on it everyday. P1 uses WeChat for communication and Weibo to obtain
news, but she is not very active on them. Sometimes she posts landscape photos, records her
daily life on the Moments and occasionally reposts news and some well-written articles.
Information on WeChat is shared with all her followers and information on Weibo is open to
the public.
P1 said that she did not have the habit to check news authenticity, but her subsequent answers
indicate that she actually verifies news on social media. P1 thinks news on social media is
very fast but it may cause the inaccuracy. She thinks that whether the influence of fake news
is big or not depends on the news content. And she will do nothing when she find fake news
on social media, unless it is related to her. P1 recognises the significance of news verification
but always stresses that ordinary people have no ability to verify news, and it should be
carried out by professionals and authoritative organisations. She likes questioning everything,
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and maybe she would verify the news she doubt. The ways she uses are to check the news
content depending on her experience and knowledge and search relevant information.
P5 thinks that only media workers can release news and he always obtains news online.
Social media is important for him to get information and communicate with friends, and he
spends more than 1 hour on it everyday. For P5, WeChat has replaced the role of telephone,
sometimes he also chats with people on Baidu Post Bar. Besides, he watches videos on
YouTube and Bilibili for entertainment. P5 is not very active on social media, he occasionally
posts something he wants to record or share with friends, and sometimes reposts something
he is interested in. Generally, P5 does not think it is very significant to check information
authenticity before reposting, so he just verifies it roughly. Moreover, he shares information
on WeChat with acquaintances and information on Baidu Post Bar with people having
common hobbies.
Except for the third method, P5 agrees with every news verification method shown in the
third part of the interview, but actually he would only take a look at the identity of the news
provider, judge the news based on common sense and search relevant information online.
However, this instant response is inconsistent with his answer to the last question, in which
he said that he just used the search engine to find related information. P5 thinks news on
social media is easier to be fake because sometimes news providers are not professional, and
he also thinks that fake news can heavily affect people’s life. P5 are not expanding much time
on fake news and he just ignore it, unless it is shared by his relatives. He recognises the
importance of news verification and thinks that the government, social media platforms and
users should be responsible for it together. P5 said before that he tended to trust information
posted by other people, but then he said that he would doubt the truth of news on social
media. Furthermore, he would only proactively verify the news which he is interested in or
may affect his self-interest.
Because P6’s undergraduate major is journalism, she has a deeper and professional
understanding of news. She thinks that news screened just shows part of the facts and both
the authoritative media and We Media can become news providers. Generally, she gets news
from some websites and social media platforms. P6 sees social media as an indispensable
channel to connect her with the world. She uses several social media platforms and spends 3
to 4 hours on them everyday. WeChat is used to communicate with her parents and Chinese
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friends, Weibo and Instagram are used to browse through the information she is interested in
and Facebook is used to contact foreign friends. P6 is not very active on social media, she
posts original thoughts and ideas, something about her everyday life and travel photos once a
week to record her life and express feelings. Sometimes she reposts academic articles to share
with people who may interested in them. P6 is cautious about reposting and would check
information authenticity before reposting. Generally, information on her Moments is shared
with all followers, but sometimes she only shares some views which may not be accepted by
everyone with friends who have the same values with her.
Although P6 thinks that some of them have limitations, she basically approves of all methods
summarised from previous research. She pointed out that nowadays news can be used by
medias to distract people’s attention or earn money, and she thinks a piece of fake news may
not be totally false, maybe it is exaggerated or out of context. P6 thinks that fake news must
affect people’s life. When she gets fake news on social media from acquaintances, she will
tell them that it is not real, otherwise she will just ignore it. P6 is in deepest agreement with
the significance of news verification and thinks that it should become part of everyone’s
media literacy. Duo to her major, she is suspicious of news on social media but only
proactively verifies the news which she is interested in or is valuable to her. Otherwise, she
will just wait for other people to do it. Furthermore, the methods she verifies news are to take
a look at the original information source and check the news content.
P7 thinks news is the latest information about all perspectives, which should be released by
the special department of government, media workers or authorities of social media platforms.
He gets news through the automatic push service of social media platform, news applications,
the window popping up on his laptop desktop and the chat with friends. P7 thinks that social
media impact heavily on his life, because everyone can not live without social activity, and
he can quickly obtain the conception of world and society by using social media. He uses
various social media platforms and spends much time on them everyday. P7 uses WeChat to
communicate with friends, uses QQ to connect with people in a same game guild, uses
QZone to get friends status and sometimes reads the news other people repost, and uses
Weibo to read news. Besides, Baisibudejie and Bilibili are used for entertainment, and the
latter is also used to get news. P7 is very active on social media, he uses the Moments as a
electronic photo album to post some inspiration and feelings on. He often reposts something
to share his interests with more people or to inform people something important. P7 thinks it
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is his responsibility to check information authenticity before reposting. Generally, his
information on WeChat is shared with friends, information on QQ is shared with people in
the same game guild and he may be not familiar with them. Furthermore, information on QQ
and QZone is open to the public, and information on Weibo, Baisibudejie and Bilibili is
shared with his followers.
P7 agrees with all the news verification methods presented in the interview. He thinks that
more fake news which can heavily affect people’s life exists on social media, and nowadays
news is used as a tool to control public opinion. If he finds fake news on social media, P7 will
leave words in the comment area to remind people. P7 approves the significance of news
verification, he also thinks that everyone should devote himself to it. Furthermore, P7 would
doubt the truth of news on social media, unless it belongs to official informative news. Then
he would proactively verify it by using his experience and knowledge to judge it, searching
relevant information online and even discussing it with friends.
4.2 The comparison of 8 interview conversations
4.2.1 Participants’ understanding of news and the way they get news
1.Definition of news
In the interviews, all participants hold the similar view of the content of news. They think that
news presented in many forms includes real-time information, facts and knowledge from
various fields, and people can get what they want based on their needs and interests.
Furthermore, P6 emphasises the value of news she thinks that news is the processed truth.
However, participants have different points of view on the identity of the news provider. On
one hand, half of them (P1, P2, P5 and P7) emphasise on the significance of news provider’s
qualification. A news provider must be official (P1), authoritative and good at writing (P2).
Only media workers (P5), the department of Public Information and operators of social media
platforms (P7) can release news. On the other hand, the rest of participants (P3, P4, P6 and
P8) agree that people, organisations and media without qualification can also report news.
Therefore, even an individual can become a news provider.
