Local Perceptions and Practices of News Sharing and Fake News
This research addresses the problem of fake news for local communities in Singapore, offering insights for targeted mitigation efforts, but it is incremental as it applies existing survey methods to a specific context.
The study surveyed 75 participants in Singapore to understand perceptions and practices regarding news sharing and fake news, finding that fake news is more pervasive in instant messaging apps than social media and that sharing is a stronger problem than creation, with highest trust reported in government communication platforms.
Fake news is a prevalent problem, particularly in digital media, that undermines trust and cooperation among people. As a variety of global mitigation efforts arise, the understanding of how people consider fake news becomes important, especially in local contexts. To that end, we carried out a survey with 75 participants in Singapore to understand people's perceptions of and practices with news (real and fake). Locally, fake news was found to be more pervasive in instant messaging apps than in social media, with the problem attributed more strongly to sharing than to creation. Good news sharing practices were generally observed. Highest trust was reported in government communication platforms across 11 media items. These results show that Singapore possesses a peculiar sociocultural scene, suggesting that efforts directed towards locally relevant measures may be more effective in addressing fake news in Singapore. We detail the survey results and recommended directions in this paper.