• News |  
• Articles |  
• Sparks studies hyperlinking behavior in fake news

Web of lies: Research suggests hyperlink patterns help identify real vs. fake news

For as long as journalism has existed, fake news has developed alongside it. To help technology and people differentiate from websites trying to turn your attention into knowledge versus profit, research from Auburn University is looking into the fine print.

Assistant Professor of Journalism Jessica Sparks studies news media trust and credibility. Her latest study, “Real connections in fake news: Analysis of linking behaviors of fake news websites,” maps a digital web of lies made to look like real news outlets.

“Originally it was pretty easy to tell when something online wasn't going to be sincere or accurate, whereas nowadays what we found is that those news sites look very close to what you would see in a trustworthy outlet,” Sparks said. “They're doing a better job of mimicking trustworthy news behaviors that can really play a role in our ability to get information for our day-to-day lives, to make decisions about self-governance and democracy and how we build our communities.”

Hyperlinking is the practice of providing a link to other digital sources within a story. Sparks and the rest of the research team compared hyperlinking behaviors between trustworthy and fake news websites from an existing media credibility database.

On trustworthy news websites, journalists hyperlink to the proof of their findings and previous coverage of a topic.

Fake news websites are more likely to link to their own content. In Sparks’ study, the research team found that fake news websites hyperlink to their own website pages at a significantly higher rate than trustworthy websites.

“The trustworthy websites are bound by ethical considerations such as transparency, accuracy and public service, versus with fake news, they’re really motivated by that commercial entity or the money,” Sparks said. “We know there's only so much money in the world, and there's only so many places that will put advertising on the online news format. So, when those fake news outlets start to take some of that ad money, that does impact the traditional and more trustworthy news outlets.”

When fake news websites link to websites outside of their parent company, Sparks said the research suggests it serves two purposes: to discredit a competitive, trustworthy source or to “borrow” the credibility of a trustworthy source.

In the first case, the fake news website is trying to discount coverage from a competitor because audience’s attention is a limited resource within the news market.

In the second, the fake news website is attempting to transfer a publication’s credibility to itself by association, without the decades of unbiased reporting it took the trustworthy organization to build its reputation.

As news evolves, Sparks hopes her research on pattern recognition, which was published in Telematics and Informatics, can help software engineers and developers create tools to discourage misinformation.

“One of the big areas this is important for is people who are trying to create mechanisms for people to easily identify what is fake news,” Sparks said. “I hope that this gives people, especially engineers, an opportunity to create something that flags or downgrades rankings in Google results so that we can start to etch away at the problem of fake information infiltrating our information system.”

For now, Sparks hopes this contributes to how people approach online information. Hyperlinks are just one of the patterns to take note of – Sparks also suggests finding trustworthy authors to follow, seeing if multiple outlets are reporting on the same topic and treating news intake like a balanced diet.

Sparks said when you engage with a variety of news sources, and challenge yourself to be open-minded, you’ll find yourself much closer to the truth.

“Most people do rightfully have suspicions when they see fake news. Most people can identify it as long as they're willing to see it,” Sparks said. “So when we look at information, especially on the web, just being willing to think a little extra about that headline before we repeat it is a really big step in the right direction.”

Learn more about research in the School of Communication & Journalism.

Tags: Communication and Journalism Research Faculty