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2.The way to get news
From the answers of the 8 participants, it can be indicated that all of them get news online
instead of traditional media like newspapers, TV and magazines.
P1:“Now we have no TVs and I do not read newspaper.”
Specifically, social media applications and news applications based on mobile terminals are
the most popular channels, especially Weibo (P2, P6) and WeChat (P2, P3, P5 and P6),
because they aggregate various news sources (P2) and can offer news with fast speed, short
time cost and fewer restrictions on geographical characteristics (P8). Moreover, P1, P5 and
P7 mentioned that the automatic push service on both PC and mobile terminals is a way to
obtain news. Besides, P5 also gets news from Baidu, P6 gets news from some websites and
P7 gets news from his friends.
4.2.2 Participants’ social media usage preferences and habits
1.Social media use intensity
First, it averagely costs each participant more than 1 hour to use social media everyday.
Specifically, P1 and P5 spend 1 to 2 hours, P4 and P8 spend more than 2 hours, P2, P3 and
P6 spend 3 to 4 hours, and P7 spends 5 to 6 hours. P6, P7 and P8 also mentioned that they
use social media very frequently. Then, all participants agree with the significant of social
media in their daily life. Compared with other information media, social media can provide
richer and broader information (P4 and P5) and news (P1 and P7) from many sources with
fast speed and low cost (P8). So P6 and P7 think it is an important way to access the outside
world, which can make P6 feel saver. Furthermore, it is also an important platform for social
activity (P7), P2 and P5 see social media as an indispensable way to communicate with
people, and P8 thinks it is good for social media to offer the opportunity of interaction
between users. On this basis, P3 and P8 think that social media is the best choice which can
not be replaced.
2.Participants’ usage of social media
From the interviews, social media platforms and the ways they are used are summarised. First,
WeChat is the most commonly used platform, all participants use it everyday for
communication (P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6, P7 and P8), getting information from public accounts
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(P3 and P4) and the Moments (P4 and P6). Weibo is the second popular platform used by 5
participants (P1, P2, P6, P7 and P8), and they use it to get news and information. 3
participants (P3, P4 and P6) use Facebook to contact friends, especially foreign friends (P4
and P6), and P6 also use it to keep track of friends’ latest status. Similarly, What’s up is used
by 2 participants (P3 and P4) for communication. Moreover, Bilibili is used by 3 participants
(P3, P5 and P7), while YouTube is used by 2 participants (P3 and P5), they choose these 2
video platforms to watch videos and webcasts for entertainment.
Besides, there are some social media platforms mentioned by 1 participant. P5 uses Baidu
Post Bar to chat with other users, P6 uses Instagram to get information from the accounts
followed. P7 uses QQ to communicate with people in a game guild, QZone to get friends’
latest status and news. He also uses Baisibudejie for entertainment. Furthermore, all
participants use different social media platforms for different purposes and in different ways.
3.Participants’ usage of posting and reposting
From the interview results, only 3 participants (P3, P4 and P7) always post something on
social media. Moreover, P3 and P7 mentioned that they tend to post information on WeChat
instead of other platforms.
P3:“Except for WeChat, I do not always post something on other social media platforms. I
think it is related to my nationality because most of my followers and people I am following
on other social media platforms are foreigners. ”
However, most of the participants (P1, P2, P5, P6 and P8) post texts or images infrequently
on social media, P5 and P8 said that they do not have the habit to share their daily life online.
The information participants post are records of daily life (P1, P3, P4 and P6), travel photos
(P1, P5 and P6), original thoughts and feelings (P6 and P7), something significant (P2 and
P5), and reading log (P6). Participants can record their daily life (P5, P6 and P7), share their
latest status to family and friends (P3, P4 and P5) and express their feelings (P6 and P7)
through posting. P6 also wants the information posted can resonate and inspire herself.
Similar to the results of posting, only 3 participants (P1, P4 and P7) usually repost texts or
images on social media, while the other 5 participants (P2, P3, P5, P6 and P8) do not always
do that. The reasons are that P2 thinks most of information on social media is not worth
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reposting, and P3 ascribe it to his characters and he also thinks that information posted by
elder people is less reliable. The content participants repost can be divided into 4 classes:
information related to participant’s interests and hobbies (P2, P5, P7 and P8), important and
useful information (P2, P7 and P8), articles (P1, P4 and P6), and news (P1and P4). They
repost information because they want to share it with more people (P4, P5, P6, P7 and P8),
they want to mark the information so that it can be found easily in the future (P2 and P8),
they think the information is worth reading or well-written (P1 and P4), and the information
can bring benefit to the participant (P2).
4.Participants’ choices of checking information before reposting
The interview conversations show that only 2 participants (P1 and P5) would not check
information authenticity before reposting. In their immediate responses, P1 thinks that all the
news she reposts is from official accounts and she does not have the ability to check it.
Simultaneously, P5 always thinks that since the information can be released online, then it
must be true, and what he usually reposts is not sensitive or misleading. However, in fact,
their latter answers in the interviews show that in some cases, P1 and P5 also check the
authenticity of news on social media. The other 6 participants (P2, P3, P4, P6, P7 and P8)
said that they would check the information before reposting. Particularly, it is worth noting
that whether P2 will do that depends on the type of information.
P2:“No, generally, the fact of the information I repost is not necessary for people, so I do not
check the authenticity. But if it is a piece of news, I will check it.”
Participants always do that because there are lots of news sources (P8) and reverse news (P6)
on social media. Therefore, P3, P4, P7 and P8 think that people should be responsible for
their words in terms of reposting information online.
5.People who participants share information on social media with
P2 and P3 always share information on social media with their friends, while P8 only share
with his parents. Furthermore, the other participants decide the people they share information
with depending on the social media platform where the information is (P1, P5 and P7) and
the content of information (P4 and P6).
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P7:“I share information on WeChat with my friends. I use QQ to communicate with people in
a same game guild, so when I find something useful, I will share it to the chat group, but
maybe there are so many people I am not familiar with or even not know in the chat group.
My account on Qzone is open to the public, so strangers may see the information I share. In
terms of Weibo, Baisibudejie and Bilibili, information is shared with my followers.”
P4:“When you want to post something on the Moments, you can select the users who you do
not want to show this post to. If the post is closer to my privacy, maybe I will select people I
am not familiar with so that they can not see it. If the information is not very important, like
an article, then all followers can see it.”
