Publication

What can be done to counter fake news?

The 2016 US presidential elections moved the debate about phenomena such as “hate speech” and “fake news” to the centre of public attention. The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom therefore commissioned the communication researchers Dr Philipp Müller and Nora Denner to analyse the impact of these phenomena.

In their study, they review how fake news affects the way in which citizens form their opinions and then describe various ways of addressing the problem. This is the second edition of the study, which continues to attract a lot of attention and which was therefore updated to include the most recent research findings.

One of the more unexpected findings is that the problem might be less widespread than previously thought.