Defining “Fake News”: A typology of scholarly definitions

Edson C. Tandoc, Zheng Wei Lim, Richard Ling

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

1349 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper is based on a review of how previous studies have defined and operationalized the term “fake news.” An examination of 34 academic articles that used the term “fake news” between 2003 and 2017 resulted in a typology of types of fake news: news satire, news parody, fabrication, manipulation, advertising, and propaganda. These definitions are based on two dimensions: levels of facticity and deception. Such a typology is offered to clarify what we mean by fake news and to guide future studies.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)137-153
Number of pages17
JournalDigital Journalism
Volume6
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Feb 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

  • facts
  • fake news
  • false news
  • misinformation
  • news
  • parody
  • satire

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