4.2.3 Participants’ opinions on existing news verification methods
1.Concentrating on the news provider’s identity
Question 11 and 12 focus on verifying news by checking the reliability of the original news
provider and people who has reposted it. First, all participants agree that paying attention to
the news provider and its identity is a basic and useful method for news verification, and they
would do it in practice. 5 participants (P2, P3, P4, P5 and P7) said that they tend to trust the
news if the news provider’s username shows that it is an authoritative, official or certified
account. Besides, P8 thinks that the accounts he has been following for a long time are more
reliable. However, only P6 also pays attention to the identities of people reposting the news.
P6: “ If the news provided by a normal user has been reposted by news media, then it is
reliable because the news media must verify it before reposting.”
Second, all participants agree that verifying the authenticity of news provider’s identity is
useful, but 5 of them (P1, P3, P5, P6 and P8) think it is hard to implement it.
P8: “ I think it is difficult for individuals to do this, it should be done by the social media
platform. When individuals and official accounts post information, the platform need to do
something to verify their identities, especially for knockoff accounts.”
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Additionally, 5 participants (P2, P3, P6, P7 and P8) unequivocally stated that they would
check the authenticity of news provider’s identity, and the only way mentioned was to check
if the account had been certified by the social media platform.
Moreover, in some cases, P5 and P7 may trust the information from ordinary people or
someone they are not familiar with more than the information from public figures and official
accounts. Because sometimes the latter may hide the facts out of interests. However, P4, P6
and P8 think that people should get and compare the information from the 2 sides to have a
full understanding.
2.Checking the soundness of the news content, based on participants’ knowledge and
experience
All participants think it can be a way to verify news, but 5 participants (P3, P4, P6, P7 and P8)
also pointed out the limitations of this method.
P7:“I think it can be a way to verify news and everyone should do this, but it is difficult to
say if it is useful because everyone has his ken.”
P2 and P3 said that they would not do it because it was too much trouble. However, P3’s
answer to Q26 shows that he checks the news content in practice. P1 would use it because she
likes finding loopholes. P5, P6, P7 and P8 would also do it, but the result depends on
personal ability, so sometimes misjudgment can be made.
3.Accessing eyewitnesses or relevant information from search engines, other news media and
credible sources
In terms of this method, only 2 participants (P2 and P3) disagree with it, they think that the
information or eyewitnesses found can also be fake. P2, P3 and P6 will not use it to verify
news because it is difficult and too much trouble to carry it out. Furthermore, for the other 5
participants (P1, P4, P5, P7 and P8) who agree with this method, 3 of them (P4, P5 and P8)
will use it only when the news is important for or related to them. And all of the 5
participants chose to search relevant information online instead of looking for eyewitnesses.
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4.Using tools to check the videos and images in news
All participants think it is helpful and useful, but only P7 who is experienced in Photoshop
may use it, because ordinary people can not use these professional tools (P1, P2, P3, P5, P6,
P7 and P8), and it also takes time and energy to do that (P2, P3, P4 and P6). Factually, they
usually check the videos and images in news based on their experience and knowledge (P3,
P4 and P5) or get useful information from comments (P4 and P7).
5.Influence of participants’ position on their attitudes and judgment to news
All participants agree with this statement, especially for the nationality (P2, P3, P4, P5, P7
and P8), gender (P7 and P8) and political preference (P6). For the direction of the influence,
4 participants (P3, P4, P7 and P8) think it is bad for news verification, because individuals
are in different status and position which may cause stereotypes and prejudices if people can
not maintain objective. Accordingly, it may encourage the spread of rumours. However, P5
said that it can have a good effect. People can take a more objective view on the news if they
can clearly realise their existing position. Additionally, P6 expressed her novel opinion:
P6:“I think it is difficult to say whether the influence is good or bad. There is different news
provided to meet the demands of various customers, because different people have different
political standpoints. So all of the news is meaningful and you can not say the influence is
bad.”
4.2.4 Participants’ attitudes towards fake news and news verification
1.Participants’ opinions of news and fake news on social media
First, participants hold different views about news on social media. P4, P6 and P7 think news
on social media is in chaos situation, both true and fake news exists. On this basis, P3 and P4
believe that most of news is reliable, while P2 and P7 hold the opposite view, and P8 pointed
out that the reliability of news is related to the platform releasing it. In terms of the feature of
news on social media, P1 thinks that its high speed to some extent reduces the accuracy, and
P5 thinks news on social media is not professional enough. Additionally, nowadays news has
been used as a tool to catch people’s attention and control the direction of public opinion (P3,
P6 and P7).
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Then, all participants agree that fake news can affect people’s real life, but they have
different views on the influence degree. P4 and P5 think the influence is big if an
inflammatory rumour can not be immediately refuted by the government. However, 4
participants (P1, P2, P3 and P6) said that the influence degree of fake news depends on the
news type and content, bad news and news close to people’s personal interests can affect
heavily. Simultaneously, P2, P7 and P8 also connect the influence degree with the audience’s
characteristics.
P8:“It depends on the user and his method, ability and attitude to verify news. If you are good
at verifying news, then fake news will have less effect on your real life. On the contrary, like
elders, children and people whose knowledge level is not high, they do not have enough
ability to verify news. So it can have big influence on their real life.”
2.Participants’ attitudes towards fake news on social media
Participants handle fake news on social media in different ways. Generally, P1, P2, P5 and P6
usually do nothing but ignore the fake news they found, because they do not think it is their
responsibility to refute rumours, and there must be someone who has already done that.
However, if the fake news is close to themselves (P1) or is shared by their acquaintances (P5
and P6), they will tell people not to trust it. On the contrary, because of the sense of social
responsibility, P3, P4 and P8 choose to report fake news immediately while P7 chooses to
leave words in the comment area, they want to reduce its bad influence on people. On this
basis, P8 said that he would search information to refute the rumour if he has spare time.
Furthermore, except for P2 who once shared a piece of fake news with a friend for fun, no
participant posted or reposted the fake news they have already known, because they do not
want fake news to continually mislead people.
3.Participants’ attitudes towards news verification on social media
Since there is lots of fake news on social media, and news verification can reduce its bad
effect on society and people’s life (P1, P2, P3, P5, P7 and P8), all participants highly
recognise the significance and necessity of news verification. In terms of people who should
be responsible for it, participants give different opinions: first, P1 and P4 do not think
ordinary people have energy and ability to verify news, so it should be implemented by
professional people and organisations or people who are interested in news verification. Then,
P2 and P7 think that news providers, especially certified accounts, should be responsible for
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their words. However, P3, P5, P6, P7 and P8 think that users of social media should master
some skills of news verification, which P6 regards as part of media literacy. Furthermore, P3,
P5 and P8 think that social media platforms should provide prefect review mechanism and
reporting system to benefit verifying news. Then, P5 and P8 also mentioned the important
role of the government, which should pass laws and regulations about news verification.
