Trustworthiness is key in journalism, yet some journalists intentionally deceive their audiences by fabricating sources or inventing news stories altogether. Earlier research suggests that deceitful news articles have characteristics that are different from trustworthy news articles. We aimed to confirm and expand on the existing literature by examining the case of Perdiep Ramesar, an esteemed Dutch journalist until it was discovered in 2014 that sources were non-existing in 126 of his articles for national newspaper Trouw (‘Fidelity’). Using content analysis, we searched for systematic differences in source use and presentation comparing Ramesar’s deceptive news articles with two same-sized sets of reliable articles, 1) articles on similar topics from other journalists, and 2) articles with verifiable sources from Ramesar himself. Results indicate that compared to real news sources, fictitious sources are more often secondary definers, who are presented in more stereotypical ways and through more and longer direct quotations. Furthermore, negations and self-references occur more often in deceptive news articles

Govaert, C.G.

Klemm, C.

Lagerwerf, L.

VU Research Portal

VU Research PortalDeceptive newsLagerwerf, L.; Govaert, C.G.; Klemm, C.2019document licenseUnspecifiedLink to publication in VU Research Portalcitation for published version (APA)Lagerwerf, L., Govaert, C. G., & Klemm, C. (2019). Deceptive news: Characteristics of untrustworthy newsitems. Poster session presented at 69th Conference of the International Communication Association,Washington, DC, United States.General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.            • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.            • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain            • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ?Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediatelyand investigate your claim.E-mail address:vuresearchportal.ub@vu.nlDownload date: 27. May. 2021BackgroundTrustworthiness , source fabrication and detection of deception Journalism at riskTrusted intermediaries now seen as partisan activists (Wahl-Jorgensen et al., 2016)To regain trustworthiness, verifiability of facts and sources is critical; deception is devastating How can editorial rooms, besides fact check policies, detect deceptive news items before they are published? Deception in newsMaking up stories easier than construing them out of facts and real sources (Dalecki, Lasorsa and Lewis, 2009)Source fabrication most occurring type of deception (Lasorsa and Dai, 2007a), next to fact fabrication and plagiarism Source characteristicsInvented sources are more easily fabricated: more sources, longer direct citationsPrimary (elite) versus secondary (non-elite) definers (Atton and Wickenden, 2005): the latter less visibleReal sources get unique descriptions; invented ones are described stereotypically/abstractly (DePaulo et al., 2003)(Secondary) sources in foreign countries hard to trace (Lasorsa and Dai, 2007b); more likely to be eye-witness or victim Invented news contains more (stereotypically described) (secondarily defined) sources, longer direct citations, referring to self Stylistic characteristicsDeceivers exaggerate within specific genre (Markowitz and Hancock, 2016)Typical for news: Embedded Quote (Semino and Sharp, 2004; Lagerwerf, Schurink and Oegema, 2011)Liars avoid stating verifiable facts, reduce commitments to statements: negative formulations (Van Swol, Braun and Malhotra, 2012)   Invented news contains more embedded quotes and more negationsResultsDeceptive JournalismCharacteristics of untrustworthy news itemsCharlotte Govaert, Luuk Lagerwerf and Céline KlemmMethodDesign Dutch journalist’s articles identified as deceptive (sources untraceable according to research committee Trouw) compared to his own sincere work, and to other journalists’ work in national newspapers (three comparable corpora)Samples Corpus of 126 deceptive news items (no. of words M = 770.71; SD = 558.25); corpus of 126 items by samejournalist, paired in date and length (M = 629.89; SD = 436.21); corpus of 126 items by otherjournalists in national newspapers, paired in date, length and topic (M = 699.12; SD = 539.33).Content variables Source characteristicsNumber of sources; number of direct citations; length of citation; self-reference (mostly within citation)Primary definers: spokespersons, politicians, CEOs, celebrities, sports professionals; if not: secondary (victim,eye witness, vox pop); use of abstracting descriptions of sources (attributive or predicative adjectives); reference to ethnicity Style characteristicsUse of negation terms (never, not, nobody); Use of embedded quote (Clinton said he smoked marihuana, but he never ‘inhaled’) Krippendorff’s alpha’s between .79 and .99Data analysis Frequency counts and also ratios (number of variable divided by number of words) Comparisons of counts between corpora with non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis tests (Epsilon-squared effect sizes) and Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc pairwise comparisonsExampleConclusion