Breaking the News
WEBSITE + SOCIAL MEDIA
Interactive + Brand Design
Problem
According to Statistica, a “Statistics Portal” from over 22,500 sources, Fake News has been “one of the most hotly-debated socio-political topics of recent years.”
Websites which deliberately published hoaxes and misleading information popped up across the internet and were often shared on social media to increase their reach. As a result, people in the United States became wary of the information that they read online, with over a quarter stating that they rarely trusted the news that they read on social media. Fake news has the power to shift the national outlook on everything from sports to entertainment to politics. More than ever, bogus stories infiltrating all news categories have been
clogging people’s newsfeeds with over half of social media users claiming to see them regularly.
“One quarter of users state that they rarely trust the news that they read on social media.”
Solution
Breaking the News is a campaign in partnership with FactCheck.org that aims to collect, deconstruct and display some of the most popular and influential Fake News stories of the past year on Instagram.
Data is primarily collected from Statistica’s Fake News Statistics. Facts and Fake News examples are pulled from leading research organization FactCheck.org (partnered with Facebook).
View the webpage here.
WHY FAKE NEWS?
Over the past 5 years, I’ve personally noticed a spike in fake news stories permeating my Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds. I wanted to explore a data-centric campaign to help minimize it.
Additional Credits:
Abby Guido
Instructor
Graduate Seminar at Tyler School of Art
Prompt
Use data visualization to address a societal problem