4.Participants’ attitudes towards news presented in different forms
Participants hold different opinions on different forms of news. P2 thinks news photographs
are more attractive than text news. However, P5 likes reading text news because it is relaxing,
time-saving and can clearly show the argument and data. Simultaneously, P6 pointed out that
news in any from can be distorted.
Compared with news in any other form, radio news is less popular among participants (P2,
P3, P5, P6 and P7). Most of them (P1, P2, P3, P6, P7 and P8) agree that it is easier to make
fake text news and news photographs than fake video news and radio news. However, P5
thinks text news is more reliable, while P4 do not trust radio news because it is hard to verify
the information released by radio.
4.2.5 Participants’ own ways of news verification on social media
All participants have experience of doubting news on social media, but the conditions are
different. Only 3 participants (P1, P5 and P6) have the habit of doubting all news they read,
and they do it because of personal hobby (P1), the chaos situation of news on social media
(P5) and the subconscious habit brought by the undergraduate major (P6). However, the news
provider’s identity affects whether most of the participants (P2, P3, P4 and P7) will doubt the
news or not. P2, P3 and P4 will doubt the news only when the news provider is not an official
or authoritative account. Furthermore, P7 will doubt the truth when the news is not a
notification from an official account. Additionally, P8 will doubt the news only when it is
related to himself or his interests.
Moreover, not each piece of news doubted can be further verified. Only 3 participants (P3, P7
and P8) verify all fake news they doubted because of the search for facts and truth (P7 and
P8). However, most of the participants (P1, P2, P4, P5 and P6) only proactively verify the
news which is related to their life or interests, because they do not want to spend much time
and energy on insignificant matters (P5 and P6). In terms of the news verification methods
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used, participants usually search relevant information online (P1, P2, P4, P5, P7 and P8),
check if the news provider is reliable (P3, P4, P6 and P7), judge the news content based on
their knowledge and experience (P3, P4, P6 and P7), and read comments (P2, P4 and P8).
Furthermore, P2 may also access people involved in the news and P8 may also discuss the
news with friends.
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Chapter 5. Discussion
This chapter concentrates on summarising and discussing the interview results, then
compares the results with previous research findings and exams in depth of the reasons
behind their answers and behaviour. It includes 6 parts. First, participants’ understanding of
news and the ways they get news will be summarised. Second, their usage preferences and
habits of social media will be presented. The third section will show participants’ opinions on
existing news verification methods summarised from the literature in detail. Then,
participants’ attitudes towards fake news and news verification will be discussed. Next, the
fifth section will focus on their own ways to verify news in practice. Finally, a methodical
method of news verification on social media will be proposed, based on the research findings.
5.1 Participants’ understanding of news and the way they get news
5.1.1 Definition of news
From the 8 interview conversations, half of the participants still think that only official and
authoritative organisations and individuals can release news. However, there have already
been 4 participants who hold an up-to-date understanding of news. They agree that
information released by people and organisations without qualification can be also integrated
into news, which was similarly argued by Hermida and Thurman (2008). This result shows
that part of the participants have already had the leading awareness of news.
5.1.2 The way to get news
According to the interviews, all participants get news online instead of traditional media.
Specifically, social media represented by Weibo and WeChat is the most common channel,
because of the mass information offered, fast speed and fewer restrictions on geographical
characteristics. This finding is consistent with previous research results (Gottfried & Shearer,
2016), it can be indicated that social media is becoming an important news source for
ordinary people.
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5.2 Participants’ social media usage preferences and habits
5.2.1 Social media use intensity
Through calculating the time participants spend on social media, averagely, it costs each
participant 2.5 to 3.5 hours to use social media everyday. They also use it frequently.
Furthermore, all participants agree that social media plays an indispensable role in their daily
life. Therefore, all participants selected meet the requirements of the research, they have
sufficient experience of using social media.
5.2.2 Participants’ usage of social media
WeChat used by all of the 8 participants is the most popular social media platform in the
research. It is most commonly used for communication with people. Weibo with 5 users is
the second popular platform, and it is always used to get information and news. Facebook and
What’s up are used by 2 participants respectively to contact foreign friends, because they are
more popular than WeChat in the UK. As a special kind of social media, video websites such
as YouTube and Bilibili are mainly used for entertainment, which are used by 2 and 3
participants respectively. Moreover, some social media platforms were mentioned once:
Baidu Post Bar is used for chatting, Instagram is used to get information, QQ is used for
communication, QZone is used to get news and friends’ status, and Baisibudejie is used for
entertainment.
Furthermore, it is obviously that participants use different social media platforms with
different motivations. On the basis of the 4 motivations proposed by Java et al. (2007), the
researcher found that entertainment is another purpose to use social media.
5.2.3 Participants’ usage of posting and reposting
First, most participants do not actively post information on social media, only 3 of them
usually do that, and the preferred platform is WeChat. The information participants usually
post includes records of daily life, travel photos, original thoughts and feelings, something
important or meaningful, and reading log. And they post information on social media in order
to record their daily life, share their latest status and express their ideas and feelings.
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Similarly, most participants are also inactive to repost information. What they repost includes
information related to their interests and hobbies, important or useful information, articles
and news. Through reposting, participants can share the information with more people, mark
the information and even get benefit. Therefore, in this research, generally participants are
not very active to post and repost information on social media, but they do them with clear
purposes.
5.2.4 Participants’ choices of checking information authenticity before
reposting
Although in their immediate response, 2 participants said that they would not check
information authenticity before reposting, their latter answers demonstrated that sometimes
they actually do that. This contradiction shows that some participants do not have clear
awareness of verification, sometimes they can not realise that some of their behaviour
belongs to checking information authenticity. Accordingly, all participants have the
experience of checking information authenticity before reposting, and half of them do that out
of a sense of duty. Therefore, participants are becoming more cautious, rational and
responsible when dealing with reposting on social media.
5.2.5 People who participants share information on social media with
Generally, the people participants want to share information on social media with depend on
the platform and the information content. Compared with other platforms, followers on
WeChat are always participants’ acquaintances, so they prefer sharing personally identifiable
information on WeChat by either using the Moments or sending messages to specific friends.
