Research by Women for Women
Carolina M. Billings Fake News and the New Social Media_Proceedings_e-book The issue of fake news, hoaxes, and disinformation and how much influence it has on social events has been resonating more than ever lately, influencing the way people perceive the world. Fake news, and in particular its ability to go viral – thanks to means which break down all barriers of time and space – through the new social media, significantly influences decisions that fundamentally affect the life and direction of society, be it decisions about one’s health or voting preferences. The fourth LIGS University conference addressed the phenomenon of fake news from several perspectives, which you can read more about in these proceedings.
Abstract
This paper aims to identify the impact of fake news on a women-businesses operating on social media platforms. The findings show that men’s and women’s perception of difficulty in identifying fake news is similar. In contrast, women are more concerned than men about the harmful effects of misinformation on society. This article’s main objective is to investigate users’ perception of fake news, as well as identify the criteria on which their recognition strategies are based and the effect on their choice of the social media platform for their business strategy as well as the correlation between fake news content and the changing demographic of platforms such as the boomerizing of Facebook, and aging of Instagram and TikTok and the migration to new platforms. The results are based on the analysis of interviews where participants were asked about their competence in determining the veracity of the information misinformation vs disinformation and their ability to identify false content. Their consideration of changing their existing social media platform for emerging new social media as a result. Benefits are related to a better understanding of the effect of algorithms on business marketing as a result of mitigating fake news.
Keywords: Algorithms and Marketing, Fake News, Gender and Management, New social media, Women Entrepreneurship
JEL Classification: M1, M3, 035