Source characteristicsInvented news contains more secondarily defined sources, who are more stereotyped, with more ethnic associations,using longer direct citations and more self-references Stylistic characteristicsInvented news contains more embedded quotes and negation terms Deception preventionEspecially with respect to source characteristics, fact check departments may look for secondarily defined sources with elaborate direct citations, described stereotypically with ethnic references, to detect news that needs checkingIn terms of automated analysis, negation terms seems to be a stable indicator of deception; Q is genre-specific  Discussion Invented news presents a more coherent world (Dalecki, Lasorsa and Lewis, 2009) More stereotypical and ethnical descriptions of sources are additionally unfavourable in deception  Negativity of deceptive news might also deceive by emotional distraction (fake news, clickbait) Automated analysis is possible, but results will always be context and genre specific Deceptive news is written to look like proper journalism; fake news is written without care for credibility Nevertheless: Future research of text characteristics of clickbait and fake news would be interestingReferencesAtton, Chris, and Emma Wickenden. 2005. “Sourcing Routines and Representation in Alternative Journalism: A Case Study Approach.” Journalism Studies 6(3): 347-359.Dalecki, Linden, Dominic L. Lasorsa, and Seth C. Lewis. 2009. “The News Readability Problem.” Journalism Practice 3 (1): 1-12. DePaulo, Bella M., James J. Lindsay, Brian E. Malone, Laura Muhlenbruck, Kelly Charlton and Harris Cooper. 2003. “Cues to Deception.” Psychological Bulletin 129 (1) 74-118.Lagerwerf, Luuk, Marjolein Schurink, and Dirk Oegema. 2011. "Subjectiviteit als Taalgebruik in Dagbladen en Nieuwsweblogs." Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap 39 (3): 107-126.Lasorsa, Dominic, and Jia Dai. 2007a. “Newsroom's Normal Accident?” Journalism Practice 1 (2): 159-174.  Lasorsa, Dominic, and Jia Dai. 2007b. “When News Reporters Deceive: The Production of Stereotypes.” J&MC Quarterly 84 (2): 281-298.Markowitz, David M., and Jeffrey T. Hancock. 2016. “Linguistic Obfuscation in Fraudulent Science.” Journal of language and Social Psychology 35 (4): 435-445.Van Swol, Lyn M., Michael T. Braun, and Deepak Malhotra. 2012. “Evidence for the Pinocchio Effect: Linguistic Differences between Lies, Deception by Omissions, and Truths.” Discourse Processes 49 (2): 79-106. Wahl-Jorgensen, Andrew Williams, Richard Sambrook, Janet Harris, Iñaki Garcia-Blanco, Lina Dencik, Stephen Cushion, Cynthia Carter and Stuart Allan. 2016. “The Future of Journalism.” Journalism Practice 10 (7): 808-814.We would like to thank several Bachelor students in Communication and Information Sciences who conducted the research for their bachelor’s theses. Photos by courtesy of David Travis (top), Grzegorz Walczak (middle left), and Jan Kahánek (middle right)Zijn ouders vreesden dat Hicham Hashmi na het zien van de film ’Fitna’ van Geert Wilders zou gaan rellen. Maar Hicham vindt de film een grapje. Grootvader Habib echter voelt de film als verraad.Perdiep RamesarHabib Hashmi (69) buigt zijn grijze hoofd, hij sluit zijn ogen en prevelt een kort gebed. De oude vrome Marokkaanse moslim wil de film Fitna van Geert Wilders eigenlijk helemaal niet zien. „Mijn geloof dwingt mij om de film wel te bekijken, want ik mag niet zomaar over iets of iemand oordelen, zonder te weten waar het over gaat. Ik moet deze beelden zien, maar ik kan mijn oogleden niet bedwingen mijn ogen te sluiten, zo gruwelijk zijn ze.”His parents feared that Hicham Hashmi would go and riot after having seenGeert Wilder’s film ’Fitna’. But Hicham thinks the film is a joke. GrandfatherHabib, however, experiences the film as betrayal.Perdiep RamesarHabib Hashmi (69) bends his gray head, closing his eyes and mumbling a short prayer. The old pious Moroccan Muslim actually doesn’t want to watch Geert Wilder’s film Fitna at all. „My religion yet forces me to look at the film, because I can’t just judge anything or anyone without knowing what it’s all about. I have towatch these images, but I can’t refrain my eye lids from closing my eyes, as horrible as they are.”00,511,52No. stereotype srcs*** DeceptiveSincereOthers0123No. secundary definers***DeceptiveSincereOthers0246No. sources*DeceptiveSincereOthers0246No. ref. to ethnicity***DeceptiveSincereOthers0204060%direct citation***DeceptiveSincereOthers0123% self-reference*** DeceptiveSincereOthers01234No. embedded Q***DeceptiveSincereOthers00,511,52%negation terms***DeceptiveSincereOthers For all the above diagrams the pairwise differences were significant between deceptive journalist’s news and his sincere news, deceptive journalist’s newsand the other journalists’, but not between the sincere journalist and others (Dunn-Bonferroin post hoc z-tests) Except for no. of sources: Only a significant difference between deceptive and sincere journalist. Effect sizes (Ε2) ranged between .02 and .27.

Deceptive news: Characteristics of untrustworthy news items

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

VU Research Portal

NARCIS