5.3 Participants’ opinions on existing news verification methods
5.3.1 Concentrating on the news provider’s identity
From analysing the interview conversations, all participants agree that checking the news
provider’s reliability is a basic and useful way for news verification on social media. First, all
participants said that they would check if the original news provider’s username is
trustworthy, such as an official and authoritative account or the account is followed for many
years. However, only 1 participant would simultaneously pay attention to the accounts
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reposting the news. It can be inferred that for most of participants, the the original news
provider’s identity is more important than people who reposted the news. In terms of
verifying the authenticity of the news provider’s identity, all participants think it is useful but
difficult to implement. The only way they could use is to see if the account has been certified
by the social media platform. Therefore, the research result is different from Wang and
Mark’s (2016) finding, which shows that people rarely verify the credibility of the author. In
fact, most participants check the author’s reliability but the method used is very simple,
because it is hard for ordinary people to do that.
It is worth noting that a credible news provider does not always mean the news it release is
also reliable. Lingzhang (2017) identified the weakness that people easily tend to trust the
information posted by the accounts they are following without thinking carefully. However,
as shown in the fake news about movie Titanic (Doubandounimei, 2012), many authoritative
news media all over the world also spread the fake news, because sometimes these
authoritative or official accounts believed by people are not the original information source,
and they just copy the news from other accounts they think are reliable without scrupulous
verification.
Furthermore, more than half of the participants to some extent agree with the statement
presented by Paulussen and Harder (2014) and Saldaña et al. (2016). For a piece of news,
sometimes they may trust the information from the public more than that from authoritative
or famous accounts. In this situation, participants prefer getting and comparing information
from both sides to have a full understanding of the news.
5.3.2 Checking the soundness of the news content, based on participants’
knowledge and experience
For the method provided by Khaldarova and Pantti (2016), all participants think it is
reasonable, but the effect depends on people’s ability, because everyone has his limitation of
knowledge and experience. 6 participants said they would use it in practice while the other 2
participants think it is too much trouble.
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5.3.3 Accessing eyewitnesses or relevant information from search engines,
other news media and credible sources
For the method presented by Brandtzaeg et al. (2015), Nölleke et al. (2016) and Wang and
Mark (2016), most participants think it is useful, and they prefer to search relevant
information online rather than access eyewitnesses. Furthermore, it is more possible for them
to use it when the news is important for them or related to their interests and hobbies.
However, there are still 2 participants who disagree with it, they think information from other
sources is always the same fake news, because news providers often copy information from
each other. This viewpoint is similar to Doubandounimei’s (2012) finding that the
complicated citation relations among news providers can cause the difficulty of news
verification.
5.3.4 Using tools to check the videos and images in news
For the method identified by Brandtzaeg et al. (2015), although all participants think it is
helpful, only 1 participant who has experience of Photoshop may use it in practice, because it
is time-consuming and they can not use those professional tools. In fact, similar to the second
method mentioned above, people usually check the videos and images in news based on their
knowledge and experience, as summarised in Fu’s (2015) research. Besides, they also get
useful information from comments where professionals always show their arguments.
5.3.5 Influence of participants’ position on their attitudes and judgment to
news
All participants agree on this statement summarised from Khaldarova and Pantti’s (2016)
research findings, they admitted that nationality, gender and political preference can affect
their attitudes and judgment to news. Additionally, most of them think the effect does more
harm than good for news verification. Stereotypes and prejudices can be exploited by people
with selfish purposes to encourage the spread of rumours, as mentioned by Lingzhang (2017),
in the fake news about Apple Store.
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5.4 Participants’ attitudes towards fake news and news verification on
social media
5.4.1 Participants’ opinions of news and fake news on social media
Participants think that news on social media is in a chaos situation, both true and fake news
exists. Compared with news released from traditional media, news on social media is faster
but not professional enough, so it is more likely to be fake. Besides, some participants came
up with an opinion that news has been used as a tool to divert public attention and control the
direction of public opinion. This can cause the emergence of fake news, which was similarly
identified by Khaldarova and Pantti (2016) and Lingzhang (2017). Moreover, all participants
agree that fake news can affect people’s real life, and different news types and contents can
have different effects. This result is consistent with Fu’s (2015) research finding.
Additionally, they also connect the influence degree with the audience’s ability and attitude
to news verification. Participants believe that children, elders and people with low knowledge
level are easier to believe and spread fake news. Furthermore, the influence degree is also
related to the relationship between the audience and fake news--the closer the relationship is,
the bigger effect the fake news will have. Generally, all participants agree that the effect of
fake news is negative.
5.4.2 Participants’ attitudes towards fake news on social media
By analysing the interview conversations, the researcher found that participants handle fake
news on social media in different ways. Half of them just ignore the fake news they found
because they do not think it is their responsibility or obligation to prevent the spread of
rumours. They think it is time-consuming and always pin their hope on other users. Only
when the fake news is related to them or their acquaintances, they may tell people not to trust
it.
However, when they find fake news on social media, the rest of participants will use different
methods to fight it. 3 of them choose to report it immediately through the reporting system
offered by the platform, and another participant prefers leaving words in the comment area to
remind people of its falseness. They do that because of the responsibility of citizens, they do
not want fake news to mislead people.
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Moreover, only 1 participant has the experience of sharing fake news whose falseness is
already known, but she just shared it privately with 1 friend for fun. It is similar to the result
of a previous interview (Fu, 2015), that people would not repost the fake news they already
know, unless to notify people the truth or just for fun. Therefore, all participants have a sense
of responsibility, they do not deliberately spread fake news. However, only half of them have
a stronger sense of responsibility and try their best to fight fake news, whether it is related to
them or not.
5.4.3 Participants’ attitudes towards news verification on social media
All participants clearly acknowledge the importance of news verification, because it is
beneficial to create a good environment for news on social media. However, they hold
different views on people who should be responsible for it. First, 2 participants think it should
be implemented by professionals, because ordinary people do not have energy or ability to do
that. However, other participants agree that every user should be aware of news verification
and master some basic skills. Then, another 2 participants focus more on the information
source, they think that news providers should always be responsible for their words to avoid
spreading rumours. Besides, most of the participants think that news verification should be
implemented by the joint efforts including 3 parts: first, each user of social media should
master some news verification skills. Second, social media platforms should provide prefect
checking systems to check the news before it can be released, and the reporting systems to
handle the reports of fake news from users immediately. Furthermore, the government should
strengthen supervision of news on social media. For example, it can pass relevant laws and
regulations to fight fake news.
