Fake News? Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda in Cyberspace

FAKE NEWS, MISINFORMATION, DISINFORMATION AND PROPAGANDA IN CYBERSPACE
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Fake news is information intentionally fabricated and published with an aim of misleading and duping others to believe and doubt verifiable facts. Misinformation refers to false, erroneous and inaccurate information whose creation and intent is not to cause harm. Disinformation refers to inaccurate information which are intentionally created to cause harm to an individual, organization, country or social groups. Propaganda is disseminated information, arguments, rumors and half-truths to influence public opinion and instill a certain response and attitude (Ireton, C., & Posetti, J. 2018).
The spread of Covid-19 has resulted to several creation of false cures and myths. World Health Organization has treated them as fake news and disinformation and gave a warning against believing them. There has been information that COVID-19 had been artificially created in a lab and engineered as a bio-weapon by Chinese yet there is no evidence to support that. In UK, there was a Facebook page which shared a conspiracy theory that the recently introduced 5G was linked to the spread of novel coronavirus. The third example was also a post on Facebook page in Italy which stated that Lemon and hot water were possible cures of the disease. The information on the virus being created as a bioweapon in a lab in China is the most troubling because it weakens the diplomatic relations between China and other nations with president Trump now referring COVID-19 as “Chinese virus”. It also led to US withdrawing its financial aid to WHO (Pennycook, G., et al 2020).
Deep fakes refer to videos and images with the face of public figure individuals which are edited using artificial intelligence software to appear real and authentic. For example, there has been a video of Mark Zuckerberg bragging of having total control of billions of stolen data. This is deep fake since the words were put into his mouth. Separating deep fakes from facts is problematic because of technological advancement which results in high quality deep fakes which are not likely to be detecte...