Fake News and the Work of Journalists in Digital Era

Abstract

                The advancement of digital technology and social media today has opened widely for internet users to create their own contents and easily share those contents to other users. Such situation, on the one hand, has helped comfortably circulating news and information worldwide. But, on the other hand, it has caused the issues discussing on what facts or what fake news are seen for digital users. This article aims to examine the definition of fake news in the new digital context, and, to propose the verification process for journalists and users in dealing with fake news. Conducted by document research and samples, the article found that fake news we are encountering is not relatively new since it appeared for hundred years. But the fake news in the digital media context is more intricate than before. This article found at least 3 forms of fake news threaten in digital media todays: (1) advertising/propagating disguised contents as news; (2) presenting sarcastic, or satirical contents distorting facts; (3) intentionally produce fake contents to serve political agenda, increasing hyper-partisan emotions and its divides. Therefore, journalists and digital users should strictly apply the verification process and preform their professional skills to deal with fake news.