In the current media world, there is a huge debate about the importance of the visibility of a news website in order to secure its existence. Thus, search engine optimization (SEO) practices have emerged in the news media systems around the world. This study aimed to expand the current literature about the SEO practices by focusing on examining, via the walkthrough method, the ways that news companies allow the users to comment on their online news articles. The comments on the news websites are related to the notions of social influence, information diffusion, and play an essential role as a SEO practice, for instance, by providing content and engagement. The examined sample was collected by the most visited news websites’ rankings of alexa.com for a global scale and for the countries Greece and Cyprus. The findings reveal that the news websites throughout the globe use similar features and ways to support the comments of the users. In the meantime, though, a high number of the news websites did not allow the users to use their social media accounts in order to comment the provided news articles, or provided multiple comment platforms. This trend goes against the SEO practices. It is believed that this finding is associated with the difficulty of the news organizations to regulate and protect themselves by the users’ comments that promote, in some case harmful rhetoric and polarization.

Fake news and misinformation are a menace to the public sphere, democracy, and society with sometimes irreversible consequences. Journalists in the new era seem not to be able or willing to play their traditional role of gatekeeper and social media have made the problem even more intense. The need for truth is unnegotiable in modern democracies. Nevertheless, non-true stories and misinformation dominate media outlets with severe consequences and negative impacts on societies all over the world. Fact-checking platforms based on crowdsourcing strategies or automated digital websites might be the answer to a problem that is escalating. Initially, in order to tackle such a severe problem, researchers and experts have to monitor its characteristics. Very few research attempts have been conducted in Greece on fake news, its characteristics, origin, and impact. This dissertation scopes to map the characteristics of fake news and misinformation in an EU country such as Greece, based on the findings of “Ellinika Hoaxes” a fact-checking platform that uses in combination professional fact-checkers and crowdsourcing strategies in collaboration with Facebook. The findings shape new perspectives on the nature of misinformation and fake news in Greece and focus on new communication and fact-checking models.