Combating the spread of fake news remains a difficult problem. For this reason, it is increasingly urgent to understand the phenomenon of fake news. This review aims to see why fake news is widely shared on social media and why some people believe it. The presentation of its structure (from the images chosen, the format of the titles and the language used in the text) can explain the reasons for going viral and what factors are associated with the belief in fake news. We show that fake news explores all possible aspects to attract the reader’s attention, from the formation of the title to the language used throughout the body of the text. The proliferation and success of fake news are associated with its characteristics (more surreal, exaggerated, impressive, emotional, persuasive, clickbait, shocking images), which seem to be strategically thought out and exploited by the creators of fake news. This review shows that fake news continues to be widely shared and consumed because that is the main objective of its creators. Although some studies do not support these correlations, it appears that conservatives, right-wing people, the elderly and less educated people are more likely to believe and spread fake news.

Current literature on fake news is rather abundant and mainly focused on history, variety, and types, rather than processes. This review draws on current literature to build a working definition of fake news focused on its present relevance to journalism and political communication contemporary debate, distinguishing it from non-pertinent conceptual varieties and contributing to a much-needed clarification on the subject. We performed a qualitative analysis of the literature published between 2016 and 2020. Data were extracted from Web of Science and Scopus. We define fake news as a type of online disinformation with misleading and/or false statements that may or may not be associated with real events, intentionally designed to mislead and/or manipulate a specific or imagined public through the appearance of a news format with an opportunistic structure (title, image, content) to attract the reader’s attention in order to obtain more clicks and shares and, therefore, greater advertising revenue and/or ideological gain.

Elections worldwide have been marked by the spread of fake news. Online disinformation is everywhere, used as a political weapon in the battlefield of manipulation. This study focused on the Portuguese 2019 elections to assess the reach of fake news compared to mainstream media news and to verify whether fake news had specific targets. We reviewed all posts (N=1197) from newspaper Facebook pages and fake news Facebook pages published during the campaign to verify their engagement. BuzzSumo assessed popularity by counting all posts’ shares, reactions and comments. Iramuteq software related the content of all published headlines by analyzing clusters of the most frequent words. Findings show that fake news had no greater reach than real news during the election campaign. However, fake news are more likely to be shared, while real news tend to get more reactions and more comments. In fake news headlines the terms associated with left-wing and government are the most common. The prime minister and the Socialist Party are associated with negative connotations. Results suggest that Portuguese fake news are related to rightwing extremism and publish hate content targeting corruption and leftist policies in general. Unlike other countries, anti-immigration discourse and fearmongering were not prominent contents.

The relationship between a subject’s ideological persuasion with the belief and spread of fake news is the object of our study. Departing from a left- vs. right-wing framework, a questionnaire sought to position subjects on this political-ideological spectrum and demanded them to evaluate five pro-left and pro-right fake and real news, totaling 20 informational products. The results show the belief and dissemination of (fake) news are related to the political ideology of the participants, with right-wing subjects exhibiting a greater tendency to accept fake news, regardless of whether it is pro-left or pro-right fake news. These findings contradict the confirmation bias and may suggest that a greater influence of factors such as age, the level of digital news literacy and psychological aspects in the judgment of fake news are at play. Older and less educated respondents indicated they believed and would disseminate fake news at greater rates. Regardless of the ideology they favor, the Portuguese attributed higher credibility to the sample’s real news, a fact that can be meaningful regarding the fight against disinformation in Portugal and elsewhere.

Political fake news continues to be a threat to contemporary societies, negatively affecting public and democratic institutions. The literature has identified political bias as one of the main predictors of belief and spread of fake news. However, the academic debate has not been consensual regarding the effect of political identity on the discernment of fake news. This systematic literature review (2017–2021) seeks to understand whether there is consistent evidence that one political identity may be more vulnerable to fake news than others. Focusing the analysis on European and North American (United States) studies, we used Scopus and Web of Science databases to examine the literature. Our findings revealed that most studies are consistent in identifying the conservative or right-wing audience as more vulnerable to fake news. Although there seems to be a motivated political reasoning for both sides, left-wing people or liberals were not, in any analyzed study, associated with a greater propensity to believe in political fake news. Motivated reasoning seems stronger and more active among conservatives, both in the United States and Europe. Our study reinforces the need to intensify the fight against the proliferation of fake news among the most conservative, populist, and radical right audience.

This study examines how university students in Portugal and Spain perceive the quality of journalistic news produced by generative artificial intelligence (AI). As AI—particularly generative models like ChatGPT-3—becomes increasingly integrated into news distribution and newsroom operations, it offers the promise of greater efficiency and the reduction of non-value-added tasks. However, its rise also raises concerns about potential risks, ethical implications, and the evolving relationship between human journalists and AI-driven content creation. The study focuses on the perceptions of journalism students, addressing key research questions related to their ability to discern AI-generated news, comparing the quality between AI-generated news and news written by journalists, and the influence of news topics in assessing quality. We applied two surveys to 444 participants, evaluating dimensions of news quality, such as readability, informativeness and style. The findings indicate that students generally rated news generated by ChatGPT-3 as being of higher quality than news written by journalists. Students in Spain gave higher ratings to AI-generated news. The findings suggest a potential shift in perceptions of news quality, promoting discussions about the evolving role of AI in journalism education and its broader implications for the industry.