The University of Sheffield have issued a press release covering my recent work on mis-and disinformation in Northern Ireland.  This draws on my recent submission to the UK House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s Fake News inquiry, which argued that local journalists and politicians had a key role to play in countering ‘fake news’ shared via social media in Northern Ireland. Some selected quotes from the release are below:

Dr Reilly said: “While citizens played a role in sharing tweets that corrected rumours, mis-and disinformation shared on social media during these incidents, it is clear that professional journalists have a critical role to play in factchecking such claims and amplifying corrections and debunks.”

Other key points from Dr Reilly’s submission to the Fake News inquiy relate to the terminology used by politicians and the news media to describe such activity. He argues that the term ‘fake news’ fails to capture the complexities of how false information is created and shared via social media.

Dr Reilly added: “Fake news has become something of a ‘floating signifier’ – a term that can be weaponised by political groups to discredit news coverage that they disagree with. It also fails to capture the nuances of a spectrum of activity on social media that might be broadly defined as ‘false information;’ This ranges from the relatively benign behaviour of parody social media accounts that poke fun at our politicians to the more malevolent and sinister use of ‘troll farms’ to manufacture news with the intention of sowing confusion and disunity within democracies.”