5.4.4 Participants’ attitudes towards news presented in different forms
The interview results show that participants have different preferences for news forms. 1
participant thinks that news photographs are more attractive than text news, while another
one likes text news better because of its conciseness and clearness.
In terms of the reliability of news in different forms, 1 participant showed her deep
understanding that whatever form the news is presented in, the nature of news is that it is
filleted and edited, so there must be a distortion. Generally, most of them agree that video
news and radio news are more reliable than text news and news photographs, because the
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former requires higher cost of falsification. However, 1 participant trusts text news most
because it is time-saving, while another one do not believe radio news because the
information released by radio is hard to be verified. Furthermore, compared with other forms
of news, nowadays participants rarely get news from radio. They think radio is more popular
in western countries than in China.
5.5 Participants’ own ways of news verification on social media
The final 3 questions focus on participants’ news verification methods in practice. First, all
participants have experience of suspecting news on social media, but only 3 of them doubt all
news they can see, and the reasons are various: personal hobby, the chaos situation of news
on social media and the subconscious habit resulting from undergraduate major. However,
most of the participants only suspect the news released by unofficial or unauthoritative
accounts, and 1 participant only suspects the news related to himself or his interests.
Then, not every piece of news doubted can be proactively verified. Only 3 participants verify
all news they doubted to figure out the truth and facts. However, whether most of the
participants decide to verify the news they doubted depends on the relation between the news
and participants. They just proactively verify the news related to their life or interests,
because it is too much trouble to do that for all news items.
Furthermore, by summarising the news verification methods mentioned by participants, the
researcher found that they prefer to search relevant information online, check the news
provider’s reliability, judge the news content depending on their knowledge and experience,
and find helpful information in comments. Individual participants may also access people
involved in the news or discuss the news with friends. Accordingly, similar to Schifferes and
Neuman’s (2013) and Brandtzaeg et al.’s (2015) research findings, people rarely use
technology to verify news on social media. There is also not an uniform way of news
verification, as summarised by Fu (2015).
On this basis, by connecting participants’ answers in this section with their former response,
it can be indicated that although all participants have already been aware of the significance
of news verification, there is still a big gap between cognition and practice. First, when facing
fake news on social media, only half of the participants will proactively fight against it, while
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others do not want to spend time on indifferent things. Then, only 3 participants proactively
verify the news they suspected before, while others only verify the suspected news related to
themselves. Therefore, it is evident that the gap between cognition and practice is
participants’ absence of social responsibility, some of them just focus on things close to them,
and think it is a waste of time to handle inconsequentia.
Moreover, it is obvious that there is a difference between the methods participants said they
would use when they were asked to evaluate some existing news verification methods and the
ways they really use in practice. Similarly, sometimes their answers are inconsistent. Both of
these show that there is not an uniform way to verify news, and participants always
implement news verification subjectively without a clear strategy.
5.6 Summarised methods of news verification on social media
As mentioned before, there are not a series of methodical ways for ordinary people to verify
news on social media. By analysing participants’ opinions on some methods summarised
from previous research and their own ways in practice, the following method including 5
steps has been generated. Since the steps in this method are drawn from reported practice
(rather than an ideal of what could be done) they could form a practical basis for education in
news verification.
First, check the reliability of news providers, including the original information source and
the accounts which reposted the news. Although some participants pointed out that some
famous accounts have low credibility and sometimes authoritative accounts also cite each
other without rigorous verification, generally, official and authoritative accounts certified by
social media platforms are more reliable. People can also find out the news providers’
reputations through the number of followers, level of account and the number of years of
registration.
Second, check the soundness of the news content, based on personal knowledge and
experience. News content includes the headline, texts, images and even videos. Sometimes it
is easy to find mistakes by just using their knowledge, experience and common sense, such as
a sensational headline, illogical or contradictory details and photoshopped marks.
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Third, find useful information from the comments. People could read the comments under the
news if they can not judge it by using the first 2 steps. There are always some users who have
left useful messages about the news, they may be users who are interested in the news and
want to reveal the truth or even people involved in it. Therefore, the helpful information from
the comment area can help people judge the news.
Furthermore, search relevant information online. Beyond the social media platform, people
could use keywords to search relevant information online. Contrasting the information found
online with the suspicious news, people can have a better understanding of the fact.
Simultaneously, ordinary people should maintain an objective stance and try their best to
avoid the influence of their position on the attitude and judgment to news. Besides, for the
controversial news people each sticks to his argument for, especially when the opposing sides
are ordinary people and the authority or celebrity, people should get and analyse information
from both of the 2 sides to make an accurate judgment.
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Chapter 6. Conclusion
The final chapter divided into 2 parts is to review and summarise the whole research. First,
the achievement of each research aim or objective presented in Chapter 1 will be summarised
in detail. Then, the next section will concentrate on the recommendation for practice and
further research.
6.1 The research achievements of aims and objectives
6.1.1 The research achievements of aims
There are 3 research aims need achieving:
1.To investigate the way ordinary people verify news on social media.
2.To explore people’s attitudes towards verifying news on social media.
3.To propose a methodical approach to news verification of social media, based on research
findings.
All research aims have been achieved by literature review and the qualitative interview. First,
similar to previous research findings, the interview results show that there is not an uniform
way for ordinary people to verify news on social media, and the methods used are basic and
simple. Ordinary people tend to verify news subjectively and they rarely use technology or
tools. Second, ordinary people could recognise the significance of news verification on social
media, and most of them agree that news verification should be implemented by 3 parts: the
user, the social media platform and the government. Then, according to the interview results,
a methodical news verification method including 5 steps has been summarised.
6.1.2 The research achievements of objectives
1.To search previous research about social media, news and the emergence of fake news,
influence of fake news and people’s attitudes, and people’s ability and methods to verify
news on social media.
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2.To understand, analyse and critique the literature collected of fake news and its verification
on social media.
These 2 objectives have been achieved through literature review and interviews. First, the
definition of social media and its function were summarised by reviewing previous research,
it indicated that social media is becoming a popular news source, which was also identified
from participants’ answers. Second, according to the literature, the definition of news was
expended, user-generated information on social media can also be integrated into news. And
this understanding of news was recognised by parts of participants. Besides, 3 reasons
causing fake news were identified from previous research. Then, as shown in the literature, if
people have already known that a piece of news is fake, they will not repost it unless sharing
it for fun, and they think that fake news can mislead people. The interview results were
similar, participants would not deliberately spread fake news, but not all of them could
proactively fight against fake news. Additionally, they think that the influence of fake news
on people’s life relies on the type of news, and the audience’s ability and attitude towards
news verification. Next, similar to previous research findings, the interview analysis also
shows that ordinary people have inadequate ability to verify news on social media, they often
subjectively use simple and basic methods without the help of tools or technology.
