Since US President Donald Trump weaponised the term “fake news” during the 2016 presidential election campaign, the phrase has gone viral.

Increasingly it is used by politicians around the world to denounce or dismiss news reports that do not fit their version of the truth.

But as news outlets defend their work, false information is saturating the political debate worldwide and undermining an already weak level of trust in the media and institutions.

The term has come to mean anything from a mistake to a parody or a deliberate misinterpretation of facts.

At the same time, misinformation online is increasingly visible in attempts to manipulate elections.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-fake-news-fact-online-truth.html