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""Consumers have been confronted by fake news, fake online reviews, fake phishing emails, fake applications that install malware, fake accounts on social media platforms-and the list goes on," explained consumer psychologist Kenneth Faro, Ph.D., who worked with Origin/Hill Holliday on a new study that explores how the fake economy is affecting brands. "There's one big learning here, and it's the fact that we are seeing the emergence of a new consumer need-the need for truth." Faro recommends that brands view this need as an opportunity, not a challenge. "Valuing 'truth' can be a differentiating brand platform and a point of view that brands can stand for and rally consumers around," he said."

"There is so much fake stuff on the Internet in any given week that we've grown of tired of debunking it all. Fake Twitter fights. Fake DHL ads. Amazing viral video? Nope - a Jimmy Kimmel stunt! In these heady Internet times, it's all too easy for a fictional story to gain traction in the span of a few hours. More perniciously, it's easy for news organizations to slap a sexy headline on a story, or pull the juiciest nugget from a study, and drop it on the Internet - forgetting that, in many cases, social-media users don't actually click through and read the whole thing. So rather than take down each and every undeservedly viral story that crosses our monitors each week, we're trying this out - a quick, once-a-week debunk of fake photos, misleading headlines and bad studies that you probably shouldn't share over the weekend. "

"Fake news is nothing new. Despite its rise to fame thanks to the 2016 presidential election, the phenomenon has been around since humans have been able to relay information - from spoken word to the first newspapers and now, to social media. It's also nothing to be afraid of. When armed with the right tools and information, anyone can spot fake news from a mile away. NewseumEd offers free classes and resources on media literacy.  But if you're in a hurry, here's a quick guide to identifying fake news. "

"Bad news for shoppers who rely on web reviews: New research has demolished the illusion that star ratings realistically reflect product quality. "Average user ratings are only slightly better than a coin toss" in helping you make a decision, says Bart de Langhe, who teaches marketing at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His analysis of 1,272 products on Amazon found a "very low correlation" between ratings and quality. One reason for the disconnect: Fake user reviews. To crack down, Amazon has initiated three lawsuits over the past 15 months, most recently targeting companies that sell positive reviews to vendors. Both Amazon and Yelp also say they use algorithms to filter out suspicious posts-although some still slip through, says Boston University's Georgios Zervas, who has studied Yelp user reviews. He estimates that about one in four submitted reviews are fakes. To avoid getting duped, experts suggest a skeptical approach."

"For a look at the sometimes-silly, sometimes-concerning false information that circulates the Internet, The Washington Post offers a weekly roundup on The Intersect, a blog dedicated to digital and Internet culture. Its series called "What was fake on the Internet this week?" can be a resource for teaching news literacy using timely examples that are relevant to an Internet-savvy generation. The most recent blog entry addresses topics such as fake tweets, false reports of a smartphone virus and bogus rumors that the National Rifle Association is banning guns at its annual convention. The Intersect blog also offers commentary on Internet and social media trends, viral content and hoaxes. Here are a few additional websites that debunk misinformation in the news:"

"How did misinformation spread during the 2016 presidential election and has anything changed since? A new study of more than 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to more than 600 misinformation and conspiracy news outlets answers this question. The report reveals a concentrated "fake news" ecosystem, linking more than 6.6 million tweets to fake news and conspiracy news publishers in the month before the 2016 election. The problem persisted in the aftermath of the election with 4 million tweets to fake and conspiracy news publishers found from mid-March to mid-April 2017. A large majority of these accounts are still active today. Here are eight findings that stood out to us:"

"Don't like the media? Think it's all "lies" or "fake"? Then you're probably not as good at reading the news as your less perpetually annoyed peers. That's one finding from a new study from the News Co/Lab at Arizona State, in collaboration with the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas. Those who have negative opinions of the news media are less likely to spot a fake headline, less likely to differentiate between news and opinion - but more confident in their ability to find the information they need online."

"The term "fake news" is problematic for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is widely used to mean anything from "outright hoax" to "some information I do not like." Therefore, I refrain from using the term to describe media sources at all. Besides that, I refrain from discussing the term because I submit that the biggest problem in our current media landscape is not "hoax" stories that could legitimately be called "fake news." What is far more damaging to our civic discourse are articles and stories that are mostly, or even completely, based on the truth, but which are of poor quality for other reasons. This post is the first in a series I plan to do in which I visually rank one or more recent articles on my chart and provide an in-depth analysis of why each particular article is ranked in that spot.  My analysis includes discussions of the headlines, graphics, other visual elements, and the article itself. I analyze each element and each sentence by asking "what is this element/sentence doing?""