3.Drawing on previous research, to explore people’s attitudes and habits with fake news, by
interviewing a small sample of Chinese students.
This objective has been achieved in Chapter 3. According to the research aims and objectives,
the qualitative interview was chosen to collect data.
4.To analyse the data collected by thematic analysis and draw valid conclusions.
This objective has been achieved in Chapter 4 and 5. Thematic analysis was selected to
compare participants’ answers. Besides the results which are similar to or different from
previous research findings, through the interview, participants’ social media usage
preferences and hobbies was also investigated and summarised.
Therefore, all research aims and objectives have been achieved.
45
6.2 Recommendation
6.2.1 For practice
First, news providers, particularly the official and authoritative accounts certified by social
media platform, should strictly follow the rules of releasing news. They must release or
repost news after rigorous examination, and could not just regard news as a tool for making
money or increasing click rates.
Next, social media platforms should improve their information verification systems and
reporting systems to reduce spreading fake news. Platforms such as Weibo could exploit
people’s ability to verify a post from their own experience and knowledge by making it easier
to attach, identify and analyse comments which add evidence for the authenticity or falseness
of a piece of news.
Simultaneously, education about news verification on social media should also be
popularised among ordinary people to enhance their media literacy. The steps outlined at the
end of Chapter 5 could be used as a basis for an educational programme (including online
tutorials), which could be supported and promoted by social media platforms.
6.2.2 For further research
Because of the small sample size the researcher has not generalised the findings, nor drawn
conclusions about gender differences. However, some possible correlations and gender
related differences did emerge. They could be explored further, for example through
quantitative surveys with a larger, stratified sample. Possible research questions arise, for
example from the following:
The majority of those who took action when they noticed fake news were male: can this be
hypothesised to the general population?
Those participants who were most doubtful about news (see 4.2.5) were not those who took
action to correct fake news: again is this a trend in the wider population?
46
There could be a relationship between people’s conception of news (e.g. whether it was only
news if it came from recognisable news outlets) and whether they check authenticity of news.
There could be a relationship between belief in people’s efficacy to verify news, and gender
(e.g. 4.2.4, 3), with a possible hypothesis that females are less likely to believe in ordinary
people’s efficacy.
(Word count: 15536)
47
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Appendix
Appendix 1: Interview questions
1. What is your definition of “news”?
2. How do you usually get news?
3. How much time do you spend on social media everyday?
4. Do you agree that social media has become an indispensable part in your daily life?
5. Which social media do you use? How do you use it (make new friends, contact people,
gain news and information)?
6. Do you use all of the different social media platforms for the same purpose? With the
same use?
7. Do you always post texts or images on social media? What kinds of information do you
always post (text: daily life, news and information, emotion, special event; image: selfie,
record for something, landscape photos)? Why do you post?
8. Do you always repost texts or images on social media? What kinds of information? Why?
9. Will you check the authenticity of the information before reposting? Why?
10. Who do you always share the information on social media with?
11. Paying attention to the news providers (the original provider and people who repost it)
and their identities (is the news provider a certified account or a normal user?)
12. verifying the identities of the news providers (is it real or counterfeit?)
13. You may prefer to trust the information from ordinary people or someone you are not
familiar with instead of public figures and official accounts
14. Based on your experience and knowledge, checking the soundness of the news itself,
such as the argument, details, evidence
15. Accessing to eyewitnesses, insiders or relevant information from search engines, other
news media and credible sources
16. Using tools to check the videos and images in the news
17. Your position (means your status, such as nationality, gender...) may affect your attitude
and judgment toward a piece of news
18. What do you think of the news on social media? More truth or more fake news?
52
19. Do you agree that fake news can impact heavily on people’s real life? How big influence
can it have?
20. What do you usually do when you find a piece of news on social media is fake? Why?
21. Did you ever post or repost a piece of fake news even though you knew it was fake?
Why?
22. What do you think of news verification on social media? Is it necessary? Why?
23. What is your attitude to the news presenting in the form of radio, texts, videos and
pictures? Which one is easier to be fake? Which one is more credible?
24. Do you have the habit to doubt the truth of the news on social media? Why?
25. Will you proactively verify the news you think may be fake? Why?
26. How will you verify the news on social media?
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Appendix 2: Characteristics of P2, P3, P4 and P8
P2 also holds the traditional understanding of news, she thinks that the news provider should
be very authoritative and has a good writing style. Weibo is the most commonly used way for
her to get news because of its fast update speed, convenience and the various information
sources. P2 agrees that social media has become an indispensable part in her life because she
can communicate with friends who are not around and keep the relationship with them. In
general, it costs her 3 to 4 hours everyday to use social media, and she uses WeChat to chat
with friends and family and Weibo to browse news. P2 is not very active on social media,
once in a while she posts something making her happy or particularly meaningful for her. She
rarely reposts information on social media unless she really like it, because she thinks it is
boring and meaningless. Unless it is a piece of news, P2 will not check the information’s
authenticity before reposting, because the authenticity is not significant for the information.
She prefers to share the information on social media with her friends because they have more
common language.
P2 thinks that there is much fake news on social media and the influence of fake news
depends on the content, the audience and the spreading range. Although she acknowledges
the importance of news verification and agrees with some of the methods provided by the
previous research, she rarely verifies news on social media. Similarly, P2 would do nothing if
she finds fake news on social media, because other people must have already refuted the
rumour. When she verifies news, the methods used are very simple, such as accessing people
involved in the news and browsing through the comments to find some useful information.
Furthermore, she believes the authoritative users with sign V (for verified) very much. In
most cases, she just doubts the truth of news but not verify it. Because it takes too much time
and energy, and she hardly spreads news so the authenticity of news is not significant for her.
Besides, she does not think that she needs to search for the information by herself because
there must be some people who have already done it. Therefore, only when the news is
related to her, she will verify it proactively.
P3 recognises that information from social media can also be news, and he gets news from
the public accounts on WeChat, mobile applications of many medias and news applications
because of their fast speed and portability. P3 agrees with the significance of social media, he
54
thinks that it is an inevitable choice for people to choose social media to accomplish anything
they want. P3 spends about 3 to 4 hours on social media everyday and uses WeChat,
Facebook and what’s up to communicate with people, subscribes the public accounts on
WeChat to get information from all aspects, and watches videos on YouTube and Bilibili for
entertainment. He is not very active on social media and is very cautious to post and repost
something, because he thinks that much information on social media is fake, he needs to be
responsible for his words. He also thinks that there is no need to repost something because his
reposting can not have big effect. So he just sometimes shares his individual trends and status
on his Moments and pays attention to privacy protection simultaneously. P3 would check the
authenticity of the information before reposting, he thinks everyone should feel responsibility
to both other people and himself. His information on social media is often shared with friends.
Although there is more fake news on social media, in most cases P3 still thinks news on
social media is reliable, and he does not think fake news can impact heavily on people’s life.
He is cautious to fake news and would report the fake news he found. P3 thinks news
verification is very necessary and it should be accomplished by both the social media
platform and users. He has the habit to doubt the truth of news on social media and would
proactively verify it, especially when the news is harmful to himself or his motherland. In
terms of the way P3 uses, his instant response is inconsistent with the subsequent answer.
Generally, the methods he uses are very simple and he does not want to spend to much time
on it. He will check whether the news is released by an authoritative account and then judge
the news based on his knowledge and experience.
P4 holds the advanced understanding of news, she said that everyone can release news
through any media, and she often gets news from some news applications and social media.
P4 thinks social media which she spends 2 to 3 hours on everyday is important for her to get
information from the outside world. She uses WeChat most commonly to chat with people,
browse through the Moments and get information from various kinds of public accounts. P4
just uses Facebook and What’s up to communicate with her British friend. She is active on
social media, she often posts something about her daily life and reposts some articles or news
she thinks are worth reading. P4 thinks that she needs to be responsible for the content
reposted, so she would check the authenticity of information before reposting. Besides, she
just share information about her private life with acquaintances, other information is open to
all of the followers.
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P4 agrees with most of the news verification methods summarised from previous research,
but she does not think ordinary people would use all of them in practice, because people are
used to quickly browsing news and do not want to spend time on the verification. Although
fake news exists, P4 still thinks that most of news on social media is reliable. She agrees that
fake news can heavily affect people’s life if the government can not immediately refute the
rumour. Furthermore, P4 would report the fake news she found on social media and tell
people not to trust it. She recognises the significance of news verification but thinks that it
should be implemented by professionals and people who are interested in it, because ordinary
people do not have the ability. P4 is used to doubting the news released by some less
unreliable platforms, and only proactively verifies news she doubted or she is interested in or
may have influence on herself. Moreover, the ways she verifies news are to take a look at the
news provider, analyse the news content and search relevant information. She often reads the
comments and thinks that is helpful.
P8 thinks that only an individual or organisation who has a large number of audiences is
qualified to be a news provider. He always gets news from social media and news media. P8
uses social media with high frequency everyday and he thinks that social media plays an
important role in his life because it offers massive amounts of information and user
communication, and it also saves time. P8 uses WeChat to communicate with friends and
Weibo to keep in touch with current event and news. He is not active on social media because
he does not like sharing his life online, and he only reposts something which is important and
useful or is related to his interests. But he always emphasises that he just has a few followers.
P8 is responsible for his words so he checks the authenticity of information before reposting.
P8 only shares information on social media with his parents.
P8 agrees with most of the news verification methods summarised from previous research,
but he also found some limitations. P8 thinks that the quality of news depends on the
platform, and the influence of fake news depends on people’s news verification ability. When
he finds a piece of fake news on social media, P8 will report it immediately. If the fake news
is reposed by people around him, he will also remind them and even search the facts online.
P8 recognises the significance of news verification and thinks it should be achieved by the
government, the user and the social media platform. P8 only doubts the news related to his
self-interest, but he would proactively verify every piece of news he is interested in. The
56
ways he uses to verify news are reading people’s arguments and searching for relevant
information online.
57
Appendix 3: Ethic consent form
The University ofSheffieldInformation School
Investigation of the way people verify news on social media
ResearchersZiying yu, 160128763, email: [email protected]
Purpose of the researchTo investigate the way ordinary people verify news on social media and their attitudes towardit.Then propose a methodical method of news verification on social media, based on researchfindings.
Who will be participating?All the interviews will be undertaken with people who are students of the University ofSheffield and have experience of using social media, and all participants needs to come fromone single country.
What will you be asked to do?I will conduct a 20 to 30 minutes interviews with you to ask some questions about verifyingnews on social media.
What are the potential risks of participating?The risks of participating are the same as those experienced in everyday life.
What data will we collect?The interview will be audio recorded and all of your answers will be recorded.
What will we do with the data?I will be analysing the data for inclusion in my Master’s dissertation. The data will stored onthe Information School's research data drive which can be accessed by only by me, mysupervisor, and the School's Examinations Officer and ICT staff operating the facility. Thisdata will be deleted 3 months after the dissertation has been completed. I will also store apassword protected back up copy on my personal laptop, and will delete this data once mydissertation has been completed and marked.
Will my participation be confidential?All participants’ personal data and the research data will be stored anonymously which willnot be identified.
58
What will happen to the results of the research project?The results of this study will be included in my master’s dissertation which will be publiclyavailable. Please contact the School in six months. The findings may also be included inacademic articles or presentations.
I confirm that I have read and understand the description of the research project, and that Ihave had an opportunity to ask questions about the project.
I understand that my participation is voluntary and that I am free to withdraw at any timewithout any negative consequences.
I understand that if I withdraw I can request for the data I have already provided to be deleted,however this might not be possible if the data has already been anonymised or findingspublished.
I understand that I may decline to answer any particular question or questions, or to do any ofthe activities.
I understand that my responses will be kept strictly confidential, that my name or identity willnot be linked to any research materials, and that I will not be identified or identifiable in anyreport or reports that result from the research, unless I have agreed otherwise.
I give permission for all the research team members to have access to my responses.
I give permission for the research team to re-use my data for future research as specified above.
I agree to take part in the research project as described above.
Note: If you have any difficulties with, or wish to voice concern about, any aspect of your participation inthis study, please contact Dr Jo Bates, Research Ethics Coordinator, Information School, The University ofSheffield ([email protected]), or the University Registrar and Secretary.
Participant Name (Please print) Participant Signature
Researcher Name (Please print) Researcher Signature
Date
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Appendix 4: Ethics application
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61
62
63
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Appendix 5: Approval letter
65
Appendix 6: Access to dissertation form
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