"The slides for the LOEX 2018 session entitled Fake News, Lies, and a For-credit Class: Lessons Learned from Teaching a 7-Week Fake News Undergraduate Library Course can be seen on the right."

"Fake news videos aren't new, but they are on the rise and more realistic than ever due to technological advances. What used to be a fairly big production and cost thousands of dollars can now be achieved with a selfie stick and a smartphone. That may not sound like a big deal, but when politics, propaganda and bad intentions enter the fray, the potential to cause harm is staggering and potentially irreparable.   ASU Now spoke to Dan Gillmor and Eric Newton , who launched News Co/Lab in October, a collaborative lab inside the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication that aims to help the public find new ways of understanding and engaging with news and information. They believe fake videos soon will be "trivially easy, inexpensive, and all too believable.""

"How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was "bots masquerading as people," a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube's systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event "the Inversion.""

"It started with a post on social media. Or, to be more exact, a series of posts about a visit to McDonald's to buy a milkshake. Within hours, Josh Raby's gripping account on Twitter was international news, covered by respected outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. "This guy's story about trying to buy a McDonald's milkshake turned into a bit of a mission and the internet can't get enough of it," read the headline on Indy100, the Independent's sister title. The New York Daily News said he'd been "tortured". Except, as McDonald's pointed out - and Raby himself later admitted - the story was embellished to entertain his Twitter followers, although he says he based it on real events. Raby's was the latest thinly sourced story that, on closer inspection, turned out not to be as billed. The phenomenon is largely a product of the increasing pressure in newsrooms that have had their resources slashed, then been recalibrated to care more about traffic figures. And, beyond professional journalists, there is also a "whole cottage industry of people who put out fake news", says Brooke Binkowski, an editor at debunking website Snopes. "They profit from it quite a lot in advertising when people start sharing the stories. They are often protected because they call themselves 'satire' or say in tiny fine print that they are for entertainment purposes only.""

"The Internet is a gullible place. Before you know it, you buy into a YouTube video, and you're sharing Facebook posts and tweets with misinformation. If you haven't done so yourself, you likely know someone who has. Some of the most viral stories of the year have turned out to be fakes. Remember when Will and Monifa Sims captured our hearts in May while singing karaoke at a gas station? They were actors. And who could forget the hilarious twerking girl on fire? Simply a stunt orchestrated by Jimmy Kimmel. Not all hoaxes were videos, though. The Internet followed along with Elan Gale, a producer for The Bachelor, who live-tweeted a fake situation he claimed to experience on an airplane; an adorable kid's letter to Santa was actually the brainchild of a comedian. For a full look at the top social media hoaxes you fell for this year, check out the gallery above."

"There was a time when The Learning Channel (TLC) actually focused on learning. There was a time when Bravo programmed cultural events. Now, entire networks have been revamped to prop up reality shows that aren't even real. As a result, the inability to pin down what's actually happening - to separate what's real from what's fake - seems to have infected everything. Take the 24-hour news cycle. The crop of pundits paid to fill airtime and spew talking points are just like those kids on The Real World, who knew exactly why they'd been cast and played their roles with gusto. In hindsight, it was only a matter of time before there were political consequences for blurring the line between real and fake."

"From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece"

"Here Come the Fake Videos, Too Artificial intelligence video tools make it relatively easy to put one person's face on another person's body with few traces of manipulation. I tried it on myself. What could go wrong?"

"Fake news is a term that's become popular today, but what does it actually mean? And how pervasive is it?"

"That Facebook post about a super-secret conspiracy mainstream media doesn't want you to know about? It could soon be accompanied by a link to actual reporting repudiating those claims. Facebook began rolling out a new initiative to debunk fake news Thursday that automatically serves up related links from reliable sources for stories that have been flagged by fact-checkers as potential hoaxes."

As teens move from facebook to instagram, is the fake news moving with them?

"A study that claimed Fox News viewers were significantly less intelligent than average Americans is a hoax, Michael Giltz writes. The "study" was ordered up by a group of conservatives who hope to move the Republican party in a more moderate direction, lead hoaxer "P. Nichols" told Giltz."